Welcome to our 2020 Summer newsletter.
In this edition, we share Barada Barna Aboriginal Corporation’s client success story, introduce some new Wantoks who have joined the Mipela team recently, present another X-infocus tech tip and update of our teams activities in connecting people with information.
To open I would like to introduce the following new team members, Jimmy Reilly and Hayley Koot as Support Specialists and an old hand, Jaci Button as our new Client Success Coordinator, back for her third time at Mipela. It also gives me great pleasure to welcome our recent new clients that include CleanPeak Energy and DBYD Qld to the extended Mipela family.
Reflecting on 2020 seems like living in an era where the status quo has been thrown out the window, there is a need to be able to make good decisions, faster in our day to day activities. For our teams internally at Mipela we have been focused on asking lots of questions as a catalyst for figuring out what happens next. We should never assume before trying to connect the dots in what we promise, delivery and support for our clients. We have been continually looking to improve our processes by looking at what tasks we can automate using the X-Info Suite to, over time, be able to better understand any trends, in turn using that information to make better decisions. Our plan is this inquisitiveness and process improvement leads to better skilled specialists in our teams and solutions for our clients as our combined knowledge increases.
To close I would like to acknowledge one very special Wantok for their recent years of service milestone. Christian Abella one of our Senior Software Engineers who is our X-Info Aware mobile guru, recently celebrated six years of service.
On behalf of the Mipela team thank you for your trust and support throughout 2020. I wish you ‘Compliments of the Season’, safe travels to wherever you might be with family and friends, best wishes for a rewarding and successful New Year which we look forward too with excitement and confidence, stay safe!
Hayden McDonald
Founder and Managing Director
Welcome to our 2020 Spring newsletter.
In this edition, we provide a sneak peek of the X-Info Connect V6 release, our most recent client success story and recognise two of our long term staff on their years of Service. We would also like to welcome newest client, Archipelago.
It’s that time of year again, we are excited as ever to be involved in this month’s 2020 Australian Pipeline Gas Association Annual Convention moving to a virtual format for the first time (run in five sessions of about two hours each over five days) from Monday 19 October to Friday 23 October focusing on this year’s theme of “New Decade: New Perspective.”
I am sure you will all agree 2020 has served as a real time experiment in the technology space, accelerating existing trends and disrupting today’s reality in everything that we do. We believe success in the New Decade requires New Perspective in how we Communicate and Engage with people. If you have large volumes of data, looking to improve the quality of information your teams need on a day to day basis or interested in how to make more accurate decisions, please contact us. We will be showcasing the hugely anticipated release of X-Info Connect v6.0, empowering people to identify insights reliably, increase the speed of communicating tasks and outcomes, allowing you to see your world from a new perspective.
To close I would like to acknowledge two very special Wantoks for their recent years of service milestones. Simon Bobeldyk leads The Brains Trust, our software development team who are responsible for making X-Info suite what it is today, recently celebrated nine years of service. Simon we cannot thank you enough for the support you offer us ALL. Congratulations to Alana O’Connor on six years of Service at Mipela GeoSolutions. Your enthusiasm for assisting our clients to bring their ideas to life using our X-Info suite of software is exceptional and thank you for always looking to go that extra step to deliver on what we promise.
From all the team at Mipela GeoSolutions, stay safe!
Hayden McDonald
Founder and Managing Director
With COVID19 restrictions lifting around Australia, our teams are still working from home and recently been heading into the office one day a week for product planning, reviewing work in progress, solution implementation projects, system efficiencies, lesson learnt sessions and the opportunity to reconnect with colleagues has been greatly appreciated by all. When decisions are made with respect to any of these initiatives and their impact, we will communicate them as soon as we can.
June saw US going the extra distance in our 10th year of supporting the MS Brissie to Bay in our #projectMAD “30 for 30 Challenge”. Our team of 57 MAD participants from Mipela, Partners (DBYD Qld, ISGQ, MC Global, Powered, Sentanil Systems), Suppliers and Colleagues committed to a virtual trip of 25,760km around the coastline of Australia #makeeverykmcount raising awareness of Multiple Sclerosis and funds to MAKE A DIFFERENCE for those living with this debilitating disorder. To check on how they went, read the article further through this newsletter.
Please reach out to us if you have any questions, let us know what we have done well or not so well in these last three intensive months. Personally, for me it has been a time to be reflective, adaptive and I want to continue to be proactive. It goes without saying that we take nothing for granted and are grateful for your ongoing support.
Remote sensing was used to fight and recover from the recent bushfires on Kangaroo Island.
Firefighters, farmers and ecologists needed up to date burnt area maps to plan firebreaks and protect animals. Boone Law (Adelaide University), responded by using free, multi-spectral Sentinel 2 satellite imagery. This has a 5-day revisit frequency and 7-hour preparation delay.
On receiving new imagery, Law required an additional two hours of processing to update a false colour map, using the Normalised Burn Ratio algorithm to assign red shades to burnt areas.
Spatial science fights fires in near real time.
Source: Spatial Points, accessed 11/6/20, http://www.spatialpoints.com/2020/02/04/visualising-burnt-area-impacts-on-kangaroo-island-with-satellite-imagery/
These are challenging times and things are changing rapidly. As a business we are taking on the challenges of COVID-19 just as we would our purpose of connecting people with information.
