Geelong

Rachael Robertson was leader of the 58th Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition and on June 16th 2010 she will be sharing her adventures with Geelong Young Professionals.

Rachael recounts her experiences with humour and vigour, sharing what it's like to lead a team for a year in the highest, driest coldest and windiest place on earth.

Hear what these extreme conditions taught Rachel and her team about about the power of preparation, training, planning, systems, teamwork and trust.

The event is at 'Bistro @ 310' at 5:45 pm. Tickets are $30 per person and include nibbles and drinks on arrival.

Be inspired and entertained by film maker Adam Elliot when he speaks  Geelong Young Professionals on Wednesday 17th March.

Adam is the Academy Award-winning writer and director of claymation films such as Harvie Krumpet. Hear how this Melbourne man started an animation course in 1996 and accepted an Academy Award seven years later.

Design Victoria is running a workshop in Geelong to help local businesses create and maintain a successful media relations strategy.

Could your business profit from greater media exposure? Media relations can enhance your image, help connect with your customers and improve your bottom line.

This free workshop, held on Wednesday 10 February 2010, will show the business advantage of a media relations program that is simple to devise and implement.

Register on the Design Vic website.

Choc Chip recently completed a major website design and online marketing campaign for www.visitgreatoceanroad.org.au using the Drupal CMS (Content Management System).

GOT (Geelong Otway Tourism) contracted us to build the new website to provide tourism information and represent the tourism association members by giving them prominent pages on the site.

Site Build

As well as an attractive, dynamic design, this site includes a considered navigation structure and content targeted to attract site visitors and lead them to the member pages.

The challenge in building this site was to incorporate data for the tourism association members from two different external sources.

If you're a web designer or are interested in web technologies and social networking tools, join the Geelong Web Technology Meetup Group and come along to the next get-together.

A loose connection of web designers and users from the Geelong region have gathered informally a few times over the last 12 months for a good time discussing our passions and learning from each other. We're now getting slightly more organised and plan to get together regularly, every month or so.

The Geelong Chamber of Commerce is running events over the next two months to help prepare and motivate local businesses during what is predicted to be a hard year financially. If you're in the Geelong region you might find these sessions very useful.

There are three types of events being presented:

1. Information Sessions

These will feature selected presenters talking on a specific topic each time and accommodate a larger audience.

2. Q&A Sessions

These will be similar to past Q&A sessions run by the Chamber (like the one on growing your business online that I spoke at) but the l members will be focussing on topics relevent to financial downturn.

I have been asked to appear on the panel for the next Geelong Chamber of Commerce Q&A event, providing advice for small businesses wishing to leverage the power of online advertising and sales.

The Q&A sessions are a Geelong Chamber of Commerce initiative that provide advice on a range of topics of interest to local businesses, and take place in the form of a panel of experts that the audience can ask questions of.

This month's Q&A has the topic of 'How to grow you business online' and you don't have to be a chamber member to come along.

Read more on the Geelong Chamber of Commerce website or in the invitation pdf file.

Many of our clients run small businesses or startups in the Geelong area. If this is you, you may be interested in these training grants currently available for Gordon TAFE's 'Enterprising Futures' program.

The small business grants provided by the City of Greater Geelong are to undertake business training, skills building and business development. The grants fund half the costs to participate in one of two Enterprising Futures training and business support programs, either 'Explore Your Business Idea' or 'Focus on Your Business'.

This is your opportunity to benefit from expert small business support and training at half the usual cost.

For more information and eligibility please see the flyer below.

Download the Enterprising Futures flyer.