Brian Moore (@Kiwiartist) is an oil painting and bronze sculpture artist from New Zealand. His work embodies his belief that New Zealand is the most beautiful country on the planet. His passion has spilled over on to Twibes and Twitter where he has become world ambassador as founder of the New Zealand Twitter group. You can enjoy and purchase his work at Brian Moore Fine Art.

Adam Loving:

So, can you please tell me a little bit about what you do? I’ve got your website up here, Brian Moore Fine Art. Are you a photographer, painter?

Brian Moore:

No, I’m a painter and a sculptor, Adam. I work in oils, watercolors, bronze. And I mostly do studies of things that are pertaining to New Zealand. There’s a lot of stuff that is iconically New Zealand.

Adam:

Right.

Brian:

Like our wildlife, birds. There’s one creature that’s found nowhere else on the planet that’s called a tuatara, and he’s a little reptile that actually pre-dates the dinosaur, and yet he’s still alive and well in New Zealand. That’s quite a fabulous little phenomenon.

Adam:

Right. I see your bronze here. Yeah, fantastic.

Brian:

Yeah. Do you see the tuatara there?

Adam:

-huh, -huh.

Brian:

Yeah. That’s a little creature that’s only found in New Zealand.

Adam:

Wow. So, do you find you get many customers or fans on your website? Is that a big leader for you? Or is it more your shop in town or what have you?

Brian:

Well, we just took an order for one of the tuataras from Scotland, recently, off the website. So, the Internet marketing is working, but it’s not up to speed yet with what we can do locally with personal contact.

Adam:

Right.

Brian:

It’s slowly getting there.

Adam:

Well, that’s just a segue to my next point. So, somehow, you managed to be king of the New Zealand Twibe here. This is the only founder of a national Twibe that I’ve spoken to so far. [laughs] I’m very impressed.

Brian:

[laughs] Oh, thank you. [laughs]

Adam:

Your Twibe page has 483 members. Which, I realize New Zealand is far larger than that, but still, it’s quite impressive. Has there been any method to your madness here? Have you been actively promoting the Twibe, or do people just stumble along and find you, or what’s going on here?

Brian:

Well, what happened was, it wasn’t long after I first joined up with Twitter that I noticed that somebody had joined something called Twibes. So I thought, "Gee, I wonder what that is." So, I went and had a look at it. And I saw there was a category for geographic regions.
And I’m a very proud Kiwi. I love my country. I love doing whatever I can to promote the country. One of our largest industries is the tourist industry. If you have a look at my bio, I say something along the lines of, "I think that New Zealand is the most beautiful country on the planet." And I genuinely believe that. I haven’t done a lot of travel, but from what I’ve seen, there’s nothing tops New Zealand for its beauty.

Adam:

Yeah. Yeah.

Brian:

So, as an artist, I kind of dovetail with that as a purpose. I just love to do something to put New Zealand out there. So I thought, "Gee." New Zealanders, Kiwis, they’ve got a lot of nationalistic pride. They love to be able to announce themselves on a world-stage presence and be proud to be Kiwis. Like our All Black rugby team. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of them.

Adam:

-huh, yeah.

Brian:

Yeah. Well, they’re considered the best rugby team in the world, and there’s a terrific amount of pride around that.
Do you remember the America’s Cup campaign?

Adam:

The sailing races?

Brian:

Yeah. Yeah.

Adam:

Yeah, yeah. In fact, I have a friend who actually sailed in one, a guy that I work with.

Brian:

Oh, really?

Adam:

Yeah.

Brian:

Well, I did what was considered locally as the official portrait of our boat, Black Magic, that won the campaign in San Diego in ’95.

Adam:

Fantastic.

Brian:

So that’s the kind of thing that I love doing as an artist – anything that works as a parallel with what I’m doing as an artist and what forwards New Zealand to the rest of the world. And that’s why I decided to start up the thing called Twibes, the New Zealand Twibe.
And an amazing thing happened. I think there was only about 15 members or something. And then somebody from one of the top social media type guys who are working in the national media as well. I think it was called New Zealand Live. I think they’re in radio and that sort of stuff, or modern music. They joined, and that created a massive flood. It went from like about 15 to 140 over night, virtually.

Adam:

I see.

Brian:

So, it created its own self-multiplying.

Adam:

[laughs] Right.

Brian:

Do you see what I mean?

Adam:

Right. [laughs] A viral effect, yeah.

Brian:

Exactly. Exactly.

Adam:

Is Twitter very well-known in New Zealand? Are there many people using it, in general, do you think?

Brian:

At the moment, it seems to be mostly a kind of a clique. The people who are most keenly interested in social media seem to be the greatest users of it. After that would be individual causes. And then after that would be general populace, just for social reasons.

Adam:

Right. OK. Well, sort of my hidden agenda here is to discover anything new I can do for Twibes, either any features for the website you’ve been wanting or any way I can support you and your website and help make the interaction with Twitter better. I just wanted to know if there’s anything I could do to help you out.

