Design House is pleased to anounce that after submitting an application and partaking in the interview process we have been confirmed as a Finalist for:
The Micro-Business Award (for businesses with five or fewer employees):
Graphic design and print company, Design House Fraser Coast, Hervey Bay;
Online lingerie and fashion company, HOTTIE.COM.AU, Hamilton;
Parenting products provider, mumentum, Chermside; and
I’ve decided to start a new venture to provide myself and others with abit of fun and fitness!
The group welcomes all ages, singles, couples, dancers, non dancers and will seek to ensure all have a fantastic time. The music is exciting, the dancing is HOT and the atmosphere electric!
I hope you may enjoy the website and the events too!
Today I was officially invited to attend the community Cabinet Official Luncheon held in the Fraser Room at the Hervey Bay Boat Club with the Hon Anna Bligh MP Premier of Queensland and the Cabinet.
Finger food and light refreshments were served as the guests mingled with the politicians asking questions of relevance and raising suggestions and issues of concerns within our area.
Anna seemed in high spirits and on the mend from her fall / recent injury. Anna was very articulated and interesting speaking confidently in front of the crowd.
Two local Police officers were presented medals of honour from Judy Spence Minister for Police, Corrective Services and Sport for their long service within the Queensland Police department and the local community.
The Premier presented Fraser Coast Regional Mayor Mr Mick Kruger with a cheque for 4.9 million from the government to go towards the proposed Waterpark. We were able to view the actual plans of the Waterpark that will be located at the end of Main Street next to the seafront oval.
The Mayor was also presented a beautiful photograph of the harbour area in Hervey Bay taken in 1973.
Nancy Bates editor of the Fraser Coast Chronicle was congratulated for her 20 years service to the area. The longest period a woman has been an editor in Australia.
Anna also personally autographed my official invite stating, “You go Girlfriend!”
I also met and shook hands with Mr Kerry Shine the Attorney-General and Justice and caught up with our local politicians Andrew McNamara MP, Chris Foley MP and Fraser Coast Mayor Mick Kruger.
If you’re reading this, then you’re using a computer and I have a feeling, reading the Design House Blog is not the only thing you do on your computer. We all use our computers every day for all kinds of important tasks.
A couple of days ago I noticed a clunking noise coming from on of the servers. Naturally I wanted to investigate and get ride of the noise. I pulled the side off the server and took a closer look. As it sounded, it was a power supply fan failing. Lucky I invested in commercial grade power supplies, with redundant cooling fans running, so no damage would come of this. Never the less, it was time to swap over the power supplies and get the server back up asap.
Ironically, two months ago I performed maintenance on all three servers, and replaced power supplies in the other two servers, and didn’t think it was required to replace this one.
However, while I was down working on this server, and had the afternoon free, I decided to test out our disaster recovery plan and backup systems. I had other people using the other servers so it wasn’t a full test of our disaster recovery plan, but I still went ahead testing on the secondary mail server, database and web development server.
After restoring from one of the terabyte backup drives, I was fortunate enough to be able to successfully create and repopulate about 200 MySQL databases and load back up about 95 websites, and all of which operated fine.
Hopefully, all of us backup these days, with external Hard drives being so affordable, but how often do you test your backup is working?
You might plug your drive in every day and backup, but is it actually doing that? It may be having errors, partially copying things, all kinds of errors.
You need to be prepared, or have in place sufficient plans for when your computer dies and looses everything.
This Year I travelled to Sydney for the largest annual ICT show in Australia, known as CeBit.
Now, what is CeBit you might say? Well I wasn’t all that sure either when I signed up, I knew it was IT based and really, that’s all I needed to justify a work trip. CeBit is primarily a trade show for CEOs, CTOs, IT managers and the like to come along and discover what is out there and how they can go back home and optimise to stay at the fore front of the technology arena .
CeBit accommodated for members of the IT industry, from those just starting out to the CTO (Cheif Technology Officers). There were small talks on things like how to utilise the power of Plesk or cPanel and how to maintain a Joomla website plus expert researchers explained what the new Government is trying to do with Broadband and what they need to do.
Apart from these free talks happening everywhere there were also conferences in a lot of web based industries, Web 2.0 in Small business, e-Marketing, SEO and things like DSL discussions plus hearing from Federal members on what they are doing with ICT in Australia.
There was so much new technology out there it was fascinating to learn of some of the products that are in the market and how some can help the smaller business streamline their IT and save money. VOIP seemed to be one of the strongest presences in the expo, along with Wireless transmitters and web hosting.
