Ignorance in Paradise

The worst thing about living and working in beautiful Noosa is when small town mentality shifts from being endearing to insulting. We were recently slandered as part of a local malcontent’s campaign to discredit one of our clients and this is my right of reply.

The author has an issue with the governance structure of Noosa Biosphere Ltd (our client). I love a good bit of social agitation and his passion actually draws my admiration. For all I know, his preferred governance model may be just what Noosa needs to stop idiots littering, developers exploiting and cars dominating. The issue I have is with this critic’s ignorant, cynical, insulting and piteous attack on the integrity of people he doesn’t know and makes no effort to contact for comment.

The political argument is for someone else to answer. This post deals with two scurrilous accusations:

1) That public money has been squandered by engaging PunkLogic to build an ‘expensive’ website.

2) That nepotism played a part in our appointment.

In response to the first ignorant statement; “expensive” is a relative term, so if this means that the website we built is expensive compared to a shit website, then it is indeed expensive. If we had been contacted and asked to comment, we would have unapologetically stated that our hourly rate is $100. Of course, the reality with any professional services firm is that ‘achieved’ hourly rates are typically much less than that. In fact, the size of our investment in time to get the original website live was over 3 times more than the number of hours invoiced. And on an ongoing basis, we regularly exceed the hours covered in the $2800 monthly retainer by over 100%. If anyone were to think that PunkLogic had ripped off the taxpayer, they’d be a fucking moron.

Why would anyone choose to view NBL’s ambition to create an outstanding website that’s built for community engagement as something that is incongruent with the pride we all take in calling this place home? For Noosa to be “special” shouldn’t it seek to always go the extra mile in every aspect of managing its reputation?

If Noosa’s local economy is to mature and diversify into less carbon intensive industries, then highly educated, experienced and skilled people in the prime of their career, need to be able to settle here with their family and make a living. Attacking the integrity of a small start-up digital consultancy business threatens to drive away some of the very people that are hoping to make a genuine contribution to the sustainability of the region.

The charge of nepotism is equally hard to let slide. I only wish it were true because we invested over $10,000 in time on a multi-staged public tender process to win the work. Is it beyond the realms of possibility that we were appointed because we’re actually pretty good at what we do?

The critic’s personal attack focuses on my colleague, Bee who held a volunteer position on one of the sector boards for NBL. A more mature and productive debate could have been opened on this subject because it’s actually an interesting dilemma. Here is a case of someone caring passionately about the environmental, social and cultural pillars of the biosphere enough to volunteer hundreds of hours over a long period. When an unforeseen opportunity arises to apply your professional skills in a paid-for capacity, what would you do? It’s surely a win-win: the client benefits from employing someone that is bang up to speed and who is very likely to over-deliver, and the individual benefits financially and in an emotionally rewarding way whilst continuing to volunteer additional time. Frankly, if someone wants to be cynical even after a public tender process, I’d say: “well you do the volunteer hours then!” Or perhaps I’d just say, “Get a life”.

The biggest irony of all is that I suspect Bettina is often a royal pain in the arse to the Governance Board – pulling them up on issues she’s passionate about. Their lives would be made a whole lot easier by excluding her rather than signing up for a double dose! But perhaps they see the value of constructive debate, honest engagement, respectful exchange, diversity, dedication and above all, the value of quality work. Mind you, I’m only forming this judgement based on my personal, direct experience of dealing with some of these people and getting to actually know them over the last 12 months. Strangely, I was never tempted to form a personal opinion of them before doing so or use blind prejudice or a political agenda to determine their character.

I invite anyone to leave a comment below to help me better understand how the value of quality work is perceived by people in your community. How have you sought to answer ignorance?

Tags: quality, value for money