VitiVolatics: Vineyards with Photovoltaics

Greetings from the University of Adelaide where I am attending the Sustainability spotlight series (seminar 1) on VitiVolatics, with Professors Cassandra Collins, Armando Corsi and their students. Professor Collins defined VitiVolatics as being about optimising solar power generation and wine quality. In retrospect, the idea seems obvious, and deceptively simple: use solar panels to shade grape vines, providing power while improving growing conditions.

AgrVolatics (Agriculture under PhotoVoltaics) have considerable potential in Australia. As well as the practical aspects, this could be politically useful, by allowing large solar farms which do not stop agricultural production and provide additional income for farmers. This approach is applicable to berries, fruit and leafy vegetables, as well as smaller livestock, but not grains.

An amusing aside in the seminar was that most of the carbon footprint of winemaking comes from packaging, so drink casks wine! ;-) More seriously, the temperature in winemaking regions is increasing, which PV could address. 

It would be interesting to see if the same pre-wired folded panels to be used on the large scale project to export power to Singapore could be used for agriculture. It would also be interesting to see if AgrVolatics are viable in Northern Australia, at a large scale. Interestingly the students have designed an approach to attaching lightweight flexible solar panels to a framework using common off the shelf hardware (steel from local hardware store and electronics from the local hobbyist store). This allows manual installation, compared to the machinery required for heavier rigid panels and the steel mountings used by the solar industry. 

One issue is the aesthetics of large expanses of solar panels across traditional wine growing regions. This seems a little odd, as shade cloth and plastic sheets are already used on a large scale for protecting grapes. However, renewable energy can be triggering for some, so requires research.

Interestingly University of Adelaide is not just researching the engineering and viticulture of PV panels over grape vines, but how to market this to wine drinkers. The idea is to sell the resulting wine using a positive environmental message about carbon emissions. 

At question time I asked if green coloured solar panels would be more acceptable. This is possible using coloured film over conventional blue cells, without a large loss in efficiency. It would make the panels much less visible.

OK RDY Wins iAward for Diversity

Timothy McKay from OK  RDY and
Tom Worthington ANU at AIIA iAwards

Greetings from the AIIA awards. Way back in 2017, I had the pleasure of mentoring a team working on the OK RDY mentoring platform in the Innovation ACT competition. Timothy McKay accepted the iAward for diversity tonight. Good to see OK RDY going from strength to strength.

AIIA iAwards

Dr Catherine Galvin & Tom Worthington 
at iAwards in Adelaide. 

Greetings from Adelaide where I am attending the AIIA iAwards. Dr Catherine Galvin has a team competing for an award and I am mentoring a team of ANU Techlauncher students competing in another category. 

The Deputy Premier of DA is giving the keynote. In this she mentioned the merger of Uni SA and Adelaide Uni. It will be interesting to see what effect the Australian Government's decision to limit international enrollments will have on the merged entity.

Building the Australia Tech Industry in Adelaide

Tom Worthington with the student team:
Ethan Teber-Rossi & Steven Nguyen at Deloitte

Greetings from Deloitte in Adelaide, where a team of ANU Techlauncher students is competing in the national AIIA iAwards. It was only yesterday the students were told that I am not doing the presentation, they are. That required changing the outlook of the presentation to a student perspective, which made it much better. It is is difficult as the students have to talk about their own project, as well as the university's way to deliver experiential education. Ethan Teber-Rossi and Steven Nguyen, from the "FireApp" team in Techlauncher are presenting.

So far nothing strange in Adelaide

Greetings from the State Library of South Australia cafe. In Adelaide for the AIIA iAwards. So far nothing odd has happened. Last time I bumped into the now Vice Chancellor of ANU writing a report for the SA government. On a previous visit I bumped into another professor writing a report on tech development for government. 

On the last occasion I was giving a talk on open source software for submarines and before that inspecting a defence company at a tech park. This time I am mentoring students competing in the iAwards.

Untangling Australian Higher Education from Migration Policy

Professor Andrew Norton (Australian National University) makes a well reasoned case for Australia not needing caps on international student numbers. He suggests recent changes to regulations will be sufficient to correct problems with the system. However, I suggest some of these problems are political, rather than administrative, but the government's proposed close regulation will make things harder for them, rather than easier. Universities should be ready with alternative policy proposals, for when this government, or a future one, realises they need another solution.

As Professor Norton points out the pent up demand for international education caused by COVID coincided with a a shortage of housing in Australia. But as other commentators have pointed out, these are not necessarily connected: students have different housing needs. Reducing the number of students competing for inner-city share houses and on-campus dorms, will not provide suburban houses for Australian families.

