 Thank you everyone for joining us. We're going to kick off the webinar now. It's my pleasure to welcome you to this chat. We're joined by Michelle Dickinson and Ron Warrom, and it's a chance for us to hear more about their stories of connecting more with New Zealand. They're both people that have been in New Zealand for a while, but they came came from offshore, and it's a chance for us to hear about their experiences of settling and innovating from New Zealand. Hey, Michelle and Rod, do you want to just say a brief hi? We'll come back in more depth in a bit later, but do you want to just kick off by saying hi and a brief intro? Okay, after this, I'm Michelle. I have been in New Zealand for almost 10 years now. I'm an engineer and nanotechnologist, and I am happy to answer any questions you have later on. Hi, I'm Rod Orham. I'm a business journalist here in New Zealand, and I've been here now 21 years, originally from the UK but then US and Canada, and I'm a Ned Edmund Hillary fellow, and I'm very much looking forward to the discussions with you. Thanks, Rod and Michelle. A few housekeeping things before we jump in. So firstly, we are recording this conversation, and that'll be so that we can share this with some others that have registered for the call but aren't able to join us right at the moment, and also we'll post it on YouTube afterwards so others can view it. So we'll be conscious of that. We'll try not to mention your your full names or anything that will identify you unless you want that. And the other thing is just in terms of broad kind of our plan for today. So I'm just going to start in the first five or ten minutes, just kind of giving a bit of an EHF 101, just kind of setting the scene for what the fellowship is, and then we'll open up for Rod and Michelle and we'll hear their experiences of moving to New Zealand and innovating from here. We are keen to get your questions so we can keep this an ongoing discussion. The best way for you to do that is there's a Q&A box, which should be somewhere on your menu, likely down the bottom depending on what type of operating system you're running. So if you have questions at any point, chip them away and then we'll either post them to Michelle and Rod or I can cover some of them off as well. So do keep them coming. I'm going to start by giving a five or ten minute intro into EHF. So I'm going to talk about the fellowship and what that involves, and then secondly I'm going to talk a little bit more about if you are interested in the fellowship, what's involved in terms of applying, and the process of becoming a fellow. So EHF is building a global community of change makers and the idea is that we'd have people solving global challenges from New Zealand. New Zealand is a great place to incubate new ideas and can be a launch pad to scaling those globally. This slide shows a bit about actually what does it involve being part of the fellowship. So let me unpack each of these briefly. So every six months we have our new frontiers summits and they bring together a bunch of our fellows across different cohorts as well as other innovators and entrepreneurs and government stakeholders in New Zealand. So for people who are part of the fellowship they're welcome to join each of those summits as a way of reconnecting. Also for those that are first offered a place in the fellowship or you know newly offered a place in the fellowship they'll come to New Zealand for what we call welcome week and they'll spend a bunch of time connecting with their cohort as well as joining the new frontiers summit. Also we have regional gatherings so for example in Wellington we have a monthly dinner with fellows and as we get more and more fellows across the country we'll have more connections able to be to be done by fellows in particular locations. Thirdly we have online tools for connecting fellows with each other so and there are discussion topics by for example geography you know which place in New Zealand you're based or by cohort or by which particular topics that you're working on. A key part about the fellowship as well is the informal collaboration that happens between the fellows. So for example one of our fellows who's doing work to to build theme parks that are educational came to me and was asking if we have any fellows that are doing work with renewable technologies because she wanted to demonstrate that with one of the theme parks and then I was able to introduce her to a fellow who's who's a leader in terms of wind technology so that's just an example of the kind of the kind of connections that can happen across different topics of fellows meeting with each other. And then fourth the EHF team is here to help support you and that involves helping support you as you transition to come to New Zealand for the first time supporting you in terms of connecting you with people from New Zealand that might make sense for you to connect with and it could be startups or incubators or science organizations in New Zealand as well. Here are a few photos this is from a New Frontiers Summit a year or two ago. Here's a little bit about the global impact visa so and how it works is that people apply for the Edmund Hillary Fellowship and if they're offered a place then they can then apply for a global impact visa. Key things to say about the global impact visa one is that it's very flexible it enables you to work and invest and to even certain types of study and to start up new ventures and we don't necessarily hold you to a particular business plan. Sorry. Thanks. Maybe