News Archives
Click on a month to go directly to the listing for that month; otherwise browse through the archive anyway you wish! The old archived news articles from the previous version of the web site - before March, 2006 - have had all hyperlinks removed as they would no longer work under the new structure.
2005 January February March April May June July August September October November December
2006 January February March April May June July August September October November December
2007 January February March April May June July August September October November December
2008 January February March April May June July August
21st February 2005: Web site launched
The Gaia Resources web site was officially launched today. This is a major step for the business, and opens up the provision of a range of additional services to our clients. For more information on our site, please feel free to contact us via the contact page.
22nd February 2005: Forum on-line
The forum was released today and provides a general forum for the environmental community. This PHPBB2-powered bulletin board is now open for comments.
3rd March 2005: Digital Birding Tool Testing
One of our first R&D projects, the creation of a digital birding tool, has begun testing. This tool comprises of a PDA-style handheld phone, on which specific forms for the collection of bird data from surveys have been created. The unit can also take low-resolution photographs, for use as habitat descriptors or just as reminders, and can also record the calls of birds. Testing is envisaged to take place over the next few weeks to streamline data entry and to upgrade the user-friendliness of the system. A future upgrade is planned to integrate a GPS with the device.
11th March 2005: Melbourne Trip
Piers is off to Melbourne from Friday the 11th of March and will be back in Perth for Wednesday the 16th of March. While this is a personal trip, Piers will be also testing the new digital birding tool in and around the Melbourne suburbs. Piers is contactable by mobile during this time as per usual, and will check email daily to avoid disrupting support services to clients.
16th March 2005: DBT Testing Complete
The testing of the Digital Birding Tool (or at least round one of the testing) finished with the end of the Melbourne trip. While it was quite successful, there are a few aspects of the DBT that need some additional development, including site location data and extended bird lists for other states. The DBT should be back out for a second round of testing in WA later this month.
20th March 2005: Client areas on-line
Our two clients on support contracts, Biota Environmental Sciences and the Western Australian Museum's Natural Sciences section, had their client areas released today. These areas include a range of documentation as PDF documents and provide an indication of our support movements over the next few months.
26th March 2005: Dedicated DBT page released
A dedicated page for the Digital Birding Tool has been developed and is located on the web site here.
30th March 2005: More DBT Testing
More testing on the Digital Birding Tool has been undertaken today at Thompsons Lake in Perth. There are still a number of issues to work out with the software, but the system development is close to finalisation for version 2.0. A commercial release will begin development as version 3.0.
17th April 2005: Research page released
A specific page has been released documenting the research we are currently undertaking. This is in preparation for an on-line survey of environmental consultants, which will hopefully be undertaken in the next few months.
22nd April 2005: Forum revamp
We've added in a new area for environmental researchers to the forum area. This is intended as an area that environmental researchers can use to ask for advice, assistance or just to discuss aspects of their work.
12th May 2005: Trip and Forum Update
Piers will be away on Friday the 13th of May (scarily), but should be in mobile range for any urgent queries. In addition, we've just sent out some articles for newsletters to promote the forum area, which might help in raising awareness about this resource.
18th May 2005: DBT Upgrades
We have just ordered some additional hardware for the Digital Birding Tool project. The addition of a Compact Flash sleeve, additional battery and a GPS device will add significant functionality to the tool. Version 3.0 should begin testing in early June.
30th May 2005: DBT Testing Milestones
With the integration of some previous records for version 2.0, the Digital Birding Tool testing reached two milestones today. Over 1,000 separate records have been recorded, representing over 5,000 individual birds. The most numerous species to date is the Pacific Black Duck (1,148 birds seen), and the least is the Australasian Bittern (only recorded from a call). This represents over 15 hours of testing to date.
14th June 2005: Forum Notice
We recently sent out some notices to a number of newsletters to drum up support for the forum. The RSWA newsletter for June was the first one we saw, but the link in the article was incorrect. If you are having problems accessing the forum you can access it by clicking here.
7th July 2005: End of First Year!
The end of the financial year marks the end of our first year of operation. During the year we performed well financially, but our real wins were in research. We have one paper accepted and one submitted, but more rewarding is the support we gave to environmental researchers - almost $6,000 was donated during the year through free services and lower rates.
9th July 2005: 100 Species
testing trip around Bold Park notched up our 100th species in testing for the Digital Birding Tool. This was a Swamp Harrier soaring overhead. Testing of the unit has also gone on for more than 24 hours.
