Janet Leung begins her series on time saving tips for the office professional. In her first tip, Janet asks us to question whether our current methods really do save us time, and suggests to consider not only short term, but the long term methods of time management.
Time Managing Techniques:
Can be view from short or long term perspective.
Quick implementable tips:
CALL instead of emailing, you may actually get a quicker response as well as eliminate any misunderstanding or misinterpretation of information from emails.
ELIMINATE ASAP / COB and NOW from your vocabulary. Urgency and importance are relative to each individual and time itself. Putting a real time to something allows you to plan more effectively and ensures that expectations are the same for all parties.
Suggest a DEADLINE instead of waiting for someone to give it to you. This gives you the ability to better manage your priorities on your terms. Always work towards permanent / long term timesavings rather than immediate ones.
With over 200 exhibitors and 3500 visitors, AusRAIL PLUS 2009 sponsors and exhibitors share their experience of being a part of the biggest rail conference and exhibition in Australia. Featured sponsors include Downer EDi, Bombardier, Lockheed Martin, United Group Rail, Laing O'Rourke, AECOM, John Holland, UK Trade & Investment and Alstom Transport. Featured exhibitors include Ansaldo STS, Alcoa Fastening Systems, Siemens, ABB Group, Red Zone Protection, Faiveley, RT Health and many more.
Conference attendance was equal to that of AusRAIL PLUS 2007 with 1000 senior executives participating in the conference over the three days, despite the difficult economic conditions and the event being held away from the 'big three east coast cities' for the first time.
The AusRAIL exhibition received an average of 2500 visitors through it on each of the three days. Exhibitors commented on the quality of the visitors in attendance. The visitors and delegates were reported to spend far more time at the show amongst the exhibitors than they have in all previous AusRAIL years.
On 15 October 2009 the Minister for Education announced the 2010 and 2011 Capital Development Pool (CDP) allocations worth $71.5million.
The funding is for the development of infrastructure at Australian universities. It will help expand courses in areas of national importance, and improve vital teaching and learning facilities and student amenities.
Twenty-three grants have been awarded through the Capital Development Pool (CDP) for 2010 and 2011.
The Australian Government recently released a report, Transforming Australia's Higher Education System, that rolls out a 10-year plan to reform Higher Education in Australia.
According to the website: "Higher Education is central to achieving the Government’s vision of a stronger and fairer nation. The Government is proposing a landmark reform agenda for higher education and research that will transform the scale, potential and quality of the nation’s universities and open the doors to higher education to a new generation of Australians."
We have the opportunity to interview Captain David Shennan, Harbour Master of Port of Melbourne Corporation as he talks about the significance role that Harbour Masters play in the daily operations of ports, current challenges for Harbour Masters, the theme for IHMA Congress 2010 and the main message he hopes to come out of next year’s congress.
We have the opportunity to talk to Alan Birchmore of Fremantle Ports and Captain Eric Atkinson, Vice President of the International Harbour Masters Association, in regards to the upcoming International Harbour Masters Congress 2010 that will be held in Perth in 2010; its main focus, its benefits being some of the topics discussed.
An ambitious website showing an animation of the growth of web usage in Australia has today gone live.
The History of the Australian Web project, created by the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association, allows users to view the rise and fall of websites across the last eight years based on pages views, audience or time spent.The display was developed by The Interaction Consortium using data supplied by Nielsen Online.
AIMIA CEO John Butterworth said: “This project has revealed some fascinating insights into Australian web usage and creates a much needed snapshot of the Australian Internet landscape and longer-term trends.”
AIMIA’s 5th Digital Summit 2009 will be held on the 12-13 October 2009 at the Sydney Harbour Marriott.
A vision of sustainability and an ambition to be 21st Century pioneers led to the successful rebuilding process in Greensburg.
The Kansas city was destroyed by a tornado in 2007 but it became an opportunity to rebuild it from scratch with “green” initiatives, Mayor Bob Dixson said.
