Well, hasn’t this year flown? One minute we were making New Year’s resolutions, and now here we are in the middle of May!
One resolution that I made of course, was that this year I was going to create a blog for my website. It might have taken five months, but here it is!
The original idea to create a blog came from two good friends of mine – Darrell and Chelsea – who run the website www.ameriaus.com
They are very well-known food bloggers in the Brisbane area, and they also back their blogging activities up with their social media, particularly Instagram. They also run Instamates around Brisbane with different restaurants and use them for promotions. Seeing what they were doing got me thinking about running my own blog, because at least it gives you the chance to let everybody know what you are doing, and is another cool way to connect with people.
Along with creating my blog, one of the most exciting things that has happened this year also – and I can attribute this to putting a few of my other resolutions on hold – is to do with a company called Worklinks.
They have been around for about 17 years, and for 15 of those I have been contracted with them to look after their IT requirements. It has certainly been a great adventure, watching them grow from one server, two computers and three staff to a bustling business that at one stage had more than 70 employees looking after youth programs like ‘get set for work’ and ‘youth connections’. As so often happens however, during the Campbell Newman government era, all of the funding got cut for the youth – we won’t touch on that too much though, Mr Campbell Newman is a whole other subject all on his own!
Anyway, back to my original point – earlier this year, Worklinks were awarded the ‘Transitions to Work’ Program, otherwise known as the TTW Program – which is a fantastic program that supports young people into work and further education – for the entire Somerset region. This is such fantastic news for an amazing company. Worklinks is driven by a lady by the name of Jan Robinson, and what she has done for the youth in the Brisbane metropolitan surrounding areas over the 15 years I have witnessed has been nothing short of sensational and just great work in my opinion.
As a result of this great news, they have been able to reopen offices in Caboolture, Kippa-Ring, Strathpine and Michelton and have been keeping me busy setting up computers, emails, cloud drives and so on to accommodate all of the new staff and the extra business which has been just great. It is such a fantastic project to be involved in and I can’t wait to see what’s next for this great group of people.
There has been plenty else going on as well. My old mate and drag racer Grant O’Rourke, who I look after a website for (www.orourkemotorsport.com.au) won the ANDRA Grand Final in Adelaide! It was a fantastic event and together with a local photographer there and a media and communications outlet here in Brisbane called Jigsaw Communications, we were able to put a great package together to tell the world how good Grant was! It is so pleasing to see him do so well and pick up a win like that, because in the scheme of things, he is probably one of the least-funded teams as far as sponsorship goes. He and his wife do the majority of what they do out of their own pocket – so to see them have this success is certainly a highlight of my year so far.
I have also this year joined up with the Canon Collective Team and been able to attend some fantastic events. Canon Collective is a great program put on by Canon which encourages people interested in the world of photography to come along and receive information on how to use their camera and get advice where needed, while enjoying some great experiences.
The Collective has had some magnificent events already this year, but one thing I am really looking forward to is the beginning of June when I will be off to Sydney for three days with Canon Collective to photograph the Sydney Vivid Festival.
Canon is one of the major sponsors of the festival this year. They’ve done this project before but this year they’re returning to the Museum of Contemporary Art to support the festival and basically they’re inviting the general public to drop in and capture and print any photographs that they’ve taken from the festival for Vivid Sydney Memories. There’s quite a lot of experiences being conducted over the three weeks of the festival, and also the studio workshops and so on. There are also guided walks, where you will basically be given a Canon camera to use (you supply your own SD card) and once you are done, you come back to the Museum of Contemporary Art and you’ll be able to print out one of the best photos you’ve taken. If you’re interested to see any more info on what Canon Collective have on offer as far as the Vivid Festival goes, www.canon.com.au/vivid is the place to go – I definitely recommend it as something to get involved in.
Finally, to close off this first full blog post of mine – I would like to end on a bit of a personal note.
While this may be the last part of this blog, once you read the story you will see it is by no means least!
Hannah, our youngest daughter, plays water polo for the Polo Bears in the 16A Division. Earlier this year, they won the Brisbane Metro Competition up against All Hallows and then went on to the Queensland Championships and they took up the gold medal! It was quite exciting to say the least – three days of water polo in Fortitude Valley and they’ve come away with the gold.
That was certainly very thrilling for me, and I was lucky enough to be asked by the Pol0 Bears Club to photograph the event, so I’ve included a link here to the photo album that I created on Flickr if you are interested to see. As for Hannah, she will now be training through Winter, as they are off to the National Championships in Hobart in September.
Anyway, I’ll close it off there for now. This was basically the first official blog that I’ve created, so I would be interested to hear your feedback below, or if there is anything in particular you would like me to discuss in the future just let me know by leaving a note in the comment section below.
Thanks again, and talk to you in four weeks!
