Author: Geoff Ebbs

A sovereignty concert at Musgrave Park commemorated the 1982 concert on the same ground at the Commonwealth Games which established the Sovereignty movement in the minds of the people of West End and South Brisbane.

Teila performed in memory of her Dad (Ross Watson) along with Rod, Andrew Paine, Marley, the Bim Bimbis (Trevor and Graeme) supporting Ian Curr and Phil Monsour. Harpist Bart performed on the closing day after the Sovereignty talks on G20. MC, Boe Knows; Marley & Phil on sound; Tony Mockeridge (Three Miles from Texas), Phil Monsour and Jumping Fences for the sound and lights all contributed to make the event a great success.

People are welcome to participate and help organise this event and other fundraising activities like it. There will be a fundraiser at Kurilpa Hall in November (date to be announced) to pay Wayne (Coco) Wharton’s fine for his defending the Sacred Fire and to contribute towards the Tent Embassy food program.

Contacts:  Boe Spearim 0424610492 and Eliza 0421472465

This and other issues are discussed at tent embassy meetings on Wednesdays 6pm

All are welcome to the sacred fire at 121 Cordelia Street West End on Wednesdays!

Black Fella – White Fella

The Yellow Jersey Bike Shop has landed in Woollongabba, joining the highest density of cyclists in Queensland from Ipswich where it was awarded Australian bicycle retailer of the year last year. Opening last month in Stanley St, the shop caters for all road, mountain, triathlon, womens’, fitness and kids’ cycling needs for every budget.

Onwer Troy Dobson aims for a family atmosphere that engender’s customer loyalty and creates a cycling hub for the inner-south. With competitors Bike Hub catering for serious cyclists just a stone throw’s away on Annerley Rd and Planet Cycles in the same suburb they will have to earn the priviledge. Long established Cycle Revolution in Montague Rd services the West End market putting together standard bikes from off the shelf and second hand components.

The new premises have had customers referring to it as the “Ferrari store for bikes”, partly due to the refurbished Austin vintage car on shop floor and supported by the generally sleek design and open layout.

A dedicated workshop facility with qualified mechanics is available for all servicing and repairs. Olympic cycling gold medallist, Ryan Bayley OAM has been with Yellow Jersey in Ipswich for over 5 years and brings that expertise to the  Woolloongabba workshop and sales team.

Blanca Nieves is a thorougly modern Snow White set in Spain a century ago and filmed in black and white without any speech. There are enough twists in the presentation of this story to provide an element of surprise and the film is so lushly made and the drama so finely presented that the audience remains captivate for nearly two hours.

The masterful use of bald melodrama, familiar tropes and a well known plot allows writer and director, Pablo Berger a free hand to stage the story using the best techiques of a century of film-making. The modern camera and depth of acting brings the black and white silent artform a century forward and the integration of a beautiful soundtrack with a silent film engages the senses of a modern audience.

The actors bring every element of the story to the attention of the audience as a series of unforgettable vignettes, each of them a powerful image and cinematic moment as well as an integral part of the story.

Setting the film set a century ago provides a classic fairy tale atmosphere while delivering a thoroughly recognisable world of media, glamour and false heroes. It connects the world of Gatsby with a more distant darker past.

The use of a century old film style to present the world of the time allows the use of high melodrama without being too cheesy and the twentieth century is much more like our  own than the premedieval setting usually associated with the tales recorded by the brother’s Grimm.

It is hard to know what mainstream audiences will make of this, the Oscar winning silent black and white film the Singer did well on the arthouse circuit two years ago but was hardly a block buster. This film is less hollywood and is unlikely to make it onto the screens in most shopping malls.

It is also the third Snow White movie in as many years. We have had the sword and sorcery Snow White and the Huntsman starring Kristen Stewart in Joan of Arc armour closely followed by the would be post-modern comedy, Mirror Mirror starring Julia Roberts as the wicked queen. They each sat firmly within their genre and barely broke the surface of the regular flow of film that washes across our screens.

I will mark Blanca Nieves down as being something that little bit extra, it would easily make my top ten for 2013, but I will not be recommending it around the water cooler at work. I suspect it is just one step too far for the suburban cineplex.

Future Park: Imagining Tomorrow’s Urban Park is a new book by Brisbane-based landscape architect Amalie Wright.

Her book deals with the challenge we face of living in cities – places where over half the world’s population now live.

“My aim was to demonstrate how shifting populations require a lot from the urban spaces of our cities and how essential it is to re-imagine them accordingly,” Ms Wright said.

