Ladies and Gentlemen, Ann and I would like to welcome you all and thank you for joining us today to help celebrate the wedding of Megan and Aron on this beautiful autumn day in Adelaide.

We’d also like to give a special thank you to the friends and family members who have worked to help make sure that today’s ceremony and this reception have gone smoothly and successfully.

Particular thanks to those friends and family members who have travelled long distances from interstate and overseas to be here with us today. We are particularly pleased to welcome our visitors from New Zealand, with a special welcome to Aron’s Grand-mother, Chris Coleman.

And a very special welcome and thank you to Aron’s mom Linda who has come down from Darwin and to his father Carl who has travelled here from Switzerland.

I’m delighted that the newly-weds’ parents are able to be here together today.

When a child looks at a parent, they see, hopefully, someone important to their lives but separate from them.

But when parents look at their child, they see part of themselves. When their child is happy, they are filled with joy. When their child is sad, their hearts break.

As Ann and I watched Megan grow, we experienced a whole range of emotions with her.

And we were always ready with some advice, guidance and support if she wanted it – or if we thought she needed it, whether she wanted it or not.

Everything from cleaning up scratched knees, and questions about why the sky is blue, through school and study, and how to build web sites, to the best way of handling customer relations and creating strategic plans.

And we watched her grow and mature into the confident, professional woman she is today and of whom we are very proud.

And during those years, from time to time she would bring home a boy – and that was fine.

Then one day she brought home a man. And that’s when a parent realises that things have changed.

And Aron was such a man – confident and mature himself, well-established in both his social and professional life. This was a serious contender.

For a while it was a bit like the old bull and the young bull, wary and weighing each other up.

But I’m glad to say that Aron showed himself to be a man we could like and respect. And we were delighted and honoured when Aron, in a very traditional way, asked Ann and me for permission to ask Megan to marry him.

Although that delight comes with a slight pang, when you realise that you are no longer going to be the number one go-to person for support and advice.

But there are many, very welcome compensations – like gaining another member of your own family, and bringing two families together.

That is why Ann and I and Rebecca are delighted to welcome Aron as a member of our family, and why we are happy for Megan to become a member of his. Through Megan and Aron’s marriage, our families are brought together and both gain.

We hoped you like the symbolism of having the ceremony in the New Zealand section of the Botanic Gardens, then walking through the South Australian section to the Reception.

Therefore, on behalf of Ann and myself, I ask you to raise your glasses and join us in wishing the bride and groom happiness in their future life together.

Ladies and gentlemen:  The Bride and Groom.

2012 has kicked off with two interesting projects. First was editing a short report about a civil engineering project in Darwin and its construction plan. The second was a fascinating exercise to write a submission to the Biodiversity Fund, part of the Federal Government’s Clean Energy Future Program. The submission seeks funds to reforest and revegetate a large area of farmland on the Eyre Peninsula to improve biodiversity and create potential carbon offsets.

It’s been a busy couple of months since returning from holiday, with some interesting pieces of work:
- helping the Australian Institute for Loss and Grief to determine pricing schedules for its range of workshops and related training services;
- reviewing and editing content for SAGE Automation’s new web site;
- editing documents for a large mediation/arbitration for an Extension of Time Claim for a major international civil engineering project and
- reviewing and editing a Field Trials Report on the collection of post-harvest biomass for energy production for Syngas, an outcome of the previous submission that won Syngas $300,000 in R&D funding for this project a year ago, almost to the day.

1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;

2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;

3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be all right really.

(Douglas Adams, 1999)

It’s good to play a small part in another winning project.

The ALLWATER Consortium – a Transfield Services joint venture with Degremont and Suez Environnement has secured a new 10 year alliance contract worth approximately $1.1 billion with its new customer, SA Water, to operate and maintain water and wastewater services for the City of Adelaide and the surrounding metropolitan area.

I am delighted to have made a small contribution to the winning bid by editing and rewriting parts of the extensive and complex tender documents, including those dealing with water and wastewater treatment plants, leak management and R&D. Congratulations to Les, Ben and their expert teams for their successful submission.

