Archive for April, 2007
Posted April 9th, 2007 by Scott
Indigenous Australians die 17 years earlier than non-Indigenous Australians and Indigenous infant mortality is three times that of non-Indigenous Australians. It is a national disgrace that Indigenous Australians do not have the same access to health services that other Australians enjoy.
ANTaR (Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation) is one of a number of organisations who refuse to accept the status quo. When they decided to take their iconic Sea of Hands online, they partnered with Hugeobject so that together we could create something truly unique.

Together we proudly launched the Online Sea of Hands in Sydney last week, with Cathy Freeman and Ian Thorpe both in attendance to add their hands to what we hope will evolve into one of the largest tools for change in the country.

A healthy range of media turned up for the day, no doubt drawn in part by the recent turmoil in Ian Thorpe’s swimming career. Surprisingly, all questions on the day remained on topic and focused exclusively on the Close the Gap campaign.

Joni and Helena Chan were the Hugeobject design talent behind the online Sea of Hands, shown here in front of one of their banners.

A traditional welcome kicked off the day, before a number of speakers took to the podium and discussed the current state of Indigenous health.

One of the speakers was journalist Jeff McMullen. Without the use of notes, he spoke articulately and with passion about the need to act now.

Cathy Freeman spoke about the impact of the current Indigenous health crisis on her own family, while Ian Thorpe talked about his efforts to assist Indigenous communities.
Thorpe is an extremely polished public speaker, delivering well thought out and confident answers to all media questions. While not quite as polished, Freeman showed why she is one of the most loved athletes in the country with her honest, transparent and heartfelt views.

Cathy Freeman added her hand to the Sea of Hands, and used the tools provided to write out the word “Love”. Nice one.

The launch was held at Telstra Stadium, with the giant screens being put to good use.

A small physical implementation of the Sea of Hands was there on the day.
The target for the online version is 4 million people, or the equivalent of one in five Australians. You can assist by:
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Posted April 3rd, 2007 by Scott
Years ago, it used to be okay to put up your website with a few pages that said “coming soon”. The truly tacky amongst us supplemented this with animated construction men (myself included!).
These days you can’t get away with such a sloppy effort and still expect people to take you seriously. If you want to know how closely people are watching your Internet efforts, consider that the major websites are now having their “uptime” tracked.
Pingdom shows us the results of the top 20 websites for 2007.

In years gone by your call centre may have gone off line for a few hours, but at least the vast majority of people never knew about it. Now, you take your website off line for even a minute and everybody knows.
It’s a raising of standards, which can only be a good thing.
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