This year, you’re going to see a fair bit from us recapping what we’ve done to get to where we are over the last 20 years, and we thought we’d start this off in January with a bit of a look back to the start of things.

Back in 2004, I had left working in a biodiversity survey company to finish my Masters in Business Administration, and then started the current iteration of Gaia Resources (technically, I used the name back in 1997 and 1998 when I was doing some short term contracts for various organisations).

Gaia Resources started from my home – technically, from a small table in a side area off our lounge room – and look how we’ve come full circle – now, post COVID, we are mainly working from home these days once more.  

The story of Gaia Resources – right back from that table – is one that I look back and think about regularly – seeing some of the challenges we’ve faced and overcome really does help you to have the strength to take on new challenges and to solve other problems that arise.  So I thought I’d just write a little about the areas we’ve worked in over the twenty years as a starting point, and how far we’ve come.

When I started the company we were providing a range of spatial data services to the biological survey part of the environmental industry.  We were busy digitising the maps and tables from a range of different biological survey reports, creating digital datasets from paper sources.  Oh, how far we’ve come since then – like the projects we’ve done like using Artificial Intelligence to capture biodiversity data (such as our work with the Northern Territory).  One constant though – it has also been important to interacting with biodiversity data standards when doing this data collection (like the TDWG standards and the new Australian Biodiversity Information Standard), as we have done that throughout our history.

This pic was from The Stagg cafe in Hobart during the TDWG 2023 conference

In 2005 we saw the arrival of Google Maps, and that started to change the landscape of spatial data quite quickly – all of a sudden it was much more desirable to present spatial data through the browser.  Google Maps started to get traction over the next few years and we realised that digitising and producing paper maps was on the way out, so we started to hire software engineers into the company to build systems to manage spatial data.  To this day we are continuing to develop these biological data systems, such as our work on the Western Australian Biodiversity Information Office (both design and build) and the federal government’s Biodiversity Data Repository.

During those early days, we also found ourselves working with the Western Australian Museum, where we were supporting their collections databases – registers of all the vouchered specimens that they have in their collections.  This led to a chance meeting and discussion around Archives, and then we were providing services to a whole new sector, which has become one of the areas I’m very proud of.  

We have delivered a range of open source collections databases to the Archives sector in Australia, across Western Australia, Victoria and most notably Queensland, where – on the back of our work with the Queensland State Archives – we set up our second office in Brisbane.  All of a sudden, we were an Australian company – not just a Western Australian one.  So, from our origins around that little table, now we have offices and staff right around Australia – that’s been a big change!

As an aside – the Archives bug had bitten me in particular, and how!  Being at the most recent national Archives conference in Melbourne just reaffirmed how important this sector is – and how much we enjoy being part of it.  Going from our simple first steps of implementing collections databases to now implementing complete archival systems, including comprehensive digital preservation systems – all of this has been a big shift from our origins, but in the right direction!

Luke, Sarah and I went to the ASA conference in Melbourne in 2023 – our sixth one. Dennis Lillee was there already

The Environment and Collections areas have become pillars of what we do at Gaia Resources; there are other areas we also work in, but these two have come to be our mainstays.  We’ve even now designed the company to have these as our “units” – so that we are focused on our clients in these areas, and delivering high quality services to them.

There are a lot of people that have helped Gaia Resources get to the 20 year mark; clients, colleagues, friends and family.  But throughout the whole thing we could not have done what we have, as well as we have, without our team – our staff, our family away from home.  These people – past and present – have all contributed in some way to the organisation and without them we would not be here.  So to talk about the history of Gaia Resources without the people that came on the journey – so thank you to everyone who has, still does, (or will) work here at Gaia Resources – the place wouldn’t be what it is without your input along the way.  Thank you.

The team at team week in 2022 in Perth – one of the fondest memories from the last couple of years (which will be repeated this year – hopefully without COVID!)

I’m forever grateful to lead this team on our mission of making the world a better place, through the delivery of sustainable technology solutions in a responsible manner.  This year is going to be one where we get to celebrate that just a little bit, and that’s going to make for some fun times ahead.

Stay tuned for more about our history over the year, and for some bright new initiatives that we’re heading into.  Meanwhile, if you want to know more about us, why not drop me a line on email, or through our social media channels – Facebook, LinkedIn, X/Twitter and now Instagram!

Piers

The post Twenty Years appeared first on Gaia Resources.

One of the more common highlights that have been raised by the team is our company culture and values.  We’ve worked really hard since COVID to create a sustainable remote working environment, and this has been a success primarily due to a lot of passion from our team to make things better, especially from our Cultural Champions.  At our final company meeting there were many references to our values and culture that were around “living up to our values”, “looking after each other” and the one that made me the most proud – “not just doing lip service to this stuff”.  This is the softer side of business and it means that we have a really engaged team that pulls together to work through the problems that arise – it’s great to have the team having each other’s back.  We’ve got through some massive challenges this year because of our team pulling together to solve them.

Pet bingo was one of the more fun activities we did this year remotely – if you saw a pet in the video meetings then you got to cross one off!

Another common theme was the benefits of the work we’ve done in the management side of things – with our now expanded management team of myself, Andrew (now our Finance Manager), Justine (our People and Culture Manager) and Tanya (our Operations Manager) really starting to hit our stride as the year has gone on.  Having Tanya and Justine join Andrew and I has brought a breath of fresh air and really revitalised us – and the team are seeing that benefit as we are moving forward with a range of initiatives and are generally making the company really hum.