11th July 2005: ECA Newsletter
Two items appeared in the latest ECA newsletter from us - an invite for members to jump into the forum, and an announcement about the second annual environmental costs research we are undertaking. More information on the research can be found on our research page.
14th July 2005: Capability Profile
We recently added a capability profile to the web site. The profile is available as an Adobe PDF document, just under 1MB in size.
12th August 2005: 10,000 Birds
In our testing of the Digital Birding Tool, we've just passed 10,000 individual birds seen around Perth. That comprises of 110 species. The most commonly recorded bird is the Eurasian Coot (1,813 birds).
29th August 2005: Busy
It's been a busy week or two, with projects on the go with Oceanica, Rio Tinto and the Western Australian Museum. In addition, Piers has recently been nominated and accepted as a committee member of the Environmental Consultants Association.
11th September 2005: More birds!
The busy period kicks on, but Piers managed to get out and do some more birding with the Digital Birding Tool. Updates are available on the DBT page.
16th October 2005: GIS Support Continues
Piers has been assisting Oceanica with a range of GIS tasks for the past few weeks. A summary of this work has been added to the GIS Solutions page on the main site.
5th November 2005: Forum Off-line
The WA Environmental Forum is no longer available, due to a lack of interest. This was an interesting project to technically implement, and disabling it frees up space to test several other projects, including a Wikipedia implementation and an on-line database for displaying the results of our birding using the Digital Birding Tool.
17th November 2005: Back to DBT Testing
The recent busy period has meant that testing of the Digital Birding Tool has paused, but we're back on track with some more testing. Some memory issues are plaguing testing, and it looks like a new unit will be needed in the new year. With the recent arrival of the Rainbow Bee-eaters, we've just recorded our 113th species around Perth.
1st December 2005: News on Digital Birding
After a long period of testing the Digital Birding Tool has had to halt for the moment, due to some problems with the i-Mate unit. We're looking at alternative units and have some under investigation from the USA. However, this hiatus has given us the time to start development on the Digital Birding Database, an on-line database for storing the records collected with the DBT.
23rd December 2005: Merry Christmas
We'd just like to wish all of the people (and why not, even those search engine robots and viruses) that visit our web site a Merry Christmas. At this time of year, when things are quiet, we spend a bit of time looking at how we've done and planning for the rest of the financial year. We've got some exciting projects coming up, and look forward to describing them on the site in 2006.
28th January 2006: Web Site Offline
The Gaia Resources web site will be off-line for the next month or so - we expect a new and revamped version to be back on in March, 2006. In the meantime, client areas and the capability profile will remain on-line.
20th March 2006: Web Site Online
Today we see the launch of the new Gaia Resources web site, version 2.0. This revised web site has additional functionality and better organisation than our previous site. Client areas are still in place, and have been during the transition. The web site also includes more details of our solutions, and some links to on-line databases. Please feel free to email us feedback, or to let us know if you're having problems accessing the site.
28th March 2006: Digital Birding Database
We launched our first web-enabled database, the Digital Birding Database, today. Browse through the functionality and see what you think - this is a proof of concept database to show that you can quickly get something from the web that's useable in reports.
29th April 2006: Projects and Time Out
Progress continues on various projects - an on-line database documenting environmental reports has been released for Rio Tinto under their client area. On another note, we will be closed from the 18th to the 29th of May while we spend some time in the United States - yes, partly for a holiday.
17th May 2006: Leavin' on a jet plane...
We are currently away from Perth on a trip to the United States. We will return on the 30th of May. During this time, we're meeting with a few organisations to discuss data management and other technologies, so stay tuned for updates in June.
30th May 2006: ...don't know when I'll be back again
We're back from a great trip to the U.S. - meeting with a couple of organisations to discuss data management, and getting in some quality birding! Details of the birds seen in San Diego will be included in the Digital Birding Database soon (once we sort out an integrated taxonomic checklist!).
4th June 2006: San Diego Bird Records
Bird records from the recent trip to San Diego are in the Digital Birding Database. You can interactively search for particular sites, or you can see a summary of the bird species and numbers seen for the whole trip by checking out this page. Thanks are extended again to David Kimball from the San Diego Audubon Society for his hospitality on the trip!
17th June 2006: Digital Birding Milestones
The Digital Birding Database reached two milestones today; we have visited over 100 different sites, and recorded over 25,000 individual birds.
