My latest heritage piece on the City of Adelaide website. This one is based on a State Library photo album containing photos of buildings that have mostly been demolished in the city, like the wonderful Exhibition Building that used to stand on North Terrace…see below. A bit of a travesty. The full heritage piece is…
Category: Articles
The old pubs of North Adelaide
I published a little piece on the old pubs of North Adelaide that features some great old photography from the State Library. See the full piece here: https://explore.cityofadelaide.com.au/see-and-do/heritage-culture/old-pubs-of-north-adelaide/ Linkedin post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/claytonwehner_designedforlife-pubs-hotels-activity-6629885864950493184-fQIj Did you know some of the oldest hotels in South Australia can be found in North Adelaide? The British Hotel (1837) on Finniss Street and the Queen’s…
Article: Ben Folds and his ‘home town’ of Adelaide
I’m a big fan of Ben Folds…did you know he lived in Adelaide once? I wrote an article about it over on the Adelaide Living blog… Adelaide is recognised as the ‘home town’ of many talented Australian musicians – Sia Furler, Jimmy Barnes, Paul Kelly, Guy Sebastian to name a few – but it was…
Article: How digital technology can help South Australia fix its health system
I wrote this piece to try and score a job in digital health…didn’t get the job… The South Australian Government recently announced that the new Royal Adelaide Hospital (nRAH) will open on 5 September 2017. The announcement comes after a series of delays and contractual disputes that have postponed the hospital’s opening by almost 18…
Amazon is coming to Australia
As a small-time book retailer, I have always followed the fortunes of the company that pioneered online bookselling way back in the 1990s—Amazon.com. Despite not turning a profit for many years after its launch, Amazon has now hit its straps. It recently became the world’s eighth largest retailer and has signalled a massive growth phase with plans…
An Industry Analysis of the Australian Print Bookselling Industry
The following is an assignment that I wrote for the Strategic Management unit in my MBA. We were required to produce an industry analysis incorporating strategic management frameworks and tools, such as Porter’s Five Forces and PEST analysis. I’m publishing it here because it might be of interest to booksellers or other strategic management students….
This is the article that got me fired at an organisation
The Folly of ‘Flex’ Time Instituting a formal employee ‘flex time’ program in a white-collar organisation is folly. The public service hasn’t worked this out yet. A ‘flex time’ program allows staff members to accumulate ‘credits’ for time worked over and above their standard working hours, enabling them to take that time off in lieu…
The learning spaces of the future
The humble classroom looks destined to be confined to the annals of history. I attended a meeting the other day to discuss what campus ‘learning spaces’ will look like in 25 years’ time. That’s a long time horizon and it’s extremely difficult to predict with any degree of certainty how the classroom of 2041 will function. But…
7 Quick Tips that Help Me Write Better
My university thesis supervisor once admonished me for using a ‘split infinitive’. I nodded my head, feigned surprise that I would make such a glaring error, and told him that I would fix it up. Later, I looked up ‘split infinitive’ in the dictionary because I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about….
12 Things that Weirded Me Out in the United States
Earlier this year I spent a fortnight in the United States, visiting Indianapolis, New York, San Francisco and Salt Lake City. I hadn’t been to the US for over ten years. Here are the twelve things that ‘weirded me out’ in the US. 1. They have those old school buses from the movies. You know…
The most unusual South Australian place names
Ever been to Prominent Nob? Perhaps Break Wind Reserve? What about Mount Buggery? Maybe Bumcooler Flat No. 1? A newly-released map reveals some of Australia’s most peculiar place names – and they’re all fair dinkum, dinky-di place names – not made-up names! The Strumpshaw, Tincleton and Giggleswick Marvellous Map of Actual Australian Place Names is a…
Five local government areas in 5km
Adelaide has got to be the only city in the world where you can drive 5km and pass through five different local government areas. Heck, when I walk my dog, I pass through three council areas and am subject to three different by-laws in relation to dog walking! In Walkerville, it’s OK to have the dog off…
Cadet slang from the Australian Defence Force Academy
In 1987, a booklet of cadet slang entitled ‘LEGOLINGO‘ was released. Compiled by Bill Cowham, the booklet ‘put down on paper the peculiar slang used by cadets at the Australian Defence Force Academy’ (ADFA) in its first two years of operation from 1986-87. In 1993, my old English lecturer Bruce Moore published a book entitled A…
Two wide-eyed Aussies visit Linkedin in San Francisco
Recently I spent two weeks in the United States attending a conference and I had the opportunity to visit two of the world’s biggest internet companies in San Francisco, Google and Linkedin. Like many tech enthusiasts, I have a bit of a fascination with Silicon Valley and the global internet behemoths that originated there. So…
Empathise, ideate, intervene
I have been studying systems thinking in my MBA class this semester and one of our recent sessions dealt with the relationship between adaptive leadership (a topic that forms the basis for an earlier unit in the MBA) and systems thinking. Quite clearly they are interrelated (the originator of adaptive leadership, Ronald Heifetz, is a…
Relinquish control for better leadership
The traditional conception of leadership has the leader as the ‘hero’, standing boldly at the front of those who wish to be led, and possessing common traits of intelligence, drive, vision and integrity. Modern leadership theories see leadership as a more subtle activity, built less on authority and control, and more on self-awareness, emotional intelligence,…
Survival Training
‘You have just survived a crash landing of your aircraft in the jungle’, bellowed the Warrant Officer. It was 3am in the morning, bitterly cold and pitch black. I was one of about 150 officer cadets from the Australian Defence Force Academy, standing on a narrow dirt road in the middle of a thick forest, somewhere…
European carp and systems thinking
Anyone who spends time on the River Murray knows that the introduced pest, the bottom-feeding European Carp, dominates the river ecosystem and has all but destroyed our native species of fish. According to the ABC, carp make up 80% of the fish biomass and cause $500 million of environmental damage each year. To counter the carp’s…
The Pie Floater, Adelaide’s Most Famous Culinary Contribution?
Doesn’t that photo of a pie floater just make your mouth water? Tender beef chunks in a rich gravy, encased in golden, flaky pastry, up-ended in a steaming hot bowl of hearty green pea soup. Optional condiments, often applied liberally, include tomato sauce, vinegar or Worcestershire sauce. There’s nothing I like better than devouring a hot pie floater,…
A Systems Thinking Analysis of Australia’s Use of Offshore Processing Centres for Unlawful Non-Citizens who arrive by Unauthorised Boat
I’ve just listened to Professor Gillian Triggs, the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, speaking on the ABC’s The World Today (Wed 10 August 2016) about a leak of over 2,000 case documents alleging sexual and physical abuse and self-harm in Australia’s immigration detention centre on Nauru. Just last week, my MBA syndicate group submitted an essay…