The other thing that has been pointed out by a lot of the team are the rest of the team.  Our meeting had a fair few “thanks” to others in the team from people that felt particularly supported, and that was often reciprocal across the team.  We’ve brought on 15 new staff this year as others have moved on, and there was a lot of praise for the way that people have been brought into the company and supported, and a common note that there was a lot of generosity and support from the whole team.  This again links back to our core values, but the Gaia way is to look after each other, so that’s definitely bedded into the company.

There are a lot of projects we’ve been working on this year, and a number of them were raised as highlights in our meeting from the team, including some of our larger projects:

• The Queensland State Archives project, where this year we’ve developed and gone live with an internal Digital Preservation System capacity, which will roll out in the new year to the agencies in Queensland, 
• The Biodiversity Data Repository (BDR) project, where we have delivered a data ingestions pipeline that takes incidental occurrence and systematic survey data into the BDR and through some very detailed operations, transforms it into the Australian Biodiversity Information Standard ready for use in a graph database, and
• Our work with the Biodiversity Information Office, where we have undertaken an extension project delivering more functionality this year for the Dandjoo system.

A range of other projects and initiatives were mentioned by people as well – trips to see clients and work collaboratively with them, or trips to the conferences that we attend (like the Australian Society of Archivists 2023 and TDWG 2023 conferences).

Luke, Sarah and Piers at the ASA 2023 conference

Above all, though, this year was all it was about the people we work with.  As someone commented in the meeting, this year has felt like five years rather than one – but every time we yelled into the void, the void yelled back with a great deal of support.  This is exactly the type of company I wanted to build when I started Gaia Resources and it seems like it’s really working well.

Our company meeting was a good way to review the year and celebrate our successes as we head into our 20th year of operation.  There’s going to be some interesting challenges along the way, but we’ve got each other’s back and we’re ready to get stuck in after a nice break over the holiday season.

We’ll see you in 2024!

Piers

The post Wrapping Up 2023 appeared first on Gaia Resources.

While Business Analysts are still an integral part of our teams, the IT field has changed since 2021. In line with Heraclitus’ words, “the only constant in life is change,” our world is ever evolving and tools such as Artificial Intelligence, or AI, are ever present in all areas of life. As a Business Analyst, this raises questions about how AI will change our work and impact the future of the BA role. What does the uptake and evolution of AI mean for a Business Analyst in 2023? What are the opportunities? Where are the efficiencies? What is the role of the human?

Business analysis does not occur in a vacuum. It is critical to understand and leverage relevant information at the right time. This can be a challenge given the volume of information available but the limited time frame available to gather and digest this information. Harnessing the tools at hand allows more time and energy for critical thinking, problem solving, mastery of business nuances and space for further specialisation.

It is here where the considered use of AI can prove beneficial. Employing AI in its various guises can condense and curate information at a speed that is unlikely to be matched by human analysis. If AI is considered another tool in the BA skillset, it can reduce time spent on manual tasks such as reviewing data to identify trends. 

That said, for AI to be impactful and most beneficial, it needs to be introduced at the appropriate time in the analysis process with methods to validate and cross-reference the outcomes. An understanding of what AI tools are appropriate for the task at hand is becoming essential knowledge for BAs. Further to the available tools, BAs will require the skill of effectively using the AI tools to generate desired outcomes. The job of a BA does not stop there; any output will require a close review to ensure accuracy, quality and consistency. 

Much of the above thinking is geared towards how AI can be used by a BA for the job at hand. However, we acknowledge this is only a small subset of AI. At the risk of stating the obvious, AI is an expanding field in its own right, and its uses and adaptation will grow in leaps and bounds. While change is a constant, we have a suspicion that AI and its uses will soon become a constant, too. At Gaia Resources, we are looking forward and thinking about these changes. We’re doing the review and the analysis. We are weighing the opportunities, identifying the risks and planning for a future where our Business Analysts can consider and incorporate AI to maximise their impact. We are excited for what’s next. 

If you want to know more about Business Analysts at Gaia Resources and how they can contribute to the success of your technical solutions, feel free to get in touch! Or start a conversation with us on Facebook, X or LinkedIn.

Sarah & Natalie 

The post 2023 Global Business Analysis Day: Business Analysis in the age of AI appeared first on Gaia Resources.

I am just approaching the end of my third month at Gaia Resources and I feel like I have been here a lot longer than that. Starting in May, Gaia Resources welcomed me with open arms into the role of Business Development Coordinator. My role has me working closely with Piers Higgs, the Gaia Resources CEO. Piers from day one made it abundantly clear what my role was and how we would work together. He cleared his schedule for my first days to assist in situating myself at Gaia Resources. Each morning in the office we would take a walk down to the local café and I would be given the opportunity to ask any questions as needed. This initial first week ensured that I knew what was expected of me and how I could best spend my time.

Team Lunch at Samuels on Mill – would recommend the Steak Sandwich

Gaia Resources is a company with offices all over Australia and staff dotted around the major cities and this results in online communication becoming the new normal. Coming from an industry where face to face is the norm this was a change, it developed my communication skills and taught me that you have to be patient and succinct in getting your key points across. You may think that working in this virtual world would induce a sense of aloneness but Gaia Resources has successfully combated this through multiple activities. 

