2024 was the twentieth year for Gaia Resources, and a major milestone - and not without its ups and downs as there is with all years!
No matter what we do, our people come first - our team has ebbed and flowed during the year, and we will likely be looking at some hires as new projects come in to start 2025. But the highlight for me this year was the team week we held in Perth, where we got the whole gang together for some discussions about the future as well as some shenanigans.
The team week event was not only fun but it had lots of value - it highlighted the importance of connection for a remote company such as ours, and reminded us all that there are real people on the other end of those video conferences we run all the time.
We’re seeing real empirical evidence that we’re doing a good job looking after our people. Some of the metrics we run around people are via the Adapt platform, and we’ve monitored our people’s connectedness and satisfaction with the company - which has been steadily trending up since we’ve started tracking those metrics. The work that our Cultural team have been doing over the past year or two have been exceptional in ensuring that we can stay connected as a team - including online team-building events, whether it’s doing pushups to raise money for mental health, or team events like the 2024 Metrogaine (our hybrid online and physical scavenger hunt that was spawned during COVID).
As happy campers, that’s helped our team to deliver a range of great projects for our clients this year, which is something we’re seriously proud of. While this is “just doing our job” it’s also good to celebrate these projects and milestones when they occur, like:
- We delivered the full capacity of the Digital Archive for the Queensland State Archives,
- The Dandjoo system at the Biodiversity Information Office(BIO) received its last work from us in the start of 2024 as we handed it over to the BIO team,
- The Biodiversity Data Repository had a major release in November of the new data entry system and templates.
Projects ebb and flow - at any one time we have around 30 or so projects running, including ones where we’re providing ongoing support for our clients that we delivered systems for previously. This has been a big part of our success - when you build a system, knowing that you also will be looking after it means that there is a certain level of responsibility that comes with the development work - looking after “future you”!
We had a busy conference season this year - with three conferences, namely the ISPRS and FOSS4G spatial conference, the Fantastic Futures Conference and the Australian Society of Archivists conferences all happening within the space of a couple of weeks. A range of us went to them to find out more about what the future holds in these areas - and we gathered a lot of interesting information from those events - and got to give back a bit as well (yes, I got to play on a whiteboard for a few days working out solutions to problems - my favourite pastime).
Even with satisfied people and projects being delivered, it’s been a rollercoaster of a year with the usual ups and downs throughout. We’ve handled those as a team the way we always do - by following our values. Our internal and external values get included in every team meeting we run, and we hold each other to account on those. These values have really formed a strong foundation for the company - and we are continuing to support this through more training in the “soft skills” of work (like communication, conflict resolution and others).
2025 promises to be an interesting year - we’re wrapping up some more big projects, starting some new ones and there are lots of new avenues for us to explore, right alongside our clients. So stay tuned for more blogs and updates from us in the new year.
We hope you have a wonderful festive season - merry Christmas from all of us at Gaia Resources, and see you in 2025.
Piers
P.S. Oh - the formalities - we’re closed from the 24th December 2024 and will re-open on the 2nd of January, 2025.