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.

Kehan Harman – Technical Architect 

Kehan likes coffee and collections. Specifically herbarium collections. Prior to coming to work for us at Gaia Resources, Kehan worked on database and software solutions within the biodiversity and natural history domains, as well as the digitisation of herbarium collections. He has a wealth of specialised knowledge to share with some of our newer team members with regards to the open source collections management software that we have implemented and customised for our clients, and we are forever seeking ways to provide him with more opportunities to mentor within the team. Kehan strives for robust, flexible solutions to project work which can be contributed back upstream to continually improve the open source solutions products we use (particularly his contributions to CollectiveAccess). He is a passionate advocate for the environment and his colleagues and has recently become a Team Lead for a group of the Software Developers at Gaia Resources.

Kehan has been with Gaia Resources for over a decade, and has spent that time on a variety of projects within the collections space and has a breadth of experience to bring to museums and taxonomy solutions. He is also passionate about biodiversity and conservation in a changing world and has worked in conservation and the safari industry in Southern Africa.

Dr Mieke Strong (nee Burger) – Consulting Scientist/Business Analyst

With a Ph.D. in Marine Parasitology (Thesis: “Kudoid parasites: species definition and specificity”), post-doctoral experience at the Western Australian Museum, and environmental consulting, Mieke brings in-depth and applied knowledge of taxonomic management and museum collections to her project work. She has also more recently completed further education at RMIT online in Business Analytics, focusing on data analysis using tools such as Python. Her work since joining Gaia Resources in 2016 has brought her skills to bear primarily on biodiversity and collections projects, where her ability to find practical solutions to complex data and workflow challenges has been greatly appreciated by both her colleagues and the clients she has worked with.

In addition to her research, Mieke has also published a blog for us at Gaia Resources discussing the challenges of balancing work and parenting, particularly with regards to remote work. Aside from occasional introductions to the latest block-construction-toys-that-are-totally-not-trademarked build, and having personally worked with Mieke on many projects, I have to say that I am always in awe of the grace with which she balances, to my mind, all of the things.

Meg Travers – Business Analyst

Meg’s professional work prior to her joining Gaia Resources was primarily in Digital Archives and Collections Management, but she is also an avid collector and builder of electronic musical instruments, and is passionate about exploring electronic music and digital humanities. She is also one of only two people in the world who plays the Trautonium, an electronic instrument from the 1920s, and is slowly tackling a PhD on the instrument and its preservation.

With our strong presence in Archives and Collections within Australia, it is marvellous to have such an ardent and experienced team member working on the delivery of projects, particularly with the growing focus on digital preservation in these areas. She is outcomes-focused, and always wants to provide clients with the best option for their organisation. Her eclectic knowledge and irrepressible sense of humour has also been greatly appreciated at team events.

Gill White – Project Management Team Lead

Despite being unfortunately included at the end of a lot of lists when alphabetically ordered, Gill has a wealth of experience in environmental roles within State government as an Environment Officer and Spatial Analyst. She has delivered projects across a range of our subject areas, but has been able to bring to bear her knowledge of environmental science and reporting to the delivery of many solutions within our Environmental pillar.

Assessing the condition of the Donnelly River in the South-West of Western Australia

Working with Gill I am always amazed at her attention to detail and her cheerful disposition, but her track record in leading projects to delivery is equally as impressive. Internally at Gaia Resources, Gill also applies herself to the role of Quality Manager on our International Standards Organisation (ISO) team, ensuring we deliver to and maintain our ISO9001 and ISO27001 certification. I have worked with Gill on relatively few projects in my own time at Gaia Resources, but I can say with certainty she brings this drive for quality to the delivery of each one. 

If you would like the benefits of specialised experience our team can bring to your next technology solution, get in touch with us via email or start a conversation with us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Sophie

The post Staff Profiles – Publications appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Working with people in different timezones (and being located in the latest of the timezones), means that in the mornings I’ve usually got a stack of messages from people I’m working with and today is no exception. I’ll often ping someone in an east coast time zone when I finish up for the day, and they are then able to run with things before I’ve had my morning coffee in Western Australia. The project I’m working on currently also includes partner organisations around the world, so frequently mornings are the best time for meeting with all of those. 