if you could hop on mute. So we don't hold you to follow the specific business plan that you submitted so it's open for you to to do to do different things because we understand the the path to creating a venture is not always linear. People who become fellows who are internationals can apply and get the global impact visa. For their family members there are additional visas available for family members like partner visas for example. Also the global impact visa after three years there's the opportunity for people to apply for permanent residency and it's much more much more simple process of applying for permanent residency from the global impact visa compared to a number of other ways of applying for permanent residency. That's a bit about the global impact visa. Next I'll briefly discuss what's involved in terms of connecting with the fellowship if you're keen to apply and what's involved in the selection process. So the in terms of selection criteria there are five key things that we look at and you can find these on our website at ehf.org forward slash apply. So the first one is having a bold vision to solve systemic challenges. So a couple of things to note there we're after people that are doing things that are innovative and what we mean by systemic challenges is some of the big problems facing society. So if you're working on things that have the potential to get to some of the get to some of the hard of big problems then that's that's interesting to us. Secondly and very importantly as well as people's ability to deliver on their vision. So just having ideas isn't enough it's for us it's important that you can show that you can actually get things off the ground and you can do that in a bunch of different ways. You can do that through having done it on your current venture. So being able to show what you've what kind of progress you've made so far as well as previous things that you've been involved with. That could be previous ventures or previous work or previous voluntary work that you've done. So we have a we try and keep a broad lens in terms of how you can demonstrate your ability to get things done and create change. Fourth we're looking for people who can build long-term connections with New Zealand and there are different ways to do that. One obviously is coming and permanently moving to New Zealand but also sometimes people can find ways to meaningfully connect with New Zealand beyond permanently basing themselves here. So some people come for part of their time and they find ways to open up their networks and funding that can help benefit New Zealand. Fourth we're up for people who are keen to contribute to the EHF community and be great cohort members as part of the EHF cohort. And then finally people who'll be good ambassadors for New Zealand. As I mentioned before you can see more of this at ehf.org or slash apply. Here's a bit about key dates for the fourth cohort. So the application deadline is the second of September so that's a key date if you're keen to apply for the fourth cohort. Then the application process goes through September through late November maybe even to early December and then we announced to people around late November early December who's offered a place in the fellowship. Then for those who are internationals their the next step for them is to apply to Immigration New Zealand the global impact visa. And then we welcome our cohort for fellows to New Zealand in March next year and it's it's not the case you need to permanently move by March or move your venture but we expect all of those who are part of cohort four to be coming to their welcome week in March. And then after that the the fellowship begins. And next we're going to talk about a little bit more about the steps involved in the selection process. So the first step is submitting an online application and that's before second of September as we mentioned. Then for those who are shortlisted we ask a bunch of people to join a video interview and that's a chance for us to get to know you some more. Then for those shortlisted we follow up with references and then the final step is that we we at the team at EHF put forward information to our independent selection panel summarizing all the information that we've learned through our selection process and then it's the independent selection panel that make the final decisions about who's offered a place in the fellowship. So to apply before the second of September go to EHF.org forward slash apply. There's also an opportunity there at EHF.org forward slash connect to let us know a bit about yourself and then we can make contact with you after that. In terms of fees for international entrepreneurs it's $600 but if you have additional team members who are also applying to EHF it's $400 per team member. Investor applicants it's $1,100. There are there are significant discounts for New Zealand applicants as well. For there are fees payable when you apply but also for those that are offered a place in the fellowship there's a fee applicable there except for those who are New Zealanders and you can learn more about those fees at EHF.org forward slash apply. So key dates here to apply for cohort for applications close on the second of September and welcome week where we welcome fellows to New Zealand that's in March next year. Okay that is the end of our whirlwind EHF 101 in in five or ten minutes. Now we're going to pass with the slides and we'll set it up so that we can we can chat with with Michelle and with Rod. Okay here we go. Hey Rod