TBI Q&A: Sir Stephen Tindall

Kiwi Expat Association (Kea) chairman Sir Stephen Tindall talks about how the Pass It On website aims to promote a bigger picture of New Zealand, including our creative talent, in the lead-up to the Rugby World Cup 2011.

“In a country as small and as young as New Zealand imagination and creativity is a cultural asset, not a creative indulgence."

"Designers, artists, film makers, musicians and dancers play a powerful role in telling the New Zealand story to the world.”

Tell us a bit about Kea

Kea was conceived and launched at the Knowledge Wave Conference in Auckland in August 2001. We wanted to create an organization that could tap into the global expatriate community. New Zealand has the highest percentage of its citizens living overseas of any developed country and the second highest percentage (fractionally behind Ireland) of its highly educated citizens living overseas. At the time there was no way of reaching and mobilizing this large and influential group.

Kea’s ‘big idea’ – and its key challenge – is that having the world’s highest ratio of successful and connected citizens around the world is a valuable strategic asset for New Zealand. Kea aims to inform, inspire, connect and enable the global connections that will help our country develop its economy, academia, arts, sports and social wellbeing to its highest potential.

Kea started out primarily as a volunteer led organization. We had a small group of staff in Auckland and volunteer led chapters were springing up all around the world – Silicon Valley, London, Boston, Los Angeles, Amsterdam and Sydney. Today we have close to thirty international chapters.

In mid-2007, Kea’s first paid Regional Manager was appointed in Shanghai, with financial support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. In the 2007 Budget, the Government announced its first multi-year commitment to Kea, enabling the appointment of three additional Regional Managers as well as staff to build and maintain Kea’s global infrastructure.  New full-time Regional Managers were appointed in Australia, the UK, and North America by February 2008.

While there are other expatriate organizations around the world, there are none quite like Kea. We’ve spent eight years trying to develop a good operating model for the organization. We’ve had some great successes (programmes like Every One Counts and Every Vote Counts) but we’ve also had to learn from our mistakes.

Personally I think we are yet to achieve what we set out to when we established Kea. I think the next couple of years will be about lifting the profile of the organization in New Zealand and abroad and rolling out some exciting new initiatives, like Pass It On.

How many New Zealanders are living overseas and how many are on the Kea network?

Depending on how you define an expatriate and depending on which numbers you believe there are somewhere between 600,000 and a million New Zealanders living overseas. I’m inclined to believe the higher numbers, given that the Australian Bureau of Statistics told us in 2006 that there were 477,000 New Zealand born people living in Australia alone.

Kea has a contactable membership of just over 25,000 people. Of our members who have specified a current country of residence the highest number reside in the United Kingdom (32%), followed by Australia (24%) and North America (15%). Around 11% of Kea members reside in New Zealand.

Tell us a little bit about Pass It On – its mission and vision?

Pass It On is about turning New Zealanders, wherever they might be in the world, into more effective ambassadors for New Zealand. New Zealand is home to some of the most innovative and interesting people and organizations but all too often the rest of the world hasn’t heard of them. In the countries and cities around the world where New Zealand needs more recognition there are Kiwis living, working and interacting online every day. Who better to get the message out about the best that New Zealand has to offer.

The idea came out of the World Class NZ Network Summit.  How did it grow from an idea into a reality?

Yes. Martin Snedden and Michael Barnett chaired a workshop at the 2009 Summit looking at what the Rugby World Cup would mean for New Zealand and how the country could leverage the opportunity. That discussion quickly evolved into a discussion about how we could use the event to engage the global expat community. A few days after the Summit Ross McConnell, Kea’s Executive Director, used the Kea network to rope in some creative talent (principally Nigel Swinn) to frame up the concept for what would become Pass It On. We then spent a few months circulating the concept around government and private sector circles. By September 2009 we were sufficiently confident about the idea to hire a full-time project manager. Scott Riddle, a long-time Kea volunteer in Australia, joined us in October and has spent six months getting Pass It On up and running.

In what way is it connected to Kea?

In a nutshell, Pass It On is what Kea is all about. We have created an offshore network of New Zealanders but we haven’t yet created an effective way of identifying innovative organizations and individuals in New Zealand and plugging them into that network. If Pass It On is a success we will have created a great system for mobilizing the global expat community to support New Zealand’s best and brightest in offshore markets.     

Why have you timed Pass It On to coincide with the Rugby World Cup?

While the idea for Pass It On originates from a Rugby World Cup workshop at the 2009 World Class New Zealand Summit it will not be a Rugby World Cup initiative. It goes far beyond Rugby and will hopefully live on well beyond 2011, yet the event is a great platform. Hosting the world’s third most-viewed sporting event is going have huge spin-off benefits for New Zealand. One of those benefits is that New Zealanders around the world will basically have a ‘stage to stand on’ to talk about New Zealand. The event will not only get the global Kiwi community excited it will also give them an opportunity to talk about New Zealand to their offshore networks of family, friends and colleagues. Pass It On is all about ensuring they have some great stories to tell.

