The Small Business Expo is always a good show, offering much more than the chance to stock up on brochures and free pens.

Tech companies are generally heavily represented at the event - in fact they made up nearly a third of the exhibitors last year and close to 90 percent exhibitors have told organisers they'll be back this year.

Reseller News enjoys the chance to see what vendors, system integrators and others in the channel are telling potential small business customers about themselves.

Some of our readers will be exhibiting, but for those who aren't, why not come along as our guest?

Don't worry, we won't escort you around, but the Expo organisers have free tickets to give away to those who register online for one of the three venues (Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch). Auckland runs from 16-18 April, while Christchurch goes from 20-22 May and Wellington from 25-27 June.

The event includes a 'Sustainability Zone', a seminar series, networking opportunities and a cyber café.

If you want to check it out, visit one of the following pages: (by registering your details you sign up for show updates, but can unsubscribe from these). Tickets get emailed to you and can be used on any of the three days.

Auckland:
http://www.businessexpo.co.nz/Auckland/Attendees/registration.asp


Christchurch:
http://www.businessexpo.co.nz/Christchurch/Attendees/registration.asp


Wellington:
http://www.businessexpo.co.nz/Wellington/Attendees/registration.asp

Posted by Amanda Sachtleben March 27, 2008 4:26 PM | Comments (0)

Once again - while gorging on chocolate eggs and hot cross buns - many of us grumbled about the Easter trading ban - which saw most retailers shut shop on Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

As usual, many people found themselves a few sizzlers and a couple of beers short for their planned barbies over these days.

But spare a thought for another set of Easter trading ban victims - the tech-deprived - those of us, including this writer, who planned to buy some gadget or bit of software this weekend.

Late last week, I took delivery of a flash new laptop - and carefully planned my weekend to make the best use of my new toy…

Thursday night was set aside for basic setup operations. Friday I would install the copy of Office Ultimate 2007 that’s been gathering dust on my bookshelf for months, and start ripping some CDs to the new machine. Saturday I would continue ripping music, and install and synch a few devices such as a Bluetooth MP3 player, digital camera, etc.

Sunday was set aside for a family barbie. Monday I was going to test my laptop on some hot new games.

As luck would have it the family barbie was moved to Monday at the last minute. Hence I woke on Sunday thinking: So what if it’s sunny? This is going to be my gaming day!

The only problem was I had not yet bought the new games and while chomping hot cross buns on Easter Sunday morning it dawned on me that the stores would be shut.

CONVINCED that some gaming store would be open, I started ringing around furiously - I tried all the retailers I could think of - not even JB Hifi was open!

Panic set in - surely the shopping malls would be open, I thought. Maybe they’ll open at noon, I tried to console myself.

Alas, no luck. I now had two choices - install some of my old games or check out the games that were included on the laptop.

Since my existing collection of games is really quite old - and just not exciting anymore, I decided on the second option, which taught me two things.

One, just because something is included on the PC, it doesn’t mean it’s free. My laptop came with wide selection of ”HP Games„ but after a few free sessions, you have to either buy virtual coins to keep playing or buy the game outright.

Since none of the games seemed worth spending money on, I turned to the standard free Windows games, which led to my second realisation - Minesweeper has really not changed much in 20 years…

Anyway, this obviously did not occupy me for long and I soon turned to another pastime - making up jokes for 6-year olds, like this one:

What does the one Easter egg say to the other Easter egg?

Hollow!

Posted by Louis Van Wyk March 25, 2008 12:22 PM | Comments (1)

Here at Reseller News, we get invited to a lot of events. But one which I’d heard folklore about was the Axon St Patrick’s Day party which the company holds instead of a Christmas function.

This is a great idea as the Christmas events tend to blur into one after awhile - not that spending an entire evening drinking Guinness does not cause blurriness either.

So in the spirit of social networking, here is a small list of signs that you’re at an Axon St Patrick’s Day party.

1. The covers band is called Bomb Squad (an IRA reference of course!)

2. One of the ‘leprechauns’ in attendance manages to break a glass when tapping it

3. The dress code is not black tie, but green shirt (not a reference to CEO Scot Green however)

4. Scott Green receives offers to buy his "Kiss Me I'm Irish" t-shirt

5. There are no long speeches - that cuts into the drinking time

6. Everyone is worried their drunken poses will end up in Reseller News (of course they will!)

7. After a few Kilkenny’s some people think they can do the River Dance

8. The programmers start texting when they run out of small talk

Axon’s Natalie Hilterman and Alan Nehemia from Toshiba get cozy with Shameless the Leprechaun.

Posted by Hamish Barwick March 19, 2008 12:17 PM | Comments (1)

A recent media, PR and vendor event across the Tasman had much going for it, but it was also a reminder that it’s not just on the sporting field that the Aussies can make us feel small.

It was my first trip across to Kickstart in Queensland, organised by Australia-based Media Connect, while others in this year’s five-strong Kiwi media contingent had been before. There were also a couple of New Zealand-based vendors who attended, but we were a definite minority at the five year-old conference, which wasn’t unexpected.

With vendors, PR and media all together in one place to hear about plans for the year, the networking on offer was invaluable. So are the many insights you get into industry trends.

But the NZ part of the A/NZ responsibilities which most presenting vendor reps held often seemed to be given fleeting consideration.

We heard a lot of advice about what Australian businesses need to do to be successful, about the results of research among Australian companies, and the aims of firms which only operated in Australia.

The prime example was a product launch which bordered on an underarm delivery - the item wasn’t even going to be released in New Zealand. I briefly considered throwing my bat down and walking off the pitch.

It’s not a new or unusual problem - Reseller News has often received PR information which starts with the Sydney dateline and has little local relevance.

But if vendors really consider the New Zealand market important, this should be reflected in the information they give at events and on paper.

Posted by Amanda Sachtleben March 7, 2008 12:30 PM | Comments (0)