Edge Message #68 from Brian Sweeney, producer NZEDGE.COM
TO NEW ZEALAND EDGE GLOBAL COMMUNITY
DECEMBER’S LIST OF NEW WORLD MODERNISTS IN THE GLOBAL MEDIA:
Director! Director! Peter Jackson’s Return of the King everywhere, Weta Workshop, Wellywood, Russell Crowe Master & Commander, Jane Campion’s In The Cut, Niki Caro’s Whale Rider, Gaylene Preston’s Perfect Strangers, Christine Jeff’s Sylvia, Haydn Bulter Fresh, Lucy Warrior Princess, Alan Gibbs’ Aquada, Colin McCahon in Sydney, Janet Frame, Rob Mountain, John Hood, Peter Gordon’s NY Public, Noel Turner in Costa Mesa, Julian Dashper at Texas Gallery, Ngila Dickson, Jonah Lomu, Hilton Auckland, Jaz Coleman, The Datsuns, Lyell Cresswell, Brent Hansen, Katherine Mansfield, Keith Urban, Karl Urban, Martin Henderson, Kim Lucas & the Candy Bar, Chris Duff, Madge, Evers-Swindell Twins, Kerry Black, Tumu te Heuheu, NZ hot in California and Singapore, Karen Walker, Deborah Sweeney, Black Ferns, Wade Cunningham world go-kart champ, Stefan Merriman 250cc, Miles Horden’s Voyaging The Pacific, Millie Khan RIP, Wellington, Queenstown, SH73, sauvignon blanc Pinot Noir, Auckland and Waikato Uni discoveries and more all at /category/newzedge/
100 MESSAGES OF AROHA
https://www.nzedge.com/mailbox/index.html
Notes to nzedge.com from the diaspora. This in today from Sydney: “A simply beautiful website. Especially touching is the section on NZ heroes. I was pleasantly suprised to see Sir Peter Buck mentioned. Ever since I was a child I have looked up to this great rangatira. I was in tears reading the story on him. Living overseas, I am that much prouder of my culture and my country. thank you NZEDGE for making this kiwi girl’s day.”
NZ CULTURAL IDENTITY IN CYBERSPACE
Anna Tripp, Jocelyn Williams and Glenda Jacobs from UNITEC Institute of Technology have written a paper on identity, place and community in relation to nzedge.com. Many thanks for the heads-up. Their conclusion: “NZEDGE provides a reference point for New Zealanders to connect to their history, to each other, and to their future. It captures its audience at an opportune time, communicating through an efficient medium, while encouraging interaction and feedback. Through our research, it is apparent that the website’s shared rhetoric collectively reinforces the meanings derived and constructed by the participants in this study, the interpretive community.” https://www.nzedge.com/intro/cyber-identity.html
THANKS TO PAUL WARD
My big thanks to nzedge.com collaborator and editor Paul Ward, who will be based in LA from January as a story producer on Phil Keoghan’s mega-new Discovery channel programme. Paul has been with nzedge.com for four years carving and sharpening and honing the edge story and touch from Wellington, Oxford and Sydney. Paul has a commanding eloquence with text, image and design. He has commissioned contributions from many creative achievers for the site including architect Sam Kebbell, designers Turi Park and Anna Brown, Pacific producer Sarah Hunter, marketeer Sarah Connor, editors Clare Marshall and Anna Livesey, film director Costa Botes and scholars May-Ana Tirikatene Sullivan and Dr John Campbell. Paul’s parting contributions will be presented in the first months of 04 – several new stories for the Heroes page including Colin McCahon, James K Baxter, Janet Frame, Douglas Wright, Neil Finn, Tim Finn, Michael Jones, Sean Fitzpatrick, Colin Meads, Kiri te Kanawa, Rosalie Gascoigne, Bill Hamilton, Fred Hollows, Denny Hulme, David Low, Jack Lovelock and many other people with edge. Travel well Paul, may the edge be with you.
INTO 04
The New Zealand Edge is a story-in-the-making, I’ve always said it’s a ten year project and we’re over halfway into it. A choice moment was planting our metaphor smack in the middle of Time magazine’s 50 page feature on Aotearoa: Going to the Edge. Site visitors have recorded more than a million page accesses in 03. The biggest bout of registrations (300 people) was one weekend via Sam Morgan’s http://www.oldfriends.co.nz.
Speaking to 500 principals mid-year saw our traffic from schools rocket. Thanks Taranaki. My nzedge.com partner Kevin Roberts embodied the edge attitude in several major speeches at business and university conferences here and in places like Barcelona, Warsaw and Kobe. (Kevin’s new book Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands is published in New York in May 04, and then in 30 countries/10 languages, see http://www.lovemarks.com).
The efforts of hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders here and in the world are putting these isles into a place of great head and great heart. I think we can head into Christmas with a well-earned thirst.
Cheers.
Brian Sweeney
Publisher, Producer
THE NEW ZEALAND EDGE
http://www.nzedge.com
brian@nzedge.com
Thumbnail description: Orlando Bloom at the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King Premier in Wellington 2003