How does it provide the tools and incentives to build a bigger picture of New Zealand?

Kea has partnered with over thirty organizations – everyone from the NZ Music Commission to New Zealand Trade & Enterprise – to help identify the best of New Zealand. We’ve loaded video profiles of these organizations to the Pass It On platform. Pass It On is fully integrated with the most popular social media tools – Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc. People the world over can explore the content on Pass It On and then seamlessly share those stories electronically with their own networks. So often New Zealand is seen internationally as a clean, green place to visit, home of lots of sheep and bungy jumping. The content on Pass It On spans a number of different categories and aims to provide rich content about the ‘new’ New Zealand and what it has to offer – from young Kiwi musicians to high tech research and development projects. Every time someone shares one of these stories with their networks they earn ‘pass points’ which drive the Pass It On incentive programme (which has over $300,000 worth of reward prizes). 

Why is this important?

New Zealand has some amazing people, places, products and ideas. No matter how good these things are it can be hard for them to get noticed internationally. If New Zealand is going to succeed on the world stage that recognition is essential.

How does Pass It On generate opportunities for New Zealand and New Zealanders?

The simple act of content sharing in itself creates opportunity for New Zealand and New Zealanders through increased recognition. However Pass It On also allows for direct support. Each video is allied to an ‘ask’ message, a message to the global community of New Zealanders about how they can support the organization or individual being profiled. There is the opportunity for New Zealand organizations to seek feedback on ideas, in-market representation etc.

What is your role in Pass It On?

Pass It On is a major initiative for Kea. As chairman of Kea I’ve stayed close to the project from the outset. I also sit on a small Pass It On advisory committee along with John Stace and Kerry Prendergast.

What combination of people and resources are involved in this project?

You have to remember that Kea is a very small not-for-profit organization. Internally the whole initiative has been managed by a single person. What has been fantastic is the external support we’ve received. A huge number of regional and national organizations have supported the project. The generous financial support of Telecom New Zealand and many of the regional economic development agencies has also been essential as Kea could never have funded a project like this out of its operating budget.

What are the Pass It On categories?

There are three major content categories: Taste and Discover, Creative Talent and Business & Innovation.

Why was Creative Talent an important part of this?

In a country as small and as young as New Zealand imagination and creativity is a cultural asset, not a creative indulgence. Designers, artists, film makers, musicians and dancers play a powerful role in telling the New Zealand story to the world.  

What areas within Creative Talent are you seeking input from?

The sub-categories in this section of the site include dance, design, film and moving image, literature, music, object art, theatre, fashion and the visual arts.

What is the criteria?

We don’t have specific criteria for the Creative Talent category. Instead the generic Pass It On criteria apply.

• Does the organization or individual exemplify what is ‘cool, exciting or desirable’ about New Zealand?
• Does the organization or individual have an interesting story to tell?
• Is the organization or individual globally orientated i.e. is the product, service or creative output relevant and accessible to the global market?
• Does the organization or individual have a specific ‘ask’ for the PassItOn community i.e. are they hoping to achieve a specific outcome.

Who else can be involved and what is their role?

Anyone can get involved in the Pass It On initiative although the primary target audience is New Zealanders living overseas. We want New Zealanders in New Zealand to sign up and help us find their friends and family overseas. We want New Zealanders living overseas to share Pass It On with each other and to pass it on to their friends, family and colleagues living overseas.

What is your overall future vision for Pass It On/Kea?

Attract and excite at least another 25,000 Kiwi expats to join with us and help us move New Zealand forward.  Kea NZ is now establishing local NZ chapters, the first opened in Hawkes Bay in October 2009 and the Auckland chapter will open within the next three months.  As we spread throughout NZ we hope to better engage our Kiwi Diaspora with particular SME businesses to assist them with market intelligence, distribution and marketing in the export markets they wish to penetrate and to become intimately involved with these businesses, perhaps even to the point of investing in them.

What is your big idea for 2010?

Our big idea for 2010 is to get Pass It On up and running particularly with the Economic Development Agencies in the regions where the Rugby World Cup will be hosted.  The 2010 aim is to get the maximum number of overseas rugby fans signed up to purchase tickets to make the Rugby World Cup profitable for NZ and to excite them enough to spend lots of money in NZ as tourists while they are here.  Beyond 2010 and after the Rugby World Cup 2011 we hope we will have built enough momentum to increase the interest in NZ from both a tourist perspective but also from all the great stories that will be published in video form on the Pass It On website to invest in NZ with both their time, money and energy.

Further information

The Pass It On website  includes video profiles and information about what’s happening in New Zealand in 2011, and ways for the individuals or companies being profiled to “ask” the Pass It On network for help and support (e.g market insights, overseas introductions etc).