Latest news with #RyanLamont
Scoop
17-06-2025
- Business
- Scoop
The New Zealand Podcast Awards Return For 2025 - Acast Named Headline Partner
The New Zealand Podcast Awards, supported by Acast, are back for 2025, celebrating the country's thriving podcasting community and recognising the creators and voices shaping the audio landscape in Aotearoa. Going into our 5th edition and building on the success of 2024, which reached over 1.2 million Kiwis, this year's awards promise to be bigger, better and offer more exposure, prizes and engagement than ever before. We are proud to announce Acast – the world's largest independent podcast company – as the Headline Partner for the 2025 awards. With a marketplace spanning more than 140,000 podcasts globally, Acast creates the technology that connects podcast creators, advertisers and listeners. Acast will also sponsor three cornerstone categories: Podcast of the Year, Listener's Choice and Best Māori and Pasifika Podcast or Host, reaffirming their commitment to spotlighting diverse and exceptional talent across Aotearoa. 'We're excited to be supporting the New Zealand Podcast Awards in 2025,' said Ryan Lamont, Senior Content Manager at Acast ANZ. 'There's so much talent in Aotearoa's ever-growing podcasting scene and we're keen to continue championing the creators, stories and great mahi of Kiwis all across the motu.' Gold winners of each Acast category will be awarded 500,000 advertising impressions to promote their show across Acast's podcast network in New Zealand Also joining the awards as Supporting Partner is Podlab Studio, Auckland's premier podcast production studio and content creation house. As proud supporters of New Zealand's vibrant podcasting community, PodLab have sponsored three key categories at this year's NZ Podcast Awards: Best New Podcast, Best Business Podcast, and Best Branded Podcast. Each PodLab category winner will receive a complimentary recording session at PodLab, with every other category winner receiving 50% off a recording session 'Podcasting in New Zealand is going from strength to strength, and what we see each week in our PodLab studios makes us feel very excited and confident about the future of the industry,' said a PodLab spokesperson. 'Getting behind the NZ Podcast Awards was a no-brainer for us at PodLab. We're stoked to be part of something that shines a light on the magic Kiwi podcasters are making.' - Jay-Jay Feeney, Co - Owner & Founder of PodLab Key Dates for NZ Podcast Awards 2025: 18 June – Register Your Interest on our website 3 September – Entries Officially Open for Submission 15 October – Entries Officially Close 16 October – Listener's Choice Voting Opens 14 November – Listener's Choice Voting Closes 20 November – Winners Announced Want to get involved? We're looking for category sponsors, partners, judges, collaborators and champions. Drop us a line at team@ to join the NZPA movement. About the NZ Podcast Awards The NZ Podcast Awards honour excellence in podcasting from across Aotearoa, celebrating creative talent, originality, and the power of audio to inform, inspire, and entertain. For more information, visit or follow us @NZPodcastAwards on social media. About Acast Since 2014, Acast has been building the world's most valuable podcast marketplace, creating the technology that connects podcast creators, advertisers and listeners. Its marketplace spans more than 140,000 podcasts, 3,300 advertisers and one billion quarterly listens. Crucially, those listens are monetised wherever they happen – across any podcast app or listening platform. The company operates worldwide, with headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden. Acast is listed on the Nasdaq First North Premier Growth Market (
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Google to set sail in 35-story downtown Austin tower
After several delays over the past couple of years, Google Inc. has confirmed it will finally be moving into the high-profile, 35-story sail-shaped tower in downtown Austin this year. 'We look forward to opening our new Austin office at 601 W 2nd this year that deepens our longstanding commitment to Texas and the local community," Ryan Lamont, a Google spokesperson, said via email Tuesday. Six years ago, Google signed a lease for the entire building overlooking Lady Bird Lake. Completed in 2022, the building — one of the newest and most recognizable on Austin's skyline — is leased to Google through 2038. But the sail-shaped tower has sat empty due to the new world order that has defined the office market since the COVID-19 pandemic ushered in remote and hybrid work. Work-from-home has led to rising vacancy rates in many office buildings, both in Austin and around the country. On Tuesday, Google declined to say how many employees will be making the move into the Sail Tower, or when exactly that move will take place. The company also declined release an updated Austin headcount. One published report put the number at about 2,000 employees. Google had 183,323 employees globally, according