23rd June 2006: Big Announcement
We're moving into a new office at the start of July!
We will be sharing Biota Environmental Sciences' new office at 228 Carr Place, Leederville. New contact details will be released shortly.
Also, this coming week sees us travel to Dampier to present at the Rio Tinto mid-year Environment Conference. We will be away from the 27th to 30th of June, and unfortunately won't be contactable via email during this time.
6th July 2006: The Office
We are very pleased to announce that we have an office!
We are now sub-leasing Biota Environmental Sciences' new office at Level 1, 228 Carr Place, Leederville. New contact details are on the About Us page.
10th August 2006: Getting fat, saying "Hi"
We're settled into the new office in Leederville (although we're still trying to find the best coffee and lunch places) and it's been an excellent first month.
We'd like to welcome a new client, the Western Australian Maritime Museum, and say "Hi" to all the Pilbara Iron staff that are now using the databases and documents in their client area.
24th August 2006: Upcoming Malaysia Trip
There's still no official verdict on the best lunch and coffee place in Leederville.
This is an advance notice that Piers will be away in Malaysia from the 23rd September until the 10th of October. Expect some more bird records to be added to the Digital Birding Database upon our return!
28th August 2006: 6,000 records
A quick birdwatching session on Sunday morning ticked the Digital Birding Database over 6,000 records (totalling over 26,000 individual birds from 250 species).
Piers will be away in Malaysia from the 23rd September until the 10th of October.
29th August 2006: Different searches
Digital Birding Database today; the introductory page has been re-shuffled, and there is now a species specific query, so you can find where a particular species has been recorded.
Piers is going to be away in Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo (!) from the 23rd September until the 10th of October.
5th September 2006: More upgrades
More changes to the Digital Birding Database; the results from the species search can be used to access site-based results; and in reverse, the results from the site searches can be used to see where else particular species have been recorded.
Piers' upcoming trip to Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo is getting closer - Gaia Resources will close from the 23rd September until the 10th of October.
18th September 2006: 1 week to go...
Piers' upcoming trip to Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo is at the end of this week! Gaia Resources will close from the 23rd September until the 10th of October.
A few minor updates have been done around the site - our Projects page has been updated, as has our specific Rio Tinto project page.
22nd September 2006: Gone bush
Gaia Resources is currently closed until the 11th October while Piers heads to Malaysia.
You can contact Piers via email - he will check his email when he can.
11th October 2006: Back and rarin' to go
Piers is back from his Malaysia trip and back in the office, so Gaia Resources is open once again for business.
Once we get some taxonomic checklist issues solved for South-East Asian bird species, we will add some records from the trip to the Digital Birding Database.
12th October 2006: Hiring!
We're currently advertising for a casual GIS position to help us out with some digitising and other projects that we have.
If you are interested in joining us, then have a look at the details on our new Jobs page, and keep an eye our for future positions on this page.
17th October 2006: Upcoming trip
Piers will be heading to Karratha from the 31st October until the 5th of November. Partially this is for work on Rio Tinto's ECC project, but it is also to spend the weekend volunteering with their Birdwatch program at Karratha Station. Email contact will be unavailable during this time.
31st October 2006: Karratha Station
Piers is in Dampier and Karratha until the 6th of November. This includes work on Rio Tinto's ECC project, but it is also to spend Friday to Sunday volunteering with the Rio Tinto Birdwatch event at Karratha Station. Piers will not be contactable by email during this week, and the mobile phone will be out of the picture for the weekend.
6th November 2006: Birds
Piers is back from the Dampier and Karratha trip - and the records are already in the Digital Birding Database. Piers added 10 species to his personal list and saw a few 'lifers', as well as having a great time! A new page on our volunteer projects is now available here.
4th December 2006: First employee
Today is a big day for us - today Undraa Boldbayar joins us as a GIS Operator. Undraa joins us to assist with a range of GIS activities - and her background in computer science is great for the wide range of work we undertake for our clients.
8th December 2006: ApoesPort C6550 I
This week has been a big week - on Monday Undraa Boldbayar joined us as a GIS Operator. Today, on Friday, we took delivery of a new professional "Colour Multi-function Device" - a FujiXerox ApeosPort c6550I. This unit significantly increases our in-house capabilities, adding 2400dpi full colour printing and 600dpi scanning (200 A4 pages a minute!), up to A3 size.
