Evan Speigel, a product design major and Reggie Brown were both Stanford University students when they developed an application for a product development unit they were studying.

According to the Shapchat blog, Bobby Murphy who was studying mathematical and computational science at Stanford was brought in to write the source code for the application. Their first project, Future Freshman failed to gain traction; however, they found they worked well together. The next project presented to the class, the mobile app that shares photographs then disappears in a matter of seconds received a less than positive response from class members.

They felt not only would people not use the app, the only ones that do would use it for sexting; as it happens, it is pretty close to the mark. A concern is the major user demographic is below the age of 16; Snapchat Inc does not condone the use of the app for pornographic use. Speigel stated in the company blog that stories of job hunters undertaking emergency de-tagging of Facebook photographs before job interviews provided the inspiration for the development along with editing blemishes out of photographs to be uploaded to the internet.

Instead of photoshopping photographs on a personal computer, photographs taken with smartphones can be immediately edited and uploaded on Android and iOS devices. I love studying entrepreneurial ventures knowing full well that I will not be investing my own funds in such a start-up after losing plenty of money in my own eCommerce start-up. It is of some concern that Snapchat Inc does not have a revenue stream, yet funding of $13.5 million from Benchmark Capital was confirmed in February 2013 valuing the company at $60 to $70 million.

Facebook Inc then made an offer of $3 billion that was rejected by Speigel with Google Inc making an offer of $4 billion to acquire the business, a further $50 million was required in venture capital, one supposes to keep the business solvent. In a move resembling the Facebook fallout; co-founder Reggie Brown, sidelined from company ownership over a yet undisclosed dispute filed a lawsuit for loss of earning potential.

Further significant issues include photographs don’t actually disappear and can be saved and/or retrieved, the collection of personal data and then the security of the data collected. I don’t use the app, I am however at a loss to how a business requiring significant venture capital with no revenue firstly receives acquisition offers of up to $4 billion and secondly has the audacity to decline acquisition offers by the leading tech companies in the sector.

The recent media speculation surrounding the Michael Clark sledge to South African paceman Dale Steyn is not abating. We all know Steyn loves to sledge batsmen; he himself is a world class sledger initiating numerous exchanges. Does that mean he, as a tail-end batsman, he is exempt from sledging? He feels that particular sledge was very personal and Clarke should apologise; video evidence may suggest that Clarke has already done so.

Recent ball tampering fines by South African bowlers Vernon Philander and Faf du Plessis in the past 12 months have tarnished the South African cricketing reputation to such an extent that the South African ethics committee publicly stated that “they are deeply concerned at the practice feeling that such behaviour cannot be tolerated from the national team.”

Many media commentators are asking, what exactly did Michael Clarke say to Dale Steyn? Why did he take the comment so personally? Why has he taken to the media to vent his anger? Maybe, just maybe Clarke questioned why Steyn is able to gain early reverse swing in non-conducive conditions while other bowlers are unable to do so?

The precedent was set earlier in the season, if Brent Harvey initiates a bump on Joel Selwood off-the-ball making head high contact and cutting him above the eye – he will be missing game time during the finals. Selwood was running with with his defender behind him, he was watching the play and didn’t even see Harvey coming – that’s not courageous. Selwood required stitches to keep playing then needed more stitches after the game to seal the wound correctly. Harvey is just a thug, there is not much defence here, it is pretty simple really. 

You make head high contact, you are suspended – it is that easy. Harvey has to show self-discipline, something he has consistently failed to do. This is Harvey’s first week back after a three week suspension – too bad. North Melbourne are trying to argue insufficient force – the blood running down Selwood’s face would indicate otherwise. Brent Harvey, the nasty little squealer should man up, he initiated contact when the player was not looking, he split Joel Selwood’s eye and then screams when he is suspended for a preliminary final – it wasn’t an accident.  

Opening a 2010 bottle of Hamlin Bay Cabernet Sauvignon with my father to watch the 2nd semi final between North Melbourne and Geelong on Friday night was an interesting affair. After being introduced to Hamlin Bay through a wine club a number of years back, I always seek out a bottle whenever I am in a bottle shop.

