Managing director of Ebono Institute and major sponsor of The Generator, Geoff Ebbs, is running against Kevin Rudd in the seat of Griffith at the next Federal election. By the expression on their faces in this candid shot it looks like a pretty dull campaign. Read on
Geoff Ebbs with four of the candidates lowest on his ticket
Green preferences will go to five progressive micro parties ahead of the ALP in the Griffith by-election.
“The Greens spearhead a progressive movement that is a coalition of concerned citizens and activists opposed to putting short term profits first and everything else a distant second,” Griffith candidate, Geoff Ebbs said.
“The ALP has spent the last thirty years with one hand in the bosses’ pocket and one hand in the workers’. That is the fundamental reason it has lost its way.
“The Greens are a force in our own right. We effectively stand up for people, community and the environment in local, state and federal government. We are the party of the future.”
Mr Ebbs said that the five parties they have placed ahead of the ALP are all well aligned with Green values and contain many activists concerned that the Greens are too moderate on their particular issue.
“As a mature party with real power, we cannot push every agenda as strongly as its advocates would like. Our role as the political wing of the movement is to support these micro-parties and to represent their interests in parliament.”
In order of Greens preferences the parties are:
Bullet Train for Australia – The bullet train is a Greens initiative and official party policy.
Stable Population Party – Over-population and consumption are the underlying causes of our current crises.
Pirate Party of Australia – Big Brother is here and is not working on behalf of the people
Secular Party of Australia – The separation of church and state is an important plank in democracy
Karel Boele Independent – The People Decide is part of a movement to build the grass roots democracy that is one of the four pillars of the Greens.
Social media isn’t as mysterious as the myriad of business seminars indicate, according to a new article by Geoff Ebbs in the February edition of Westender
We all know that it is easier to sell something to an existing customer than it is to find new customers and we all know that eighty percent of our business comes from twenty percent of our customers.
We can’t grow our business, though, just by selling new things to the best one in five of our existing customers.
The challenge is to find and convert new customers without breaking the bank.
The core message
Many local business owners have attended seminars in the last year extolling the virtues of facebook, linkedin, twitter, tumblr or pInterest. I know. I’ve seen you there.
Most of these seminars provide compelling evidence that social media works.
Facebook’s Australian small business marketing manager, Nick Bowditch, is a three time netrepreneur who built and sold his three businesses from his PC. Two of them sold for more than a million dollars. Addressing the Small Business Summit at Rydges in July, Bowditch pointed out that searches are increasingly local and predominantly mobile and that social media is the glue that underpins an increasing proportion of communications.
Andrew Bleeker spoke passionately at DNA://13 in Sydney last year about the lessons learned in three US presidential campaigns and how they impact on business.
Most of these seminars leave business people feeling that they somehow missed the point.
Geoff’s article goes through the connection between using social media to connect with your potential customers and actually making a sale.
In the meantime, Westender is keen to hear your stories, successful or otherwise and share them with our business readers through our online weekly business eNews and the business pages of our print publication.
Geoff Ebbs is the author of the Australian Internet Book which sold 45,000 copies in 1995 and went on to a fourth edition, the pioneer of online content management systems and a management consultant with the Ebono Institute.
Declaration of Interest: The Ebono Institute is a shareholder in Urban Voice, the publisher of Westender.
With Brisbane City Council investing heavily in a broadband strategy to bring Brsibane’s small businesses into the 21st century, “ready or not” it is woth considering the lessons learned in broadband implementation programs in the USA. While the Minnesota program described here was strikingly successful, the lessons learned indicate that you cannot simply give people fast broadband and wait for the results. The examples concern relatively small cities in the USA 1 million people and so are referred to as rural, but there are many characteristics in common with Brisbane.
A link to the full article is provided below.
KEY ELEMENTS OF SUCCESSFUL ADOPTION EFFORTS
1. Communities know best.
Involve citizens directly in articulating their community’s broadband adoption and utilization goals to catalyze long-term engagement needed to increase adoption.
2. Local leadership matters.
Help local broadband champions get and use skills to frame issues, build and sustain relationships and mobilize people to build a community’s capacity to achieve its broadband goals.
3. Broadband is not an end in itself.
It is a means to the higher ends of increased economic vitality and improved quality of life. Framing it this way helps.
4. High-touch outreach works.
Effective recruitment strategies are intracommunity, hyperlocal and personalized. Change follows relationship lines.
5. Peers make great teachers.
Peer-based learning formats are popular, low-cost and easily sustainable tools to build a community’s technological savvy.
CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS
Broadband access alone is not enough.