to the company's latest annual report. More: Tech giant Google cuts hundreds of recruiters in recent layoffs; Austin impact unknown Atlanta-based Cousins Property, a real estate investment trust, bought the so-called Sail Tower in December for a net purchase price of $521.8 million. The acquisition was the biggest sale of an office property in Austin in 2024. Cousins is the largest office owner in the Austin market with more than 5 million square feet of primely located office space, including downtown and at the Domain mixed-use development in North Austin. More: IBM signs lease for entire 15-story office tower at Austin's Domain mixed-use development Google did not comment on the status of any of its other office leases in Austin, including those previously reported at 500 W. Second St., next to the sail-shaped building, and at the Saltillo mixed-use project in East Austin. Google has called Texas home since 2007. More: Google leasing big chunk of new downtown Austin tower "We have an office presence across the state in Austin, Dallas and Houston, as well as a data center in Midlothian and a new planned data center in Red Oak," Lamont said Tuesday. Dallas-based Trammell Crow Co. and MSD Capital began construction on the sail-shaped tower in January 2019. MSD invests on behalf of Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, his family and other investors. The 804,000-square-foot Sail Tower at West Cesar Chavez and Nueces streets is near the Second Street entertainment district downtown, and it has unobstructed views of Lady Bird Lake. It is just a few blocks from Cousins' existing downtown Austin office-building portfolio, which has 1.7 million square feet of space. "We are thrilled to add this iconic office property, with a strong investment grade customer, to our Austin portfolio," Colin Connolly, president and chief executive officer of Cousins Properties, said in a statemen in December. "Austin continues to exhibit strong demand fundamentals, attracting top talent and growing companies. This exciting transaction enables Cousins to enhance the quality of our leading lifestyle office portfolio and is immediately accretive to earnings." In North Austin, Cousins also is the largest owner of office space in the large, mixed-use Domain project, where Cousins' office holdings total about 2.5 million square feet of space across 11 buildings. More: Apartment tower to kick off Green Water redevelopment Eastdil Secured advised Trammell Crow in the Sail Tower purchase. The office high-rise was the last phase of a major redevelopment project that began in 2012, transforming downtown's Green Water Treatment Plant site into a large mixed-use made headlines when news broke several years ago that it would lease the entire sail-shaped tower. Austin is one of Google's largest hubs. In June 2023, a Google spokeswoman said in an email that as the company worked "to ensure that our real estate investments match the needs of our hybrid workforce, we're delaying moving into our leased space in 601 W. 2nd Street. We remain committed to our longstanding presence in Austin and investing in the local community."The spokeswoman said: "The lease on our space in 100 Congress expires in September 2023, which provided an opportunity for a careful review of our real estate footprint in Austin. Our analysis confirmed that we're able to accommodate our current space needs within our existing offices at 901 E. 5th St. and 500 West 2nd St." After the sail building, the second-largest office sale in Austin last year was for the Mueller Business District Bravo Building, a new 245,000-square-foot building in East Austin, acquired by the Teachers Retirement System of Texas in March. Before the sail-building purchase, Cousins made news when IBM said it would lease an entire 15-story office tower with 320,000 square feet of space in a Cousins' building at the Domain. IBM took over the lease from Meta Platforms, Facebook's parent company. IBM will assume the lease Jan. 1, 2026, and extend its term from 2031 to 2040. Other Cousins tenants at the Domain include Amazon, Expedia, Adobe and Fidelity. When Cousins bought Sail Tower, office brokers said it marked a milestone for the local office market, which has been in a slump like many office markets as employees have worked from home or on a hybrid basis. More: Almost a quarter of Austin-area office space sits empty, but the news isn't all bleak 'It's a testament to the confidence Cousins Properties and other office owners/investors have in the Austin market, despite ongoing challenges," Rick Whiteley, executive director of commercial real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield, said in December. With Google as a tenant, "some of the transaction's risk is obviously mitigated," Whiteley said. "However, a sale of this magnitude indicates a bullish outlook on the long-term future of the Austin office market." This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Googlers due to move into sail-shaped downtown Austin tower this year