You have to look hard at the smaller bottle shops, the large chains tend to only carry certain lines of high producing vineyards, this smaller boutique winery struggles to supply the chains with volumes. What the do serve up though is high quality at small volumes. Looking at the tasting notes; the 2010 was described as having aromas of red fruits and cassis dusted with chocolate and cocoa on a savoury background. That got me thinking, I have no idea what cassis flavours are so a quick google search of cassis first landed me on webpage describing a commune east of Marseille in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region of southern France near Bouches-du-Rhône.

After redefining my search to cassis flavours; I then learned this refers to an intense blackcurrant flavour, this I actually determined for myself. I was then intent on identifying the cocoa and chocolate overtones, they were there, although not big and bold, there was hints of chocolate flavours. The tasting notes also described the wine as having a deliberately moderate pallet, a refined line of flavour, resting on a fine grainy tannin backbone. I thought the tannins were fine, this cab sav was full bodied whilst remaining subdued and stylish. This wine has a fairly good pedigree with 14 months in French oak, 25% was new oak with the remained second hand. I like this winery, I love drinking what they produce.

I like to follow the tech companies as a matter of interest; much to my embarrassment, I knew very little about the upcoming float of the Chinese tech company Alibaba Group Holdings on the New York Stock Exchange, so some research was in order.

  
Looking at what they do, I read the core business activities around an English language portal handling sales transactions between importers and exporters; basically a business-to-business portal linking Chinese manufacturers with overseas buyers. I view with interest eCommerce businesses with little to no revenue, no solid business plans to generate solid revenue streams that tend to generate unrealistic expectations and pricing.

The secondary business revolves around Taobao, the consumer-to-consumer eCommerce portal that is similar in operation to eBay targeting mainly Chinese consumers with revenue exceeding Amazon.com and eBay combined. This is not a business with shaky earnings going to market seeking shareholder funds to stay afloat, it does appear to have higher price/earnings ratio than all tech companies except Facebook.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a market capitalisation of $155 billion will place Alibaba slightly behind Amazon.com in terms of size and approximately double the size of eBay. A fairly high projected price/earnings ratio sees of 18 times compared to Amazon’s 2.1 times and eBay’s conservative 4.2 times earnings. This appears to be an extremely interesting IPO that will be well worth following.

The Wellington Dam in Collie supplies water to the south west region of Western Australia, on a recent drive through the area, we stopped at the dam before heading to Bunbury.

The dam overflowed in September 2013, the first time since 2009. The last time a Perth dam overflowed was in 1996, the level of the Wellington Dam was once again close to overflow when we visited in November – a very wet spring accounted for the excess water.

The outlet pipe shoots a stream of water down to the overflow region where a bridge allows access.

Only a small degree of overflow is occurring, this is the water exhausted through the outlet pipe at the base of the dam.

A long weekend is a time for rejoicing, especially at the end of a long Perth summer when you have three days of sailing looming. Yachts in this class are moored at the Royal Perth Yacht Club, South of Perth Yacht Club and Royal Freshwater Bay Yacht Clubs on the Swan River.

As this is a blue water weekend; the yachts have to be motored down river, dropping the mast to clear the three bridges separating Fremantle and North Fremantle before mooring on the pontoons of the Royal Perth annex.

Rigging the yacht in the marina pre-race; the Royal Perth Yacht Club Fremantle annex requires yachts to be tied together, it makes rigging a little cluttered but very sociable.

The advantage of the S97 is the inboard diesel engine; no need to sail out of the pens, marina or onto the course. The downside was we snagged so much weed on the prop, we were slowed down on certain legs and paid dearly over the weekend.

Starting down the pin end, we believed a clear advantage could be gained by heading to the port side of the course, we sought clear air but got locked in position leaving us with limited maneuverability.

A great duel between yachts ensured close racing over the weekend, the difference between first and last was very narrow, any advantage required careful planning and positioning.

