Kester Cranswick Lifetime Achievement Award

IT Writers Awards Home | 2006 Winners | Kester Award | Kester Nomination

Many people in the IT industry have fond memories of Kester Cranswick, and a number of them have kindly shared their memories here.

If there is a person that you would like to nominate to receive a 'Kester' Lifetime Achievement Award please complete the Kester Nomination form.

Kester Award Recipients

2006 John Costello
2005 Graeme Philipson
2004 Beverley Head
2003 Helen Dancer
2002 Helen Meredith
2001 Kester Cranswick

Kester Award Winner Biographies

As part of our commitment to the outstanding individuals who have contributed to IT journalism in Australia we intend to place on this page a short biography of each Kester recipient If you have interesting anecdote or can provide any background information it would be gratefully accepted.

Graeme Philipson 2005

Graeme Philipson has been writing about computers since 1983, when he started an Apple II magazine for Gareth Powell. After a stint with analyst company Yankee Group he became editor of Computerworld in 1987 and 1988, and was founding editor of IBM mainframe magazine True Blue in 1989. He was a columnist for Computing Australia for many years before founding Strategic Publishing Group with Alistair Gordon in 1992.

Strategic's best known title was MIS magazine, which within five years was being published in NZ, Singapore and India. The company was sold to John Fairfax in 1999, just before the tech crash. Graeme was founding editor of MIS, and editorial director of Strategic. He also started and ran Strategic's market research division, which was sold to Gartner in 1997 before being reacquired just in time to be sold to Fairfax. He joined Gartner for two years as part of the deal.

Graeme had a weekly column in The Australian's IT section from 1992 to 1997, and has had one in The Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age since 1999. He writes extensively for UK analyst company the Butler Group, and has monthly columns about IT in Campus Review and Print21, the magazine of the Printing Industry Association. He is in demand as a conference speaker, and is writing a book on the history of software. This year he began a new market research company, Connection Research, concentrating on the Digital Home space.

Beverley Head 2004

The 2004 Kester Cranswick lifetime achievement award goes very deservedly to Beverly Head, who has been writing about IT in Australia for longer than most of us (and she) cares to remember. Bev has always been a true professional, cutting her teeth on Fleet Street in the early 1980s before moving to Computerword Australia in 1986.

She has worked for many of the industry's leading publications, and was for ten years the IT editor of the Australian Financial Review, where she was instrumental in turning that publication's IT pages into the enormously respected section it is today. The IT section went daily while she was editor, and when she left in 1997 she was Features Editor for the entire publication.

In recent years Bev has worked on a freelance basis, allowing her more time to devote to her family. She continues to contribute to the AFR and other Fairfax publications, and was for some years a columnist in BRW. Rumours that she was the “junket queen” in the IT boom years of the mid 1990s are only partially true – she did go on those trips, but she worked very hard and always wrote the best stuff afterwards.

Graeme Philipson on behalf of the judging panel

Helen Dancer 2003

This award celebrates the life and career of a very special person in information technology journalism, one who made a tremendous impact on all who met and knew her.

Helen Dancer began writing about technology long before it became a field for the trendy. She knew the issues and wrote about them -- and the people involved in them -- with flair, passion, clarity and great understanding, for a wide range of titles, publishing houses and audiences. 

She was always a true professional. Nobody did it better. Her words always fitted and were delivered spot on time, as many an editor will attest.

But she was much more than a proficient and gifted technological writer. She had warmth and wit and a canny commonsense that was universally engaging. She was a wonderful mentor to the many young journalists entering the trade. And she faced life with enormous courage, never allowing a long and debilitating illness to get between her and her work or her and her many friends.

All of us who knew, respected and loved Helen miss her deeply. It is most fitting that this award should be her memorial. 

David Frith on behalf of the judging panel

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