Completed HGT Application ready for lodgement

Congratulations to the team at Hospitality Group Training for completing and lodging their Application to the Commonwealth Government’s Industry Skills Centre Fund. I enjoyed working with them on this submission for funds to help establish a commercial training kitchen in Adelaide’s CBD.

The proposed project is to provide a modern, eco-friendly and environmentally sustainable commercial kitchen and associated training facilities for hospitality students to complete certificate and work skills training and gain general and technical competencies to be effective Chefs, Cooks, Waiters and Bar Persons in the high demand area of Hospitality.

Thanks go to Wendy, Jodi and Janet for their energy and focus and for including me on their team for this bid.

Before - The Funding Submission and Business Plan

After - the result - the new MTA Workshop

Congratulations to the Motor Traders Association and its Group Training Scheme on the official opening of their new apprentice training centre for heavy vehicle maintenance at Royal Park.

On the left is the “before” – the submission I wrote for the MTA back in March 2009. It won $1.359 million in Federal Government funding. The MTA matched the funding and built this new $3 million Apprentice Training Centre shown on the right – “after”.

Chris Evans, Federal Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations officially opened the centre today. It will be a great asset to help kickstart the careers of the many young people who train here.

The Tomorrow Grant Program provides two competitive grants that support South Australian digital media businesses at different stages of development. The purpose of this Creative Industries SA Program is to inspire South Australian businesses to develop digital media products and services for local and global commercial opportunities.

The Tomorrow Start Grant provides up to $10,000 to South Australian start-up digital media businesses to establish and build a commercial business.

The Tomorrow IP Grant provides up to $100,000 to established South Australian businesses to develop and commercialise strategic Intellectual Property relevant to digital media and generate additional revenue streams.

Click here for more information about the grants and how to apply.

On this day, 47 years ago, late on a Friday night, my dad and I were coming out of the AGM of our fishing club in downtown Birmingham, UK. Stepping out into the normally bustling Friday night city streets, we wondered why everything seemed so quiet. There was hardly any traffic and small groups of people were huddled on street corners, talking together quietly but intently. It was very strange. Dad asked someone, “What’s going on?” The reply: “Kennedy’s been shot”.

They said it couldn’t be done – get wireless broadband on my netbook. Hah!

Go to any high street retailer of mobile broadband services such as Telstra, Optus, Vodafone, Three and Virgin and ask if their gadget works on Linux.

“Sorry”, they’ll say, “it only works on Windows or Mac”.

They are wrong. It was like being told in 1985 that you couldn’t access the embryonic internet with one of those new fangled Macintoshes.  They said Macs didn’t have the F keys that you needed at that time for the log-on process. So I just telnetted around a few archives until I found a software F-key emulator, FTP’d it across and used it to log onto their system and send them emails complaining that I could access it on a Mac when they promised me I couldn’t.

Nowadays I have one of the early netbooks, a very cute, very tiny, Asus eee PC. In the days before Blackberries and iPhones, a netbook with a cheap, pre-paid wireless broadband “dongle” (a thumb-sized, plug-in broadband modem that looks like a fat USB memory stick) was an ideal solution for occasional use. I still use it when travelling. No bigger than a slim paper-back book, it is still very convenient and prepaid wireless broadband is much cheaper than the internet fees in hotels and the like.

However, the Linux operating system is Open Source software, and that is anathema to Microsoft and Apple who own the proprietary Windows and Mac operating systems. And it seems as if the retailers are either colluding with them or have been competely conned by their propaganda.

There is nothing intrinsically ‘wrong’ with any of these systems, they are all fine for a great range of business and personal computing activities. But to be told in 2010 that my Linux netbook could not use wireless broadband was bizarre.

None of the retailers nor their help desks could even begin to get their heads around using their products on Linux. Their “best” advice was to change the operating system to Windows XP. Yeah, right!

Many simply didn’t want to know – for them it was simply a case of “It can’t be done”. That was the ‘deja vu’ moment of being told that you couldn’t access the internet on the early Macs.

But it can be done. I have posted a fairly detailed explanation of the relatively straight-forward process on EEE user forums. If you are interested, this link will take you to a copy of those notes.