To start, the daily coffee catch-ups. When you are working in an office, many parts of your day are engaged in small talk and informal conversations between co-workers whereas working in a virtual office is where this becomes a challenge. The team at Gaia Resources has dedicated daily times daily for coffee catch-ups, and they are open to anyone and the start times vary to cater to the offices around Australia. The best part of these calls is getting a glimpse into other people’s lives, their pets and their hobbies, it is always a great way to spend some time between client meetings.

Waiting for the Culture Coffee Catch-up whilst working from home

Secondly, I have noticed at Gaia Resources how passionate the team is about their work and their hobbies. There is nothing better than having a company and it’s employees who have values that align with your own. I have noticed in my first months that the team always put a focus on ‘is this the right thing to do?’ both from a business and environmental perspective. It’s nice to see and helps to push me to do the best thing in my daily tasks.

Last but not least, Gaia Resources has good vibes (I’m gen Z, so this is my standard vernacular). What I mean by this is the Gaia Resources team is encouraged to grow and learn everyday or as much as they would like and if there is something that will help us in our role we are encouraged to go for it and enhance our skills. Everyone in the company is also only a message away, so if I can’t figure out the difference between Drupal and WordPress it’s only a few minutes before I have a full explanation. Moving forward with Gaia I am excited to expand my knowledge and learn more about each person in the company.

Starting this role at Gaia Resources has pushed me to learn new things, develop my online communication skills and refine my gif and meme crafting. Without the strong foundation I received in my early months and the support of my colleagues from coast to coast, I would not have the same level of confidence in my position that I currently do.

I have included some tips that I have gleaned from my time at Gaia Resources so far:

If you are looking for a company that will support you and provide you with the necessary tools to further your career please don’t hesitate to contact me or check our current job opportunities on LinkedIn.

Luke

The post Settling into my role at Gaia Resources appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Gaia Resources started at a messy little table in my house, where I was trying to find ways to merge my previous careers of wannabe ecologist and GIS data nerd together into some sort of job for life. So, when Rachel asked me for something for our EOFY blog, I started thinking about the last year and then I kept falling down the rabbit hole that is 19 years deep! I think we might have to climb out of that rabbit hole for a while and instead focus on this last financial year, though.

Speaking of a trip down memory lane, here’s some of our team photos from the past

This last year presented us with a solid footing for moving forward for this year.  We are entering into the new year with a number of “repeat” or “extension” projects, especially in the Environmental space. Our environmental knowledge and past work resulted in us being re-engaged to work on two very large and important projects for biodiversity management in Australia – the Biodiversity Information Office (BIO), and the Biodiversity Data Repository (BDR). We’ve spoken about BIO on our blog in the past (like the recent blog on BIO), but I realise we’ve not talked a lot about the BDR.

That project, led by our federal Environment department (the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water) has been something we’ve worked on for a couple of years in the “data partner” role.  In this sense we are the ones that work with data providers to ensure that data can be provided to the BDR’s main repository, and then we run all that data through a detailed pipeline to ensure that it meets the needs of that repository when it gets there. This is really important – the need to access robust, authoritative biodiversity data in a timely manner is a key part of the reforms that are being delivered by this government.  It’s something that we’re proud to be involved with, and we’ll have to explain more about it in the future.

The BDR is a large initiative that can be broken down into an ingestion pipeline (which we manage), and then a repository to store the data

The BDR and BIO have been really positive environmental projects, but in the other part of our business – the Collections side – we have also been delivering on a range of projects, with some milestones coming just around the corner as we push towards a Production release of the Digital Preservation System (DPS) for the Queensland State Archives.  This will be a big milestone – the first time that an integrated DPS will be included in the Archives there – and to get there has been a lot of work by our dedicated team.  I’m really looking forward to seeing that go live – that will be a big part of our wins from this last financial year.

Collections and Environment have been our two focus areas for the last year, and our team has changed around those areas.  We’re also recruiting for more people to come along and help us make a difference – including a range of ads that are out now for particular jobs, too:

Two of our recent job ads that are still live at the time of posting this blog

With these projects continuing into the new year, we’ve got a pretty full book already – so recruitment is going to be continuing, and if you’re at all interested in the positions we talked about in the last recruiting blog, then drop us a line at jobs@gaiaresources.com.au. 

Next year we are celebrating 20 years of Gaia Resources, from that little table in my house to to a team of over 40 spread across Australia (and even some in Europe). Stay tuned for some changes that are coming and make sure to be subscribed to our newsletter.

Right – we better get on with it and start this new financial year then! In the meantime, if you’d like to know more about our coming projects, or about our recruitment then start a conversation with us on social media – LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter or drop us a line.  All our best wishes for the new year ahead, and we look forward to seeing you during it! 

Piers

The post Happy New (financial) Year! appeared first on Gaia Resources.

At the moment we’re recruiting for:

• Project Managers – to add to our team in the Project Management area, as we’re about to start some big new projects in the new financial year – we’ve been looking through our recruiters, but stay tuned for an ad coming soon too,
• Software Engineers – we have already advertised and are in the interview stage for our Senior Developer role, but we are also about to start looking for more Software Engineers to join our team for the large projects mentioned above,
• Business Analysts – we are still receiving applications from our recent Business Analyst job advertisement, to again bring on some more people to help with projects, and
• DevOps – we are about to also start recruiting for new DevOps team members, to help with the every-growing work managing our cloud infrastructure implementations.  Another job ad will be out soon for this as well.