Today started with celebrations for Piers’ birthday – coffee and cakes and silly hats with the whole gang from our offices around Australia. We were already pretty good at working remotely with clients and our colleagues in other states, but the pandemic has really sharpened our skills at this. For the celebration, in the Perth office we had everyone on a big screen so that we could stop by for a chat, and also allow all of us to join in a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday!

After the celebrations, it was back to work, starting with a meeting with some of our devops team and another of our business analysts in Tasmania to brainstorm the architecture for a complex application and storage system that will be hosted in AWS. As with all meetings, this then resulted in each of us going away to do our part of the work and documentation, ready for presentation to the client. For me, this means checking through the processes we have designed and superimposing them over the AWS infrastructure design to make sure that the system architecture is complete for the workflows.

We’re also working with some new open source software in my current project, so I’ve been looking at how it functions to gain expertise myself, and also to determine how it will change the way data flows through the system. We’ve been lucky to partner with the original developers of this software, so we’re getting great advice on it, as well as the opportunity to feed back how we’re using it with our clients. 

Commuting home at lunchtime is a great way to clear my head to spend the afternoon tackling tasks that need focussed time. Gaia’s flexible working is really helpful to me in that regard as I find it much easier to do focussed work at home than the office – I’m fortunate to have a quiet home office! Before that though, I am able to quickly troubleshoot a problem another client is having with their system for our support team, allowing the client to get back to work within 10 minutes of logging the issue. 

While I specialise in archives and collections projects, there are several different systems that we support and develop for in that area, as well as many different clients in almost every state in Australia. Tomorrow is an early start to lead a workshop on the east coast and then start working on the outcomes from that. Every day is truly a one-off. 

We’ve got a lot of big projects in progress and coming up, so if you can see yourself working for Gaia Resources, then feel free to get in touch with our recruitment team, or start a conversation with us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Meg

The post Once in a lifetime – a day in the life of a business analyst at Gaia Resources appeared first on Gaia Resources.

When Gaia Resources was smaller, BA tasks were often subsumed by the Project Managers. As we grew, those doing the work held such job titles as “Consulting Scientist”, “Archives Specialist”, “Collections Specialist”, and still “Project Manager”.  However, with the frequency of winning complex projects and our commitment to internal reflection and growth, a new team of Business Analysts has been established, allowing better knowledge sharing and procedures. The BA unit includes some of those who previously held the title of “Specialist”. Thus, we maintain our subject matter expertise on each project.

Still, many people ask what is a Business Analyst and what do they do? The way the Business Analyst role has separated from the Project Manager’s role is that the Business Analyst is the one that is across the business as usual of the client. He or she knows the pain points and what potential options our team can offer to provide solutions. This is best achieved by having and utilising subject matter expertise, client engagement, and consultation with the technical in-house staff, such as architects and developers, about what is achievable before relaying options. This active role that the Business Analyst plays in the design of the implementation puts them in a position to define the success criteria along with the client to determine if what is produced is actually fit for purpose. The Business Analyst is directly involved in taking on feedback during the testing phase and determines the required actions to take to fix them. These range from deciding if there is a need to revisit requirements, deciding if a scope variation is needed, and identifying bugs to be remedied. From there, the other members of the team can be informed and act under the direction of the Project Manager.

At Gaia Resources, our approach to projects is to work collaboratively with our clients. As such, the role of a Business Analyst is crucial to developing a rapport that can allow them to truly understand their requirements, and how best we can fulfil those within the scope of a project. With a mixture of subject matter experts and team members with a solid project management background, our newly minted Business Analyst unit has the specialised domain expertise and project delivery methodology to deliver projects that add true value to our clients.

 If you want to know how our Business Analysts can help guide your technical project to success, feel free to get in touch with one of our Business Analysts or start a conversation with us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Sarah

The post Celebrating our Business Analysts appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Support for our clients is something that we take seriously and over the last year or so we’ve been evolving and changing our offerings around it.  This is all driven by the fact that, we need to shepherd our resources (mainly our time) very carefully – we need to make sure we can plan the time required for delivering on projects as well as have the time available for making sure our launched projects are cared for.

