Gary Benner Email & Phone Number

Auckland - Tauranga

Onlearn provides a complete e-Learning service targeted at organisations both academic and in the workplace. Onlearn provides the initial consultancy to choose the right systems to develop and deploy learning online. If required Onlearn will provision your online systems, and train your staff to administer and develop your training and learning content. If you don't have the internal skills, Onlearn will develop your content for you.

Tauranga, Bay Of Plenty, New Zealand

Developing a Public Alerting System for use during civil emergencies. TSUNADO is a system to ALERT - INFORM - SAVE. based around a battery and mains powered radio, it contains a alarm that can be remotely activated when there is an emergency. We have been working with the Civil Defence Regions and MCDEM in New Zealand for the last three years refining the system operation, and preparing the system for widespread use.We have a subsidiary system in use now in Waihi, there the TSUNADO system is used by the Waihi Gold Mining company to gently let residents know when there is to be a mine blasting. Rather than alert or startle, the TSUNADO radio eases any alarm that may be caused by the blasting, by playing soft and gently music prior to the blast.

123 Internet is a New Zealand Internet Registrar specialising in the hosting of clients web pages, web applications, and business applications. We have a skillset in implementing server clusters, and high availability solutions. Our business began in 1994, and over the last 20 years we have developed a range of skills and experience to provide a sound and reliable set of solutions.

New Zealand

GOODAS is set up to produce quality programmes with an educational and investigative nature. With decades of experience in developing educational courses and programmes, much of which has used film as a medium, I am now putting a focus on this medium to communicate and inform.

Tauranga

Semantic provides software and web design services on a contract basis. Our skills include Delphi business software, and PHP, HTML5, CSS and Javascript skills. This enables us to support products such as Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, Moodle, Mahara and many other open source products.Our projects include custom e-Commerce solutions, Practice Management Systems, Client Job Management, Asset Management, Online Ticketing Systems, Airshow Management, and extensions and configuration to Wordpress, Moodle etc.

Tauranga

Providing Systems and Professional Support for this very dynamic Talent Agency

Tauranga

This is a voluntary position providing Scheduling Software for Airshows held at Tauranga, Wings Over Wairarapa, and Warbirds Over Wanaka.

New Zealand

I have supported Moodle since 2004 when coming across Moodle at the Waiariki Institute of Technology. In 2005 my wife Julie and I organised the first Moodle Conference (Moodle Moot) in Rotorua where we attracted almost 200 attendees.I set up a unique Free Moodle Sandpit service for New Zealand users, and have provided over 800 sites as part of that service. This allows interested users to try Moodle in a full service environment before moving to a full service, and does not require any technical expertise to get it going.I have developed a number of Moodle extensions including e-Commerce options, an animated Flashcard Module, a Document Library module, a secure PDF presenter with dynamic username watermarking, and a set of javascript extensions providing amongst other things a full lightbox presentation of Course activities and resources.

New Zealand

In 1994 a group of early adopters with the Borland Delphi software development product began meeting regularly. I had been on the Beta program and this eventually turned into an online forum that still exists today with over 200 users.I also worked as Borland's Delphi and .NET trainer in New Zealand, and was also lucky to be employed in Australia to fill in over there.

Rotorua

In 2001 I moved to the Bay of Plenty after 25 years in Auckland. By chance I was asked to help with the progamming classes at Waiariki by friend and colleague Steve Peacocke who was working there. What was to be a 6 week "jaunt" lasted 7 years on a part time basis. I ended up teaching not only Programming courses, but also Data Communications, Webmaster and Web Application Development Courses. In a fast moving technological environment this was most beneficial - the teacher learns more than the students!During this time I came across Moodle, after writing the core of my own Learning Management System, and also got to present at NACCQ conferences. In the research phase of my work there I concentrated on developing server clusters and high availability configurations, and had a paper published on this topic in the BACIT Journal.

New Zealand & Australia

My foray into teaching programming after my son joined a computer class at his school Rosmini College. I was asked by the teacher to help out, and that ended up being a two hour class every week on Wednesdays. I taught Delphi as it is based on Pascal, an excellent language to learn good programming habits. The teacher also learnt well, as he went on to develop his own educational software using the skills taught. Borland New Zealand became aware and I was installed as the local trainer. I had presented at a couple of overseas Borland conferences, and got friendly with the Delphi "Evangelists" who came to visit - notably Charlie Calvert and David Intersimone, whom I still keep in contact with.I got to travel around New Zealand and Australia teaching the Borland Courses to the likes of Fisher & Paykel, Clear Communications, Livestock Improvement, Foodstuffs, Massey University, NZQA, Sovereign Assurance, and SMSS. In more recent times Delphi & the RAD Studio has been taken over by Embarcadero and they have introduced the cross platform development environments allowing mobile and iOS single source development environments.I still use Delphi now with the TSUNADO Central software, and TSUNADO Direct mobile apps for iOS and Android.

My responsibility was focused in training programmers.

