title: Listening to micro-business operators: what are their social and educational needs?

authors: Samujh, Helen

subjects: micro-business

abstract: This paper discusses issues that had been revealed during 15 in-depth interviews and a subsequent questionnaire survey of 91 micro-business (five or fewer employees) operators in Hamilton, New Zealand. ‘How to support micro-business operators in their efforts to achieve successful, sustainable self-employment within this changing social world?’ has been the guiding research theme. The questionnaire was used to gauge opinions on and the extent of attitudes and feelings about being self-employed that had been revealed during the in-depth interviews and small business literature. This work gives voice to the perspectives of micro-business operators rather than that of experts or small business operators in general.
Findings from this research suggest that micro-business operators need to be provided with opportunities for support and education to cope with psychological and social factors, particularly with fears, anxiety and isolation. Further, it appears that support is not available to micro-business operators in a way they can readily engage with. Lack of time appears as a reoccurring theme. Given the global trend towards self employment as a career option in the 21st Century, social policy makers need to be aware of the changing social and education needs and provide support to enhance micro-business start-up, survival and growth by encouraging initiatives that facilitate co-operative relationships and build social skills.

text: Listening to micro-business operators: what are their social and educational needs? This paper discusses issues that had been revealed during 15 in-depth interviews and a subsequent questionnaire survey of 91 micro-business (five or fewer employees) operators in Hamilton, New Zealand. ‘How to support micro-business operators in their efforts to achieve successful, sustainable self-employment within this changing social world?’ has been the guiding research theme. The questionnaire was used to gauge opinions on and the extent of attitudes and feelings about being self-employed that had been revealed during the in-depth interviews and small business literature. This work gives voice to the perspectives of micro-business operators rather than that of experts or small business operators in general.
Findings from this research suggest that micro-business operators need to be provided with opportunities for support and education to cope with psychological and social factors, particularly with fears, anxiety and isolation. Further, it appears that support is not available to micro-business operators in a way they can readily engage with. Lack of time appears as a reoccurring theme. Given the global trend towards self employment as a career option in the 21st Century, social policy makers need to be aware of the changing social and education needs and provide support to enhance micro-business start-up, survival and growth by encouraging initiatives that facilitate co-operative relationships and build social skills.

year: 2004-10-29

title: SIFTing the relevant from the irrelevant: Automatically detecting objects in training images

authors: Zhang, Edmond Yiwen

subjects: Image processing

abstract: Many state-of-the-art object recognition systems rely on identifying the location of objects in images, in order to better learn its visual attributes. In this paper, we propose four simple yet powerful hybrid ROI detection methods (combining both local and global features), based on frequently occurring keypoints. We show that our methods demonstrate competitive performance in two different types of datasets, the Caltech101 dataset and the GRAZ-02 dataset, where the pairs of keypoint bounding box method achieved the best accuracies overall.

text: SIFTing the relevant from the irrelevant: Automatically detecting objects in training images Many state-of-the-art object recognition systems rely on identifying the location of objects in images, in order to better learn its visual attributes. In this paper, we propose four simple yet powerful hybrid ROI detection methods (combining both local and global features), based on frequently occurring keypoints. We show that our methods demonstrate competitive performance in two different types of datasets, the Caltech101 dataset and the GRAZ-02 dataset, where the pairs of keypoint bounding box method achieved the best accuracies overall.

year: 2009

title: Kava and Maaori: New drug fashion or re-engagement with 'kawa'? [Invited presentation]

authors: Aporosa, S. 'Apo'

abstract: It is estimated there are more than 20,000 kava users in New Zealand on an average Friday or Saturday night, with increasing interest and uptake of this indigenous drink by Māori. This presentation argues that some of that increased use of kava by Māori can be interpreted as a cultural expression of pre-migration Hawaiki, rather than simply a new interaction with a foreign drug substance.

text: Kava and Maaori: New drug fashion or re-engagement with 'kawa'? [Invited presentation] It is estimated there are more than 20,000 kava users in New Zealand on an average Friday or Saturday night, with increasing interest and uptake of this indigenous drink by Māori. This presentation argues that some of that increased use of kava by Māori can be interpreted as a cultural expression of pre-migration Hawaiki, rather than simply a new interaction with a foreign drug substance.

year: 2016