Her book also examines spaces that have often been officially off-limits, so that we might picnic next to a sewage plant or enjoy the benefits of temporary pop-up city parks.

Through art, politics and engineering innovation, “Future Park” includes surprising stories of the economic, social and environmental benefits of parks, told with insight and humour, making the subject accessible to anyone.

Ms Wright challenges us all to stay involved, asking readers to not just use and enjoy their local parks, but be part of the remarkable transformation occurring around what a park can and should be.

“Whether as citizens, policy makers or designers, we all can play a role in making the most of our parks,” she said.

The first public parks were created on urban ‘greenfields’. Once these designated sites had been used, cities looked towards post-industrial sites, and built parks in places that had suffered from environmental degradation, neglect, abandonment and conflict. With finite stocks of urban post-industrial land now also approaching exhaustion, more ways of making parks are required to create inclusive, accessible and resilient urban places.

Future Park invites Australian built environment professionals and policymakers to consider the future of parks in our cities. Including spectacular images of public spaces throughout the world, the book describes the economic, social and environmental benefits of urban parks, and then outlines the threats and challenges facing cities and communities in an age when more than half the world’s population are urban dwellers. Future Parkintroduces the need to embrace new public park thinking to ensure that benefits continue to be realised.

Described by some as “facebook with a tie”, Linked In is social media for business. It is flavour of the month in Brisbane this month, with Kenmore & District Chamber of Commerce and Cooper Networking both holding sessions with this as the major topic.

This follows the emphasis on social media marketing at the Small Business Conference on July 25 in Southbank. See related story http://westender.com.au/mobile-media-future/

At its core of LinkedIn is a map of the connections between people, which offers a bit more sophistication than the single category of ‘friends’ that underpins facebook.

LinkedIn adds sophisticated Resume functions to this, reminiscent of most job finding networks and then adds a layer of social media that allow you to post articles, comments and thoughts to your profile, business page, or groups that you belong to.

Today at the Kenmore & District Chamber of Commerce, members Ian Reynolds and John Belchamber presented tips for building your business with LinkedIn.

During the interactive session they provided 7 ‘Must Do’ Tips For Building Your LinkedIn Profile:

1. Update Your Profile: make sure it tells people why they should do business with you with text, images, videos that tell your story for you;
2. Update Your Employees’ Profiles: people will look at their profiles when they’re researching your business. Make sure that they’re representing you well;
3. Start A Business Page: add your products, services, video and special offers and then spread the word to get people following your business;
4. Connect With The Right People: work out who you want to talk to, connect with them and then communicate with them;
5. Start And/Or Join Groups: join the groups where your prospects are active and/or that are related to what you do. Don’t spam groups with your content. Start business related conversations that add value to other members;
6. Become A Person Of Influence: post useful content using the 80/20 rule (i.e.only 20% about what you sell) and ask/answer questions to get yourself known as a person that knows their stuff
7. Start And/Or Join Groups: join the groups where your prospects are active and/or that are related to what you do. Don’t spam groups with your content. Start business related conversations that add value to other members

The session generated vigorous discussion, questions and advice from people with the full range of experience. Among some of the more controversial topics was the discussion around employees who build contacts with customers through Linked In and then take them when they move on.

Many companies are now writing into employment contracts that LinkedIn connections are part of the intellectual property developed while working for a company that belong to the company upon termination of the contract.

As if the concept itself is not controversial enough, the discussion about how this might be enforced is a minefield for both employers and employees.

The Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland, QICC, is working with local chambers of Commerce seeking accreditation to deepen its reach into local communities.

According to the QICC, the top two purposes of this program are to

1. reposition CCIQ as a vibrant and vital organisation by aggressively promoting and reinforcing it with all stakeholders, and
2. Introduce a compelling regional chamber value proposition that will see a consistent brand and position adopted across Queensland

For local chambers this means significantly better access to CCIQ resources, participation in CCIQ programs and, hopefully, better access to the corridors of power.

The Brisbane West Chamber of Commerce and Kenmore & District Chamber of Commerce are in the process of dissolving their current structure to reform as CCIQ – Brisbane West. The Brisbane West membership has already voted to proceed with the merger and the Kenmore group formally announced plans and a special general meeting for November 17th to vote on the issue.

Details of the merger and the proposal, together with the motion to be voted on at the special general meeting will be available at the Kenmore & Disctrict Chamber of Commerce website.

Businesses in 4101 are generally covered by Business South Bank, West End Traders Association, the South West Chamber of Commerce or a combination of those groups. An overview of the local chambers with links to their websites is provided on this site.