The Australia government proposes to set quotas for the number of students in each course at each university. A political calculation has been made to set the quotas higher at regional universities in sensitive electorates, and lower for capital city universities. The elite capital city universities are perceived to be well off and it is assumed will not elicit sympathy from voters. It is likely a flawed calculation.

Apart from the politics, Australia needs universities to provide a trained workforce to service the community and support the economy. International student revenue has been used to supplement decreasing funding from government. 

In my submission to the accord panel, I suggested Australian universities need to design an education product which appeals to both domestic and international students. These should not be reliant on a work visa to be attractive to international students. They should not be dependent on students, international or domestic, being at a particular location, country, or on a campus. The universities should end the arms race of offering more and more advanced degree programs to each student. Vocational and university offerings should be combined to meet current real world work needs. Education should be offered online wherever the student is, in small nested packages, which can build into degrees.

Designing Tomorrow: Strategic Design Tactics to Change Your Practice, Organisation, and Planetary Impact

Martin Tomitsch and Steve Baty at ANU. 
Photo by Tom Worthington CC-BY 2014.

Greetings from the Australian National University, where Martin Tomitsch and Steve Baty are talking about their book "Designing Tomorrow: Strategic Design Tactics to Change Your Practice, Organisation, and Planetary Impact". The event is hosted by ACM SIGCHI Chapter for Canberra and the ANU School of Cybernetics. The approach advocated in the book will be very familiar to engineers, computer professionals and other design based disciplines, but may also be of interest to others.

Google on Designing Tech Policy for AI

Greetings from the"Special Conversation with Kent Walker: President of Global Affairs @ Google" hosted by the Australian National University. Dr Walker cautioned against over regulation of AI, suggesting this be by application depending on the output, not input. Regulation of technology is not easy. The Australian Computer Society elected me a fellow for my work on public policy for Internet regulation (or it may have been for bravery fronting up to explain the Internet to the Senate).

Dr Walker gave the example of requiring someone to walk with a red flag in front of motor vehicle as an example of over-regulation. However, this was at a time when roads were not designed for motor vehicles, there were no safety standards for cars, or driving tests. It was not acceptable then, and I suggest not acceptable now to see how many people the technology mames and kills, before considering regulation. That may sound an exxeration, but the Australian government is acquiring up to 10,000 smart sea mines, each capable of sinking a ship, along with funding the development of robot aircraft and submarines. 

Dr Walker argued for shorter qualifications to keep up with needs and provide more flexibility. 

Presumably Dr Walker will be having a similar discussion with lawmakers in Parliament House, just up the road. It is useful to know the thinking of one of the companies involved in developing AI. Google was caught out by the popularity of Chat GPT and it is good to see them now taking the issues seriously.

Trying Mastodon in Plance of Twitter/X: So far So Good

Recently I have noticed more annoying messages on X/Twitter than interesting content. Not the extreme stuff reported in the media, just annoying. So I am trying Mastodon. As I understand it, Mastodon is a free open source self hosted social network, similar in spirit to the old Usenet. So far I am not seeing much content, which is good. My first post drew criticism, but it was mild, and from an acquaintance, which is a kind of welcome to the system. I have tried looking for some education, defence and computing conference, but I am not exactly sure where to look. But it took me week to work out hot to use Usenet (a long, long time ago). Every now and then I get a hankering to look at Twitter, but so far am resisting the temptation.

AUKUS Beyond Nuclear Submarines

Last week I attended "AUKUS: Assumptions & Implications": a two day conference organized by the Academy of the Social Sciences. AUKUS is a partnership between Australia, USA & UK, announced in 2021. Originally it aimed to provide Australia with conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarines, but has more recently broadened with other defence cooperation. The conference was held at the Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW), which was apposite, given some of the discussion was about China's reaction to AUKUS. his conference showed the value of academics and researchers in giving an independent perspective on contentious issues, and offering a platform for discussion of important public issues. 

Coffee before formalities was a meeting of the old guard. I was asked by someone if I recalled them from Defence Capabilities Branch in 1997, when I worked on technology policy at the Department of Defence. I can't even remember the branch. ;-)

Normally I would include a photo of the event, but this was a strictly :"no photographs" conference. This was odd as there were numerous journalists in attendance and the event has been reported in the media.

