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Local brains have been buzzing this weekend as the X|Media|Lab moved their festival of ideas to Auckland. Seventeen international mentors, keynote speakers, plus seventeen projects teams met at the Viaduct Harbour to share their knowledge, experiences and pathways to success. 

This is my third X|Media|Lab to date, though the record holder is Dale Herigstad with six under his belt. I had an inspiring time listening to the diverse keynote speakers from across the globe, and learning about the innovative digital media projects chosen for the Lab workshops. My brain had a full blown information hangover by the end of the weekend, but it was well worth it.

Read Helen Baxter's roundup of the X|Media|Lab, Auckland in full at the Big Idea and follow live tweets from the keynote conference day @thebigideanz.

Paul Smith AKA the Twitch Hiker left the UK on March 1st, with a goal of travelling as far as he could in 30 days. The techno twist in this travel story is that he is relying solely on travel offer and places to stay that have been offered through Twitter.  The Twitchhiker is aiming to get as close as he can to Campbell island at the southern tip of the South Island of New Zealand, and this morning he arrived in Auckland on an Air New Zealand flight from Los Angeles. Thanks to my trusty camera phone I managed to capture the moment he offically arrived New Zealand.

I first heard about the Twitchhiker earlier this month and reported his story on Virtual World. Since then I have been following his story at http://twitter.com/twitchhiker When I saw that he had a flight to Auckland arranged I offered to give him a lift from the airport.  We met at around 4.40 a.m. and headed in to the Kiwi Fm studios in Ponsonby, for the Radio Wammo breakfast show. Listen to a podcast of Twitchiker interviewed by Wammo.

We headed to the Mohawk Media studios for some breakfast and a chance to catch up with emails. We accepted the offer of lunch at The Falls after a roadtrip out to Aratipu and Piha beach. It was a perfect balmy day to head to Piha, with blue skies and a light breeze. The drive through the bush was magical as always. The Falls is a period building that was relocated to it's current space in Henderson city, and the owners used to be work at prestigious restaurant The Ivy in London.  Lunch was delicious especially the chocoate desert, and I dropped the Twithhiker off at his Sky City hotel feeling very mellow and well fed. 

Keep an eye out on http://twitter.com/twitchhiker for more news

Watch Helen & Chelfyn Baxter on Campbell LIve talking about Twitter the increasingly popular microblogging service. Report by Natasha Utting at TV3.

 “Its a super simple, easy to use, quick to set up form of communication, and it enables people to stay in touch when they're on the road, through their handsets and their mobile devices.

So in some ways you're taking your network, your community, your whanau with you on the road," says ‘Internet expert extraordinaire’ - Helen Baxter.

“I'll find an interesting article on the internet and I’ll use a service called Tiny Url to shorten it into a small piece of text and use the rest of my tweet to explain in as few wordsas possible what the rest of the article was about in a way that I hope will interest my friends and readers,” says Chelfyn.

“Its put me in touch with a lot of people that I met face to face that live all around the country who are in similar lines of work to me who work from home and we don’t have an office to collect together,” Cheflyn says.

In that way, Twitter is like a virtual water-cooler, a constant stream of people that you're listening to - watching the conversations flow past like a little river.

Follow the mohawks at Twitter: @msbehaviour, @chelfyn