As the fleet splits heading towards the windward mark, we felt the advantage to the port side would give us a distinct advantage, however, we got buried at the windward mark on port tack.

Heading past the windward mark, setting the spinnaker pole and hoisting the spinnaker is where superior crew work pays dividends. Only a couple of weeks later, our forward hand was contacted by a radio station in regards to her being the oldest forward hand competing on the Perth waterways.

Spinnaker set and heading downwind, the light winds over the weekend suited a number of boats, unfortunately for us, heavy breezes didn’t eventuate – this just wasn’t our regatta.

I have been a lecturer for going on a decade now, for those of you who don’t know what TAFE stands for, it is Technical and Further Education, but the real question is, what does TAFE really stand for?

As a technical college, vocational training in trades based skills drives industry and the economy, there is little doubt a highly literate and skilled workforce drives economic development – the Technical of TAFE. The equity side of the equation sees similarities to the community college model – the Further Education; community access and lifelong learning.

The vocational education and training (VET) sector sits between the high schools and higher education providers, their lower level qualifications are eroded by the high schools system whilst their higher level qualifications are regularly poached by the university sector. The real strength of the TAFE sector is technical training in the form of apprenticeships and community access.

But what does it really take to become a TAFE lecturer? Well, you need vocational competencies, a lecturer needs extensive experience in the industry, you also need to maintain such competencies and you then need training qualifications. The Certificate IV in Training and Assessment is a totally worthless qualification, even deemed an at risk qualification by the auditing body. Making practitioners update to the latest qualification as the old ones were handed out in their droves in a race to the bottom does not improve quality.

Because, guess what? The low quality colleges churning out weekend Certificate IVs just do the same with the new qualification – they churn them out en masse.

The qualification should take close to six months fulltime study, a standard Certificate IV qualification aligned to the Australian Qualifications Framework is basically a supervisor’s qualification. Yet this qualification is often completed in just a weekend. I had to upgrade from the older qualification to updated qualification as required by the college, it took me just four hours to complete. Now while I held the older qualification, it doesn’t seem much effort, I did, after all know the material well.

You can imagine my surprise when some experienced staff, that is ten plus years employment, were unable to complete the upgrade themselves. As you can well imagine, the benefit to a practitioner of a four hour upgrade is highly questionable, it is purely a paper shuffling exercise, everyone knows it. Then the department can say, we have a highly qualified workforce, that may be true, they have met their KPIs. The question remains, do we have a highly skilled and technically competent workforce? I would say no.

What TAFE and the vocational education and training sector needs is suitability qualified and experienced practitioners. That is dual skills, vocation skills qualified to the level they are instructing to and teaching level skills. The problem then arises, to maintain top notch vocational knowledge and skills, the practitioner needs industry currency, that is, to remain working in the industry they teach.

To take three years to complete a university level teaching qualification usually requires three years fulltime study, to take this time out of industry seriously undermines vocational skills and currency, by the time the practitioner is ready to begin teaching, their vocational currency has already eroded.

The real troubles with TAFE stem from their middle management, that is, at the strategic business unit level. From what I have seen, upper management has shown the ability to strategically position the organisation in a heavily regulated environment. The system recruits outside the system on many occasions, this has the ability to bring new ideas to the organisation, this has to be balanced with enough internal recruitment allowing managers with specific knowledge of the VET system to prosper.

At the strategic business unit level, program managers lack the skills to lead a team mainly due to the fact many colleges will not place program managers in their area of expertise. In an engineering discipline, the college would place a manager from aged care, child care or horticulture. The program manager has to negotiate with business enterprises having a sole engineering purpose, if they don’t know the industry, the sector or the organisations, then problems occur. The program managers do not have the skill to overcome such hurdles, generally holding no management qualifications or experience.

As a state government body, the ability to attract and retain suitable personnel is a burning issue, all too often, a strategic business unit is burdened by non-performing staff. Not only is there no real performance management systems in place, management fails to follow such procedures. Yes, there is a policy document, that is what it is, a document saved in a computer somewhere.