how about we start with you in terms of maybe if no maybe maybe how we'll do it actually is we'll we'll talk to both of you and we'll start with what did you what did you expect before you came to New Zealand? Right I'll jump straight in. I had never had any intention of coming to New Zealand. I was very happily involved in a terrific job in London and I was cold-cored one day about a job opportunity in New Zealand and my initial response was no no I I'm very happy here at the Financial Times I've been here for a long time I don't want to go to New Zealand but I thought well no I I should hear what someone offered. So to cut a very long story short what my wife and I understood as we were talking to some New Zealand friends in London was that if we made the switch from London to New Zealand we'd be trading in very large scale in terms of the stories I was doing at the Financial Times or her work as an actress and so the scale would be smaller here but crucially we would gain dimension. So at the FT the stories I wrote were about major companies doing big things but in a sense though I hope good quality it was still kind of a two-dimensional view of business and the economy and I hoped that in moving to New Zealand I would get to know far more people and try to keep an entire mental model if you like going in my head about this country as an economy and a society and same situation for Lin too. So that was our expectation when we came and that's been very very richly fulfilled over that time and in terms of the range of people we know here the activities we get involved in are all much more diverse and in many ways more rewarding because of the the connection and the intimacy of the country versus working at a larger scale but in a rather more two-dimensional way in the UK and so that's been essentially the huge pleasure for me and my family of becoming New Zealanders but also it's something which keeps growing so here's this whole new phase for me now as an Edmund Hillary Fellow and so this seems to be an evergreen opportunity for me despite the time I've already been here in New Zealand. Thanks Rod how about you Michelle? So I actually didn't have any expectations before I moved to New Zealand I was probably quite naive in that I saw it as a very pretty place where they spoke English it was good enough for me I moved here I was living in the US before here and but I had also lived in England for 10 years before that and people have described New Zealand to me as a bit like living in Wales so I thought well that sounds lovely I'd spent some time in Wales and so I was very naive and I was so pleasantly surprised and delighted when I actually moved here and and it took me a while to settle in I reckon it took me two years to really figure out what New Zealand was and how it worked and then once I did I really flourished and met some amazing people and and one of the things that I have found about living in New Zealand versus living anywhere else is connection to people is not only so powerful but so easy here it literally is everybody does know everybody and so you can find the person that you want to connect with quite easily which I've struggled with in other countries so my expectations were pretty low because I didn't really know what to expect I guess you know I thought it was a bit like Australia and I'd spent some time traveling there but maybe with friendlier people but this ended up being this amazing place filled with innovation and passionate positive people who really are here to make a significant change for the better Thanks Michelle and any other thoughts from either of you on terms of what was unexpected coming to New Zealand? Michelle it sounds like you didn't come with strong expectations and you know the kind of the positive surprise I guess of being able to connect with people more quickly and deeply but any other surprising things that you found about New Zealand that you maybe wouldn't have expected when you first arrived or before you came supermarkets I think it sounds really silly and I host a lot of new immigrants now and so I see this all the time supermarkets in New Zealand close on strange days and I still don't really understand it but I think it's Easter Sunday anyway you'll find that some days the supermarkets are closed and you're not expecting it and then suddenly you can't buy food and I think it's only at Easter now but that was the thing that surprised not only me the most but whenever new people come here it's always the thing that catches them by surprise and in many ways the biggest surprise for me is well the first one is I was hoping in coming to New Zealand I would be closer to the action in Asia and which was slightly counterintuitive because London to Seoul was a shorter distance than sort of Seoul to Auckland but of course Asia means a huge amount to us it's a very big influencer upon us and so I found that connection with Asia a deeply fascinating one and I feel whilst the plane rides for a bit long when you want to go anywhere else it's sort of a great sense of connection with people not just in our region but around the world the second thing is the very powerful impact of our indigenous culture on us so I was aware of Maori before I came but as each year goes by that becomes more and more a defining thing for me as an ex-European New Zealander not that I am trying to be Maori but that but the sense of place in the world that that creates that I very strongly relate to in many ways and I think quite significantly defines us as a country so