Speaking of hosting I was fortunate enough to meet the Design House dedicated server & domain name provider, AussieHQ Pty Ltd. I met and socialised with the CEO of the company, my account rep and other techs.
On Saturday Night I attended the Forget Me Not Orphanage Fundraising Ball at Kingfisher Bay Resort on Fraser Island. Design House Fraser Coast donated numerous hours design time to develop artwork including; event posters, tickets, invites and paper ads for the ball. What a sensational night; the atmosphere was electric, the food was delicious, the swing band was going off and the donations were enormous (40K+)! Fraser Coast Regional Council Mayor, Mr Mick Kruger and State MP for Burnett, Mr Rob Messenger were among the many illustrious guests.
Naomi Wood, Mick Kruger and Jeanette Maynes, photographed at the ball.
Congratulations to Rob Garland and Lynda for taking out the best dressed couple award at the ball from our “Jail House Rock” table.
“The Ball last Saturday, May 17th, altogether raised over $40,000 for the Forget Me Not Children’s Home! Enormous appreciation to all who attended and the many businesses and sponsors who contributed in a variety of ways. Huge thanks also to Deb Haigh who worked incredible hours for months as the Ball co-ordinator and to her hard-working planning group.”
There were a few tears in the crowd for what was a moving fundraiser for the orphanage; helping with the provision of shelter, education and most importantly, love to orphans in Nepal.
I’m positive every year will be even more successful with the can do team behind this event and orphanage!
I found this quite amusing, and as a Design Firm, we relate to this every day.
Everyone wants their website, logo and business card to look how they see it in their mind / head and as graphic and website designers - we decipher and transform those thoughts into powerful visual designs concepts.
Last Friday Ben and I attended the 3rdHervey Bay Business Network luncheon with keynote speaker Karni Liddell, who is a successful and respected Paralympics swimmer. Born with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (a muscle wasting disability which affects all body muscles including internal), Karni has defied Doctors and the odds to have not only lived to the age of 29 but to have successfully embarked on an international sporting career.
I found Karni to be a very well spoken, inspirational and articulated young woman. Her will power, strength and life defining moments she kindly informed us off were truly inspirational and motivational. Her courage, competitiveness and drive, I felt was partly instilled by her parents at an early age as they were great role models (her father being a sporting hero also) plus their implementation of a continuous exercise program from the age of 3 has been phenomenal is Karni achieving such remarkable goals.
Karni holds every Australian record in her contested swimming events.
“Achieving things in life people say can’t be done is one of the greatest pleasures in life. Never say never!” Karni Liddell
What a fantastic luncheon and enlightening / motivational presentation and slide show.
Karni is pictured here with; L-R: Rob Garland from Jobsmart, Jeanette Maynes from Design House, Ted Sorensen Mayor of Hervey Bay, David De Bruin from Quantaslink and Scott Rowe Editor of the Independent.
Why do I need to have a total co-ordinated look, for my logo, business cards, website, shop signage etc? A. This forms an essential part of your branding strategy. The main aim is to get the public familiar with your logo, colours and as much to do with your business as possible. You only get one chance to make a dynamic and lasting first impression!
At Design House we specialise in assisting you with your whole business advertising process. Why run from place to place for different print mediums and advice when you can have your marketing and advertising organised for you all under the one roof and hassle free. We have thorough product knowledge, prompt service and only use quality print suppliers; email info@designhouse.com.au for a FREE quote today, let us take your business to the next level!
Design House would like to officially welcome Matthew Rochow to the team. Matt has been on board for two weeks now and his skills in advanced CSS and XHTML enhances our website design and development team. Matt will be working in closely with Ben, our IT Manager on website and multimedia projects.
Matt’s first job was the development of a website for a non profit charity organisation, Riders for Life, in Kambalda, Western Australia.
The Kambalda Equestrian Club is hosting a horse trek, RIDERS FOR LIFE riding 130ks from the township of Norseman to Kambalda. All proceeds raised will be split between the Kambalda Equestrian Club to purchase equipment for the juniors and the Kambalda St John Ambulance Centre. Naomi Andersen.
Design House has donated it’s time to design and develop all the promotional material for the Riders for Life Fundraiser; including logo design, posters, sponsorship package and website. We all hope the Fundraiser is a huge success raising much needed funds for the Kambalda Community. To find out more or download sponsorship forms please click here.
Welcome to the Design House Blog! A Blog is an online news delivery system, here you will be able to read what staff members at Design House are thinking about or what is going on at Design House!
This Year I travelled to Sydney for the largest annual ICT show in Australia, known as 
dressed couple award at the ball from our “Jail House Rock” table.