Some of the high profile speakers

Professor Ross Garnaut

Professor Ross Garnaut's keynote took us back to the power politics and economics of WWI. He traced Australia's transition from the UK to the USA as our major ally. He talked about the "golden age" of the 1980s, with Australian economic prosperity based on exports. He warned that AUKUS was returning to the old and familiar, rather than the difficulty of a relationship with Asia. Also he warned "We are becoming a cranky and divided community". Professor Garnaut argued Australia should be exporting "immense" amount of energy and green refined metals, using equipment supplied by China, with US protectionist policies assisting this.

Professor Garnaut described AUKUS as an economic opportunity for UK submarine exports and questions how long US commitment to the Pacific west of Hawaii will last. He then told an anecdote about discussions with the Bush administration on Australia standing by US to defend Taiwan (and saying Australia would not).

Getting back to economic,s Professor Garnaut showed a chart of the rapid Chinese exports from 2000, and it becoming a larger trading partner for most countries than USA by 2011. He suggested going to war without a consensus was undemocratic. He suggested India and Indonesia could balance China's dominance, but without drawing them into a close military alliance.

Professor Garnaut suggested China military occupation of Taiwan would be prohibitively expensive. In closing Professor Garnaut argued Australia could remain a US ally without joining a war over Taiwan. He suggested joining such a war would result in isolation of Australia from Asia.

An interesting question, from a banker, was about Australia deepening ties with Korea and Japan. Professor Garnaut said he would leave it to other speakers, but suggested military purchases were not the best way for Australia to secure relations with Korea and Japan. That may be the case, but I suggest the combination of their expertise with manufacturing, plus Australia's AI skills, could produce weapons systems to match the best in the world.

Professor Gareth Evans

Professor Gareth Evans view on AUKUS is detailed in an article published concurrent with the conference: "AUKUS is terrible for Australian national interests – but we’re probably stuck with it". In his address, Professor Evans argued that missiles and drones would be more important to defence than submarines, but Australia was already committed to AUKUS by both major political parties. I agree with the first part of this, but not the second. 

Ghost Shark prototype built in Sydney.
Photo from DoD 2024

Australian Government funded development of the Ghost Shark autonomous extra-large unmanned undersea vehicle (XLUUV) is reported to be proceeding well and ahead of US government sponsored technology. It would be possible to redefine the AUKUS agreement by placing more emphasis on Pillar 2, with Australia's contribution being autonomous technology, rather than crewed submarines. 

Rear Admiral Peter Clarke (RAN Retired)

In the introduction to his presentation, it was pointed out that Rear Admiral Peter Clarke was the only one in the room who had commanded a nuclear submarine (before joining the RAN). The former Admiral gave an expert assessment of the advantages of nuclear submarines over conventionally powered ones. However, other speakers had pointed out there were alternatives to both. 

UUVs will be superior to crewed submarines for their primary mission of  surveillance. In addition an Australian fleet of 500 XLUUVs would be able to place the 10,000 smart sea mines Australia is acquiring, around harbour entrances and sea lanes, denying an enemy the ability to operate their warships (without hindering civilian trade). UUVs would be less useful for maritime strike, and not at all suited to land strike, but the strategic value of those missions is questionable. Conventional weapons would have limited effect, and if they did have a significant effect this might prompt a nuclear response.

Australian Universities Campaign Against International Student Cutbacks Takes to the Airwaves

Universities Australia has ramped up its "Universites Matter" campaign, with  advertisements on broadcast TV.  The advertisement depicts research helping Australian health and industry. There is no direct mention of recent government moves to restrict the numbers of international students, but clearly the campaign is being run in response. 

Half jokingly I had previously suggested dressing students in high visibility vests and medical scrubs and show them building houses and caring for the aged, which is essentially what this campaign is does. Universities have been relatively restrained in response to government restrictions on international students. Campaigns by industries such as mining, when threatened by government action, have been far more direct. Government members and ministers will have made a careful political calculation that votes from being seen to cracking down on foreigners will play well with the electorate. Universites, I suggest, need to remind voters that it is themselves, their friends and families, who will suffer as a result, from loss of jobs, income and services.

Skills for Career

Joe Schmetzer,
Head of Software Engineering,
Applied AI at Penten

Greetings from the Australian National University where Joe Schmetzer , Head of Software Engineering, Applied AI at Penten is talking to ANU Techlauncher students about "Skills for a Tech Career". Beforehand I introduced a small assessed task for students, which is to find a job or other opportunity and explain why they have the skills and knowledge for it.

