This is my last editorial for Yaffa Media’s Australian Defence Magazine (ADM). After 15 years with the title, I’m off to see what life in a Defence SME looks like firsthand. You’ll find more than my usual number of words in here thanks to a retrospective piece on P16 and (as a final farewell) a From the Source on P58.
I leave the good ship in the hands of Ewen Levick and Nigel Pittaway who will both step up on the editorial front. You can see the whole team if you slide your eyes slightly to the right; they will continue to bring you everything you’ve come to expect from ADM coverage, online and in print, with our awards/conferences, analysis, podcasts and more.
In writing this, I remember meeting a lovely somewhat shy engineer as the chairperson of ADM’s Congress one year. Chatting in the morning tea break, he admitted that my editorials made much more sense now that he had heard me speak.
‘Uh, thanks?’ Good lord, where is this going? I think to myself, racking my brains and trying to think of what I had written recently.
‘Well, now I will be able to hear your voice in my head when I read them. It’s a very Douglas Adams/Terry Pratchett approach.’
I just got compared to my two favourite authors! Huzzah!
It did bring home to me that no matter how many policies and frameworks and guidance documents we have in Defence, business is about people. The people have been the best part of this job. Thank you.