Now, for a Choptober 2009 news bulletin...

Choptober now has a PR crew from Waikato University, led by Hannah Weir, they'll be graciously orchestrating our 2009 PR campaign. Cheers to that!

We are trying to secure some of the male stars from Shortland Street to appear on some Choptober billboards.

We are trying to get sponsorship from a brewery for the campaign and Choptoberfest. A beer sponsor can only be a good thing!

Rhys Darby (Flight of the Conchords) has been asked to grow his chops for the campaign. Get amongst it Rhys!

Counties Tax Services Limited have kindly agreed to donate their accounting services to Choptober, we're humbled to have them on board.

And finally...a new website should be online this week incorporating the work of KingSt and Interspeed. This is still a temporary site with the fully functional site to be bought on line on September 1st.

Wow...as you can see, the Choptober snowball is picking up pace.

Cheers for your time, you're all essential to the success of this thing!

Ollie

Hello...my names ollie, and I'm the latest recruit in the Choptober camp.

I moved to NZ from the UK about 2 weeks ago to live with my girlfriend - a kiwi - over here. I'm residing in Christchurch for at least the next 12-months and trying to make something of a life for myself over here. I was half-way through a Journalism and Creative Writing degree in London before I abandoned ship, although I intend on finishing my degree at some point.

My role for the Choptober Foundation will consist of looking after and maintaining all the websites, social networking sites, and blogs that will be vital in ensuring the certain success of Choptober! I'll also hopefully be writing bits and pieces for the press and other media while I'm helping out...I guess I'm something of an "Editor" - probably NZ's only unpaid one at that!

Thank you to Jeremy and Seton, who have totally taken a gamble in taking me on. I really appreciate the oppurtunity and experience I'll get from helping out with Choptober.

Cheers for reading!

Ollie Pelling

ollie@choptober.com

We are very happy to announce that DPS have agreed to provide Choptober with a payment gateway for the new site for free! This is a significant investment by DPS worth many thousands of dollars. We would like to thank Ari and all the crew at DPS for their invaluable support.

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We had some great news late last week. Web development company Interspeed has agreed to create a new Choptober website which will be unveiled on September 1st. This will replace the temporary Choptober site that is currently on show. Welcome guys!  

We at Choptober are very excited to announce a partnership between ourselves and the very cool Goodfella razors. Check these bad boys out at www.goodfella.co.nz The details of this partnership have not been finalised yet so stay tuned!

Grayson Law have agreed to provide The Choptober Foundation with free legal advice during the 2009 campaign. Thanks to Michael, Andrew and all of the crew at Grayson Law for their support.

We are pleased to announce that KingSt are on board for the Choptober 2009 campaign. KingSt will be assisting in the advertising, design and marketing of the campaign. Many thanks to Chris, Konrad, Tony and all the KingSt crew for their support. We look forward to working with you all.

http://www.kingst.co.nz

Jason Napier is a courageous young bloke who discovered he had a brain haemorrhage as well as a medical condition called Arteriovenous Malformation (AVM) in April.

Jason has a dream of becoming famous and a facebook group (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=119792571223) has been set up by Jason's friends to help make that dream a reality. Jason is also raising money for charity through:

http://www.givealittle.co.nz/member/tjnf/project/thejasonnapierfund 

We wish Jason all the best for a speedy recovery and look forward to seeing some chops plastered on his face in October.