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September 2015

- Ms Karen Bolinger - Melbourne has positioned itself as Australia’s intellectual capital by hosting some of the world’s biggest conventions, but to ensure it continues to be seen as such, it will need to adapt to a rapidly changing world.

For Melbourne to remain the countries’ centre of knowledge, it will need continued government involvement as well as investment to maintain its world-class universities and ground-breaking research facilities.

More importantly, it will need strong leaders in these fields to help drive Melbourne’s research agenda. In a decade’s time, retaining, as well as attracting these highly sought after individuals will help Melbourne continue to be a global leader.

September 2015

- Mr Mark Stone - If small business can adapt to an evolving economic and technological landscape, it has the potential to emerge as a formidable sector by 2025.

Technology is impacting how we do business with more and more business taking place online. Videoconferencing and other tools are making communication easier, while social media is playing a larger role in business networking. However, none of these innovations can replace the face to face communication, information sharing and networking that is facilitated by business events.

There will always be a need for businesses to make new connections, rekindle old ones, learn from each other, share experiences and hear from leaders in their fields. There are fundamental benefits in people getting together and interacting that cannot be replicated online. The face to face connections that are made at business events can lay the groundwork for strong working and business relationships which can grow over time. 

September 2015

- Lord Mayor Robert Doyle - Flying cars and robotic servants or bikes and feet in 10 years? Trends are all about the people in the world’s most liveable city.

As a boy, my favourite television show was “The Jetsons”, a 1966 cartoon family of the ‘future’: that is, of 2016!The Jetsons promised that we would all be driving flying cars and be waited on by robotic servants. 

If you had said to people in the 1960s that the future is all about bicycles and public transport and walking, they would have laughed at you. In fact, that is what has happened.

Over the last three years, we have invested more than $10 million to increase connectivity and safety across the bike network in Melbourne.

We now have more than 136 kilometres of bike lanes throughout our city, and cyclists account for 17 per cent of all vehicles coming into the city, which is nearly double what it was in 2008.

I have no doubt these figures will grow significantly over the next ten years, as we aim to further boost the number of people riding into the city from surrounding suburbs and encourage residents to use bikes around their neighbourhoods.

June 2015

In March at the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) Global EDGE Conference at MCEC, the Open Digital Earth Foundation was launched, featuring the astonishing Foundation Globe - a type of next generation google earth.

The Foundation Globe is a complex data map of resources with the ability to create and share information on the wellbeing of human kind.

A particular value of the Foundation Globe is its capacity to visualise combined spatial environmental, social and economic information, and in doing so deliver valuable insights for complex decisions, especially with non-expert communities.

Showcase topics featured in the Foundation Globe include infrastructure, food security and health. The datasets within health explore global life expectancy rates and health expenditure, with a local focus on the spatial patterns of the Ebola virus, for example.

June 2015

Surprise would be an understatement, describing Professor Milton Hearn’s reaction upon learning that he was the recipient of the prestigious 2015 Alan S. Michaels Award from the American Chemical Society.

“I am thrilled that the research my team and I have carried out has been recognised for its global and environmental impact,” Club Melbourne Ambassador Professor Hearn AM said.

The Award, conferred in March in Denver Colorado, acknowledges the outstanding research and practice contributions towards the advancement of science and technology for the recovery of biological products.

Fundamental research in this field has revealed new avenues to produce safe and effective drugs and well as many other applications in the life and chemical sciences.