Nicholas is not a vegan or an anarcho-primitivist. He is animated by a vision of a post-scarcity advanced industrial-ecology society democratically managed by a network of nested worker-cooperatives. 

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Background

Nicholas was born in Sydney and grew up on a small chicken farm on the rural fringe of the western suburbs of Newcastle in the Hunter Valley, Australia.

He was exposed to gardening, farming and nature through his home gardens and neighbors, conservative and rural friends and camping and bushcraft on both sides of the Great Dividing Range.

During the waves of publicity around Permaculture A Designers Manual and the television series he became fascinated by the Holmgren-Mollison permaculture synthesis and did experiments in perennial polyculture at his parents property. In the early 90s he did a PDC at Crystal Waters with Max Lindegger as teacher. He has done casual WWOOFing at Mollison's Tyalgum farm (a quiet time while Bill was abroad) and a few other properties in Australia and Italy.

During the late 90s and early 2000s he was a technocratic mercenary worked mostly in corporate IT and media with generalist work on cross-media (print, web, television, radio) and specialist career in web-publishing and technology. After a few years waging the War on Terror (2000-2003), at News Ltd as webmaster for The Australian and The Daily Telegraph, he made a move into community media and small business.

During 2008 he was in Hungary for Drupalcon 2008 and in Malmo, Sweden in the media and documentation team for the European Social Forum. 

The last 5 years he has been making a personal wiggly transition (with stops, starts and backtracks) into sustainability and media, with most of his efforts going into research and publishing on formation of a global Permaculture Cooperative. In 2009 he started with a new phase of the journey with Permaculture Hunter Region (Tom Toogood and friends) and an intro talk at Permaculture North Sydney. Taking sanctuary for a couple of months at Robyn Francis' Djangbung Gardens (now Permaculture College Australia) he did more experiments with the permaculture cooperative project which became Permaculture.TV. 

At Geoff Lawton's Permaculture Research Institute he teamed-up with Kirstie Stramler, who he spent most of 2009 travelling US and Europe researching further permaculture AND cooperatives. They visited the Permaculture Guild of San Francisco, San Francisco worker-cooperatives (Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives, Rainbow Grocery, Mandela Foods), community gardens in Brooklyn and NYC and then onto Europe. In Spain, Basque Country they did a tour of Mondragon Cooperative and had conversation with Professor Fred Freundlich about Mondragon Permaculture. In Scotland and London they where active participants in climate activism at the Scottish Camp for Climate Action (with Kirstie writing the Coal Health Study) and at the London Climate Camp. 

During an impromtu visit to Totnes, Nicholas met Ben Brangwyn (Transition Movement co-founder with Rob Hopkins) and Ed Mitchell, the Transition Network technologist. He also had a kitchen meeting to discuss permaculture cooperation and cooperatives with Andy Goldring coordinator of Permaculture Association of Britain.

During December 2009 he covered the COP15 and Klimaforum09 in Copenhagen for Permaculture.TV, and interviewed permaculture pioneers from India, Africa, Palestine, El Salvador, Brazil and Scandanavia. Klimaforum was founded by a Danish architect and permaculturalist Tony Andersen who presented From Activist to Grassroots and the 10 000: A Global Strategy for Climate Change.

In 2010 he will be again in the USA and Europe, where Nicholas and Kirstie will be working through formation of the permaculture cooperative, and are developing products and services as well as continuing to publish and educate with media, websites, events. They tentatively will be attending the US Social Forum in Detroit and Klimaforum in Mexico City.

Career

- Over 10 years as project manager, producer & webmaster in high-level web, media & IT roles
- 3 years webmaster at Nationwide News Ltd (The Australian & The Daily Telegraph)
- PRINCE project management training, certification and experience in News Ltd HQ in Sydney
- 5 years local community, social justice and environmental projects

Career Highlights

•2010 - Founder and webmaster for PermacultureGroups (Drupal in Open Atrium) and the Permaculture NEWS Cooperative (Drupal in Managing News)
•2008-2009 -  Founder & Producer for  Permaculture TV free video cooperative, filming at Klimaforum09  in Copehnagen during COP15
•2008-2009 -  Researching global Permaculture Cooperative in Mondragon-style
•2009 -  Climate Camp Scotland media coordination; filming & edits, interviews & advocacy, Coal Health Study, writing. London Climate Camp video & filming
•2008 - Project volunteer at European Social Forum 2008, Malmo. Sweden; media center, documentation, language interpretation system, research for organising an Australian Social Forum
•2008 - Producer for science and sustainability web communications agency BoaB Interactive; www.BoaB.info
• 2008 - Project consultant to The Byron Shire Echo newspaper with hyper-local news-web-print strategy, revenue model, system documentation
• 2007-2008 - Web project manager for a DotNetNuke (commercial open-source .NET) travel industry portal; budget $500 000, 10 staff, 20,000 web-pages; www.stellaresorts.com.au | www,mantraresorts.com.au  | www.breakfree.com.au 
• 2007 - Webmaster for Royal Australian Institute of Architects www.architecture.com.au 
• 2005-2006 - Proprietor & manager of own micro-ecommerce & web hosting business
• 2004-2005 - Project manager & webmaster for regional peak arts organization Octapod Association (running websites for This Is Not Art, Electrofringe, National Young Writers Festival, Sound Summit, Environmental Awareness Raising Festival) NSW Arts cultural audit, festival websites
• 2004-2005 - Technical manager & webmaster for TIN Radio FM/online community radio
• 2003-2005 - Project manager at digital multimedia agency: websites, TV, audio, DVDs, CD's, VB software development
• 2000-2003 - Webmaster, producer & project manager at Nationwide News Ltd (The Australian / The Daily Telegraph etc) www.TheAustralian.com.au & www.dailytelegraph.com.au
• 1999-2000 - Webmaster Meat & Livestock Australia
• 1999-1998 - Web developer and designer in web, advertising and IT contracts London, UK (Guinness, Hewlett Packard etc)
• 1997 - Web designer - Evatt Foundation etc