it was a very small country four and a half million people in a world of seven and a half billion and I think that does give us a sense of place and a sense of where we stand in the world and I think that in turn then gives us an increasing sense of strength about how we can be welcoming to others and play a role in the world and so that's that second one has been I think the most powerful thing for me overall. I'm sorry I should give a sensible one then my sensible one other than supermarkets closing is how multicultural it is here in New Zealand like I think I was really surprised at literally how it's I mean Auckland is one of the most multicultural cities in the world and it's incredible because you have access to this amazing group of people from everywhere and I think being an immigrant and sometimes I've struggled when I've immigrated to other countries to to fit in or feel like I was welcome here but New Zealand is it's filled with amazing people from amazing places who have a story of travel and journey and moving to a new place for a reason and so I think that is a really special thing. I'll just add a couple of reflections on that because I think that's fundamentally important sorry it's the business journalist who'd be about to correct some data. Auckland is the fourth most immigrant intensive city in the world after in order Toronto Vancouver and Brussels and so 43 percent of us who live here in Auckland were born outside New Zealand and yet so far and I think this will continue and our ability to assimilate people works and I see this particularly in New Zealand tech companies or indeed more widely across the economy where their staff become these many united nations of people and even quite recent immigrants quite quickly acculturate first into the culture of the company and then find their own way to give their own expression of what it means to be a New Zealander and the way they then work in those companies and the way they contribute more widely in society is a delight and whilst we're the most immigrant intensive place in the country you'll find that in all our towns and cities however small. Any reflections from you both about how connecting with New Zealand as compared to other places you've connected and with like I know that each of you have spent times in lots of different parts of the world and even you know formed homes and new places before coming to New Zealand so how you know how would how would your experience connecting with New Zealand compare to different places where you've landed? I'm going to tell a story against us or against New Zealand in one sense. When I arrived 20 years ago it was a very warm welcome it was a bigger welcome than I had and a more open one than I had received in the States and then later in Canada which was wonderful but then I realized after a while there was this sort of slightly unsaid thing this kind of little sort of glass ceiling that and it started to come out there was this expectation I was only here for a while before I'd be moving on you know why are you here why why didn't you go back to London and when I was making it very clear I was staying and the years went by and then I felt that I got through that semi-invisible barrier but that's changed a very great deal and I think over these years particularly say over the last 10 there's a real sense of confidence and purpose here and also of course a greater appreciation that this is is a very good place to live and work where democracy still works and you know all sorts of other things are in somewhat better shape than in some other countries so that's gone away I think people now are thinking well you know welcome to New Zealand it's lovely to have you here you've made a good choice you know it's gone of the old days is when you're leaving any any reflections from you Michelle because compared to settling in the States or different different places yeah I found it much easier I think to settle here in New Zealand which I figured out how it worked and actually that's changed a lot since I've been here because I moved here 10 years ago and now if I think about people I know who've moved here recently there are so many meet-up groups and events every night there is a free event going on somewhere and the co-sharing spaces and the start-up spaces actually all invite you in so I think it's become even easier to connect with people here and there are welcoming spaces where you can do that and I think actually those co-sharing spaces and those innovation hubs actually are filled with people who are incredibly connected with likely the people that you would need to find when you get to New Zealand and so I think it's become even more easy to settle in very quickly and find the people that you know are your tribe and then even when it was 10 years ago and any any words of advice for anyone who's wanting to come to New Zealand like any thoughts of what they should be thinking about you know what sort of picture they do before they come or what should they be aware of or you know once they arrive here how should any any tips for them to connect in? Well I think the first one is if you're an English speaker don't be confused by what seems to be a common language because in in sort of subtle ways you'll realize it isn't and this isn't you know England from a few years back or whatever and so just being very open to the difference to the nuance I think it's an important thing and but at the same time to you know be confident about yourself but also then crucially about your confidence