Welcome to the world of Enspiral. We are an international collective of people pooling resources and ideas together to help build a better world. A social innovations incubator and resource for changemakers.

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Hackers Wanted

March 11, 2013 By Leave a Comment
wanted

Companies all over the world are struggling to find enough technical people and it is a great time to get into programming. At Enspiral we are passionate about helping people learn or improve their programming skills and are offering internships and paid opportunities on some exciting projects. You'll get to work on real projects and learn from people who have significant experience in the industry. If you have experience with Rails, JavaScript or front end development then awesome - if not, we'll teach you! Learn more at Enspiral on Thursday March 14th, 4pm - email … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Events, Featured, News and Updates

Come and learn about the GFN Challenge: Cambodia

February 4, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Good For Nothing

A few of us have been working on a fantastic initiative to spend a week in Cambodia helping local charities and we're running a session in Wellington next Monday explaining what we're up to. The Good for Nothing (GFN) Challenge provides opportunities for talented professionals to come together and solve meaningful social problems. Professionals from all around the world meet on location for a week and form teams with local experts (from NGO leaders to social entrepreneurs) to solve a pivotal problem for a local organisation. We had a few Enspiral people who went to Cambodia in January for a … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Events, Featured, News and Updates

The dystopic future of Loomio?

November 2, 2012 By 1 Comment
feat_loomio_dystopian

One of the things I love most at Enspiral is the way playfulness and creativity seep into every aspect of our work. We've had a fair bit to decide as a collective recently so I've been putting a fair bit up on Loomio - maybe it was excessive, maybe it wasn't. I'm on the side of the wasn't but everyone's free to their own opinion :P Instead of a 'Hey Josh, ease up on the loomio'  Will Lau (one of the Bucky Box founders) chose instead to post this up on Yammer which is some of the most creative feedback I think I've ever received. THE LAST LOOMIOT. I'm thinking about writing a … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Staff Stories, Work_Life

An opportunity to Stand Up

April 13, 2012 By 5 Comments
feat_standup2

Sometimes an opportunity comes along that nudges its way up your todo list and makes you stand up and take action - today I got nudged. A few months ago some volunteers approached me about launching a New Zealand version of GetUp! - for those of you who don't know about GetUp I'd recommend you take the time to read through their site - they have had a pretty big impact in Australia. I found their disclosure page particularly useful in understanding what makes the organisation tick. The core idea is a member funded organisation independent of any political party that runs a continuous series … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Work_Life

Sir Paul Callaghan’s legacy

March 24, 2012 By 3 Comments
feat_paulcallaghan

I was deeply saddened to hear of Sir Paul Callaghan's passing today. While he made many contributions to New Zealand over the years, for me personally his lasting legacy will be the presentation he gave at StrategyNZ last year. This talk resonates with many of us at Enspiral and was one of the inspirations that prompted Alex Gibson (with Graham Jenson) to create 100 Companies. The vision of New Zealand as a place where 'talent wants to live' is bang on the money - I constantly meet (and usually try to recruit) very talented people who can live anywhere in the world and choose New … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Inspiration, Reflections Tagged With:

Enough is enough: a Duel to settle matters!

August 2, 2011 By 1 Comment
Duelling gentlement

Image courtesy of Dennis Burger At Enspiral, we’re committed to Live Below the Line in August, and we’re supporting our good friends at The Global Poverty Project. Over 1.4 billion people on our planet live on less than $2.25 a day, lacking basic choices in their lives that we take for granted in New Zealand. We don’t think that is acceptable and want to do our bit to help out. So for 5 days from August 22 - 26 each member of team enspiral will each spend just $2.25 (the equivalent of the International Extreme Poverty Line) on their food and drink each day to raise money and … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Work_Life

Calling for rails volunteers

March 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

One of my favourite rails projects The Worldwide Permaculture Network is looking for rails volunteers to lend a hand. The vision for the site is to be the Facebook for Permaculture practitioners around the world and they are off to an excellent start with nearly 1000 people and 300 projects on the site so far. The Permaculture movement is possibly one of the best chances we have of feeding the planet in an energy constrained world feeling the effects of climate change. These guys can literally green the desert and by helping them connect and strengthen the community we can really help … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Volunteer, Work_Life Tagged With: , ,

Auckland introduction to Enspiral event

January 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

We're running an introduction to Enspiral evening in Auckland this Thursday, it's a great way hear what we're up to meet some of the team. Some of our story to date: - high growth, 40+ people in last year in 9 cities worldwide - pioneering a radically open organisation in collaboration with bettermeans.com - tech startups : moneyscopehq.com, showgizmo.com, allaboutthestory.com - supporting not for profits : 350.org.nz, Regeneration, Intersect, Ooooby An introductory evening awaits... Where? 103 Beach Rd, Level 2. When? Thursday 27 January, 6:30pm What? - meeting some of the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Work_Life

Bettermeans rocks our world

January 6, 2011 By 2 Comments

I was lucky to stumble across Bettermeans a few months ago and it was like walking into what our dream company intranet would look like with a couple of years development. Very exciting for us, but I think this software will profoundly change the way people work together. Here are two things Bettermeans does really, really well - there are many other things but these are two stand outs. Democratic collaboration Building a large scale, flat, decentralized organisation focused on high performance is hard work (trust me!) and the big challenge is staying fast and efficient. The whole … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Opinion, Work_Life

Balancing work and family

December 2, 2010 By 1 Comment

We have a mission at Enspiral, well we've got several but one which I am super excited about is helping find work for parents with young children, particularly stay at home mothers. We are committed to optimizing our work opportunities to fit the lifestyles of people looking after young children. This ties into one of our core philosophies that work should be shaped to people, not people to work. It amazes me how many practices are taken for granted in today's organisations - in particular the insanity which is a called a standard working week. If an organisation can only successfully … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Work_Life
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