Therefore we have decided to implement a new set of Service Level agreements (SLAs) for our support offerings. For those not familiar with SLAs, they are formally defined agreement between the vendor and the customer, which provides a common understanding around the important parts of the SLA – the level of service, covering areas such as response times, scope, priorities, responsibilities and the like.  In simple terms, we are providing a promise we will respond and resolve the issue within an agreed timeframe.  The quicker the times, the more valuable (and expensive) the agreement is – we can turn the dial up to 11 if the client needs us to!

We also recognise that we have clients of different sizes, so it makes sense to have a four tiered approach – making sure we have solutions that fit the needs and the budget of our clients.  The Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum SLAs all have different costs but the key differentiator is the response times for us to respond to our client’s requests, and the amount of time we include each month to provide support.  We also still offer the a lower cost (Time and Materials) approach for those that do not want to engage in an SLA and are happy to engage us only when required – which helps if you have smaller systems, or smaller budgets.

So why are we revising our support offerings to the new set of SLAs?  Primarily it is from our experiences on supporting the bigger projects we do now (such as with the Queensland State Archives, as we wrote about recently), but the main reason is also to address two primary needs:

• Future planning – by locking in an SLA, we can schedule our core work with greater accuracy, giving a better service.  The client knows how many hours are available for support for the year, and we know in advance the time that your SLA will require and have it scheduled in.  If nothing breaks, (which is generally the case) then the hours are used on preventive maintenance or enhancements, and 
• Confidence and security – our clients are assured that timely support will be coming, and know what your response time and resolution time will be on any issue that arises.  This provides more certainty than the previous more informal approaches that we used to reduce the cost to the clients.

Simply put, we wish to make sure we have the right time available for support while making sure we can continue doing good work on our projects that are also running concurrently.  This assists in reducing bottlenecks which can have a cascading effect on productivity across the organisation.  At the same time, our client is getting a ‘locked in’ response time at a scale that matches their needs – and budget.

We’ve been listening to our clients who wanted to see some change, and we think that these Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum SLAs will capture these and provide a solid basis for the ongoing delivery of support services from Gaia Resources to our clients.

If you have any questions around support,  or what these services can do for you, feel free to email me or strike up a conversation on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

Gus

The post The Importance of Support appeared first on Gaia Resources.

This years theme was Phytophthora Dieback – Tools for the Future, covering a range of contemporary topics such as recent developments in research and technology, and insights on industry engagement and land management. As with many events during the COVID-19 situation, the conference allowed the opportunity for experts, speakers and attendees to join together in person or online to contribute from local, state and international perspectives.

Some significant highlights for us included:

• the chance to catch up with many of our south coast clients
• learning about their work current practices and future directions, and how Gaia Resources can help
• the potential use of Phytophthora Dieback management practices in other industries, e.g. in managing other soil-borne diseases
• seeing how management goals have shifted over the years in response to previous management outcomes

The best highlight for me was the field trip to the beautiful Wireless Hill Park for a demonstration of Phytophthora Dieback management practices.

Tilo Massenbauer or Tilomass Consulting discusses the dynamics of public behavioural change	A demonstration of sampling a Phytophthora Dieback infested plant specimen
Anigozanthos manglesii at Wireless Hill Park, Perth	Diuris corymbosa at Wireless Hill Park, Perth

If you’d like to know more about our work in this area, please drop me a line at tracey.cousens@gaiaresources.com.au, or connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

Tracey

The post Dieback Conference 2020 appeared first on Gaia Resources.

There is always excitement, tinged with trepidation, as you start your new job on the first day; starting a new job during a global pandemic further adds to the mix of emotions.

Day One was not your normal first day on the job. For starters, I didn’t leave the house; I had the best car park; I also knew which of the two coffee shops down the road provided the best coffee; where the amenities were and how to escape the building if there was a fire alarm.

What I didn’t know was the culture of the company, how everyone interacted, what was expected of me and who was who in the business.

Gaia Resources already had their Business Continuity Plan in place for a few weeks before I joined and the team had all chosen to transition to a ‘work from home’ solution to the COVID-19 shutdown.