This morning I was interviewed by Kristina Hoeppner for her Portfolio Podcast series "Create. Share. Engage". I explained that for Techlauncher we have disguised the capstone e-portfolio reflection exercise as a job application. Joe is now taking students through what he likes to see from applicants. He has students do a short coding exercise, which is not unusual for a technical job but a "cultural interview" is. After the code test the Penten Head of Operations asks the applicant why they are there and they have an idea of what the company they are applying to. This is something STEM graduates tend to have difficulty with. It helps if students have done some sort of practical project. Joe then talked about the Trident Career Model. 

Later the ANU Careers and Employability staff took students through a series of careers exercises. The RIASEC categorised me as being Realistic, Artistic & Investigative, suggesting I could be a Landscape Architect. As it happens I did an introductory design course for architects and industrial designers. 

Stackable Micro Credentials from UNSW Canberra

  Professor Blackburn, UNSW.
Photo by Tom Worthington CC-BY 2024.

Greetings from First Wednesday Connect at Canberra Innovation Network. The pitch from Professor Deborah Blackman hooked me with on Stackable Micro Credentials UNSW Canberra. UNSW offers very short training modules (called microcredentials). These can be used for credit towards a larger qualification, usually a graduate certificate. The idea is to supplement, rather than replace, conventional courses and qualifications, to top-up skills and knowledge quickly where needed. 

UNSW Canberra were hosting the event and this was a good opportunity to learn more about the business model behind their new Canberra CBD campus. What I couldn't understand was where UNSW was going to get all the students to fill the new classrooms: where they expecting to attract undergraduates to canberra from around Australia, or the world? The answer which became clear from a series of pitches from UNSW staff was that the new campus would focus on postgraduates, work shills and the needs of the Australian Public Service, the defence community and industry.

Australian industry, the public service and defence needs workers with new skills. Outbidding other employers for experienced staff is expensive, as is headhunting abroad. The better way to acquire stared staff is to take the staff you have and train them further. In 19 years with the Australian Public Service I was regularly sent on training courses run by top people in their field*. One problem in that system was the training was not formally recognised. Systems of nested microcredentials allow for recognition. I suggest this is the core of the future of Australian higher education. Unfortunately Australian universities are well behind their international competition, especially Singapore, with this.

ps: * Sometimes the training could be excessive. I was sent on two project management courses back to back. After a few days of intensive training I was ready to knot the sheets together and escape from my monk-like room in the Melbourne Business schools, but the windows did not open. ;-)

Water Politics Young People and Rap

Greetings from "Intersectional voices in water politics: an exploration of the Menindee fish death disaster, and what public discourse and research can do better" by Dr Hannah Feldman. They identified the difference between older and younger people's approach to issues such as climate change and water politics. 

It occured to me that part of this is the mode of communication. On a trip to Menindee, at the Yaama Ngunna Baaka Corroboree Festival. 2019, I saw a jaw dropping performance by Dobby. He was later able to bridge the gap from performance in the outback to a national art gallery, Warrangu River Story.

Killing Bushfires with Drones

Associate Professor Roslyn Prinsley,
Head of Disaster Solutions,
ANU Institute for Climate,
Energy & Disaster Solutions

Associate Professor Roslyn Prinsley, Head of Disaster Solutions, ANU Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions is taking about ways to prevent natural disasters. One of these being worked on at the Australian National University is to detect lightening strikes, resulting bushfires and quickly targeting them from the air with drones. This is a very challenging application as bushfires can start in large areas of Australia, and there can be thousands of lightning strikes which can potentially start a fire. Such a system can't simply water bomb every potential fire. This was at the ANU Disaster Solutions Update 2024.  The event is available live online.

The approach Professor Prinsley outlined was for small spot fires to be detected by UAVs and targeted with water dropped by steered parachutes. Such as system would be similar to those needed to defend Australia. Such a system has to scan large areas, decide what is a potential target deploy assets & assess results. Recent conflicts have shown it is no longer feasible to do this with crewed systems & human decision making. There are too many potential targets to be serviced & too much happening too quickly.

Minister says we are still putting homes in harm's way

The Hon Stephen Jones MP,
Assistant Treasurer and Minister
for Financial Services

Greetings from the ANU Disaster Solutions Update 2024, with Stephen Jones, Minister for Financial Services giving the keynote at the Australian National University's Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions. He pointed out that in the past government have not done a good job, for example building low cost housing in areas which flood: "Its the fact that we are still putting homes in harm's way" , "We have to stop doing dumb things." He then went on to point out the importance of insurance, not only in paying out, but also influencing what gets built where. He went on to discuss what measures government needs to take to reduce the risk, encouraging people to put in place mitigation measures, as well as action by government.

The event is available live online.