I have a number of skills in a number of areas and have a few topics around which I can talk for 40 mins or 1-2 days!! You may consider them to be a bit eclectic and not really connected .... but in fact they are all connected through my project management, business investment and general management experience. All of them are well grounded in my personal journey ....good and bad!

I am mostly engaged through my consultancy firm HolisTech® Pty Ltd or my investment firm Padden Industries Pty Ltd, but I do have relationships with companies and businesses big and small through which I sometimes sub-contract.

I attended this presentation quite some time ago last year and blogged about it at the time. But then my site went pear shaped. It is worth putting it up though. Michael Schaper had some interesting facts to discuss. So her is my original blog entry.

Along with Donna Cox of Mantra Training and Development, I attended the Canberra Business Council (CBC) (of which HolisTech® is a Corporate Member) and Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) luncheon. Apart from doing a little networking (not that I am good at that), we listened to an interesting presentation by Dr Michael Schaper, the Deputy Chairperson of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). It was titled Small Business - Future Opportunities & Challenges.

I attended this presentation quite some time ago last year and
blogged about it at the time. But then my site went pear shaped. It is worth putting it up though. Michael Schaper had some interesting facts to discuss. So here is my original blog entry.

Along with Donna Cox of Mantra Training and Development, I attended the Canberra Business Council (CBC) (of which HolisTech® is a Corporate Member) and Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) luncheon. Apart from doing a little networking (not that I am good at that), we listened to an interesting presentation by Dr Michael Schaper, the Deputy Chairperson of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). It was titled Small Business - Future Opportunities & Challenges.

I want to talk about trust in this blog. I have had my trust betrayed on a number of occasions in both business and within projects. I have also had it tested and have been shown great trust by business colleagues and friends.

A while back, I was asked by a business colleague to assist in providing an insight into how an organisation could handle their knowledge asset better and how they could weave a network of advisors and small/medium enterprises.

After a couple of coffees and a long chat, he asked if I could encapsulate our discussion in a short brief. Always up for a challenge, I based the brief on the one hour executive briefing we (HolisTech Pty Ltd) provide to executives in Government agencies on leveraging Web 2.0.

If Web 1.0 is the broadcast web ("here I am and this is what I do" - it is read only - static) then Web 2.0 is the collaborative web ("here I am and we can do this together" - it is read/write and interactive - a far richer experience).

Designing an Emergent Capability Based Strategy: Toward a New Business Planning Paradigm?  A paper published in the Australian Defence Force Journal in 2003.

One of my goals in life is to illustrate the value of projects to the general management fraternity. Perhaps more accurately, explaining the value of project management to executives. For a number of years now I have been "monitoring" the level of acceptance of project management into the broader management community. I do this by looking for project management books in the management "guru" sections of bookshops. I must say .... I am yet to find one devoted solely to project management. Normally the project management books are in the IT section or the academic sections. It's an interesting "index" which I have started to call the "PM guru status" index.

Camrass, R. and Farncombe, M., Atomic: Reforming the Business Landscape into the New Structures of Tomorrow, Capstone Publishing Limited, UK, 2004.

Atomic attempts to identify the future business construct based upon trends identified today. Camrass and Farncombe take the analogy of an "atom" that can become part of larger molecules to form value adding business structures. These are more agile and focused organisations than the monolithic businesses today. To their credit, they try to identify those "atoms" rather than just generalise:.

This concept can be viewed another way - as a chronology or evolution of systems. A system enters its life at some point in time. In the below diagram some have begun their life prior to say, 2006. Others entered their life after 2006.

You will also note that the system will commence life as being in use (green), then at some point start to degrade (yellow), then become critically degraded (light red), until finally it is obsolete (red).

Many project management books and texts (and perhaps blogs) start with a definition of a project. Or if not, it is certainly in there shortly into the book. But why is that?

Well I guess they all need to put a boundary around what they are talking about, but also because it is pretty useful leading into the wider part of the text.

I am no different in that sense because I do need to answer that question "What is a Project?". But I think what I am about to say is different because the way I define a project is different to what you might find in the more traditional texts.

So ... what is a project?

I am exploring a number of concepts under an eclectic collection of
subject areas. I am also exploring some of these in my blog about small
and medium enterprises and micro-businesses at Lukim All. Undoubtedly, I will add to these in time.

Formal. Pat is a very experienced program and project manager with a strong academic background in the profession which includes post graduate project management qualifications. He has a significant and current consulting and business background with a particular strength in communicating complex concepts in simple and pithy ways including discussions, presentations, blogs and papers.

Informal. I am the normal family man - wife and two daughters, two dogs (german shepherd and golden retriever - stupid and cupid as the kids call them!), a stack of frogs in the gardne and a visiting family of magpies (a native Australian bird that is quite at home in the urban environment).