EWB Victoria Region: celebrAGM: Celebration, Champagne and Clean Energy

EWB's Annual General Meeting - or affectionately known as the unpronounceable celebrAGM - was held in the last week of November in the beautiful Edinburgh Gardens in Fitzroy.

There was a stellar turnout, full of engineers and non-gineers, EWB and EA members and affiliates, or just your general man-about-town looking to mix with the humanitarian crowd.

The evening was a great success, with a wonderful special talk by Mary Dougherty, Executive Director of Embark. Embark helped create the Hepburn Community Wind Park: Australia’s first community wind farm, built on farmland at Leonard's Hill, near Daylesford, north-west of Melbourne. Mary was kind enough to discuss the project with us, with an emhasis on community partnerships. Despite many challenges, the overwhelming support from the community enabled the Hepburn Community Wind Park to happen – inspiring similar projects to explore the co-operative model for community-owned renewable energy projects.

Other discussions at the celebrAGM included: a finance report ("it's all good"); a fancy Prezi production highlighting some forms of restructuring in 2012 ("it's all good"); and congratulating the 2011 team, while simultaneously welcoming in the 2012 leadership team (yes, "it's all good").

The night was made even more celebratory by The Good Brew Company, who are dedicated to an environmental and socially sustainable future! The beer and cider are brewed locally by breweries with solar preheat or other innovative environmental measures in place and delivered by bicycle. All served from reusable kegs into reusable glasses/bamboo which can be washed, rinsed and chilled at venue. Zero waste is created, and at EWB - we love effective waste management!

Overall, the evening was a huge success: the discussions were interesting, the organisations is in good stead for the future, the beer was chilled, the weather was warm, and most of the attendees were humgineers (humanitarian engineers)...also, The Melbourne University Engineering Faculty's Music Society was an awesome jazz band that added to the celebrAGMing atmosphere.