In the meantime here is very good limited offer if you are quick.

1. Wellington is home base for the world famous WordPress Ecommerce plugin. That is co-organiser Dan Milward’s company. Instinct also famous for games.
2. Wellington is the capital city of new Zealand which means museums and cultural organisations like the film archive are well supported. The main Drama School is there.
3. Peter Jackson and Weta Film Studios are based in Wellington sometimes called Wellywood as a result. There was a joke that the entire population of NZ was in LOTR but really it was only Wellington people.
4. Silicon Welly. An old statistic says that NZ has the highest percentage of programmers in the world per head of population (after Iceland.) Not sure about that but mention Ruby on Rails or Webstock or gaming and it is clear that much of the top IT talent has a presence in Wellington.
5. Last but not least – Wellington is hosting the first WordCamp in New Zealand on August 8th & 9th 2009.

What would you add to the list?

We have noticed at previous wordcamps that certain venues get nominated as the wp venue.

Do you have a cafe / restaurant/ bar/ hotel in wellington that you think might be particularly useful for wordcamp visitors? Follow us on Twitter @wordcampnz

“I wish I was in Wellington, the cafes and the bars
The music and the theatre, and the old Cable Car
And you can walk everywhere ’cause nowhere’s very far*”

(*from The Muttonbirds song – I Wish I was in Wellington.)

Here are our top 10 reasons to visit Wellington list . You can probably think of more. Part 2 on Thursday.

1. Music – Flight of the Conchords came from Wellington’s vibrant music scene which includes Fat Freddys Drop and Fly My Pretties. Black Seeds. The Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra Shihad,  Luke Buda The Phoenix Foundation and many others.
2. Coffee. NZ is the real coffee capital of the world- bigger than Italy. A little known fact. I’m talking coffee roasting drinking on the streets in the middle of winter / that’s how good it is. As an Aucklander I won’t pick the best cafe in Wellington but please let us know and maybe we can set up a poll to pick the best one. Fidels? |  Coffee Roasters | coffee sign | Wholly Bagels has free wifi via Zenbu with their coffee – that sounds useful.
3. Bandwidth. Dark fibre. Mmmm. Due to creative thinking by Wellington council staff way back in the early days of the internet, many kilometres of high capacity cable was strung from cablecar lines. They didn’t have to go underground and so got the jump on local utilities creating a bandwidth magnet for businesses in NZ. Citylink story. | Innovation capital sometimes called Silicon Welly.
4. Lots of Snow this year in NZ. Ski-fields are a only few hours away. I believe 27 ski-fields or more. For Northern Hemisphere readers – Winter season here has just started. Bring your board get a few days on snow and then come speak at Wordcamp NZ
5. Mountain-biking heaven. Wellington is a hilly city with a beautiful harbour. I have personally ridden Battle Hill to the North and Wrights Hill where the turbine is. There is now a mountain biking park at Makara peak.

What do you think – Is this a fair list? What have we left out? What would be your top 5 or top 10?

@wellyal says boutique shopping

For more information on visiting Wellington please keep an eye on getting here for more travel resources and tips as they come in.

Special Hi to @wordcamprdu this coming weekend in NC. Follow us on Twitter @wordcampnz