First up was our work on Retromaps, which recently won the Spatial Enablement category of the Asia Pacific Spatial Excellence Awards for Western Australia. 

This project started a very long time ago when we started thinking about what to do with maps in Archives around Australia.  We had been working with the State Records Office of Western Australia (SROWA) on implementing a new Archival Management System for their use (based on the open source Access To Memory platform), and so we picked up some publicly available maps and in December 2015, we georeferenced a few, and did a basic web map (located here).  Then, in 2016, Damien Hassan from SROWA came to one of our QGIS training courses, and we talked about how to digitise those maps (again, here).  Damien worked on the digitisation of those 2,202 plans over the course of the next few years, and Retromaps was born from that massive effort.  Next thing I know, Damian Shepherd and I are standing in front of a room full of spatial people accepting an award for the project on behalf of our teams that worked so hard on this project.

About a week later, we were invited by the team at South Coast NRM to watch the 2021 Australian BioSecurity Awards, where there was particular mention of the Project Dieback project – which we have assisted with the development of the Dieback Information Delivery and Management System (DIDMS), which was again contributed to by a large group of people over the years.  Their acceptance speech was a good one to see:

There’s nothing better than hearing that our clients have won awards for work that we’ve done with them, as it really does make us feel like we’ve done a good job.  Some, like Retromaps, end up being years in the making, but that’s still a great reminder of what we’ve delivered.

Really – what we want to say is “thank you” to our clients for choosing us to work with them, and hopefully we can help our future clients win more awards!

If you would like to know more about how Gaia Resources can help you, then feel free to get in touch via email, or start a conversation with us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Piers

P.S. For those not in Australia – the title “Straight to the pool room” is a great line from an Australian film called “The Castle”, meaning that it’s worthy of being treasured!

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The journey started for us back at the start of 2015, when we thought we’d like to see Dolphin Watch get some recognition for our client, the Department of Parks and Wildlife (and of course, for our own work here).  We looked through the entry criteria and put in an application for the state WAITTA awards.  As a result, way back in March, Alex, Marnie Giroud from the Department and I were presenting on Dolphin Watch to the State judges, and in June we were at the State Awards dinner, where Dolphin Watch was made a State finalist, and entered into the national iAwards – and as a result I had to do a short piece to camera on the night:

Our Finalist summary at the WAITTA Awards (why do I have my eyes closed in the preview!!)

Then in August, Alex and I jetted across the country to the National iAwards in Melbourne, where we again presented on the project to the judges, and then attended some of the events around the awards ceremony. This included an interesting “VIP Lunch” for all of the finalists, which was sponsored by the UK Office of Trade and Investment and focused around entrepreneurship.  I found this interesting not to hear from entrepreneurs, but from the agencies that support them.

When I started Gaia Resources 11 years ago, it was from my kitchen table, with a rough idea to do a couple of years of contracting as an experiment to see if I could combine my two passions of environment and technology.  There were minimal entrepreneurial advisory services, no incubators and no angel investors.  Nowadays, well, we have a few incubators now, like Spacecubed, but little else has changed.  It left me feeling a little bit sad at the state of the “industry” (be it information technology, spatial, environmental or whatever you like to call us), despite attempts by industry associations to work through these challenges.

At the iAwards dinner, we got to hear very brief outlines of a range of different projects in the IT space, across the different categories.  This was pretty interesting for a range of reasons (not just because Dave Hughes was the Master of Ceremonies) but because it really gave you a quick overview of what businesses were doing in the IT space.

Dave Hughes presenting at the iAwards

This also generated a few ideas and possibilities, but also spurred me on to look more closely at our own technology situation at Gaia Resources (ranging from our infrastructure, to our approaches to various products and projects).  In turn, this set us up really well for a few client meetings while we were in Melbourne, too.  With a bunch of fresh ideas in mind, we went to talk to a few existing and potential clients and came up with a range of interesting projects we can run in the future – and since then we’ve been working on getting these ideas into action, with more to come on those in the near future.

So although I came home with a massive head cold/virus of some sort (which took Alex out for a few days as well), I also came home with a head brimming with ideas and plans for the future.  Oh, and although we didn’t come back with an iAward, the journey was really interesting and has opened a few doors I didn’t even know were closed.

Leave a comment below, or connect to us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Piers

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The POS project was awarded:

Award for the Use of Technology – The Parks and Leisure Australia Use of Technology Award recognises outstanding achievement in the area of technology application.

Award for Research Project – The Parks and Leisure Australia Research Award recognises outstanding achievement by a professional, student or academic which has made a significant contribution to the parks and leisure industry through researched based projects which enhance or promote the benefits or importance of the parks and leisure sector in Australian society.

Each year Parks and Leisure Australia acknowledges excellence in our industry through the prestigious National Awards of Excellence.

The program is dedicated to fostering business and public understanding of the importance of excellence in the parks and leisure sector to the social, environmental, economic and physical wellbeing of all Australians. It’s also a fantastic opportunity for your organisation to generate business, improve brand awareness, build your business profile and create an invaluable marketing tool.

Congratulations to the project team from both CBEH and Gaia Resources and look out for the POS project in the national awards at the PLA National Conference in August.

Visit the POS tool here

Andrew

Email me directly here or find me on Twitter

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