The executive team had run surveys and feedback sessions to understand what would be helpful for everyone to work from home. The way Gaia managed the changing environment by engaging the team really resonated with me. There were morning video coffee chats set up; a simple emoji ‘whereabouts log’ created, and an end of week discussion and survey to check-in to ensure everyone was OK.

So, what are the main differences from starting a new job in an office compared to working from home? Well firstly, you don’t normally stand at the front of an office and meet everyone at once as you do in a video call; there is no way to listen and observe the intricate social interactions, which often create the working relationships; and it’s hard to know what is expected without asking those awkward questions.  Gaia Resources has made great efforts to accommodate these communications.

The video chats and calls are created in a relaxed environment with humour and good nature, which helps the meetings flow. My first group team meeting, where my screen was filled with new faces, did not feel as overwhelming as I had expected. Everyone took the time to say hi, introduce themselves and explain a little more of their background.

I was teamed up with a mentor and a team buddy, and having them both to hand gave me a sense of direction and understanding, helping me ease into my new role. My mentor, who is in fact the company’s CEO Piers Higgs, provided the guidance and encouragement for me to excel and grow quickly within the team. There were lots of opportunities for me to clarify meeting outcomes and provide post-meeting feedback, which ensured I didn’t feel isolated. In fact, the new working day interspersed with video calls and chats is actually starting to feel like a normal workday!

Another big factor to working from home when starting a new job is ensuring you are staying healthy by exercising and having family time. It is a little too easy to work and not know what is acceptable for the start and end of the day. Having the ‘whereabouts log’ was reassuring in that everyone is aware of their wellbeing and that there still needs to be a division between work and home life.

I have been impressed with how Gaia Resources has transitioned their company (which has staff in Perth, Brisbane and Darwin) into a productive work-from-home solution so successfully. With such support and direction, I plan to be working with them for many years to come.

Tania

Thank you, and welcome Tania! If you would like to know about Gaia Resources response to the COVID-19 shutdown, please contact us directly via email, or drop us a note on our social media channels: Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post Starting a new job during a Pandemic appeared first on Gaia Resources.

The new submissions portal complements DWER’s existing online repository of land-based biodiversity surveys in Western Australia, known as the Index of Biodiversity Surveys for Assessments (IBSA).

The objective of IBSA is to capture and consolidate data contained in biodiversity survey reports to support assessments and compliance under the Environmental Protection Act (1986). The survey data and reports are available for everyone to download from the IBSA repository, delivering:

• improved quality of data for assessment
• a broader decision-making base for regulators
• an expanded knowledge base of WA’s flora and fauna
• improved availability of environmental information for the community.

The new IBSA Submissions portal enables proponents to submit and digitally sign a data package for later ingestion into IBSA itself (Source: DWER 2020 IBSA factsheet)

The new IBSA Submission Portal makes it easy for proponents to submit biodiversity surveys via a single page web-form. The web-form automatically validates files on upload and immediately alerts the proponent when information or files do not meet the IBSA data standards. This makes completing the process very responsive for the proponent and provides greater consistency in the submissions process. It also provides efficiency gains for the DWER officers, significantly reducing the time they need to spend checking IBSA submissions, which results in time savings for the broader environmental assessment process.

We developed the IBSA Submissions Portal using Serverless technology; this is a lightweight, innovative approach that provides a highly responsive system but eliminates the cost of managing servers. A key component of the Serverless approach was ensuring that the new submissions portal is a conduit, temporarily housing the data packages until they are incorporated into DWERs existing IBSA database.

While the submission workflow is relatively simple at this stage (survey submission and sign-off), it has a flexible design that can be expanded to accommodate more complex workflow steps if required. The project was designed and delivered within a three month period, including significant testing rounds.

The IBSA Submissions Portal is now launched and in production.

If you’d like to know more about our work with portal development using serverless technologies, and how it can help you improve your stakeholder interactions and process efficiency, please send me an email or start a conversation via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Gill

The post IBSA Submissions Portal launch appeared first on Gaia Resources.

