Australian Interactive Media Industry Association - History of AIMIA

History of AIMIA

AIMIA was founded by Richard Heale the CEO of the Perth based New Media company Interactive Logic and a group of other invited CEO's from companies in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

The idea for AIMIA came from a conversation between Richard and Michael Gale who at the time was the CEO of the Authorware distributorship in Australia. Michael's commercial network afforded the opportunity to invite interested parties to an initial meeting in Sydney. At this meeting Richard Heale brought a Perth lawyer, Martin Haas of Murie Edward, to draft an initial constitution and AIMIA was born.

Richard Heale was the first AIMIA President, a position he held for the first two years of the organizations life. Paul Campbell of ICE Media in Brisbane was elected Treasurer and John Caitlin of Applied Learning in Sydney it's Vice-President, other board members included Stephen Schwalger, Marius Coomans & Kevin Karp.

AIMIA's initial primary focus was not on creating awards and their associated ceremonies but on creating federal government support for the fledgling New Media industry. AIMIA did organize awards and ceremonies the first taking place in Perth in 1992. However, at the time the AIMIA board realized that New Media had a significant role to play in Australia's mixed economy. New Media had both export potential and the opportunity to make certain aspects of the economy more efficient and effective.

In 1994 the AIMIA board gained funding from the Department of Industry and Technology to appoint the organizations first permanent national CEO and subsequently state based officers. Interviews were conducted in Sydney & Melbourne, by federal government and AIMIA officials, and from a strong list of candidates Stephen Schwalger was appointed.

The appointment of Stephen Schwalger (CEO 1994-1997), who had been a member of AIMIA's first national board, gave AIMIA the everyday horsepower it needed to develop appropriate foundations for the New Media industry in Australia.

After considerable lobbying of the federal government by the AIMIA board & CEO, significant funds were allocated to AIMIA and the New Media industry as part of the 'Creative Nation' initiative from the Keating labour government. Creative Nation was launched in each Australian capital city in 1994 by the Hon Simon Crean and Richard Heale AIMIA's president.

Significant components of the Creative Nation initiative included:

The Multimedia Enterprise - A funding bank for the creation of CD titles (there was no internet at that time for content commercialization) Australia on CD - Where Australian cultural institutions and New Media companies were encouraged to collaborate and bid for a pool of funds to create CD titles that reflected Australian history and culture.

Over the next three (1994 - 1997) years AIMIA grew from a membership of 40 companies to over 800, set up State and federal structure for the association and negotiated state federal funding for industry development staff in 4 states, developed and managed a three year export strategy in conjunction with Austrade which resulted in Australian companies entering markets in UK, USA, Europe, Canada, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Exports generated in this period exceeded $250 million dollars on Austrade figures and introduced the AIMIA national conference program and the annual industry awards for excellence.