• Wednesday 30 January 2008
  5:30pm - 8:00pm

• Where: Wellington Chamber of Commerce, Level 28, The Majestic Centre, 100 Willis Street, Wellington.

[Sorry - FULL HOUSE]

The UP New Year Party!

Do you want to know what's going to happen in 2008?

A year ago, we asked leading Wellington bloggers to predict the future for 2007.  Well, the future is now, so we're doing it again, first off we'll see if they got it right.

Once again, Wellington's best bloggers will gaze into the future and tell us what the big news will be in the next twelve months. The wisdom of their prognostications will astound you--or amuse you, at the least.

The blogger who makes the best predictions--as voted by YOU, the audience--will be crowned UP Visionary of the Year for 2008, and receive an official certificate, a beautiful tiara*, and full bragging rights... at least until 2009, when we will vote again on whether to revoke their title.

The Bloggers 

The rules:

Each blogger will make 3 to 5 predictions in the following categories:

Predictions made by blog readers in comments are allowed, but must be credited.

Cheating -- by using insider knowldge, in-depth simulations, latent psychic powers, reasoned analysis, alcohol, ouija boards, etc -- is strictly encouraged.

The Event:

We predict that this will be an UP event like no other. Come to drink, meet and mingle, and at 6pm we will assemble to hear the bloggers reveal all--their own forecasts, and those made by their readers.
Then you will vote for the blogger who has made the most plausible yet unexpected claims about the year ahead. The blogger with the most votes will take the prize...  
The evening will conclude with a traditional Unlimited Potential feast: free pizza and beer! RSVP now to reserve your spot!

Event Review:

Philip Fieringer, blogger from turntablemedia.com and interaction designer for Xero.com was crowned UP Visionary of the Year for 2008.

The What’s UP 2008 Event on Wednesday night was a huge success. Over 100 people gathered high over Wellington city at the majestic level 28 headquaters of Wellington Regional Chamber of Commerce. The popular event booked out to standing room only - stretching the capacity of the venue, with double the number of attendees compared to the innurgural event in 2007. Concluding the night was a third round of drinks and delicious pizza

All five speakers were in fine form, and we’d like to thank David, Hamish, Mauricio, Philip and Tom for coming and sharing their predictions once again in 2008. In the end there could be only one winner, and it was Mauricio from Geekzone, who predicted that:

• Telecom CEO Theresa Gattung will leave the company by May 2007. This will freeze planning and investments, leaving the company ready for takeover by a large U.S. corporation.
• Econet Wireless will not deliver the third cellular network in New Zealand, again, in 2007. It may actually fold, leaving investors (including the New Zealand government and the Hautaki Trust) with nothing. (Bonus prediction: The third cellular network in New Zealand will come from TelstraClear.)
• Windows Vista released after 5 years of development: it is full of eye candy and some real new features. However, it will fail to get into small and medium businesses this year, and unlike Windows 95 companies will not be pressured by employees to migrate to this new OS.(Bonus prediction: This is the last BIG operating system release we will see, future OSes will be smaller downloads with a core and packages, Linux-style.)
• The MSM won’t get blogs. But they will keep trying by renaming their columnists as "bloggers".
• The Queen will abdicate in July 2007.

Join us again next year, when we will revisit the predictions, and see if they stand the test of time.

Thanks again to all our speakers.