KENN ALLEN

Participated in Ideas at the Powerhouse sessions:

'The most important social movement of the century'
- 1.30pm, Thursday, August 16
What to do with all that spare time
- 3.30pm Thursday, August 16

Kenn Allen is World President of the International Association for Volunteer Effort. He advocates for and speaks about volunteerism around the world. In late 2000, he presented his remarks at the launch of the International Year of Volunteers and said "when the Government of Japan first proposed the International Year of Volunteers, the international board of directors of IAVE committed our worldwide network to give strong leadership for the year. We mobilized support for the proposal; we have worked in partnership with UNV to encourage the development of national planning committees; our members are leading and participating in many of those committees and in other local and national planning efforts."

At the IYV launch, Allen announced that IAVE's contributions to the international year would include a series of activities that will create a global framework for the celebration of IYV. Some of these were staged in January and April. IAVE's first Global Forum on Volunteering will take place in December. This forum will focus on volunteering and displaced people to examine how volunteering by displaced people sustains their culture, community and language as well as how volunteering on their behalf assists them with resettlement in new communities.

Speaking at a conference in Australia last year, Allen said that "volunteering ... is the fundamental building block of civil society. Without the willingness of people to commit their time, talent and energy, there will be no sustained non-governmental organizations. Without volunteering, there is a lower rate of giving of money. Without aroused citizens, made knowledgeable by their work as volunteers, there is no pressure on government to allow the freedoms, pass the laws and provide the resources that can make civil society a reality."

IAVE has contributed to the development of a Universal Declaration on Volunteering which was launched on January 16, 2001. The Declaration sounded a clear call to all sectors of the community for new levels of support.

The International Association for Volunteer Effort is online at http://www.iave.org

Richard Allom

Participated in Ideas at the Powerhouse session:

Is this the comfort zone?
- 5pm, Friday, August 17

Richard Allom has been involved in heritage as a conservation architect for nearly twenty-five years. He is a director of Allom Lovell Architects, a practice with offices in Brisbane and Melbourne specialising in the care of historic built environment projects throughout Australia. During his professional life he has been involved first hand in the establishment of standards, practice and legislation currently in both Queensland and at a national level.

His interest in heritage goes beyond these practical matters and in recent years, he has focused on the role of conservation within its wider context of memory, tradition and of changing cultural and social perceptions as they relate to historic buildings.

In 1978 he established a specialist conservation office, arising out of the expertise that he developed while working as Principal Architect with the National Trust of Queensland. Following his partnership with Peter Lovell in Melbourne, Allom Lovell now operates nationally and is recognised as one of the leading practices in this country.

Allom studied architecture at the University of Queensland and University of Melbourne, graduating in 1971.

He currently lives in Brisbane and is a Fellow of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects. He has been Vice President of Australia ICOMOS and Chair of the Heritage Committee established by the Queensland Heritage Buildings Protection Act.

Richard Braun

Participated in Ideas at the Powerhouse session:

Eureka! - but what do I do now?
- 12pm, Saturday, August 18

Richard Braun is a graduate of the University of Westminster, where he studied Computer Systems Engineering & European Languages. He is now one of the few engineering Generalists in Australia, and is Head of Research of ÆOSIA, an international team of engineers & scientists.

He also practices in the Innovation Industry, not only as a respected Prior Art Researcher, but also as one of the only "Patents Busters" in the Southern hemisphere, which he achieves by multilingual block-reading of large masses of techno-legal documentation.

For the past several years, he has been part of a team working on the solution to the solar energy problem. As the Patents will only be published on December 23 this year, the system, 'Project Sierra' cannot be revealed at this point in time.

He works voluntarily with the Inventor's Association of Australia of which he is the Queensland State Secretary. This Queensland Association receives no grants or assistance of any nature, yet the dedication of the staff has won for Queensland a Double-Star Encyclopedia Britannica rating, the only one in the world for any Innovation website.

In his ten years with the Association, he has lectured on the subject of innovation methodology at Queensland University of Technology and Department of State Development venues, and also

gives monthly training presentations to innovators at the University of Queensland. His informative publications are available from the Patent Office (IPAustralia), the Queensland Manufacturing Institute, and branches of the Department of State Development throughout Queensland.

His 'Ideas' presentation, Eureka!-but what do I do now? is designed to give people from all backgrounds an in-depth insight into the baffling and dangerous world that faces the first-time innovator. It will be welcomed by both individuals and small business operators.

DAMIEN BRODERICK

Participated in Ideas at the Powerhouse session:

'The world will get weirder, the end of the human era'
- 11.30am, Thursday, August 16
Hear audio highlights from the session

Damien Broderick is Australia's dean of science fiction, with a body of extraordinary work reaching back to the early 1960s. A novelist, futurist, and critical theorist, Damien Broderick is a master of writing about radical new technologies, and The Spike and The Last Mortal Generation have been Australian popular-science best sellers.

A senior research Fellow at the University of Melbourne in Australia Broderick holds a multi-disciplinary PhD from Deakin University in the comparative semiotics of science and literature. Broderick has published 26 books and is also a prolific book reviewer. His reviews cover a large range of topics: popular science books, science fiction, and cultural issues and theories.