If any of these interest you then either hit up the linked job ad above, or drop us a line at jobs@gaiaresources.com.au and send us a CV and some information on what you’re interested in, and why.

While we have been busy reaching out to our networks and to our recruiters to find good candidates for these positions, as well as the adverts already out or coming out shortly, we thought we might also talk a bit about what a job here looks like, too – the things you can’t quite put in the job ad.

• People first – one of our core values is about supporting our people, and making sure that we think of the person as well as the role that you play.  We have a whole raft of ways that we support our teams, including our Cultural Champions and a range of training and support around “soft skills” (like we mentioned back in May, last year, and again just recently).
• Flexibility – we pride ourselves on our flexibility around working arrangements, and most of our team work from home for part of the week at least – some people prefer entirely remote roles, and others prefer to come into an office space, but the choice is yours.  We also get you the things you need to make work happen – our “I Need Stuff” email address has had some hilarious requests over the years
• Autonomy with accountability – we allow people to manage their own time to achieve the outcomes that are necessary for their work. To that end you will also have Work Leads to help support you and to help you find that balance, and a team of people that look at workloads and solve any challenges there each week.
• Get good – our functional guilds are full of like minded people who work in the same disciplines, and our Functional leads are the ones that help you to get better at what it is that you do – along with all the other members of your cohort.  From coworking time to knowledge sharing to just plain ol’ lunch together – there are plenty of ways to build your skillsets.

We take our work seriously but we don’t take ourselves too seriously – after all life needs to have some balance and we need to find ways that we can all work together and have a bit of fun along the way.  So from things like the more formal “welcome lunches” we are having in the next few weeks, to the much less formal Friday drinks, gaming sessions, jam sessions and other shenanigans all add some colour and personality to the place – and makes a nice break from our remote lives these days.

As we mentioned, we’re looking for people that want to join our team and so if any of the positions above specifically interest you, or you would like to chuck your hat in the ring, then feel free to email us at jobs@gaiaresources.com.au and tell us about yourself!

Piers

The post We’re recruiting! appeared first on Gaia Resources.

The return to undertaking work travel still feels strange.  After COVID lockdowns and travel restrictions, we’re still very aware that there are plenty of viruses out there, so we do suggest to people to do what they need to in order to feel as safe as possible.  Gaia’s procedure “don’t come in if you are ill” is something we’ve been doing throughout and we want to keep, so that we don’t end up taking out the whole company with an outbreak of the flu – this used to happen in the past.  But for work trips – this means being aware of different people’s needs and requirements, and making sure that our clients are happy to accommodate during the meetings and workshops, which is, frankly, super easy these days. 

When we plan for work trips we try to make the people side of this paramount from the start. The team choose the flight schedule that works for them, so that they can be in the location we need in the best shape possible.  This also means that it creates the least disruption to their families and other commitments outside of work.  Of course, there is a need to be on site at a certain time, so there are parameters to consider here, but this flexibility is important for our team. You don’t want to start a work trip anxious that you’ve had to compromise on things like family!  

After travel and settling into the accommodation, we met up for the first time in person since COVID for some of us while we have brekky and get ready for the first workshop (L-R Megan, Piers, Mieke, Grant and Gail)

Accommodation is also an important choice for our team. We want somewhere close enough to the client site that you don’t have a hassle to get there.  A benefit of being within walking distance is that you can then also have some active recovery (non strenuous aerobic of physical activity) after the workshop as you walk back to the accommodation.  The key is that it needs to be spacious and nice enough that you don’t feel bad about living in a shoebox for a few days (we do provide accommodation for our team that extends across weekends either side of work trips if they want to hang around and explore a bit).  These little things can all go a long way towards making the whole time away from home just that little bit better.  All these little things add up.

So you’ve gotten to the workshop in the best possible state of mind – now we need to keep it that way, and that’s going to be different for everyone. I’ll use a recent trip as an example of how we do that.

Heading into the John Gorton Building in Canberra where our client is located – the basement was part of the intelligence efforts during World War Two (they have a small exhibition right underneath where we are walking)

For this trip five of our staff from different cities headed to Canberra to do some planning work for the Biodiversity Data Repository, a project we’re working on with the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.

I tend to recharge with solitude and exercise myself, so for me, I made sure to have at least one night that was free so I could go for a run around Lake Burley-Griffin as part of my active recovery.  For other people the way to recharge was to go and do some social stuff – and of course because we have our own Pickleball champion in Gail, that means that there was the option to go play in a local pickleball team, which a few of the gang took up.

Playing pickleball for the first time for some – Sarah wearing our #stayathome t-shirt we organised during COVID lockdowns

We also wanted to have some time together as well, so we managed to organise a team dinner, where the local team from Canberra (Sarah and Rhys) as well as the travellers (myself, Grant, Megan, Gail and Mieke) could get together and have a bit of time just chatting.  As an almost fully remote team, it’s super important to make the most of the time that we have face-to-face. We went out for a nice low key dinner, so that we could let our hair down (yes, metaphorically for at least two of us).

Team dinners with (L-R) Grant, Mieke, Gail, Sarah (back), Megan (front), Piers and Rhys

There was a lot of good work done in Canberra on this trip, for both the client and Gaia, but also we have some really good memories of the things we did as well – playing sports, catching up as a group, or getting some time out to recharge in nice surroundings.  

