Port Stephens and taking the initiative

29 Novermber 2010

I visited Port Stephens over the weekend. Its about 3hrs away from Sydney and is a quiet beach town with some very beautiful beaches.

The best part is that after every few kms you get a different beach. There is a lot of water activities to do or you can just laze in the sun.

Now back at work, feeling refreshed and getting back to finalising the website.

One of the things that came up was to see what to do with the current GSP website. The original developers wanted a $150/hr for any changes that we were proposing and we would be dependent on them every time for any future changes.

I then looked up the APN directory and started calling people with web developer as their job title with the hope that we could make use of some people from within the organisation and I was right.

I had been in touch with some experts in APN at different sites and can confidently say that the new GSP website will not only be better than the previous one, it will also be future proofed at virtually no cost.

Just shows that there is so much expertise around this organisation. One just needs to take the initiative and ask for it!

Week 1 finishes in GSP

10 Nov. 2010

Right, so here I am in Prestons in Sydney.
For those familiar with Auckland, this is the area near East Tamaki or the Airport; a mainly industrial zone where unless you have a vehicle at your disposal you wont really get around very far.

I said my goodbyes and finished up with NZ Mags on the 29th of October and packed my bag and headed over to Sydney on the 31st of October.

Day 1 at work was on the 1st of November. Luckily yellow pages had helped me secure a hotel which was about 10 mins walking distance from GSP, for which I was eternally grateful.
Like I mentioned earlier, not having a vehicle was a serious setback.

GSP is a specialist printer for large-format printing. They produce out-of-home advertising and point-of-sale. They are the only large-format printer to have in-house equipment for every part of a campaign - from screen printing to wide-format digital.

All the nerves disappeared by the end of day one as I met and Andrew Thornberry (Client Service and Traffic manager) who firstly, took me for a tour around the massive 5000m2 purpose built facility and then introduced me to the rest of the team at GSP and then we caught up with Peter Piccione (General Manager).

We quickly got on to business and got an overview from Peter and Andrew about GSP. The way the business had been shaping up; how it fits into APN and the financial results and trends.

Outside of work, Week 1 was spent trying to find accommodation and I was lucky to sort that out with great help from Tammy and Tracy.

So the current situation is that work goes full steam ahead with GSP and I catch a bus to and from work which takes me an hour each way.
Can’t remember how long ago, public transport and I last met up!!