18th December 2006: Season's Greetings
Merry Christmas to all our clients and colleagues, and best wishes over the upcoming holidays and festive season. Gaia Resources will be closed from this Friday, the 22nd of December, and we will re-open on the 2nd of January, 2007.
2nd January 2007: Happy New Year
Welcome to 2007! We are back on deck and looking forward to another challenging and rewarding year ahead.
3rd January 2007: Research Associate
A great start to the new year - Piers has been made a Research Associate with the Directorate of Collection and Content Development and the Directorate of Conservation and Collection Management of the Western Australian Museum.
23rd January 2007: Gaia Resources Scholership
One of our initiatives for 2007 is the launch of the Gaia Resources Scholarship. This is a $3,000 scholarship for the student with the highest TER score entering a spatial sciences degree with Curtin University's Department of Spatial Sciences. We hope that this helps attract students to a profession that has been great to us!
7th February 2007: Birds WA CRSC Secretary
Piers has been elected to be the Secretary of the Birds Australia (WA) Conservation and Research Sub-Committee, and attended his first meeting last night.
14th February 2007: New PDA Units
We have just acquired two new TDS Recon PDA units which we are in the process of preparing and installing. We will shortly be offering these units - fully customised to your requirements, with training and support - for hire. These units provide great support for our Field Data Collection solutions.
20th February 2007: And the winner is...
Today Piers presented the inagural Gaia Resources scholarship to Curtin University student Charlotte Plug. Charlotte was the student with the highest TER score entering a Geographic Information Science program at the University.
21st February 2007: Job open!
Following up our scholarship presentation yesterday, we are now seeking a casual GIS operator to join our team. Check out the jobs page for more information.
6th March 2007: Travel ahead
Piers will be heading off to Auckland and back through Canberra for a Life Sciences Identifier workshop. This trip starts on the 24th of March and Piers will be back on deck on the 10th April, after easter. Contact via mobile and email will still be running during this time and operations will continue.
12th March 2007: New client, still going on a trip
We'd like to welcome our newest client, the Western Australian Herbarium. We are working with them on a number of database related projects.
Piers will be heading off to Auckland and back through Canberra for a Life Sciences Identifier workshop, from 24th March to the 10th April. Contact via mobile and email will still be running during this time and operations will continue.
23rd March 2007: Auckland and Canberra
Piers is away in Auckland and then Canberra for a Life Sciences Identifier workshop. He will be away from today until the 10th April. Contact via mobile and email will still be available during this time and operations will continue.
5th April 2007: Another one joins the fold!
Piers is back from the Life Sciences Identifier workshop. It was a great trip - more on that soon.
We'd like to take the opportunity to welcome another staff member. Nicole Trudgeon joins us in the near future as a second GIS operator.
14th April 2007: More news that you can poke a stick at
A lot of news today - Nicole Trudgeon joins us on Monday 16th April as a second GIS operator. We've also updated our products page with our new Ruggedised PDA units, which will be ready for leasing on the 1st May, 2007. And we're an institutional member of TDWG.
And stay tuned for some more exciting news from us late next week...
28th April 2007: Better late than never, but here's the big news...
We've been holding off on the big news, but here it is... We are moving to larger offices on the 1st of June, 2007. We'll still be in Leederville, and we'll update our contact details as we organise the move over the next month.
To support our expansion to these offices, we are also now looking for two new staff - a Database Operator and an Office Assistant. Check out our jobs page for information on these.
15th May 2007: Getting ready...
Preparation for the move to our new office continues - we will be moving over the long weekend in June, but it looks like service for phones and email may be disrupted during that week.
We're still looking for an office assistant for the new office - check out our jobs page here for details.
24th May 2007: Morning teas and office closures
We held a morning tea today with Biota Environemntal Sciences for Australia's Biggest Morning tea, a fundraiser for cancer research. We raised $200 from donations, and Gaia Resources matched that to donate a total of $400.
We will be closed between 5th June and 8th June while we move offices.
We're still looking for an office assistant for the new office - check out our jobs page here for details.
31st May 2007: TDWG Bioinformatics Project complete - office closures
We completed a project on collating global bioinformatics project recently for TDWG. You can see this live on the web - click here to access it.
We will be closed between 5th June and 8th June while we move offices.
e're still looking for an office assistant for the new office - check out our jobs page here for details.