Without concerted, community-based efforts to ensure that all citizens are able to take advantage of the Internet, the digital divide will continue to grow and to undermine America’s promise as a democracy where equal opportunity is available to all.
Educate and support
Community-based broadband literacy and market development efforts can and do help ensure that all Americans can participate fully in [the] nation’s economy and civic and cultural life. Eliminating the digital divide is an urgent challenge that must be part of [the] national agenda. States and communities need the federal government and its resources as a partner in this work.
Access to broadband is key:
Evidence abounds that high-speed Internet access has economic benefits (positive impact on median household income, employment and business growth). But so is adoption. According to the report “Broadband’s Contribution to Economic Health in Rural Areas: A Causal Analysis,” by B. Whitacre, S. Strover and R. Gallardo (March 26, 2013), “Non-metro counties with high levels of broadband adoption in 2010 had significantly higher growth in median household income between 2001 and 2010 compared to counties that had similar characteristics in the 1990s but were not as successful at adopting broadband.”
This point was eloquently echoed in a recent edition of ”The Daily Yonder,” published on the Web by the Center for Rural Strategies, a nonprofit media organization based in Whitesburg, Ky., and Knoxville, Tenn.: “While most government broadband policies have traditionally focused exclusively on providing infrastructure, there is a case to be made for focusing on demand. Investments in people, education and training are essential to achieve meaningful use of the lnternet.”
The Queensland Centre for Photography has released its schedule for 2014. During the first exhibition period of 2014 the gallery is showcasing artists who focus on storytelling in photography.
I thought it would be better than this
That includes exhibitions by Dean Butters (ACT), Barbara Doran & Penelope Cain (NSW), Christophe Canato (WA), Alexia Sinclair (NSW), and Katelyn-Jane Dunn (QLD). The Undergraduate Bridging Program features Paul Dielemans (QLD) from CATC Design School. The International Bridging Program features Alma Haser (UNITED KINGDOM).
Dean Butters: Batman & Robin
Dean Butters uses the tropes of Batman in constructed scenarios to portray the often-stark reality of an unfulfilled life, contrasted against the hopes and aspirations of childhood idealism. Butters images examine the ideas of protracted adolescence and social disconnection, amalgamating realistic situations with the fictional stories that we consume, to ultimately talk about a failure of identity through process of growing up and accepting the real world.
Christophe Canato: Ricochet
Christophe Canato’s Ricochet starts next week
The series Ricochet delves into the psyche of childhood, a time when darkness hides all sorts of threats and time itself seems endless. Christophe Canato’s images reflect the style of evocative renaissance paintings, put together to create an elaborate storyboard for a greater unseen tale. Canato uses the French description of the word ricochet to reference a rock skimming across water, defying logic before the reality of gravity brings it to an end, and relates the word to the dreams and fears of childhood.
Barbara Doran & Penelope Cain: Fractured Fairy Tales
Through the use of storytelling, Barbara Doran and Penelope Cain examine the contemporary urban condition, responding with hyper real narratives to make sense of where humanity stands in the modern era. Doran’s series At’Onement’ INCorporeal considers the social structures and hierarchy that we encounter in the workplace. This is combined with Cain’s series Nightgarden, exploring the qualities of the worlds we create outside our bodies in our individual dialogues between nature and culture, to form Fractured Fairy Tales.
Alexia Sinclair: A Frozen Tale
In A Frozen Tale, Alexia Sinclair weaves the historical narrative of Skokloster Slott, a baroque castle constructed in 17th century Sweden. She recreates the castles settings and the visits of its many important guests through a combination of historical snippets, digital manipulation and highly controlled studio shoots, to produce images reminiscent of traditional European paintings. The resulting works give an impression of life in the castle, from moments of significance to the simplicity of daily routine, encapsulating the myth and legend of 17th century Europe.
Katelyn-Jane Dunn: Sugar
Katelyn-Jane Dunn series Sugar presents an ambiguous and personal narrative, exploring the existing tensions of femininity, womanhood and coming of age in the male-dominated culture of regional towns. Based in her grandmothers’s home, Dunn combines documentary style images with site-specific performance to reconcile, reclaim and reflect upon a multidimensional femininity, ultimately asking, “What is it to be feminine in a regional context?”
International Bridging Program: Alma Haser (UK)
For this month as part of our International Bridging Program, where we showcase the work of international artists on the LED screen at the QCP gallery entrance, UK based artist Alma Haser’s series The Cosmic Surgery will be presented. Haser graduated in 2010 with a BA (Hons) in Photography, being named as one of the four best graduates of 2010 by the British Journal of Photography.
