Led by Australia’s medical colleges and professional societies and facilitated by NPS MedicineWise, Choosing Wisely Australia is challenging the way we think about health care.

The 2018 Choosing Wisely Australia National Meeting will bring together members, key stakeholders and influencers of the Choosing Wisely initiative, now in its third year. It is an opportunity for health professionals, consumers, researchers, funders and policy makers to come together to discuss, engage and network on topics related to reducing unnecessary care.

At the 2018 National Meeting you will:

• Engage with the Choosing Wisely Australia community and foster the exchange of ideas
• Hear about practical and implementable examples of projects on Choosing Wisely and their impact to date
• Learn about the impact of Choosing Wisely Australia

More details and registration:

http://www.choosingwisely.org.au/members/2018-choosing-wisely-australia-national-meeting

After too long an absence, we’re delighted to announce that GeoRabble Sydney will be back, on Thursday October 18th, from 6PM at the Occidental Hotel in York Street.

As usual, entry is free, and there will be pizza (courtesy of HERE Technologies)

Theme of this Rabble is “The Unusual Suspects” – celebrating the unusual, unsuspected, and surprising applications of geoinformation and -technology. Think using GPS for herding cattle, new uses of drones, photogrammetry in health, GIS on Mars, mapping in insurance and finance, to name just a few.

We are looking for speakers who have an ‘unusual suspect’ story to tell, in under 10 minutes. Do you have a story to tell about a left-field application, please let us know via email: sydney@georabble.org.

We’ll be announcing speakers soon. Click here for updates.

A panel of data and industry experts will examine changes to IP and copyright and the disruption of current business models that current and future technologies are creating, with an open discussion about governance considerations that may affect surveying businesses now and in the coming years. This will be an insightful, interesting and challenging discussion around how technology and big data are redefining business opportunities.

The speakers will be:

• Professor Kevin McDougall, Head of School, Civil Engineering and Surveying University of Queensland
• Rachel Sciascia, Partner, Gadens
• Nicole Stephensen, Principal Consultant, Ground Up Consulting Pty Ltd
• Adam Beck , Executive Director, Smart Cities Council Australia New Zealand Secretariat, Centre for Data Leadership

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/boreala

The Ocean Optics Conference attracts a diverse audience of active practitioners in the field, including oceanographers, marine ecologists, limnologists, optical engineers, marine resource managers and policy professionals from around the world.

Conference presentations will include the science of optics across all aquatic environments, research, and applications, including (but not limited to) biogeochemistry, environmental management and applications, instruments, techniques and observational systems, remote sensing, phytoplankton ecology, radiative transfer and optical theory, global change, and benthic processes.

Attendees will attend plenary presentations during the day and interact with colleagues during scientific poster session receptions held in the exhibit/poster hall in the early evening. In addition to invited and contributed oral and poster presentations, the conference will provide the opportunity for community-wide discussions.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey.