Band 1: Hot Pans on Fire are a community band and exemplar of resilience, formed in the aftermath of the 2009 Marysville bushfires as a positive community rebuilding exercise. This steel drum band were set up with 2 outdoor speakers, mixer, PA system and wireless microphone. With a light load of around 70W peaks, the band took us down to 80% charge over an hour and a half performance (to be fair though, we'd been powering up a vehicle fridge for several hours before their performance, so it wasn't a true indication of their load).

Band 2: LosBonkers are a Narara based Music + Comedy quintet, comprising lead singer, 3 guitarists + drummer, running with 3 electric guitars, digital amplifiers, mixer + microphone. Running at a peak load of around 210 watts, these guys drew down the charge on our Yeti1250 more heavily than Hot Pans on Fire, but still finished the day with more than 60% charge remaining. A nice result, with hours more playtime left. Bookings for Los Bonkers are available through Max on 0434 292 280.

With a background in Acquired Brain Injury rehabilitation as an Occupational Therapist, I know only too well how important good safety gear can be in reducing risk and how fragile our minds can be. Of equal importance though, is having skills in place to minimise the risk by being well prepared for the terrain you're riding. I've also raced MTB and completed coaching courses in it, so know how vital it is to help riders build their skills foundation to tackle obstacles in their rides and build their confidence. It's a clearly identified barrier to cycling participation, with lots of work to be done to lift Australians cycling participation rates. As a nation with wide open spaces and places to ride, I hope the teams efforts encourage more people to take up cycling and build their cycle skills literacy - it's literally a lifesaver to be able to translate off road skills to on-road defensive riding techniques.

It's been great to see the emergence of Buchanan Next Gen and the Sponsorship pattern that Caroline is adopting, using her Sportaroo campaign as a crowd funded operation to help supporters understand the costs involved in competing at a national level, as well as getting something back in return. It shows she understands very well the needs of sponsors and athletes, doing some great things to help make the connections between brands and athletes - I can see the influence of Layne Beachley's Aim for the Stars program at work. Choices are clear, return on your investment is transparent and it's a friction-free User Experience. All good stuff, but rarely found in sports marketing. That's what she's done to help make this different, breaking the mould of sponsor-as-ATM.

It's why we're delighted to make a small contribution as helmet logo sponsor to help lift the profile of the girls, keep their heads and minds safe and give them their best shot at competing on the national and international stage. They're building bike-skills, race-skills and life-skills as they experience how things can be handled with style, grace and professionalism as emerging Australian athletes. I know more girls will take inspiration from their efforts. Let's help them hit their sponsorship target!

Now go get em' grrrls.

A lot of the distributed project work we do is delivered using products from Atlassian. It does help that we're an Atlassian Expert, but using the tools to deliver and manage  projects with our clients adds a layer of extra value. It's good to know where teams can hit limitations within projects to know when a tool is needed, or something else entirely, like some traditional face to face time.  It's surprising how often we still encounter Australian businesses (including big ones) who continue to use email, shared word and excel documents, hitting Application sharing/Platform constraint issues (share as .doc or .docx?), version control management and lack of a joined up view of where a project is up to. Typical Collaboration Dysfunction and risky as an enterprise approach.

This is just a brief intro to the combinations of products that we use, with some of the videos that are routinely prescribed to new project team members who might not be used to the platforms or wiki based approaches to distributed collaboration. 

More on that in our next post..