Undergraduate Bridging Program: Paul Dielemans (CATC)
Showcased in our window gallery is the QCP Undergraduate Bridging Program, which presents work by emerging artists who are currently studying photo media at an Australian higher learning institution. The month we are presenting Paul Dielemans, a student of CATC Design School, and his series Concrete Clad, which analyses the tensions between the ever-advancing front of human construction and the natural environment.
The Queensland Centre for Photography (QCP) is a non-profit organization based in Brisbane Australia, dedicated to the exhibition and publishing of photo-media art. It is the leading institution of its kind supporting the development of Australian practitioners and their global appreciation.
Fanning the hive in hot weather exhausts bees and reduces yield
Australia’s honey industry is preparing for a difficult 2014, with abnormal weather conditions set to deliver the lowest national honey yields in at least a decade.
A combination of excessive heat, flood and drought has hit prime honey producing areas in recent times and led to honey supplies falling by over 50 percent.
The honey producing process requires the right mix of temperatures and rainfall for nectar producing crops to grow, set buds, flower and then have bees collect the nectar to ripen into honey. Erratic temperatures, both hot and cold, have meant spring production was very low.
Australia’s hottest year on record has severely hampered honey flows for bee keepers, with high temperatures causing stress and erratic behaviour in local bee populations. In extreme heatwave conditions beeswax honeycombs can melt inside the hive. The heat forces bees to remain inside and collectively fan their wings in an attempt to keep the hive cool.
According to Trevor Weatherhead, Executive Director of the Australian Honey Bee Industry Council, the honey shortage has the potential to rock the industry in the short term.
“It is a dire time for the honey industry with both apiarists and honey packers bracing themselves for the next 12 months.
“We have witnessed a ‘perfect storm’ of negative weather conditions.
“Because of this, honey stock is now the scarcest it has been in over ten years and honey packers are finding it very difficult to secure supplies,” Mr Weatherhead said.
“This will no doubt make it very hard for some companies to meet contracts with supermarkets and supply their full range of products.”
Mr Weatherhead said it was more important than ever for Australian’s to support the local honey industry.
“An estimated 65 per cent of agricultural production in Australia depends on pollination by honeybees with pollination services to Australian agriculture being valued at more $1.7 billion per annum.
“Domestic Australian supermarket retail sales for honey are in excess of $150 million a year and honey is a growing multi-million dollar source of export revenue for Australia.
“Conditions will once again return to normal, but like any agriculturally based business, during this period there will be a number of hardships that will have to be endured.
“Over the next 12 months we can greatly assist our Australian bee keepers and honey producers by continuing to buy honey as you would normally,” Mr Weatherhead concluded.
This article has no connection to the Hot Brown Honey reviewed on Jan 1.
Perhaps there will be a surprise speaker showing support for the bikies on January 26
Queensland Civil Liberties Union met last night to plan their support of a series of rolling protests against the Queensland Government’s attack on Civil Liberties. The first of these actions will be the Freedom Day Rally at the Roma Forum in Roma Street, Brisbane at 11am on Sunday January 26th.
This Rally has inspired international support around the world including rallies in London, Toledo California and Canberra.
The meeting was opened by Peter Simpson of the Electrical Trades Union who pointed out that up to 200 electricians will be banned from working in July if the legislation goes ahead.
“Decent working men with families to feed and no criminal record or history of criminal activity are going to lose their jobs because they choose to socialise with bikies.”
He quoted the acting attorney general, David Crisafulli as suggesting that the electricians “simply resign from the gangs.” The VLAD legislation, however, specifically identfies that resignation does not exclude someone from being categorised as illegal.
The Queensland Government has said that all registered trade and professional organisations are required to exclude members who the government has declared to be associates of criminal organisations from July this year.
Significantly, the legislation does not mention bikie gangs or any other specific group and it allows the attorney general to simply declare any corporation, incorporated association or group of three or more people as a criminal organisation.
“This legislation was ready when this government came to power. It does not mention bikies because it was drawn up to criminalise anyone opposing the government. The bikies simply got in the way.”
This week, Premier Newman confirmed that he decided to target bikies as a result of public outrage over shootings by bikies. Those shootings took place before and after the 2012 election.
Civil liberties activists, human rights organisations and legal experts around the world have universally condemned the laws, but conservative governments in the UK, EU and USA as well as other Australian jurisdictions have indicated they will study them and the public reaction to determine if they should follow suit.
It was the general mood of the Queensland Civil Liberties Union that the international focus and widespread opposition is all the more reason why concerned Queenslanders should join the protests in large numbers.