to adapt I get lots of calls from New Zealanders who have been overseas for a while or indeed some non-New Zealanders who think you're emigrating here who want to talk about what it's like here and I think the essential point I make to them is that the job you've done overseas is almost certainly not available here because as a small country we tend to multitask we tend our jobs can be tend to be less specialized and we have a slightly different way of working so you can't just say well I did this overseas so I'll do exactly that in New Zealand you just need to sort of work out how to slightly kind of repurpose yourself and how to find ways to make your experience and your knowledge useful here so it's just a quick I think those are some of the the transitions that you go through as you as you settle in New Zealand the big one for me is I always recommend that people don't commit to housing or where they're going to live until they've actually come here and visited and housing in New Zealand is very different than I think anywhere else I've lived in the world through it's different diversity in housing and so I always suggest that people try and you know Airbnb or stay somewhere for a month first to figure out actually the type of housing they're interested in and and the suburb that they would like to live in or the city because New Zealand really does differ from place to place and it's great to find somewhere that you would settle without committing on you know a year's rental for a place that isn't for you it's also been very fascinating with the overseas fellows in the first two cohorts because many of them have taken exactly that sort of advice that Michelle's offering and have taken their time to work out where they might be and certainly at least one fellow in the second cohort sorry two fellows I think at the second cohort have settled in Dunedin a small small ish town at the other end of the country so it's not necessarily all about Auckland as our largest city or Wellington as the capital or Christchurch as the largest city in the South Island. Travel between centres is easy I say that cautiously because some of those internal Air New Zealand flights can be quite expensive but there is that sort of connection around the country so it is well worth taking your time just to get to know various places and find one that makes good sense to you in terms of where the best colleagues are and where the best lifestyles for you. And earlier Rod you alluded to not being trapped into the the thought that the language is the same so maybe the culture is the same but any thoughts on on how you would describe how New Zealand culture is different or both of our guests to say I don't know what people might be familiar with from say UK or the US for example. Yes like let me start with some myths of a sort because every country every society has them and we do have a long history of considering ourselves very egalitarian and and that is was true in part and it's not such it was not such a class conscious society and still isn't today compared with with many countries and but there are big disparities in income and wealth in the country and especially the disparity in wealth rather than income has become more exacerbated in recent years. The another big one is it's really quite fascinating how much of Maori culture has just kind of seeped into Pakeha culture and when I first turned up here and was having meetings at the newspaper I was the new business editor at I couldn't understand quite how the meetings were working and people just kind of seem to walk in and nobody seemed to be particularly in charge and there was this kind of checking in with each other to see how they all were and I was used to going to meeting there was an agenda someone's in charge and you just plow straight into it and it was only when I made my first visit to Amarai and was welcomed on to Amarai by a local Maori Iwi and then I realized that there was all sorts of customs protocols, tikanga of Maori that are kind of seeped into the into sort of the rest of the culture and language too in terms of some of the words we use and and then there's a very strong Polynesian influence as well here from people who come down from the Pacific Islands so those are some of the big ones let me just add one more one which I think is a bit problematic for us which is we're not as good in New Zealand as some countries are some societies are in dealing with conflict so what I do see distressingly too often is say in an organization or in a company there's a tension or so or more it gets swept under the carpet and people really aren't addressing the issues until it all blows up in a pretty messy way so I think that can be one of the downsides of a small society but having said that that's by no means a blanket comment about how we deal with things in New Zealand and I think especially in very fast moving areas of the economy or society obviously technology the fast moving technology sectors would be part of that and we're starting to see more and more organizations that are developing an open culture where we can relate more productively to each other so that would be the one comment of a more negative nature I'd make about a small country but I want to emphasize that I think that I know that that's improving considerably and the thing is that life is not by and large is not quite as confrontational as it can be in in some other countries some other societies and so there is a that that makes it you know good place to be I think one of