We even managed a quick pre-airport catch up with our colleagues from Hudson Molonglo (who are based in Canberra) to have a drink and chat about our work together on the Queensland State Archives project.

So, as the sun set on our trip to Canberra, we had made the time for us to be the best versions of ourselves – for our clients, colleagues and most importantly for our families when we got home.

The sunsets in Canberra can be really amazing (not shown: amazing autumnal colours in the trees around the Lake)

As we have previously spoken about looking after our people, that continues, and we evolve as the times change around us. We are focused on making sure that we have a supportive environment that means that we can be at our best when we work with our clients, and that we can look forward to the next trip as well.  While we might be remote, that doesn’t mean we don’t have to consider our people – in fact, it means we have to consider them even more and be proactive about how we do that.

If you’re interested in working with a company that does look after our people, then why not drop us a line at jobs@gaiaresources.com.au to see if we have an opening for someone with your skills?  We’re always looking out for people who want to be part of our team and to help us make a positive impact on the world.

Piers

The post Healthy Work Trips appeared first on Gaia Resources.

We really spent the first half of the year trying to learn and plan for the second half of the year – culminating in our first face-to-face team workshop (“team week”) since COVID changed the way we work forever.

Team week 2022 – before COVID took us down!

Team week was – at least in my eyes – a great success.  Having our team together was a real morale booster for us all, despite the COVID hangover that hit us afterwards.  It also gave me the chance to test out the goals and approaches for the next year with the team and to get some really vital feedback from the team about how we were travelling – this has to have been, without doubt, the highlight of the year for me.

People are the key consideration here at Gaia Resources, and we started by expanding our executive team with the arrival of Gaye as our Chief People Officer.  Having Gaye join us to help recalibrate the company towards that people-centric goal has been an important part of our evolution and a huge part of this year.  Gaye’s been instrumental in gathering a huge range of really valuable feedback at the team week, developed new recruitment processes and set up our Cultural Champions cohort, which has already seen some great improvements to our culture and for people’s wellbeing.

Meanwhile, we’ve also been changing up the company to create Functional Leads – people who lead a guild of people that perform similar jobs (e.g. the software engineers, or the business analysts).  While Gaye’s been also helping there, the leads themselves have also been developing their own ways and methods to support their guild.  In both the Functional Lead and Cultural Champion cases, we’ve continued to work with Yentle as our partner to help grow our people into these roles.

The third leg of the stool are our Work Leads, and this is still a work in progress, but Andrew and the Project Managers have been working with Giles from Cantor and Ball to restructure our working arrangements to deliver better outcomes for our clients and for our teams.  As we’ve grown into a company of over 40 people, this has become one of our bugbears, and the systems that we created when we were 15 people don’t quite cut it anymore – so there’s a lot of evaluation and renewal happening in this area.

This three-legged stool metaphor is something we took from our coaching and work with the team at Adapt by Design, and it seems to work well for us.  The systems that Adapt by Design provide, in particular, are great ways to measure and monitor some of the more intangible things around the company, like the satisfaction of the team in the way we’re working.

An example of the ADAPT platform and some of the metrics that can be brought out of it.

In amongst all this “internal” stuff we were doing, we still had work to do and projects to deliver.  In this year, we’ve delivered two of the largest, and most impactful, biodiversity data management projects in our history – the Biodiversity Information Office’s (BIO) Dandjoo system in Western Australia, and we’ve also been working with the federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water on the national Biodiversity Data Repository (BDR).

Both of these projects have made significant contributions to the way that biodiversity data is managed, and this is one of the key reasons that Gaia Resources exists – to make a positive change in these sorts of areas.  For BIO in particular, which was launched in July, 2022, the way in which data is collected – keeping every field that has been captured by the submitter, not throwing a bunch away to match a standard – is a key improvement in the way we manage biodiversity data.  This is a pretty big one for me personally (as you can probably tell from the blog I wrote earlier this year) and I think it represents a foundational change in how we will manage data into the future – as well as future-proofing it, as we’re doing with a range of technologies in the BDR project.

Dandjoo is made up of multiple systems – Data Submission, Curation and Storage, and Delivery, as well as Nomos, the Taxonomic Names Management system we’ve developed for BIO

There is another side of our business, though – the area we call “Collections”, which represents a big chunk of the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) sector.  The link to our environmental core is the Museums sector – specifically for us, Museums and Herbaria – and that is where we first started helping these taxonomic regulators manage their data and databases.  There are also other links – like how we could archive spatial data – as well.  Once we were managing biological collections, the same tools could be used in the rest of the sector, and we now operate archival systems with State level Archives in Western Australia, Queensland and Victoria, and have worked with the Tasmanian and South Australian Archives as well. 

This archival work this year has had a major focus on Digital Preservation – making sure that the digital files that are delivered to the archives can be opened again and again into the future (which is no small feat considering how fast digital formats change).  Over this year we have been working on a Digital Preservation extension to our work with the Queensland State Archives, with our colleagues at Hudson Molonglo, Recordkeeping Innovation and Artefactual.  Digital Preservation is really an area where we want to bring something back to the environmental sector – thinking about how we preserve digital environment data for the future is something we’ve done a lot of work on this year, as well.