1st June 2007: Closed
We are closed between the 5th June and 8th June while we move offices. Our email will be down and phones will divert to messages while we shift office. See our contact page for more details of the new office!
10th June 2007: Open
We have moved into our new offices! Unfortunately, we still have no Internet access but this should be rectified by the 15th June. In the meantime, we're back up and running with project work.
We're still looking for an office assistant - check out our jobs page here for details.
12th June 2007: Wired!
We're back on the Net with our new ADSL2 broadband connection - earlier than expected, too!
We're still looking for an office assistant - check out our jobs page here for details. We will shortly be placing ads to widen our search for this position.
18th June 2007: I don't feel so lonely in this big office any more...
Tim Carpenter joins us today as our first full-time employee!
Tim's role is Lead Database Operator - he has eight years experience in a range of database and web technologies. Tim will be heading up a lot of interesting database and web projects in the future.
21st June 2007: New week
Charlotte Plug joins us today as our third GIS Operator! Charlotte was the winner of the 2007 Gaia Resources scholarship.
This has been a pretty big week for us, with Tim starting on Monday. Tim's just done some updates to our Digital Birding database - check out the Google map for the distribution of bird species!
2nd July 2007: Another staff change!
Undraa Boldbayar is back from her holiday - this time as a full-time GIS Operator.
We're off to a flying start to the new financial year, with many site updates going on and many new projects on our books. Stay tuned for more updates on these over the coming month.
16th July 2007: News feed live!
We now have an RSS feed of the latest news items from Gaia Resources.
Use the links below to add the feed to your favourite feed reader.
18th July 2007: Green Power
We've just signed up with Synergy to use their Green Power product in our new office. This is in line with our Environmental Policies - we aim to have as small an impact as we can on the environment.
27th July 2007: Holiday Moods
Both Tim and Nicole are in the holiday mood at the moment. Tim headed off to the UK for three weeks yesterday, and Nicole's back from a trip to Italy on Monday.
3rd August 2007: More staff on board
Andrew Dennison will be joining us after his current trip to New Zealand as our Lead GIS Operator. Andrew has a wealth of experience in GIS technologies (his bio and CV will be up on our People page soon).
Andrew will be working on a range of GIS projects, as well as developing our Field Data Collection services through our PDA units.
10th August 2007: New Positions Open
We are currently looking for a casual GIS operator to join our team (and we're still looking for an Office Assistant). Details of both of these positions are on our Jobs page.
21st August 2007: Welcome to Andrew!
Andrew Dennison started with us today. Andrew's bio and CV will be up on our People page shortly.
In the meantime, applications for the Casual GIS Operator are open until the end of the week. Details of this, and other positions that are open, are on our Jobs page.
23rd August 2007: Trippin
Applications for the Casual GIS Operator are open until the end of the week. Details of this, and other positions that are open, are on our Jobs page.
Piers will be away from the 1st to 24th September on a trip to Europe, partly for work, and partly for a holiday.
30th August 2007: Thanks to all
Thank you to the GIS applicants who applied for the Casual GIS position. We have made an offer an will be announcing a new staff member soon.
In the meantime, Piers is off to Europe until the 24th of September, but the office will remain open.
24th September 2007: Back on deck, long weekend
Piers is back from his European trip, after a successful presentation to staff at Rio Tinto's corporate office in London and a holiday. His travels continue this week with a trip to Pannawonnica for the 2007 Rio Tinto birdwatch on Friday.
The Gaia Resources office will be shut for the coming long weekend including Friday and Monday.
27th September 2007: Position open, office closure
We are currently recruiting for a GIS position - either full-time or casual. See our Jobs page for details.
Our office will be closed for an extra-long weekend: we're closed on Friday and Monday of this weekend.
2nd October 2007: Jobs and Birds...
We are currently recruiting for a GIS position - either full-time or casual. See our Jobs page for details.
Piers is just back from the Rio Tinto 2007 birdwatch event near Pannawonnica, which was a great weekend. Thanks to all the people who participated, especially Nev, Jodie and Melissa for organising it.
9th October 2007: Jobs, jobs, jobs....
Three job related things today: We'd like to welcome Dudley Pallewela as a new casual GIS operator, who started last week.
Secondly, interviews are underway for the GIS position recently advertised, and another announcement will be made about that in the near future.
Finally, we have opened a new job, for a Database/Web Operator. See our Jobs page for details.
