It was all go last week ... and how! On Monday I went to the usual Rotary dinner and the guest of honour was a former naval officer who lives in nearby Uralla and has taken his hobby of making model ships into a full time business. He's wildly successful ... with few if any competitors in Australia and overseas orders. Look at these two pictures of his model of the USS Winston Churchill whose home base is Norfolk in Virginia and interestingly has a permanent British officer on board. The model is huge and intricately detailed.
Our guest explained in detail how he went into the trade and how he executes his model-building.
On Monday I and three other colleagues from UNE had a meeting to discuss our evidence to be delivered to the Australian House of Representatives Standing Committee on Agriculture and Industry meeting in Armidale in Wednesday. The topic was coming agricultural technologies and how to alleviate potential blockages to their swift and effective uptake. I was there as a futurist, but my colleagues included a world leader in SMART farms (he'd hosted the German Minister for Agriculture the previous week!), and leaders in (a) the Poultry Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) and (b) the Sheep CRC. The poultry guy discussed a world in which egg production would no longer come from caged birds. Instead, they'd be outside and free range, except that their mobility wuld be constrained by virtual (noise and light controlled) fencing and the eggs would be collected robotically! And on Wednesday we gave our evidence to the committee, which was highly interested in what we had to say. On Friday, I corrected my evidence as prepared for Hansard.
On Thursday, I proof-read a book chapter coming out shortly in a tome edited by a friend at the University of north British Columbia at Prince George. The publisher is the UK company Routledge and the contents are likely to have wide circulation internationally. Also on that day, I and about 10 other colleagues came together for a working breakfast on how to accelrate Armidale's economic growth. The team included our local member of the NSW Parliament and our Mayor Hermann Beyesdorf who born in the same small German village as the Minister of Agriculture I've just memntioned!! Also present were local hi-tech entrepreneurs and government officials. And on Friday, I completed an article with two Romania colleagues which will be submitted on Monday to a well-known UK journal, whose editor in chief is another friend located at a university in, of all places, South Australia. On that day, The Regional Australia Institute published a mongraph to which I had contributed and concerned Armidale's economy and how it been improved by the completion of the National Broadband Network. So I'm un-retired retiree. It sure makes life interesting.
AS
Our guest explained in detail how he went into the trade and how he executes his model-building.
On Monday I and three other colleagues from UNE had a meeting to discuss our evidence to be delivered to the Australian House of Representatives Standing Committee on Agriculture and Industry meeting in Armidale in Wednesday. The topic was coming agricultural technologies and how to alleviate potential blockages to their swift and effective uptake. I was there as a futurist, but my colleagues included a world leader in SMART farms (he'd hosted the German Minister for Agriculture the previous week!), and leaders in (a) the Poultry Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) and (b) the Sheep CRC. The poultry guy discussed a world in which egg production would no longer come from caged birds. Instead, they'd be outside and free range, except that their mobility wuld be constrained by virtual (noise and light controlled) fencing and the eggs would be collected robotically! And on Wednesday we gave our evidence to the committee, which was highly interested in what we had to say. On Friday, I corrected my evidence as prepared for Hansard.
On Thursday, I proof-read a book chapter coming out shortly in a tome edited by a friend at the University of north British Columbia at Prince George. The publisher is the UK company Routledge and the contents are likely to have wide circulation internationally. Also on that day, I and about 10 other colleagues came together for a working breakfast on how to accelrate Armidale's economic growth. The team included our local member of the NSW Parliament and our Mayor Hermann Beyesdorf who born in the same small German village as the Minister of Agriculture I've just memntioned!! Also present were local hi-tech entrepreneurs and government officials. And on Friday, I completed an article with two Romania colleagues which will be submitted on Monday to a well-known UK journal, whose editor in chief is another friend located at a university in, of all places, South Australia. On that day, The Regional Australia Institute published a mongraph to which I had contributed and concerned Armidale's economy and how it been improved by the completion of the National Broadband Network. So I'm un-retired retiree. It sure makes life interesting.
AS
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