The real issue is the design and implementation of learning programs, my specialty. As lecturers are employed with mainly industry backgrounds; the college does not set aside suitably qualified and experienced staff to develop high quality learning programs.All too often, a program manager seeks a good worker with plenty of enthusiasm lacking in program design skills to throw together programs.

A whole professional field exists in program design, instead all too often, embarrassing and unprofessional materials are whacked together not meeting industry training outcomes or learning objectives. Indeed, most times, contemporary learning practices are largely ignored because the designer (that term is used freely) is unfamiliar with adult learning practices, learning models and facilitation methodology.

Program managers require the communication skills to negotiate with team members, the use of performance management techniques to identify possessed skills and knowledge whilst also identifying skills gaps to properly identify the correct person for the task. Utilising incompetent people to undertake high-level tasks purely because of enthusiasm in an attempt to force more competent people to work harder is not management, all this does is diminish the capability of the organisation.

An engineering workshop manager does not ask the trades assistant to undertake intricate diagnosis and testing merely because the trades assistant works hard. A competent workshop manager knows the abilities of their team members utilising the most technically competent tradesperson. The trades assistant may be asked to provide support to complete the job by removing covers, operating the machine, cleaning components and other task related duties.

I’m 10 – 15kg overweight now after living an unsustainable existence for the last few years working full-time and studying part-time. I finally have broken the shackles on this overseas trip, not eating snack food whilst locking myself indoors all weekend to read textbooks, academic papers, pour over research and writing assignments to the early hours of the morning.

I had an ad hoc exercise regime at best; it was pretty ineffective really, just wasted money on a gym membership. Was all the study worth it? Too early to tell just yet, in the future, maybe. I still have a further two units to complete in 2015. It will only be one unit per trimester so not so arduous now, I have broken the back of the task, over the hump and on the downhill run. What I can’t allow is myself to be drawn down this path again; I need balance starting with a healthy lifestyle, plenty of rest and recreation overcoming the total exhaustion my life had become.

I am still drinking wine and coffee; yet I don’t require daily Mylanta tablets in the mid-morning around 10:30 am to 11:00 am and sometimes an afternoon one around 3:30 pm to 4:00 pm. So what has changed? I would say stress; while not an expert opinion on the matter, I have no research or empirical evidence to back up my claims, the results seem to speak for themselves. The one component removed from this equation is work related stress – now all I need to do is ensure it doesn’t creep into my life again.

Why is it at not just leading universities around the nation, also second tier institutions as well; the academic staff must have formal vocational qualifications in their field, but management are not required to hold any qualifications at all? This also holds true for the government run Technical and Further Education (TAFE) colleges and private institutions. With no exceptions, no manager needs to be qualified to even a minimum level or hold full membership in a professional management association.

This is not limited to middle managers charged with controlling the great unwashed; that is, the frontline academic staff. This holds true for IT managers, HR managers, accounts managers (the accountant must be qualified though), maintenance managers, facility managers, customer service managers, divisional directors, general managers and finally, the CEO. The person sitting across the desk asking questions at your job interview is likely to be intimidated, maybe scornful and resentful of such candidates, but they need no licence or qualification to do so.

After all, universities churn out in their droves business and commerce students, accounting majors, postgraduate graduate certificates, graduate diplomas and master degrees, even a PhD in Management is available. A Master of Management or the highly prized MBA (and priced accordingly) is a qualification not seen in too many educational establishments.

So why do educational institutions not require their managers to possess the very qualifications they sell? They are in the sales business, the business of education. Do they not rate these qualifications they sell? Are the skills and knowledge not transferable to their business model? Are such qualifications designated for sole use in the private sector?

I wouldn’t think so, contemporary management practice is still management, accounting standards still apply to education and while leadership concepts change as per the situation, you still need to learn the theory, best practice and review case studies. Or really, you don’t need to be qualified to be a manager, this is just a commodity for sale where educational facilities don’t require the very qualifications they sell.