12th October 2007: Bye bye
We'd like to say thanks to Undraa Boldbayar for working with us over the last 11 months - she leaves us today for a job in the mining industry, and will be missed around here!
While talking about staff changes, we are currently advertising for a Database/Web Operator. See our Jobs page for details.
19th October 2007: Birds and jobs
Piers recently came back from the 2007 Rio Tinto birdwatch, and his data pushed the Digital Birding Database over 30,000 recorded birds and 267 species.
We are currently advertising for a Database/Web Operator. See our Jobs page for details.
22nd October 2007: Pelican Case Reseller
Gaia Resources is proud to announce that we are now a reseller for Pelican Cases. We will shortly be adding product and pricing lists to our Pelican case page.
We are currently advertising for a Database/Web Operator. See our Jobs page for details.
12th November 2007: Back from Adelaide
Piers is just back from a trip to Adelaide, where he represented the Western Australian Museum at a meeting of the Council of the Heads of Australian Faunal Collections.
We are still advertising for a Database/Web Operator, and the first round of interviews starts this week. See our Jobs page for details.
23rd November 2007: Anabats
Gaia Resources is please to announce another partnership - with Specialised Zoological. We now support SZ in their work with Anabat detectors - we handle the hiring and shipping of these units, while SZ handles the data that is collected.
We've also closed applications for the Database and Web Developer position while we make our decision. Candidates will be informed of our decision early next week.
27th November 2007: OSGEO Support
We are now officially supporting OSGEO, the Open Source GIS group. While we have been using open source products for a while, we have just sponsored OSGEO to subsidize their upcoming stand at the WALIS Forum 2008 in Perth. Gaia Resources will be there as well.
Like the rest of the industry, we're starting to prepare for Christmas - our office will be closed from the 24th December until the 4th January to celebrate the end of a fantastic year for the company.
5th December 2007: More position news..
We'd like to announce that Akeal Hayek has joined us this week as a GIS Operator. Akeal is a graduate from Curtin University, with a background in surveying.
Also, the Web/Database position has officially been filled and Lloyd Edwards will join us after the Christmas break (24th December to 7th January).
12th December 2007: Annual summary out
While we're getting ready for the end of year festivities, our first annual summary is out and on our web site here.
Our office will be closed between the 24th December and the 4th January for a break over Christmas.
21st December 2007: Closed
Gaia Resources is closed until the 7th January, 2008.
Our annual summary for 2007 is on the web site here. We look forward to seeing all our clients, colleagues and suppliers in 2008!
7th January 2008: We're Back
We're back as of today, and another new employee is starting with us.
Lloyd Edwards joins us as a Database Operator and will be working on a range of projects for our clients.
17th January 2008: Friday on my mind...
Our office will be closed on Friday, 18th January while we go to the Test Match at the WACA ground to watch Australia play India. We'll be back on deck on Monday.
19th February 2008: 2008 Scholarship
Piers presented the 2008 Gaia Resources scholarship to Benjamin Zeeb today during the Orientation Day activites at Curtin University. More information on the scholarship can be found here.
5th March 2008: Earth 2.0 and WALIS
We are proud to annouce the launch of our Earth 2.0 application today. Earth 2.0 is web-based data management application specifically designed and developed to assist organisations undertaking biological surveys.
Stay tuned for more news regarding Earth 2.0 and also about our upcoming stand at the WALIS Forum next week!
12th March 2008: WALIS Forum starts today
We will be at the WALIS Forum at our stand starting this afternoon. Come past and say hello if you are at the Forum and catch up with what's been happening with us this year.
14th March 2008: WALIS Forum Ends
The WALIS Forum finished this afternoon. Congratulations to Chris Tweedie from Landgate who won the business card draw at our stand for a couple of bottles of wine.
Thanks to everyone who dropped past to say Hi to us - we're looking forward to the next one in 18 months.
17th March 2008: PDA Roadshow
Based on the wide range of interest that we received from the recent WALIS Forum, we are looking to run a series of presentations about the state of mobile computing for environmental work.
These workshops will be run towards the end of April and will be a bit of a travelling roadshow - we'll come to you to show you the latest gear. If you are interested, please email Piers to register your interest.
19th March 2008: PDA Roadshow and Job
We are looking to run a series of presentations about the state of mobile computing for environmental work. These workshops will be run towards the end of April. If you are interested, please email Piers to register.