Mipela GeoSolutions has given us many things. Persistence, Team and Fun and it has also given us you – an incredible community and without you, there is no US! Whatever your current predicament, we wish you the strength to get through this.
Our priorities continue to be the safety, wellbeing and health of our team, the communities we live in and to ensure the continuity of our operations, support and essential services for our clients.
Our approach will be to follow the Health authorities, official Government advice and recommendations and exercise caution and common sense to take measures to minimise spread, protect everyone’s health and maintain operations as we work our way through it and the situation improves.
For US it’s business as usual, with all of our staff working from home. Our teams, suppliers and valued partners are operational with multiple contingencies in place to deal with the changing circumstances. Overall, we anticipate the nature of engaging support (email, phone and ticketing) and the capacity of support, along with our hosting services to remain unchanged. We’re also using the time to continue our push of the product development of our X-Info Suite, innovative solutions and iron out any kinks in our client experience so we can come back stronger when the challenges that we all currently face subside.
Please reach out to us if you have any questions, queries, concerns or just want a chat. Keeping up our communications in these times will be critically important. We are here for you always and grateful for your ongoing support.
From all the team at Mipela GeoSolutions, stay safe!
With work I am sure you will agree, some days are great, some days are good, some days are bad – we’ve all been there. I thought I would share some thoughts on how to be more productive using technology, with the aim to be working smarter, instead of harder:
Our recent new clients include Canadian Solar, Goldwind’s Coppabella Wind Farm and Clarke Creek Wind and Solar Farm as well as Veolia’s Springvale Mount Piper Power Station Water Treatment Plant and pipeline to the extended Mipela family.
Welcome to our Spring newsletter for 2019!
In this edition we provide a wrap-up of our recent X-Info User Group meeting in Adelaide and some handy information for X-Info DBYD suite clients on getting the most out of your automated response system. We’ll also look at how renewable projects are utilising X-Info Suite for community engagement, stakeholder and land access management as well as automated contract payments.
I would like to acknowledge and welcome our most recent new clients, City of Greater Dandenong, Canadian Solar, Walcha and Vestas.
Karen Thompson, John Quigley, Neil Aikman and I are looking forward to catching up with existing clients, learning lots and meeting some new people at the 2019 Annual Convention and Exhibition of the APGA: “Infrastructure for the future” in Adelaide 13 – 15 October. Pop by and say hi at Stand 22 to see how we assist our Clients “Catch the Next Wave” use our technology to protect their assets, respond to landholders, construction material traceability, understand operational risks, and target field services by delivering high-quality solutions to support their key operations, projects and stakeholder interactions to consistently operate as productively as possible by doing the right things. Make sure to put your name in the draw for a chance to win a “CoolCabanas” – the worlds best beach sun shelter – that won’t blow away setting you up for the best summer by the surf!
Hayden McDonald
Founder and Managing Director
In this article, we share Isaac Regional client success story, a wrap-up of one of our 2019 #projectMAD initiatives to make a difference for those suffering with multiple sclerosis, present another X-InFocus tech tip and update of our teams activities in connecting people with information.
Successful companies know that IT is not an afterthought—it’s a critical ecosystem supported by a strong team and connected by technology and processes, and it’s all about creating accord between these moving parts.
To empower technology and optimise its role for the delivery of information within an organisation, there are three things leaders must do.
I wish you all the best in your daily activities and would like to close by welcoming the following new staff Hine Laban Support Team Leader, Michael Short Senior Solutions Specialist and Mohsan Sadiq Project Manager in our Brisbane HQ. Our new clients AEROmetrex, APA Networks, City of Melton, Countrytell, Hunter Water, Isaac Regional Council and Cross Yarra Partnership to the extended Mipela family.
Hayden McDonald
Managing Director
Eating your own dog food, also called dogfooding, occurs when an organization uses its own product.This can be a way for an organization to test its products in real-world usage. Hence dogfooding can act as quality control, and eventually a kind of testimonial advertising. Once in the market, dogfooding demonstrates confidence in the developers’ own products.
Wikipedia
From marketing and sales, to solutions, to support, to products, to admin, to the board, everyone at Mipela truly believe that using the X-Info suite makes them more productive, their work more enjoyable, and their workdays less stressful by connecting our data, systems and people. What is fascinating about the latest release of X-Info WebConnect business process software, we believe that the web browser based Activities are allowing Mipela to:
This also allows us to test the latest versions of our products in real life usage to validate before it’s released, enabling proactive resolution of potential inconsistency or dependency issues, which is a humbling process.
With the next generation development of the X-Info suite underway, our measure of success and in turn our clients depends on our ability to change. The instability caused by globalisation and advance of new disruptive technology guarantees only the adaptable will survive.
Success in the digital age is not only defined by the formulation of good ideas but the ability to implement those ideas in a rapidly shifting environment. Technology is changing the world at an ever increasing speed. Disruptive business models (Airbnb, Netflix, Uber) are leaving established organisations in the wake of their more agile competitors. Change can only occur when people, process and technology are aligned/connected.
We need to empower people to alter their ongoing operations at the point they capture data while delivering outcomes in a dynamic environment. This is where changing business environments, ERP implementations, reorganisations and mergers, changing product and service offerings, changing laws and regulations are constantly in flux.
But we can’t do it alone. With our suppliers, our partners, our people, our clients’ teams, together we are committed to the continuous process of analysing, designing and monitoring our activities to perform tasks efficiently and effectively and look forward to sharing more on this in future newsletters.