The NRM “industry” in Australia is really more like a community.  Depending on where you are in Australia, your local NRM groups will be not-for-profit companies, government agencies, community groups and all sorts of different permutations of that.  Across all these different types of corporate vehicles, you meet some really passionate and interesting people from a wide range of backgrounds – conservation, farming, business, retirees, the works. They are really what keeps the whole NRM industry running.

The crowd at the recent Rangelands NRM AGM – a broad range of people attended from a really diverse set of backgrounds.

When we first met the NRM community, their work reminded me of the community we were part of when I was growing up on a small farm in the south-west of Western Australia.  A lot of passionate people, a lot of volunteers, all getting together to make their corner of the world just a little it better, in a bunch of different ways.  That includes things like helping advise on sustainable agricultural practices, fence off areas to protect them against feral animals, undertake weeding (like our Perth office team did before Christmas), running educational events, and all sorts of other things. Through these sorts of actions they manage, improve and protect the natural resources, and are a voice for the environment.

What we also saw was a need to help out with the technology side of things.

Our first, and probably the biggest, project with the NRM community was GRID.  Originally this was seen as a way to create a new corporate spatial system for the South West Catchments Council, one that was easy to use and tailored for the various activities that the NRM group undertook.  Keen to make sure the project delivered, we invested a lot of additional time and effort into the development of GRID on top of the funding we received through State NRM, including a second round to tweak GRID further.

We have been fortunate enough to be able to provide GRID to the NRM groups across Western Australia.  We’ve developed a way to do this that starts with a small project to establish GRID with the groups, customising it and setting up the various activities that they need.  Then for the ongoing costs, we also roll in monthly data updates of all their data, an annual training course wherever they wanted in their region (plus an administrator session), and unlimited phone and email support for their staff, and any of their community groups that use it.

Chris running some GRID training with the Peel Harvey Catchment Council

Making any generic product that has to suit a wide range of people means you’re not going to make everyone happy, and we take every bit of feedback about GRID very seriously.  We’ve been developing wish lists, capturing any and all feedback, and looking at the future of GRID and how we can look at making it even better in the next version – and how we fund it.  That’s the area that we’re actively looking at right now – pulling all the requirements together to start costing what it would take for the next version, and how we make this all stack up – not easy for a small business!

Along the way with GRID we’ve also delivered a lot of other projects in the NRM area, including web sites, spatial support and mapping, development of online shops, and we’ve even been involved in the grants process itself, through last year’s GRID Grants implementation (a lighter, simpler front end to GRID for the grants process that creates a baseline spatial area for the grants).

Spatial sciences has been a bit part of our history at Gaia Resources – we did, after all, start as a spatial company.  And when the South Coast NRM group, through Project Dieback, asked if we could help them with QGIS (a freely available, open source GIS package) training, we jumped at the chance, and created our freely available online QGIS training course.  Again, we invested heavily in this, and developed a course that has been taken up all over the world.

Our current map of the people who’ve asked for our training manual and data for the freely available online course.

The NRM community has been working hard, especially over the last year or so, at creating sustainable business models.  Meanwhile we’ve been looking at the same sort of business models and how we can make our technology offerings even more appropriate and sustainable.  We’re already working on an updated QGIS training course, pulling together GRID 2.0 requirements (which you can find in our Wish List) and even offering shared spatial services across the groups.

The best part of working with the NRM community is the people.  Frank, fearless and passionate, there’s no shortage of people telling us how we can improve and make things even better for them.  We’d love to hear from any NRM groups with ideas or requests for assistance – you can reach out via email, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.  While the NRM community continues to look after the natural resources of the world, we’ll keep on supporting them for as long as they’ll let us.

I hope that’s for a while to come yet.

Piers

The post What is Natural Resource Management? appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Training is a really rewarding process, but very exhausting.  Thankfully, Bunbury has some pretty darn good coffee, and some pretty nice spots to sit and recharge, especially around the estuary (where, occasionally, even I see a dolphin!).

While I find training not only interesting (and fun), it also is quite challenging, for a wide variety of reasons.  You have people of very different experiences in the room, the room itself is often not set up ideally for how you’d like it, and then you have all sorts of glitches that can happen during the day.  However, this is all part of the challenge for the trainer, to try to deal with these glitches and make the training as relevant as possible to the wide range of audience members.