We are also advertising for a Junior Developer to join our team - the ad is advertised on seek.com.au.
26th March 2008: Trips, PDAs and Jobs
Piers is off on a trip to Canberra to represent the WA Museum at several meetings, then on to Melbourne to visit several organisations and then finally on to Sydney to see some suppliers and the Australian Museum crew. He's back on the 10th April.
Don't forget, we're planning a Field Data Collection roadshow - email Piers to register your interest. And we are also advertising for a Junior Developer to join our team - see the ad on seek.com.au.
10th April 2008: Back
Piers is back from his trip to the East Coast, where he met with a range of people from a number of places. Thanks to people from CSIRO, Museum Victoria, Australian Museum, Birds Australia and Lisasoft for the time and hospitality!
The position of Junior Developer is closing soon - see the ad on seek.com.au.
18th April 2008: Still recruiting...
The Seek advert for the Junior Developer has closed, but we're still looking for candidates who have Java and other experience. The details are on our Jobs page.
24th April 2008: ANZAC Day
Tomorrow marks ANZAC day in Australia, and is a public holiday. Our office will be closed for the day. We'll all be back on deck on Monday.
5th May 2008: Please bear with us...
We are currently re-architecting the network at our offices in Leederville. This means that we might lose e-mail connectivity occasionally over the next couple of weeks whilst any teething problems are sorted out. If you need to contact us urgently, please call us on +61 (0)8 9227 7309.
8th May 2008: IAIA 2008
Piers Higgs, the Director of Gaia Resources, presented a joint paper with Sam Nelson from Greenbase this morning at the International Association of Impact Assessment conference in Perth, on how to streamline environmental compliance data using technology and processes.
29th May 2008: Earthwatch and Curtin Uni Support
Firstly, thanks to Akeal, several of the Gaia Resources crew will be assisting the Curtin University Spatial Sciences Deparment as volunteers to help run GIS workshops for high school students. Akeal, Andrew and Charlotte will be helping out with these workshops in June.
Piers has been appointed to an IT Steering Committee for the Earthwatch Institute for a community based climate change and science project.
3rd June 2008: Finally, some more birds!
More data has been added to the Digital Birds Database for the first time in a while. Piers had a quick survey on the weekend of old favourite Herdsman Lake. There is also a range of Malaysian records being added behind the scenes, so they will be on-line soon.
A new blog from Gaia Resources will be coming to this web site shortly which gives us the ability to add more detail than these news posts, and be a bit more wide-ranging in our discussions.
3rd June 2008: Curtin Uni Support
Andrew, Akeal and Charlotte assisted with the running of a GIS Workshop for high school students at Curtin University Spatial Sciences Department. The workshop involved navigating to locations around the globe in Google Earth to complete a quiz.
13th June 2008: Earthwatch Update
Piers raced across the country to Sydney on Thursday to attend a Steering Committee meeting for the Earthwatch Institute. This is for a community based climate change and science project, called ClimateWatch.
(and then promptly caught the flu)
25th June 2008: End of Financial Year!
Andrew and Piers went to the ESRI Resources Symposium yesterday. Piers has posted a new blog post about the upcoming 9.3 release on the blog page.
We're coming up to the end of financial year (how did that happen?), and as such our office will be slightly disrupted. We're off at a staff meeting this afternoon for a couple of hours, and then on Monday 30th the office will be closed.
27th June 2008: Our office is closed!
We are closed this Monday the 30th June for the end of the financial year. We'll be back on deck on Tuesday the 1st July.
1st July 2008: Happy New (Financial) Year
Welcome to the 2008-2009 Financial Year. We're back on deck and raring to go.
Joining us today is Ryan White as a Junior Developer. Ryan comes on board to help out with a range of web applications, including Earth 2.0, and a range of other Java applications we're working on.
29th July 2008: Blogging away...
Everything is finally settling down after a very busy start to the new financial year. There's not been much news lately for us to report, but we've been busy on the blog lately. Have a look at some of our recent articles about our ventures in open source, cool NASA imagery and even how we're handling field data sheets in Earth 2.0.
10th August 2008: More birds
After a survey around Lake Gwelup this morning, more records have been added to the Digital Birding Database, bringing the total to over 31,000 individual birds. We still have quite a few records to add from historical trips, and more will be added from Piers' upcoming involvement in the 2008 Rio Tinto & Birdlife International birdwatch, this year to be held at Hamersley Station in the Pilbara.