“The decision to build back green was a decision that really came from our ancestors as being pioneers in the mid west of America,” he said. “We felt like we had the opportunity now to be the new pioneers of the 21st Century.”
Mayor Dixson will be an international keynote speaker at the Green Planning and Development conference in Melbourne on June 29 and 30. His address will deal with Greenburg’s experiences of sustainable development and how it can guide the rebuilding and recovery of Australian communities devastated by natural disasters.
One of the initial challenges faced by the city was gathering the large amounts of information available, Mayor Dixson said.
“There is just a myriad of information and we needed to gather as much as we could so we could present our citizens with solid information about how they could build back green and sustainable and as a community, we were able to utilise those resources and our government agencies were also very helpful in assembling those resources.”
Funding for the city’s restoration came from both the Federal and State of Kansas, private donations, corporate donations and insurance.
Mayor Dixson said the key to Greenburg’s successful rebuilding process was the fact the community worked together in creating a master plan for sustainable development.
“The next milestone was seeing things like the new water tower going up which not only offered fire protection, but was a beacon of hope sticking up in the air that ‘yes we are coming back’,” he said. “Seeing residents able to build their houses back was highly critical in that encouragement and hope for the future.”
Mayor Dixson said those affected by the Black Saturday bushfires needed to work together as a community to achieve a sustainable development.
“In the midst of a disaster when you lost everything, it matters not your socio-economic status. The only thing you have left when it’s all done is your relationship with each other and those are the relationships that we cultivate and those processes that lead us to the rebuilding.”
To arrange a media pass, request more information or arrange speaker interviews at the Green Planning and Design Summit please contact:
John Wilson on 02 9080 4107 or john.wilson@informa.com.au
The merging of companies in the health insurance industry will continue, but its pace will be dependent on both economic factors and the appetite of companies for change, according to Mark Fitzgibbon, Chief Executive Officer of nib health funds.
Mr Fitzgibbon will be addressing the CEO Roundtable Discussion at the 8th Annual Health Insurance Summit on July 29 in Sydney.
nib recently formed a strategic alliance with National Australia Bank and Mr Fitzgibbon believes convergence of financial services products and maybe the companies themselves will become more prominent in the future.
“I think it will be something which will naturally evolve,” Mr Fitzgibbon said.
“We are moving in a direction of convergence, so I certainly foresee a time in a not too distant future whereby you procure all your financial services from a single provider.”
”It makes a lot of economic sense to have a common brand, distribution platform and service, and as technology develops, this is becoming easier. It also makes a lot of sense from the perspective of the customer experience.”
Mr Fitzgibbon added that with Governments currently funding 70 per cent of Australia’s health care expenditure they cannot afford to sustain this level of relative spending into the future.
“It is an inconvenient truth for some that the private sector and individuals have to play a greater role in our health care funding, particularly those individuals that can afford to do so. And obviously private health insurance is a mechanism for doing that,” Mr Fitzgibbon added.
In his presentation titled ‘Unlocking member value – the compelling case for demutualisation, Mr Fitzgibbon will deal with why from an organisational and member’s perspective there is no longer a need to maintain a mutual company structure.
“Conceptually, once a mutual starts to move beyond its original community customer base, it ceases to become mutual. It competes and becomes no different to competitors such as nib, while mutuals also seek a return on the funds invested in their companies just like we do.”
“The upside for mutuals may be that they don’t pay tax, but I’m not sure how sustainable that position is. Instead why not unlock the wealth for the members as nib, MBF, ahm and Manchester unity have. In fact, given the overwhelming member support for the demutualisation of nib and the others, I can’t imagine how the management and Directors of the remaining mutuals can possibly deny their members the same opportunity to at least decide the question.”
To arrange a media pass, request more information or arrange speaker interviews at the Health Insurance Summit please contact:
John Wilson on 02 9080 4107 or john.wilson@informa.com.au