In this case, we were delivering some custom training in how to import GPS data into QGIS, use it to then create polygon datasets, and load them into the data standards that GRID uses (via the templates that are provided for each of the organisationally-defined activities).  To do this, and to do it in a safe environment, we had Shay quickly duplicate the production GRID system into a temporary training setup (which worked a treat, and was readily able to be done in the scalable Amazon Web Services infrastructure that we use).

Nothing like being prepared…. a key part of training!

We had to jump around a bit in this course due to a couple of early glitches with the infrastructure at the training venue, but after giving people a quick refresher in GRID (focused on being able to view and interrogate data and make a map), we moved into the GPS section.  Most of the attendees were there because they are doing on-ground works with SWCC, and this meant that they needed to be able to import some waypoints from their GPS, and then visualise these locations and create polygons that can then be loaded to GRID.

It was a pretty intense half-day of led training, but then the part of the day that is always the most challenging – the interactive session – went really well.  Several of the trainees stayed right through to the end of the day, and Tracey and I helped to streamline their specific workflows, answer other related spatial data questions and to also help to lodge their data into GRID.

We’ve already had some good feedback from the people there, and we’ve been following up with them as well.  In the meantime, Tracey and I are also revisiting the training materials and courses, and we will be updating our training materials in the next few months.  If you’re interested in training, either for GRID, QGIS, or a combination, then feel free to get in touch with us via our training email address, or start a conversation via Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.

Piers

The post Revisiting Training in the South-West appeared first on Gaia Resources.

You can read more about GRID here but in a nutshell it is an easy-to-use online system designed with and for Natural Resource Management (NRM) groups that provides for the collection and reporting of on-ground activities and events. Thanks to the recent State NRM Capability grants GRID is also currently undergoing a whole bunch of enhancements, which all GRID users will benefit from.

The process of rolling out a new GRID instance involves:

• Create a staging/testing site to confirm the theme (logos, styling),
• Working closely with NRM staff to ensure the setup closely resembles their in-house program and project management protocols,
• Establish data collecting and reporting standards for on-ground work,
• Source and upload useful base layers that NRM staff can utilise for reference purposes (these are contextual spatial datasets, like imagery and topography),
• Once all that is finalised, we roll out a new production site and provide on-site hands-on training (as shown below!).

NACC staff getting some hands-on training so they can hit the ground running. 

That’s it! Staff can be up and running on a new GRID instance within a couple of weeks, especially if they are already collecting data in standard formats and have some existing GIS data.  We then provide ongoing support to the organisation through our hosting, maintenance and support agreements, so that we are always on hand to help.

There is also a new State NRM GRID instance in the program for the capability grant, which in the short term will facilitate the submission of grant applications to State NRM and in the longer term it is envisioned that state-wide reporting standards can be established, increasing collaboration and more landscape-scale knowledge outcomes for Western Australia.  This is an exciting new chapter in GRID use!

If you’d like to know more about GRID please leave a comment below – or email me directly via james.houston@gaiaresources.com.au.  Or, feel free to start a conversation with us via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

James

The post NACC and GRID appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Delphine Chabanne speaking at the Dolphin Watch Day event

As a citizen science program, Dolphin Watch does a lot more than just gather sightings of dolphins –  it also underpins a range of research and conservation programs.  Dr Chandra Salgado provided an update on the dolphin population in the Swan and Canning Riverpark and highlighted the significance of reporting #nodolphins, Delphine Chabanne launched the new sixth version of the Finbook, and Marnie Giroud (on behalf of Linley Brown) outlined the Junior Dolphin Watch program.

We’re always pleased to be able to support the team at River Guardians, through our ongoing work with them on the Dolphin Watch app (iOS and Android) and also the new data curation tools we’ve implemented this year.  Tracey and I were able to help a few of the volunteers with issues that they had with the app (or their smartphones), all part of our ongoing relationship with the team at the Department of Parks and Wildlife.

You can leave a comment on this article below, or start a conversation on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Alex

The post Dolphin Watch Day 2016 appeared first on Gaia Resources.