On the 21^st of June, I will be participating in the 2012 Vinnies CEO Sleepout.

I will spend the night in the middle of winter sleeping outside, under the same conditions as homeless people do every night. That means: no bedding comforts, no wallet and no Blackberry! The discomfort with spending a night sleeping on the streets will hopefully give an insight into what 105,000 Australians experience every night.

The aim of the Vinnies CEO Sleepout is not only to raise funds, but raise awareness of homelessness. The goal of the event is not just to service the homeless, but to contribute to bringing about an end to homelessness.

My personal goal this year is to raise one dollar for each night that I will have enjoyed sleeping in a warm bed. Based on my somewhat limited maths skills, I work that out to be $9,764.

I am asking for your help not just to achieve my goal, but more importantly to contribute to St Vincent De Paul’s funding of new projects and allow them to expand their programs to assist the homeless through crisis accommodation, domestic violence support and access to counselling, life and occupational skills, legal advice and education.

Any contribution (whether it be a night, a week, a month) would be greatly appreciated! Last year the event raised over $4.2 million. I very much hope this year will be another success.

To donate online, please go to: http://www.ceosleepout.org.au/ceos/vic-ceos/profile/?ceo=1645

For more information on the event and how money raised is spent, go to www.ceosleepout.org.au

Regards,

Matt

I am pleased to announce that Aspect have made the BRW Fast Starters list in their third year of eligibility.

After coming 92^nd in 2010, 53^rd, in 2011, Aspect polled at number 36 in the 2012 BRW Fast Starters list.

The BRW Fast Starters list recognises Australia’s fastest growing young businesses.

For entrepreneurs and start-up businesses to have qualified, they must:

• Have commenced trading after June 30, 2006
• Have reported at least two fiscal years of revenue
• Reported revenue of more than $500,000 in 2010-11
• Revenue for 2010-11 must have been higher than 2009-10
• Have 200 or fewer full-time employees
• Have more than one main customer
• The bulk of revenue cannot come from government grants or other start-up funding
• Business must be Australian-owned, not a subsidiary of a foreign-owned multinational
• Private companies must have revenue figures verified by an external accountant or auditor

Aspect recorded company growth of over 77% in the last financial year while retaining 100% of their staff for the 2^nd year in a row.

This announcement recognises the continued hard work of the team at Aspect and their drive for service excellence.

Thank you to the continued support of all our business’s stakeholders. We look forward to continuing our business growth and further developing our service offerings.

Matt

Last Friday Mark and I volunteered our time to help out the Conservation Volunteers Australia, who are working in conjunction with Landcare on a series of projects around Kinglake.

The projects they are working on will assist landowners who were affected by the 2009 Victorian bushfires, in some cases losing everything. These projects help create better homes for the wildlife and plants, as well as the people.

The project we worked on was in Kinglake West, about an hour out of Melbourne CBD.

Before arriving I have to admit I was a little worried, as it was mentioned in the brief that the day could involve fence building, both of us having a severe lack of experience with the such, I thought it could be quite disastrous. Thankfully (for everyone involved) there was no fence building after all…probably worked out for the best. Instead, throughout the day we helped plant native plants, remove weeds and clear over-grown bush tracks.

It was a great day getting to know some of the other volunteers and being out in the fresh air. Special thanks to Landcare for providing a lovely morning tea and BBQ lunch!

For more information on Landcare :

http://goulburnbroken.landcarevic.net.au/ugln

http://landcarefirerecovery.blogspot.com.au/search/label/lorax

Or if you want to volunteer with the Conservation Volunteers Australia: http://www.conservationvolunteers.com.au/get-involved/volunteer

Currently there are approximately 8000 families affected by childhood and adolescent cancer in Australia.

Redkite provide real and practical support for the whole family from the moment of diagnosis, throughout treatment and when families return home to the community.

Redkite provides financial and education assistance as well as emotional support within the hospital environment through social workers and music therapists. They also support within the community, including telephone and email counselling, bereavement support and family days.

Redkite receives no government funding and relies entirely on the generosity of the community to provide these important services.

Last quarter the Team at Aspect raised $240 to donate to this great cause.

For more information go to: http://www.redkite.org.au/

Aspect is proud to announce that we raised over $338.00 to support the Red Cross East Africa Drought Appeal.

Australian Red Cross raised over $3 million dollars – with which these funds are being used to provide drought affected communities with emergency relief assistance, such as food for school children and water for people living in Dadaab, one of the largest refugee camps in Kenya, near the Somali border.

If you would like to help there are also still a range of appeals for East Africa running through the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and donations can be made directly to Kenya Red Cross, Ethiopia Red Cross and Somali Red Crescent.

For more information about this and other Emergency Response Programs: http://www.redcross.org.au/current-emergency-responses.aspx

After the large amount of chocolate and hot cross buns that had been consumed, the Aspect team rolled out from behind their desks and took their places around the A-Bar for a very serious egg painting competition!