Broderick captures the distinctive flavor of his native country while reaching out to American and European readers, His stories and novels are drenched with bleeding-edge ideas. Distinctively, he blends ideas and poetry, and a wild silly humor is always ready to bubble out.

Broderick's award-winning novel The Dreaming Dragons is featured in David Pringle's SF: The Best 100 Novels, and was chosen as year's best by Kingsley Amis. The White Abacus won two year's best awards. With David G.Hartwell, he edited Centaurus: The Best of Australian SF for Tor in 1999. His forthcoming project is an anthology of stories about the very far future and the dying Earth, combined with essays on this neglected theme, entitled Earth is But a Star. Schrödinger's Dog was chosen for Gardner Dozois's SF: Year's Best 14. The Game of Stars and Souls, a complete and free-standing portion of Broderick's dazzlingly mythic space opera The Sea's Furthest End, appears here in the USA for the first time.

Broderick has been awarded Literature Board Writing Fellowships by the Australia Council in 1980, 1984, 1990, and 1995, and writing grants from Deakin University in 1986 and Arts Victoria in 1998. He received the 1980 Ditmar Award for best Australian SF Novel; A 1985 Special Ditmar Award; the 1989 Ditmar Award; the 1998 Ditmar Award, and the 1998 Aurealis Award.

MICHAEL CARDEN

Participated in Ideas at the Powerhouse session:

Late Night Ideas - 'under the spell of heterosexual christianity'
- 9pm, Friday, August 17
See the online transcript of the session

Michael Carden has been involved in Queer and HIV/AIDS activism, as well as broader social justice issues for many years. For his current PhD research, he examines readings of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Book of Genesis against readings of the outrage at Gibeah in the Book of Judges.

Reading for homophobic and misogynist meaning within the texts, he describes his research as "essentially an exercise in intertextuality and biblical reception aimed at exposing the homophobic post-text of Sodom and Gomorrah and retrieving other readings outside the dominant Christian homophobic tradition to relativise it." He calls himself a "sodom/olog/ist" by profession.

Describing himself as 'anarcho-Catholic', he comes from a Catholic background. However, Carden says, "I see myself as a marginal or fringe Catholic, on the edge of all the Catholic Christian traditions, eastern and western." Since the mid 1980s, Carden has been active in Queer and HIV/AIDS organisations across Queensland. As a student, commencing his studies in 1992, he has participated in Gay and Lesbian groups and activities on campus.

As well as studying at Queensland University, he teaches a range of courses and has developed a new subject, Religion and Sexuality. A participant in the Bible in Translesbigay Perspective project, due for publication in 2005, he is contributing chapters on Genesis and the 12 Minor Prophets. Carden's writings about queer readings of the scriptures and queer spirituality have been published widely in journals and anthologies.

For more information about Michael Carden's research visit his website http://student.uq.edu.au/~s101014/index.html

Read and respond to Michael Carden's commentary in the Ideas Online connections discussion. Carden opens with, "For anyone wanting to understand the Bible, the most important realisation is that there is no such thing as The Bible. It does not and has not existed. Bible is a convenient word to refer to the scriptures of a variety of religions with a Middle Eastern background. Scriptures are the sacred writings, sacred texts and sacred stories of religions. The literature that is subsumed under the word Bible is the sacred literature of a variety of religions, past and present, which have as their focus some aspect of the primary (hi)story contained in the Hebrew scriptures."

To get there, go to the connections discussion, click on the topic Scriptures, and then click on the title, The Beauty of the Bible ...

http://www.ideasatthepowerhouse.com.au/6_forum/forum/forum.asp?id=3

DAWN CASEY

Participated in Ideas at the Powerhouse session:

Fascination vs. Recognition
- 6pm, Friday, August 17

Prior to her appointment as Director of the National Museum of Australia in 1999, Dawn Casey was Chief General Manager of the Acton Peninsula Project Task Force, the body responsible for the construction of the new National Museum.

Casey has wide-ranging experience in the management of Indigenous and cultural heritage policy. As a member of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, she was responsible for the establishment of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation.

She has provided policy advice on issues associated with Australia's national cultural institutions and served as Chair of the Heritage Collections Committee, the body with responsibility for implementing specific programs to address issues of collection management, preservation and conservation, research and documentation, and access.

Casey is the recipient of the Commonwealth Public Service Australia Day Medals for work of outstanding achievement.

Visit the National Museum of Australia at http://www.nma.gov.au/

SHA CORDINGLY

Participated in Ideas at the Powerhouse session:

'The most important social movement of the century'
- 1.30pm, Thursday, August 16

What to do with all that spare time
- 3.30pm Thursday, August 16

 

Sha Cordingly has worked in the community sector for the past 23 years since completing a BA at the University of Melbourne and an Associate Diploma in Welfare Studies. Her initial involvement was in youth work, later moving into the volunteer sector in various positions. She is currently the Chief Executive Officer of Volunteering Australia, a position she has held for the past two years. She has authored several papers on volunteering and has a keen interest in policy development.

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