Auckland

I initially developed a Paging application for Telecom called TPager which was used to send pager messages over the PACNET system, and early digital network in New Zealand. Surecomm took this and we developed a full on Monitoring Software with paging capability.Surecomm went through some hard times internally, and the system was taken over by one of the partners and is still in use today.

Auckland

Every story has to have some humour, and this is the cowboy period of my life. Rix was involved with CNG systems, and at this time was decommisioning the very expensive CNG systems installed in Service Stations during the "Think Big" period, reconditioning them, and then selling them overseas to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria etc.Most of the stories around this time cannot be pubished here (buy me a beer or a good coffee and that may loosen my tongue), but during that period I developed a number of systems, mainly to do with the CNG and refuelling systems, but one was different. This was a system to send faxes over Radio Telephone, destined for the Ministry of Civil Defence. as they used Radio Telephone communications during emergencies, and wished to have security for data such as body counts and the names of deceased, we developed a system to manage the fax protocol over a radio telephone network - not an easy task. This system got installed in Wellington, but I left Rix before it got installed further - and that in itself is quite a story. I can only laugh now.

Asia Pacific

After selling my interests in Postec I took up an offer to work with IBM in their DRSC division based in Auckland and Sydney. This supported their marketing efforts in Petroleum Retail. Our clients were the Oil Companies in the Region. having been self employed for most of my life, this was quite a change, and to see the internal machinations of a large corporate. We dealt with BP, Shell, Mobil and Caltex during this period. I learnt a massive amount working for IBM and am thankful for the opportunity. They have such a wealth of experience, and it was sad when they had their downsize in 1992. This left me working without a manager, or manager's manager, reporting directly to the NZ manager in Wellington. After a few weeks they realised I was left with a whole floor to myself in the Auckland office and offered me a position in Sydney, however with kids at school in Auckland, and an ex-wife who would not entertain me leaving, I relunctantly had to decline.

I founded Postec after recovering from a period of ill-health in 1986. I had retained some technologies after selling Microelectronic Services and began focusing on unattended Fuel Controllers, and then a multi-protocol pump controller. I teamed up with Sanyo Business Systems, and after their withdrawal from the New Zealand market joined forces with their GM Peter Cribbens. We focused on the Australian market and managed to get good penetration. Just before I left in 1991 we started to take on the Asian market, with a foray into Malaysia working with Olivetti in Kuala Lumpur. During this time we championed the adoption of a universal New Zealand Pump Interface Protocol, incorporating the PEC standard in widespread use, and the enhancements we and other companies had developed to deal with the then new multi-hose pumps. We set up and hosted a seminar in Auckland to bring together the Oil Companies and the major Suppliers, and while not all committed at the start, eventually everyone saw the logic and there is now an agreed standard.Postec was recently bought out by Gilbarco from Australia and continues to develop the products we invented back in the late 80's.A major input from this time came from John Soppet, and ex Airforce avionics technican. John had joined the Airforce as a Boy Cadet in the early 60's, in the same intake as one of my older brothers. After leaving the Airforce he joined Postec and brought a wealth of experience in hardware design and process that served the company well. We were also joined by Mike Simpson, who had curiously enough worked in another POS company calling their product "Postec". We made an offer and Mike subsequently joined the company bringing a significant level of software experience.

Auckland & Helensville

Microelectronic Services Ltd was founded after I moved to the Auckland region from Whangarei where I had started developing skills with microcontrollers ( the computer on a chip era had started). We were dealing with 8 bit CPU's (todays PC's use 64 bit CPU's).We were developing the digital electrinics for Service Stations and unattended Fuel installations. We had a speciality in CNG and LPG systems, and worked for Shell, BP, Mobil, and Caltex.In 1983 I developed a system called "Master", a pump controller to compete with the PEC Micro-M. This featured a video display, which went on to become the norm for such systems.The development went further with Point of Sale technology and back office software for Service Station Management in association with various suppliers.In 1986 I had major heart surgery to correct a heart arrythmia, and decided to sell my interests in the company. The new owners renamed the business Task Technology Ltd and went on successfully with their Auckland based business. This was subseqeuntly sold to a Singapore based company and merged with other like businesses worldwide.I recently came across one of the original Master Systems in a small Service Station on the Napier Taupo Road, still working after 25 years!

Locations Around New Zealand

Transcendental Mediation (TM) is a technique for personal development that became very popular in the West in the 60's and 70's. The founder of the organisation, His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, became well known after The Beatles and many others learned the technique.In later years TM became more mainstream, and adopted by business and education as a means of improving the quality of life of the individual, and society as a whole. This became even more popular when a phenomenon known as the 1% effect was discovered, that just a small group meditating could affect the quality of life statistics of a whole community.Today, TM is taught all around the world in a highly standardised form, with professional certification for teachers, with advanced programmes based on the same source of knowledge.

Education record

Activities and Societies: Photography, Tramping, TM Electrical Engineering

University Bursary, Nz Post Office (Telecom) Bursary, 1St Nz In Chamber Of Commerce Arithmetic

Activities and Societies: Soccer, Chess, Photography

Education record