Josephine Marsh presenting (virtually) on our work for the Queensland State Archives at the national Archives Conference earlier this year

With all that, it’s been a very big year.  There are a range of other project highlights that come to mind as I write this, such as;

• Continuing to support our partners at Liquid Interactive in the deliver of the My Aged Care web site,
• A whole raft of interesting things we’ve been doing with Artificial Intelligence in the archival and environmental sectors, such as capturing biodiversity data from handwritten and printed forms, through to capturing data from images of handwritten archival documents,
• Helping develop wildlife corridors within the urban environments in the Perth hills, with our work with the Shire of Mundaring,
• Attending the Here We Are conference in Canberra – our first face to face conference since COVID started, and where our clients at Queensland State Archives presented a few papers on our joint work,
• Continued work with groups like the Northern Australian Fire Index, where we produced a mobile app to help people to see the fires in northern Australia on their own devices,
• Continuing to support the Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art with their Collection Online system, and
• Working with the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions on spatial data management tools for their internal spatial data management.

That’s a sample of some of the projects that we’ve had the opportunity to work with this year – there are many more there, and in the works for the new year as well.  When I look back at these projects and initiatives for 2022, I think how different it was when we started back 18 years ago, and how far we’ve come – and that just enthuses me more to make even more of a positive difference to the world we live in.  

I’m looking forward to taking a breath for the next week or so with the Christmas season upon us, and getting a chance to plan more of our initiatives for the next year.  I hope you get a similar break to recharge, spend some quality time with your loved ones, and look forward to seeing you in 2023!

Piers

The post 2022 in Review appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Minister Whitby launching Dandjoo in July, 2022

Leading up to this launch was nine months of very intense, challenging and time sensitive work by the team here at Gaia Resources, along with the DBCA BIO team, lead by Helen Ensikat.  As we look towards the next stage of Dandjoo with the BIO team, it’s a good opportunity to look back at that nine months and to celebrate what has been achieved from that hard work!

The title of this blog covers one of the main things that has been achieved – as a collective, we’ve managed to implement a new generation of biodiversity information management.  This new way is not looking at standards as the way to store data, but is offering the ability to store every piece of information that is provided, and then to use standards to make that available.  I’ve written a separate blog back in June about how data standards should be used responsibly, all about this, so I won’t harp on from here, other than to say that the legacy that Paul Gioia left us is going on strong in the architecture of Dandjoo (summarised below, from the BIO team).

Dandjoo is made up of multiple components, including data submission, curation, storage, data delivery and taxonomic names management (Credit: DBCA)

The parts of Dandjoo that are visible to the public are at either end – the data submission and data delivery pieces.  These are where the whole team spent a lot of time trying to get this right, and to a large degree, that’s been done.  A big part of this success has been to the data interface design work we ran with our partners, Liquid Interactive.

As a result of this work, the data delivery portal (https://dandjoo.bio.wa.gov.au/) is a modern, streamlined application that is primed to move to the next stages of development, adding in new functionality that’s been requested after the initial launch.  We hope to be working with the BIO team into the future on aspects of this, but a key aspect is that this system is owned and operated by the BIO team.

The Dandjoo interface went through a range of user interface design work to deliver the modern, streamlined application that was launched in July

That’s a very important part of the BIO project to date – making sure that the BIO team can own this system and build upon the initial short nine month development piece to enhance and drive this with their own team.  This is a key part of our approach at Gaia Resources – making sure solutions are sustainable also means making sure that the clients can (if they wish to) work on the system themselves into the future.  

The data submission piece is where the next generation thinking really comes to play, and where Dandjoo implements data standards in a new way.

Instead of forcing people to discard data that does not fit, what instead happens is that data providers are asked to “map” the fields in their dataset to the data standards that are utilised under the hood (starting with Darwin Core, as outlined in https://bio.wa.gov.au/dandjoo/guide/data-standards-dandjoo).  By going down this route, Dandjoo has all the valuable data that has been collected – not just those that are in the standard.  This helps to future proof the data repository – if data standards change, the BIO team can re-map fields from the original datasets to add in new data, without going back for resupplies of the datasets.

This is such a key part of the design of Dandjoo, that to me it’s the most important thing that we’ve implemented – it does add some overheads for processing and the like, but the data collected on biodiversity surveys is precious and should all be retained – you might hear my inner archivist firing up here, and indeed it’s a lot of archival and record management thinking from our work in that area that has informed this design as well.

It’s something I’m really proud of our team for implementing – even more so than the other public parts of Dandjoo – because this to me is all about our core mission statement, to make the world a better place.  With the collective wisdom from the BIO team, people who were involved in the previous design phases, and the team over at the Biodiversity Data Repository in the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water (more on our work with them in another blog to come), we have really developed something special, and it will continue to get even better.

Dandjoo has been a big project for Gaia Resources over the last year or so, and I can’t stress how grateful I am to have had such a great team of people working together on this, both from our side, led by Tanya Aquino, and on the BIO side led by Helen Ensikat, to implement this system.  It’s been a really intense project but collectively we have delivered a system that is the start of a new chapter in how biodiversity data is managed in Western Australia.

I can’t wait to see what the next year brings for the BIO team and what they will do with Dandjoo – and the delivery of Dandjoo in only nine months, under a great deal of pressure all around, is one the team involved and I will look back on in the future with a great deal of pride on.

If you’d like to know more, start a conversation on our social media platforms – Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook or send us an email

Piers

The post The next generation of biodiversity information management in Western Australia appeared first on Gaia Resources.

We’ve previously had a team week in the past for Gaia Resources team members, and it certainly never used to involve quite as many people coming from quite as many places, but this year we decided it was time to get the band back together and see what sort of music we could make (at least metaphorically speaking, but the Gaia Resources band certainly should be a thing, we have quite a few musicians on board!).

The logistics behind the team week are pretty simple:

• Plan for people to travel to Perth on the Monday of team week, so that they keep their weekends free (although a few of our team wanted to see Perth in more detail, so some came earlier and stayed a bit longer),
• Spend Tuesday together talking about strategy, which was a bunch of presentations and discussions, followed by a big dinner to celebrate Gaia’s 18th birthday,
• Have a “free” day Wednesday where people could “just work together”, or at least do some common meetings or do some face to face catch-ups, 
• Spend Thursday consolidating the learnings from the “soft skills” work we’ve been doing (see our previous blog here), and 
• Have our travellers head home on Friday – again, preserving weekends.

What actually happened was that COVID arrived on a plane on the Monday, and then by Wednesday we started to see a few people have symptoms, and then by Thursday we were at a much smaller crew as we had people starting to isolate and stay safe, and on Friday we were madly rebooking flights, getting supplies and extending accommodation to support our afflicted team members.  I have to say that I’m very proud of what we did to support our staff through what became a pretty chaotic week, and how they all handled the sudden change of circumstances!

Despite the chaos, we still managed a few things, as you would have seen on our social media posts.

On Tuesday it was “Strategy Day” – we presented and collaborated on a range of things during the day, which included talking about the history of Gaia Resources, how we did last financial year, and the plans for the future of the company.  This was a lot of talking and presenting, but we also mixed it up with collaboration – we talked about how we can achieve our strategic goals, and we did a big “world café” session on how life at Gaia Resources can be improved in the future – working around a series of stations about the different components of working at Gaia Resources. 

The team getting together for the first time in years

We all went out for a couple of drinks after that, and then off to dinner at Bishop’s House – a very special evening to catch up and enjoy some really great food together.  

Wednesday we had a whole bunch of things pop up – including workshops as a team on some pretty weighty subjects, through to impromptu client drinks later in the day.  By this time we were already in COVID awareness mode, so masks and social distancing was kicking in and we were starting to work out how to handle Thursday… which went as well as we could have expected, to be honest!

Thursday was a “soft skills” integration session, and we did a few activities that were all about trying to cement the work we’ve done over the last few months.  This was some pretty interesting stuff for me – we’ve been working hard on this and I think it has been a big success to get such support from Catharine and Mandy from Yentle in facilitating the day.  It was a bit of a “you had to be there” day – but we still tried to bring in the others that couldn’t made make it in by slapping together a quick audio and video setup!

The soft skills session wasn’t as busy, but it was just as important

There was a lot of other incidental things that happened along the way during the week.  We got to spend some time with each other just chatting and discussing things – stuff that our virtual coffee chats don’t quite deliver on, but go some way towards helping with.  We had a few double takes at the fact that people are actually 3-D rather than 2-D disembodied heads!

We’ve covered Friday already – we had to respond to a rapidly changing set of circumstances during the week around COVID (and, as it turned out, also a flu doing the rounds), which was a reminder that we live in very different times than we did the last time we did this event.  Again, I’m really proud of the work that we did to look after our team.

Along the way, there were a few shenanigans that will make me smile for quite a while to come, like when the team presented me with a “happy birthday” sash and key for Gaia’s 18th birthday.

So, what was the point of all this?  Why did we spend all that time and energy to do this?

In short, because we’re people.  Gaia Resources is a team of people that have come together for all sorts of reasons, and to me this was important to be able to recognise and support this fact, and to get us all lined up for the challenges that we will collectively face in the future.  By being there to listen to our direction, provide feedback on it, and to provide many ways for this to improve into the future, that made it all worthwhile in my book.

I’m always keen to find ways to make the world a better place, starting with our own environment at Gaia Resources – and this week went a long way towards gearing us up to deliver on that.  The last 18 years have flown past… I can’t wait to see what the next 18 will bring!

Piers

The post Team Week 2022 appeared first on Gaia Resources.

We always do some sort of end of financial year event, and this year will be no different – except that we’re doing it next week rather than before the year ends.  This year will also be our first time that we’ve all gotten together in person since before the COVID-19 pandemic, and it will see people travelling to Perth from all over Australia to be here for our first in-person team event for some time.  That means we might have to dust of the hermit rags from working at home for so long and remember how to deal with other people in person (there’s a quote about 18 years and being a hermit from the movie The Life of Brian that feels quite relevant here).

Our team has grown and changed a lot in the last year –  we’ve had a number of people join us this year and work through their probations to be added to our permanent team, and we’ve also had a number of people join us as contractors to assist in the delivery of some very large projects for our company.  The year wouldn’t be the same without these new team members, and indeed for some of our past team members who moved on from working during the year.  

No business is anything without its team, so as I wrote about in May, this has been the year of doubling down on how we support our team and each other.  As executives, we thought that it was paramount to support our team through the difficult times we’ve all lived through over the last couple of years, and partnering with Yentle, along with employing Gaye Mackenzie as our Chief People Officer, has been critical to the success over the last year in particular.  We can still do more to make Gaia Resources the best place to work, but as a result of the work we’ve been doing in this area we’ve got a really solid footing to start from, and that is really a highlight for me from the past year.