Not since our childhood had so many glitter pens, felt shapes, paint and googly eyes been used! Desperately trying to remember what we learned in Primary School art class, Sanj questioned “How do you make pink again?”

After grabbing for the best craft materials, our egg characters started to take shape… some people clearly more skilled in this area than others.  Maxine’s approach was to glue as much onto the egg as possible, and cover with as much glitter as possible – which actually worked!  Mark, getting frustrated that the glue wouldn’t dry quickly enough, wrapped his strange looking ‘Angel Egg’ in sellotape!  Sanj surprised us all with an impressive attempt at a pig, though it was Cassie’s efforts of a penguin which took first place.

The humble winner insisted that the reason behind the victory was not that she had been practising all week, but that, being the youngest, she was the most recent to have left school.

We believe you Cassie…

If recruiting at the moment is not ‘tough enough’, Mark Parrent and Adam Brown of Aspect Personnel joined 7 other questionably crazy team mates from their ‘FKN Tough Mudders’ team down at Phillip Island for Australia’s inaugural Tough Mudder event.

Two months ago they set out on a punishing training regime to ready themselves; finally the date had arrived.

Clearly, they were not the only ones who thought that this would be a good idea; they were joined by a world record number of more than 21,000 “Mudders” to compete on the Saturday alone!

After hours of protein shakes, high fives, pump-up music, stretching and pre event nerves, they (along with thousands of others) swore their “Tough Mudder” pledge ‘help our fellow Mudder complete the course’ and set off on their challenge to the booming sounds of “Eye of the Tiger”.

Designed by British Special Forces, Tough Mudder is a 20km cross country style course with military style obstacles designed to test your all around strength, stamina, mental grit, and camaraderie. It is claimed to be ‘probably the toughest event on the planet’.

After 3+ hours they crossed the finish line, as they had started, together. Was it the toughest event on the planet? We don’t know. It certainly was the toughest thing that Mark and Adam had done! After hours of shoe cleaning and sharing of stories and reminiscing the guys pledged that they’d be back to do it all again next year. Will YOU be tough enough?

Recently my colleague, Maxine Bazeley, and I attended a Property Council Breakfast at Zinc in Federation Square for a project review and celebration of the recent opening of Melbourne’s new Royal Children’s Hospital. Over a delicious breakfast of Pumpkin Scones, scrambled eggs and olive tapenade we heard from three of the major stakeholders in the project – David O’Shaughnessy of Lend Lease, Tony Lubofsky of the Department of Health and Mark Mitchell of Architects Billard Leece Partnership.

Tony kicked off and, in his limited time slot, gave a rundown of the PPP setup and the benefits for the project that played out in the cutting edge planning and design, construction timelines and management of risk.

He was followed by David whose presentation included a wonderful (Lend Lease) video that not only outlined the Construction process but also the integration of the user groups and particularly the kids into the entire program. It was heart-warming to see the pride on the kids’ faces (and the construction workers) as they were taken on to site in their hard hats and fluoro vests for the crane naming ceremony where the construction cranes were named after individual long term patients.

This consideration and inclusion of the kids into the process of construction and design was further highlighted by Mark Mitchell and the lengths that the design team including Billard Leece, Bates Smart and HKS went to create the ideal healing environment for the kids, their families and the staff at the hospital. With more obvious design elements like the Aquarium and Meer Cat enclosure complemented by the more subtle integration with the surrounding parkland and the inclusion of family spaces to aid the welcoming environment, we now do have a truly world leading facility for our children.

Well done to the thousands involved in this project.

Last night, Aspect attended the 2^nd Annual StartupSmart Awards.

The awards ceremony is run by startupsmart.com.au and recognises the most innovative and fastest-growing new businesses in Australia. Featuring exciting start-ups from an array of industries, drawn from across the country, the winners represent the emerging generation of business leaders in Australia.

We are proud to announce that we came in at number 6 on the list this year, up from number 9 in 2011. It is a great achievement for Aspect and one that should be attributed to the continued hard work of all our staff.

To read more about Aspect’s win as well as other companies that made the top 50, please visit:

http://www.startupsmart.com.au/startupsmart-awards-2012.html.

Congratulations to the team and we look forward to 2013.

Last week, Aspect attended the Annual SEEK party.

The invite said ‘Madmen theme’ but we were blown away when we arrived to corsages and kerchiefs, free manicures for the ladies and free shoeshines for the gentlemen, a full jazz band, seafood cocktail buffet and a huge cheese board!

Later on in the evening some of the guests got interactive in the photo booth which was quite the sensation after a few champagne cocktails and made complete with props, costume glasses and hats.

The Aspect crew sensibly left before the more eager punters began throwing shapes on the dance floor.  It was a Thursday night after all!!