A custom-made surfboard may have helped attract low-cost carrier AirAsia X to Auckland Airport. Malaysian-based AirAsia X started daily services on Thursday when airport chief executive Adrian Littlewood revealed the unusual gift to the airline's charismatic founder Tony Fernandes about five years ago. "We had an inkling that he might be keen on surfing and got him one made as a permanent reminder of his time in New Zealand," Littlewood said. "We were keen to get a low-cost long-haul carrier at the time when Air Asia X was starting to look around the world and growing fast." Littlewood said it was all part of the long game airports play to woo airlines. "We didn't get it that time but the ground work we put in probably helped."
RAW
EY kicked off this year's Entrepreneur of the Year competition on Thursday with a glitzy event at the Auckland Art Gallery. Last year's Social Entrepreneur of the Year, fashion designer Annah Stretton, offered up her top three tips for budding business people as well as some anecdotes into her own work rehabilitating female prisoners with R.A.W. (reclaim another woman). It turned out Stretton has embraced raw in more ways than one, revealing she is now on a raw food diet, eating only uncooked and unprocessed foods. Asked about her favourite drink, she confessed it might have been a Villa Maria Rose but as the diet was alcohol-free she'd have to go with coconut water. Her top tips were connectivity, breathing (as in take a breath, sometimes you need to sleep on an idea) and dream big.
Imagine
The New Zealand finals for Microsoft's 2016 Imagine Cup took place last week with home-cooking app Clove taking out the top prize. The innovative online platform designed by three University of Auckland students - Hayley Yu, Edwin Tsang and Duoyi Xu, connects home chefs with consumers to provide them healthy, home-cooked meals. The Dragon's Den-style judging panel included well-known leaders from New Zealand's tech and innovation community - Michelle Dickinson, co-founder of OMGTech; Michael Brick, legal counsel and corporate affairs director for Microsoft NZ; Mark Gilbert, US Ambassador to New Zealand; and Greg Davidson, CEO of Datacom. Clove took home $5000 and the opportunity to compete in the Asia-Pacific regional round of the global Imagine Cup competition. Microsoft's director of developer experience Nigel Parker said: "The Microsoft Student Accelerator is about inspiring young people into careers in IT by creating pathways to real life work experiences." In the past year, Microsoft NZ has trained more than 2000 tertiary students, and placed 43 groups with 33 companies, as well as training 350 high school students in workshops at their schools.