the things that I found really surprising having moved here from the US where I was so used to working seven days a week fast-paced always running getting things done the pace it wasn't slower here but what I found really interesting is people take time off in January and when I say people I mean most of the country and so as somebody now who runs their own business I have to plan my calendar around knowing that literally in January it's very unlikely that the things that I would like to do are going to get done because the majority of New Zealanders are away on holiday enjoying the sunshine being on the beach and having quality family time and when I first moved here I was so frustrated because I'd come here with this fast pace of what are people doing how can they take so much time off and as I have been here longer and I realize the importance of creativity and time away from from you know your desk and your job to actually be creative in your space and I realized the power of that and the fact that the whole country does it I think is why it's a very creative country but you really have to realize that January is not the time to get big big decisions done in your industry because very few people are at work. Yeah I was always right from the outset when I first told my colleagues in London that we were my family and I were moving to New Zealand and said oh you're going for the lifestyle and I said no no no no I'm going for the work style you know it's just a you know a smaller country be able to multitask relate to people differently and I still say that is absolutely true and it is it is actually true about many aspects of lifestyle and not the least of which are you know a reasonably benign climate although highly variable little rain little sun little wind you know all in one morning and but but as I say the work style how people come together to work is often very very attractive too. Cool okay so if you want a decision made don't don't do that in January and if you want to go to the supermarket don't do it in Easter. And okay so by the way for all of our participants feel free to ask any questions in the Q&A box and we can put that to the group. I'm switching gears slightly so I'm interested interested rather to hear your experiences of once you arrive in New Zealand and the work that you're doing and the innovative things that you're doing how you found that kind of carving out your niche and you mentioned Rod that you know have to re kind of reshape compared to how things that are overseas but I'm interested in how you've found New Zealand as an environment for you to work and do the interesting things that you do. The thing that struck me first of all was how amazingly approachable people were but how generous they were in bearing contacts and that's I know that's completely true today and obviously everybody keeps a few really special contacts at their sleeves particularly really famous or hard to get to people at home and abroad understandably but in terms of sharing and those networks and contacts more widely and my sense is that people will make a fairly quick judgment that from what they've heard about you or what they see about you you're okay and therefore they will they might introduce you into their network and it's kind of up to you to see how you get on sink or swim rather than somebody being a bit more constrained and say well I really want to see how this person works out before I put them you know in with my some of my best friends and colleagues so that sense is a big one in terms of how that innovation works and it's really hard to generalize though about how the nature of innovation works across the country because sometimes it can be very quick and and sometimes reasonably commercially focused and other times it can be kind of all over the shop and you know there is a great tradition here of people tackling ridiculously big ideas or questions and bringing a real creativity to it in a very useful way and I think again a shift in possibly say the last 10 years that those innovation systems and more crucially the whole ecosystems around innovation has improved greatly in terms of the depth and capability there and a big event for us in recent years has been tech week with lots of events around the country and I was particularly struck this tech week in May as I was around the country with various events and that sense of a far more efficient and capable innovation ecosystem starting to develop because it's nothing like the scale or the sophistication of Silicon Valley or other major places in the world but I think there are some particular attributes that we can bring to that process that makes it distinctive and in some ways perhaps a bit more creative and sometimes more effective yeah I am sorry as a nanotechnologist obviously hardware and equipment is what I deal with and you know New Zealand doesn't have all of the equipment but you know what that actually made it easier for me to do things because it made me value so I would go overseas to run some experiments for example and it would give me time here to be creative about what that time was going to be and make that time more efficient but then once I was here and realized I didn't have access to everything it made me really value that time when I was away and then be able to bring the expertise back here so actually it made me more efficient I think in how I became sorry all right I'm back how I became innovative and made me think about what happened when I did have limited resources here and actually it