BRETT THE CHAIR

I've been to many, many, AIESEC conferences in my time, and now that I'm out of the organisation, the natural thing was to go back to another conference right? It's a bit like the mob, "You think you're out, but they pull you back in". I was asked by Ruthie on the Australian Member Committee to chair the Star Sellers Team Kickoff, which was basically a sales training conference in less ecoteric (non-AIESECronym) language. It was quite an experience. I'd like to say I was the best chair ever, but that's clearly not the case. Hopefully I added something to the experience and value that the delegates got out of the 3 days though. It really was a great concept which actually happened, so a huge congratulations to Ruthie for pulling it off. Leaving the conference there was really a sense of the delegates prepared to put in the hard yards to knock on doors and raise some internships.

After hours, I took the time to see off some great, great friends who are finishing their internships and heading home. Gerardo is hanging around working for GE, but was heading off to NZ for 6 months, Augusto was headed back to Italy - but not before a whirlwind tour of Europe to see the millions of people he seems to know after so long on the other side of the world. Most of all I'll miss Alenka. She really was great, and we spent some fantastic time together. It was interesting going to Prague for the AIESEC's European conference in March 05, because we got to speak a whole heap about Czech and the people over there, places we had to see, some of the insights from the short time over there. I was lucky enough to wear her Czech Hockey jersey - i'm told I was the only Aussie to have the honour. I've promised to return the favour by letting her wear an aussie cricket or rugby jumper when I finally get one. I suggested I'd get an aussie ice-hockey jersey when we made the world cup, but thought we should do it during our lifetime...

On Saturday night I went to the 2007 Chinese New Year Spectacular. Which had some phenominal dancers - if that is how good dancers are, I can't imagine how good Chinese ninjas must be. Rated as one of the Top 10 shows of 2006 by US Billboard magazine, it really was spectacular. Also making the night great was hanging out with Gabi, an intern at Real World Marketing in Sydney. We did some work together when we were both National VP ER's in Australia and Brasil, but never thought we'd meet, let alone get along as well as we do. She's even inspired me to start learning Portuguese! (more below).


MORE CONFERENCE. TechnologyOne style.

Getting back from a weekend with little to no sleep, I then backed-up with another conference. This time for TechnologyOne's Evolve User conference which was held on the Gold Coast. Not having been to a conference quite like this before I really wasn't sure what to expect, but it was great. I got to meet a bunch of clients I'd only ever heard the names of before, and the same for many of the TechOne staff (in Brisbane office or interstate). I won't go into the sessional detail too much, but they were really solid and gave a good picture of what the products made can do, but also where they're going. And I got to see a whole lot of TechOne'rs present so I can steal how they do things for my presentations!

Socially it was a blast. Coming from the AIESEC background, just about every conference I was either facilitating or organising, so being a delegate again was sooo much fun. I got to pick which sessions I went to, didn't have to run around stressing and got to party till the early hours. The last night involved Austin Powers, many, many drinks and Project Sunrise (picture right). So we stayed up to watch a fairly dismal sunrise behind clouds in Broadbeach before getting a 40 minute powernap and then setting up a support centre stand at 8am.


The planned "Week of golf" didn't pan out as the partying took over, but I did manage to get a round in with my brother on Saturday. Normally I play between 6-8am, this time was 10-12am - the resulting sunburn has my neck now peeling and my arms still a litle red. Slip, slap, slop! Good news was I hit a 41 at a par 30 course, so retained my first round score with the new clubs at St Lucia (47 of par 36)! Wasn't just a lucky round with them!

Labels: Brett Gibson, Fun, Golf, Home, Technology One, Update, Work