AIIA CEO, Sheryle Moon, said that while the parties bickered over who had the best plan for Australia’s broadband future; the underlying issues were not being addressed.

“Live yourself through to a new way of thinking”: Keith Suter – AIIA SFF 18 Oct 2007.

AIIA Victoria, with the help of dedicated sponsors and supporters, hosted an ICT Sustainable Futures Forum at Melbourne’s Docklands on Thursday 18 October 2007.

The forum, sought to answer vital questions about the role ICT can play in transforming businesses into proactive entities when dealing with environment and business sustainability issues. Through keynote speakers and panel sessions, the forum delved into the minds of some of Australia’s, if not the world’s leaders, in ICT driven green initiatives.

Over the course of the next few weeks we will be including more information about the forum speakers by providing a snapshot on their topic and linking readers to their forum podcast.

In this edition we draw your attention to the two keynote sessions delivered by Malcolm Simister and Dr. Keith Suter.

Malcolm Simister, financial commentator and green leader spoke on the ‘green program for executives’ and set the forum on the path of understanding why “less is better”. According to Malcolm, some of our major problems are not technologically problems - we already have the solution for global warming and water conservation. Malcolm discussed the roles that each of the key C-level executives can play in changing our attitudinal, social, psychological and political agendas to achieve these objectives.

Dr. Keith Suter, the Director of Studies, International Law Association, delivered one of the important and challenging keynote presentations of the day, ‘the imperative of sustainability and the important role that the ICT industry can play’ (towards a more sustainable future). 

Dr. Suter noted that in Australia, we had been through two previous environmental waves that brought on governmental change and despite the issues having disappeared from mainstream media, progress had been made in what he described as the “ratchet affect” – pressures bring about political changes that build up upon each other despite an issue having a cyclical life in the public consciousness.

According to Dr. Suter, we are now heading into the “third wave” but this will have the longest impact on the earth and we will find out over the next few decades whether humankind is the “global cancer of the global brain”. He sees an immediate and long-term role for ICT Industry and in particular he points out that the particular challenge in the long-term is for ICT to become the brain.

Dr. Suter was able to capture the attention of his audience with his extensive scholarly knowledge and experience on the politics and socio-economics of sustainability and climate change. In his final message for the day he made the following observational statement:
 
“Don’t think yourself through to a new way of living … you live yourself through to a new way of thinking …”

II is our own experience that gives way to a new way of thinking and that is what is what seems to be happening with the environment issue - we are all becoming very concerned about it!

Speaker presentations are available as podcasts and videocasts from the AIIA website.

Forum podcasts are now available on the AIIA website for these speakers

Presentations from AIIA's Sustainable Futures Forum are now available online.

Vodcasts and podcasts from the event will be added over the coming days, so keep an eye out on AIIA's Sustainable Futures Forum Multimedia webpage.

AIIA is proud to host Experience isn't what it used to be: finding and growing the talent you need on Thursday 1 November in Sydney.