With the team supported and growing, you can imagine this was due to some pretty big projects that are now coming online.  There are a vast number of projects in the last year that we’ve been involved with, but one of the ones launched just last week was our work with the Biodiversity Information Office (BIO), developing Dandjoo – the biodiversity data platform.  We’ll write more about this project shortly, or you can read more about the launch in the media statement from Minister Whitby on Friday.  In any case, the BIO project, along with our work with the federal government on the Biodiversity Data Repository (more on that soon, too), has been very rewarding – we’re seeing the combination of our work in the collections, archives and environmental areas all coming together in these large projects.  More importantly, we’ve delivered these projects on time and budget – something that we take a lot of pride in doing, especially in these difficult times.  Our team has been working extremely hard on these projects to achieve that – and again, without them we wouldn’t be where we are today.

There are so many highlights from a financial year that it’s hard to pick some, plus, I already spoke about the first half of the year and included the team’s highlights in the end of calendar year blog in December.  So I think for now, we’ll save some more highlights for the end of the calendar year – which I’m sure will come around very quickly!

There will no doubt be a bunch of shenanigans very productive things happening next week in our team catchup in Perth, which I’m sure we’ll also do something with – you’ll probably see at least a collage of photos on our social media accounts coming through during the week as we talk about all the things that we’re doing as a team to celebrate getting together in person for the first time in what feels like a very long time.

So for now – it’s somehow the end to another financial year (our 18th!), and so it’s time to take stock as a team and discuss where to next.  In the meantime, I hope the last year has been great for you, and look forward to what the new one will bring!

If you’d like to know more, you can start a conversation with us on our social media platforms – Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook, or send us an email.

Piers

The post EOFY again appeared first on Gaia Resources.

A GIS Health Check involves a process of investigation and discovery of an organisation’s Geographic Information System.  It includes a set of stakeholder interviews coupled with a hands-on exploration of the GIS data and software. It also considers other aspects of the broader system environment; but, at the end of the day, what are the benefits of a GIS Health Check? 

Well, let me explain by giving you an example. 

Think of the uses your company makes of spatial information. Can you identify any pain points, or areas where you think things could be done more effectively? Throughout the process, these are the key business problems we want to come back to, to ensure that whatever is recommended, is aimed at delivering real benefit and value. These may be things that jump out straight away in interviewing stakeholders, or they may be more stealthily embedded issues that need more analysis and thinking. Before we think about the solution, it is critical that the GIS Health Check identifies the problems that need to be solved. 

During a GIS Health Check, we consider five elements: People, Processes, Data, Software and Hardware. When these elements are appropriately resourced and working together effectively, we can say we have a healthy GIS system. However, if one (or more) element is not operating efficiently, or is lacking focus in the organisation, there are problems in the organisations’ workflow.

Each organisation has a different aim when requesting a GIS Health Check. For some, a major issue is about historical data management and a resulting lack of structure in the database system (e.g. layer naming, authoritative sources, accessibility). Others might be more interested in improving their processes, writing documentation on them and making sure all the GIS stakeholders are aware and brought into a consistent framework. There are companies that think the software they are using might not be the best fit for their work, or that alternative products may be available that will deliver better value and efficiency. Most of the time, it is a combination of issues from the different elements. 

So when it comes down to an individual GIS Health Check – what do we at Gaia Resources actually do? Even though the objectives are different for each organisation, the approach is pretty much the same. We start by checking the current state of the system: we interview all the GIS users in the company, in order to identify what is working well and where are the ongoing issues. We also get inside your system to ‘lift the hood’ and evaluate the organisations’ spatial data and how it is organised, checking for duplicate files, naming conventions and degree of adoption, folder structures, software used, key business processes supported by spatial information, and many other aspects. 

We also tap into the knowledge of the organisation’s stakeholders, to understand the business context, related strategy objectives and to gain an understanding of how staff think their Geographic Information System should evolve. Basically, what does the future state look like?

Based on our review of the current and desired future state, we put our thinking caps on to brainstorm and provide recommendations. These are meant to improve the future state of the company’s GIS environment, and provide tangible strategies and actions for getting there. The recommendations are classified in terms of  priority, estimated effort and category (e.g. the 5 GIS environment elements covered above). 

Gaia Resources has conducted a significant number of these GIS health checks over the years, as mentioned in this blog. Some of our clients are IGO, Redbank Copper, MBS Environmental, OEPA and recently, Carbon Neutral. We keep in touch with these organisations, and with some we continue to support them with QGIS training and software development. 

Having been through the process, and really benefiting from the previous GIS Health Checks deliverables, I took a page out of our own book so to speak and developed a guideline on “How to deliver a GIS Health Check.” We reviewed previous projects and identified all the common points for a successful Health Check. That guideline is now a resource for our Data Science team and project managers who will no doubt be helping more organisations in the future. 

To summarise (and answer my first question), having your GIS checked can bring many long-lasting benefits, from improving workflow efficiency and consistency, to enhancing decision making and building capabilities in your team. We help organisations achieve this by working with them to focus on the key business challenges where spatial information can play a role. 

If you think the GIS environment in your organisation could do with a review, reach out and start a conversation with us via email, or through our social media platforms –  Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook. We are here to help!

Rocio

The post GIS in your organisation: can you identify any pain points? appeared first on Gaia Resources.