Pip Smibert-Man Behind the Badge

Pip Smibert gave his story as the member behind badge and displayed a wide ranging past which covered among other things  Bar-room Brawls, Bites (pavlovas), Black Belts, Bytes and Bushfires.

Pip was introduced by Chairman Gerald Swinnerton.  It was explained that these two had enjoyed a long term friendship which began 60 years ago as school mates in the same class, much as their parent s had done a generation before.   Pip addressed the meeting on his personal background, and then gave us a snapshot of his current activity with CMS and community messaging.

Self-described as a “war baby” and not a “baby boomer” Pip gave an amusing hint of his inherited genetic disposition toward practical mastery of detailed problems .He recalled that his father determined that the Melbourne suburb to which he was moving to establish the family home was predicated solely on the convenience and flexibility of tram routes taking account of the known school option for the children and his own work location.

Marked for medical studies at Monash , Pip took a year off to work for the Snowy Mountain Authority  He told of how in Cooma his observations(from under the bar-room table) of the tensions between ethnic sub-groups working on the project was great real life experience for a naïve young man.

Back at Monash thereafter Pip switched to and graduated in Electrical Engineering including some diversionary activity in the judo club   Aside from a short term interlude early on in the “pavlova” business, building on his strong  mathematical bent Pip noted how he prospered over the next decades in that hybrid industry of computers and communication technology .   Remarking that it was always changing and hence stimulating he cited the remarkable evolution from processing units as large as a washing machine to the minute but more powerful devices now available.

Latter life interests in adolescent health concerns saw him seek to employ electronic data transmission technology to arm teachers and youth workers to interact with the youth.   An interest and career in public communication and service was thus borne.

He explained that the Black Saturday fires of three years ago and like community disasters were all worsened by the inability for the impacted communities to be warned in time. It was a trap for the post event analyses to focus on the needed organisational response to the disaster at the expense of, in his view, the most important, i.e. providing timely communication to the potentially endangered.

Hence now his work involves optimising community messaging.  This embraces solutions aimed as using SMS messages on mobile phones linked to an existing register of mobile owners and post codes.   Working with the Victoria Police these concepts are being used in connecting into the Community Message services and providing a forum to distribute information to targeted public by the Police.  One major impediment was the variety of mobile carriers and their differing systems and coverage   Nevertheless one felt that these issues were being positively tackled by the decision makers who were tapping into the skills of CMS (and Pip’s) and like entities. 

Thank you Pip for the interesting address.