made me more impactful because previously I literally could tinker with anything I wanted and didn't always know what I was doing I was like well we'll try this button and we'll try that button whereas the time here in New Zealand when I first started and and I didn't have access to all the things that I thought would help me made me realize that I didn't need most of those things and actually it helped me really to focus on what made impact what was amazing and then I could spend quality time doing that and so that was really valuable for my time because it made me use my time more efficiently and what about that exploration phase for you Michelle as as you've gone to create now it's nanogool labs and lots of other things that you've done and yeah how did you find kind of getting that off the ground and kind of figuring out what what the venture is that you're doing from from the get-go. Oh moving to New Zealand has made me more creative than I think I've ever been in my life and it has allowed me the freedom to be able to create you know my own organization my own social enterprise to concentrate on the things that I am passionate about which is education around technology and I don't think I would have done that anywhere else but here partly because I've met so many passionate people partly because New Zealand is a great place to pilot things and so I could do things at small scale and then expand them overseas and New Zealand is great for that we've had we've sold a lot of our products overseas where we've been able to show through pilot and trial data in New Zealand that the concept would work in other countries and other countries have been very appreciative of that data saying if we know it works in New Zealand we know it will work in and we've exported to Singapore and Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi and the UK and so that's been really helpful to be able to just tinker here show a proof of concept and then be able to sell that product offshore but yeah I have been more creative here I think partly because of the work style or lifestyle and allowing me to you know really think about what is important and partly because living in a beautiful country like New Zealand you really appreciate your impact and your footprint on the planet and it made me think about you know what I wanted to leave behind and what I wanted to create to help increase that positive footprint on the world to make sure that you know our footprint is not left behind in a in a carbon offset point of view but actually the footprint we leave is one about education and empowering the next generation and so yeah living here and being surrounded by like-minded people really helps you to focus on what your priorities are and what is important thanks one other reminder for participants to add in any other questions we've we've got time here um but um another question from me is around okay so what would you advise for people who have a venture and are looking at bringing adventures in New Zealand and trying to figure out how they'll you know expand that and get that off the ground any thoughts for for how to do that in New Zealand after Michelle or slide jump back in um okay I'll start with if you want to start a venture in New Zealand if you have an existing venture already and you want to bring it to New Zealand um don't expect that you could just bring it and dump it here and it will work um always come and test the waters because it it's not quite it's not quite as easy as coming here and and trying it and dropping it in if you don't already have a venture and you want to come here um don't start it until you've done a little bit of networking funding sources in New Zealand um are are here you can get funding for your startup um they're just not always in the most obvious of places and they typically come through through networking actually there are um lots of investors here in and organizations that do invest but it does take a little bit of time um on the ground here so I would say to people don't jump straight in come here sort of um spend a couple of months sort of figuring out who you need to know and what you need to know and then everybody will help you to set it up um in a way that will work for New Zealand I would just um reinforce that message that that's a very very important investment in some time um and effort to just get a feel for the place and um given that um um being a small country and the close connections between people you can do that um quite reasonably quickly certainly quicker than other countries don't think of that as a daunting prospect um think of it as an exciting one uh to kind of spend a little time here and get that sense of um how your idea um and your ambitions um um might well morph a bit once you're here and you talk to people and see what's on offer and and find yourself influenced by that and but do make that investment it sounds from what you're both saying and this is my experience as well that relational connections are maybe relatively more important here compared to other places um so just uh yeah emphasizing getting to know people and figuring out the la the lay of the land here um and i'd be interested as well roger switching tech again to hear your experiences as an e hf fellow so i'd be interested to hear you know how you've how you found that experience of being a fellow and how that's how that's supported you and supported the work that you do yeah um there is uh so much to the uh fellowship um of great value um and um one of them is um the mix of um fellows from overseas and new zealanders so in my cohort there's um six of us new zealanders and uh 22 from um overseas and um that ratio has been um i think reasonably consistent in the second and bigger cohort uh and um and will progress it's a lovely combination because on one hand i thought i knew lots of people from the country but i met some new people who are new zealand fellows so uh so it was the great joy in that um but then um in the week we spent together initially is welcome week october of last year um it was terrific to have that time to get to know the other fellows and um quite a few of them had come with their partners or and so we were meeting them too uh which was a very very rich experience now as you know from the um the material about the hf the application process basically we fall into two categories either innovators or investors and i'm a bit of a hybrid because of the nature of the work i do as a journalist so um my wife and i have um are small investors um our biggest investment uh overall there's been in a social enterprise and um the others in some tech enterprises and in terms of innovation um as a journalist i'm trying to work out what on earth is the business model that is good journalism in a small country and i'm working with some great colleagues on that so um and as an investor um the main investment i'm making um in my fellow fellows is in my um knowledge of new zealand and my networks here uh whether they've been new zealand fellows or overseas ones and and the um next big step in this process which is still shaping up is um my central preoccupation as a business journalist is how on earth do seven and a half billion people now how will 10 billion people uh live well within the biosphere uh and um how how radical are the changes the values everything else that needs to happen and um uh so the next stage for me uh is to build out my relationships across the cohorts and to expand that area of my work and there's already some terrific people involved in that and and um the idea of us um as a a stream if you like amongst the fellows um to develop some projects um to develop um some very powerful things to say um out to new zealand and around the country that's the next big step and and i'd hope that um in this coming year which will be my second year as a fellow um i will be able to um progress with my fellows on that so um this first year um has um largely been getting to know each other um people who are coming cold into the country and setting up here have obviously got a different task as opposed to somebody who's already well established like me but in a sense my um already being well established um and uh means that um i'm having to sort of carve out space and give up some stuff uh to create more time for e h f so it's kind of in like the reverse problem if you like or the reverse challenge and anyway um i'm progressing on all of those fronts and um and hugely loving it and um again it's the quality of the engagement i mean the the new frontiers get together as conferences whatever you like to call them astonishing speakers um in april our most recent one we had johan rocstrom from the stock home resilience center here who spent three days with us which was remarkable for somebody who is such a a global expert and in in such great demand and he was so generous with his time there's just wonderful wonderful conversations um so that was very um thrilling for me personally thanks for that rod um i'll i'll give one last final call for any questions so um do send them through quickly um otherwise we're we're about at the end of the call um but it just i'll put it back to michelle and rod any any other any other actually we've got a question that's come through but um rod and michelle i'll i'll see the thought for you which is just a um any other final comments for people who are thinking about moving to new zealand um okay so our question is if anyone's not selected for the fellowship but wants to connect with some of the existing fellows how can he or she do that um so the what i would suggest the best way to do that would be to come along to the new frontiers summit um so you can go to newfrontiers.nz um it's the website or you can google it new frontiers and that's a way that's i would say the best place to connect with fellows and there'll be fellows there from across different cohorts um but i'll i'll leave i'll pass it back now to rod and michelle for any any final comments um words of advice for people thinking about connecting more with new zealand and then after that we can wrap up the call unless you're any other questions from our participants michelle would i i'm just gonna say do it like just do it it's everybody i know who has done it and who has come here has created a magical adventurous journey that um that i have never seen anybody regret and so i say yes it's an incredible place it's probably not what you're expecting it's probably so much more so definitely do it and although we seem far away um apart from australia any anywhere as a minimum of a 12 hour flight just think of that as a mini film festival now there's even on-demand films in you know economy class just sit back um select your films have a bit of a snooze um a bit of dinner and heck and then you're here in new zealand just like that fantastic hey um rod and michelle thank you so much for your time and thanks for sharing your experiences um and thank you for everyone who's joined us and for for those who'll be watching this afterwards um thank you thank you