Brian:

Well, there is an idea that I have, Adam, but I’m not quite sure how you would engineer it. If there was some way of making the site of New Zealand Twibe, for example, like its own…

Adam:

Its own domain name?

Brian:

Its own village, where you could actually have a chatter with other members of the Twibe, without necessarily having a mutual follow on the bigger picture of Twitter itself.

Adam:

Yeah. Well, the Twibes page facilitates that, but it’s within Twibes itself. So, in Twibes.com group New Zealand, this will show Tweets that match searches, but also, if you check the box when you Tweet, the Tweet will show only on this page and won’t go through Twitter. So, it does do that to a certain extent.

Brian:

Yeah. I see that. But I don’t know if it’s because I’m still just on dial-up or what, but it seems that it takes…

Adam:

Ah. Takes too long, or it’s not loading?

Brian:

Yeah. It’s like Facebook. You’ve got no idea who’s online. If you want to post something…

Adam:

Oh, I see. I see. Yeah. There’s no indicator of the real-time nature of it, right.

Brian:

Yeah.

Adam:

Yeah, no. That’s something that feasible and I will investigate. Yeah. For example, if you and I are both on the same page at the exact same moment, then you should have a little green light next to my photo or something so that you know if you put something in the box that I’ll be able to see it. Yeah, that’s a very good idea.

Brian:

So that if you went to your Twibe, you could say, "Oh, there’s such-and-such, just across the other side of the square. I’ll trot over and have a chat to him." [laughs]

Adam:

[laughs] Right. Yeah, that sounds great. OK.

Brian:

Yeah. You could do all sorts of things, like put a picture of the planet and put little lights as to who’s up when or something. [laughs]

Adam:

[laughs] Need a world clock.

Brian:

[laughs]

Adam:

Great.

Brian:

How is Twibes going? Have you got other ideas to boost it up?

Adam:

Yeah, it’s going really well, overall. I just keep getting the question… So there’s maybe 20,000 Twibes, and a lot of the good names have been taken, right? You’ve scored the New Zealand Twibe. There’ll never be another. [laughs]

Brian:

That’s right. [laughs]

Adam:

[laughs] So, the people who are discovering it now are asking me, "How do I build up a Twibe like these others?" And so that’s why I wanted to give you a call and see what you’re doing, if anything.
And the other challenge is getting people to remember to come back. So, everybody seems very happy to join the group. It’s instinctual to click the join button and make my photo show up in the list. But, to keep the conversation going, I need to figure out what specific little tweaks I can make. They don’t need to be big changes. But, like you said, the real-time indicator would be great to inspire you to leave a message if you know someone else is looking at the page.

I’ve thought of it in terms of making the email alerts go out, make them a little bit more sophisticated so that they’ll send you the best Tweets from the day or what have you and make those more useful. Yeah. And I’m just looking for more ideas like that.

Brian:

Yeah. I think it would be super if it could be said, "Here is your meeting place," for everybody who’s interested in communicating through this media. The more that that can be strengthened, the more value it has. See, the one thing that the Internet hasn’t got is geographic location. [laughs]

Adam:

[laughs] Very important in this particular scenario. [laughs]

Brian:

[laughs] There are other social media things for New Zealand, like, Made From New Zealand. Now, they’ve done an awful lot, to the extent that they did a large sculpture of a fern leaf on California Beach. Because the fern is New Zealand’s symbol, you see. And that got some good PR going. But, there seems to be almost as many efforts to create social media groups as there are…

Adam:

[laughs] Groups to be had? Right.
[laughter]

Adam:

Yeah, that’s why I’m very pragmatic and realistic about what I add. I don’t want to get carried away before I understand what people are trying to do.

Brian:

Exactly. So, anything that forwards what people are saying are actually needed and wanted, that you can provide, within workable parameters, is what will make it more of an alive, happening phenomenon.

Adam:

Right.

Brian:

Yeah. I mean, I’ve got a dual purpose – to promote myself as an artist as well as promote New Zealand, and as well as promote quality communication amongst New Zealanders and from them to the rest of the planet. The whole thing is, people talk about, "Oh, he’s just in it to make money." I think they get a short look at what a lot of people are actually trying to do. They’re trying to actually, genuinely provide a worthwhile service.

Adam:

Sure. Yeah. Anyone who is outwardly just trying to get money, obviously you can spot that a mile away, and they just don’t fit in. [laughs]

Brian:

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. You’ve got to get much more upscale in your attitude to what you’re trying to accomplish.

Adam:

Right. Well, fantastic. This has been very useful. Do you have any other comments that you want to make?

Brian:

I just think it’s brilliant that I can chat to somebody like yourself on the other side of the planet.

Adam:

[laughs] It’s a miracle. When it works, it’s a miracle. [laughs]

Brian:

[laughs]

Adam:

Well, great. Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with me this morning, this afternoon. And just shoot me an email, adam@twibes, if there’s anything that crosses your mind, and I will try to respond. This has been great.

Brian:

Thank you.

Adam:

Have a good one.

Brian:

See you later, man.

Adam:

OK. Bye.

Brian:

Bye.