At the beginning, I sat in a powhiri, a Maori ceremony of welcome, for an ISO conference on IT Governance which just happened to be in Wellington, New Zealand, because my friend Alison Holt is the chair of that particular standards committee.
One of the conference attendees, Mike Taitoko, got up and introduced his tangata whenua - his tribe, his place, his people, which helps define who he is - in Maori, and gave us a Maori proverb.
He aha te mea nui o te ao
What is the most important thing in the world?
He tangata, he tangata, he tangata