How California can Learn from the Australian Experience of Drought

As the drought in California continues to bite hard on the lives of millions, a recent article on Triple Pundit suggested that many people want to help save water, they just don’t know what else to do. Which is why California needs to look beyond its borders to the driest inhabited continent on the planet – Australia. And specifically, to the recently drought ravaged State of Victoria

 

Because having endured a decade of drought that defied all of the expert and Government estimates for ‘coming rainfall’ the fact is, large parts of the State went without water for years, other parts were trucking in water to keep towns alive and one water agency handling the population of a few hundred thousand people, came within just a few days of running out completely. So in this quick piece, here’s more than a dozen simple ideas for individuals and municipalities that will help them save the most precious of all resources – water: What California Can Learn From Victoria

 

For a Futurist, Focus is a Key Issue

Aug 16, 2013

What you look at, how you look at it and where you find your information are critical elements for developing far more effective strategy.  Futures work is about removing the organisational blinkers to increase awareness of risks and emerging opportunities often through Environmental Scanning (ES).  ES comes in all sorts of guises and the key…

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Innovation has to start somewhere, but where?

Aug 5, 2013

How do you innovate? Where do you innovate? Why do you innovate? How do I start innovating? These and a truckload of other similar questions are often tied to the idea that innovation is the silver bullet or panacea to mediocrity in organisations. And maybe it is. There’s a whole raft of ways in which…

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Preparing for the Upswing & a Change in Direction

Jul 20, 2013

From an organisational perspective it is pretty common for senior managers to spend significant energy considering when to upgrade plant and equipment, be it machinery, vehicles or IT infrastructure. The upgrades can occur on the run (in response to a surge in demand for instance), as a result of necessity (say as a result of…

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Why your Race for Talent should be a ‘Slow’ one

Jul 7, 2013

If you’ve seen me speak before you already know I take a provocative stance when it comes to areas like personnel development, training and recruitment. Clients also know that once we’ve opened the door to thinking differently, they’re guided through some significant ‘of course’ moments in terms of how they approach developing their people and…

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Has The Age Editor called for the wrong resignation

Jun 23, 2013

I flag from the outset that I haven’t been a regular readers of newspapers for almost a decade, only slightly less than my giving up on mainstream TV News shows. As such you should take this with a grain of salt, coming as it does from someone who reads maybe a paper a week and…

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Renewable Energy Technology faces same challenges as new carbon tech – fact or fallacy claims

Jun 16, 2013

In the search for fuels and energy sources that act as a replacement to Oil, there’s much hype and claims that need to be tested. In much the same as claims about carbon capture technology being built onto existing coal fired power stations seem to lack both viability and credibility (in my view), the same…

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A Counter to Doomsayers of Manufacturing in Australia

Jun 3, 2013

Every day people in positions of ‘opinion authority’ make choices about what ‘opinions’ they will offer on a whole array of subjects. And it would be fair to say that over the past five years or so, many of those ‘opinion authorities’ have been significantly negative on Australia’s manufacturing sector. There’s no doubt that the…

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Emerging Consumers: Fact or Fiction?

May 29, 2013

As a futurist spending much of my time assessing emerging developments and their implications across an array of industry sectors, I am frequently asked for a view on ‘consumer trends’. Common questions are ‘what will consumers want in the future?’ ‘Does our product (service) have a place?’ ‘What is driving consumer behaviour?’ ‘How can we…

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The Trucking Industry is facing a crisis. It needs to Act. NOW

May 27, 2013

The Trucking Industry, as a key part of the wider Supply Chain and Logistics Industry is coming to the end of an era, right at the time when it should be being refreshed. Put simply, there just aren’t enough drivers for trucks, and to date, attempts to recruit more drivers have been less that what…

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Why does Facebook think it’s okay to treat Violence against women as acceptable?

May 21, 2013

In case you haven’t had time to keep up with these events, here’s a quick overview of the Everyday Sexism project’s attempts to hold FaceBook to account for its explicit support of sexual violence against women as portrayed in the many permitted Facebook pages that promote rape, rape culture, and violence against women. Facebook appears…

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