Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

After a mere five hours sleep and with a nose that was running faster than Usain Bolt I really should not have gotten out of bed, let alone drive an hour and a half to the Gold Coast to attend an all day AIM seminar. Yet I am somewhat masochistic and managed to drag myself out of my warm, safe bed and drove the hour and a half to the Gold Coast. After getting lost in Robina for half an hour I finally found the AIM office and managed to make it just in time for the first of seven presentations.
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When I put my hand up to see Jason Coleman (of So You Think You Can Dance Australia fame) present at this AIM event, I admit I only glossed over the event description. So I was a little surprised when I received a reminder for the “AIM Management Excellence Awards Brisbane Regional Final” awards ceremony.

With the awards as the center of the event, Jason’s presentation fell more on the side of novel entertainment than groundbreaking insight. He made an entrance with a song of the broadway variety, accompanied by a pair of dancing girls in bowler hats.

The Worst Jobs with the Best People

Jason spoke at length about his dance career, highlighting his disdain at being called “just a dancer”. One of his more relevant points was the necessity of the everyday little jobs that “sustain you”, though they may not be recognised or publicised like the “big jobs”. He described his experience working on the movie Happy Feet, in which dancers were required to spend hours on end wriggling around like penguins in uncomfortable motion capture suits, to empasise that even the worst jobs can be the most enjoyable when done with the best people. Whenever his agent identifies a potential job, he asks two questions - how much will it pay? (”it’s showbusiness“) and who else is working on it?

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Di Bella Coffee

Phillip Di Bella, in 2002 started a coffee business with $5000. The empire that he spawned was listed in the BRW Fast 100 three years running, which would have been four years except his accountants forgot to file the paperwork on time (d’oh). He recently turned down a $28 Million offer for Di Bella Coffee. Suffice to say Phillip knows how to do business.

I did not really know what to expect when I went to the presentation as I had no idea about any of the information listed in the previous paragraph. All I knew was that this presentation was going to be made by someone who had a successful coffee business. Coffee being essentially a commodity market in Brisbane today (think of all the coffee chains and independents around the place - Coffee Club, Zaraffas, Gloria Jeans and even McCafe), I wanted to know what it was that he had done to make his business successful. In the end I took five pages of notes, which I think is about the same amount of notes as I took in my whole time at university. While I would love to expound upon every single point taken I will take mercy on you, the reader, and only highlight the points that really stuck out.
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After the internal restructuring of global-roam, somehow I ended up with responsibility for managing the deSide product (and ez2view Ontario, ez2view Australia and ez2update Australia). This means that I am now responsible for understanding everything about energy users. How they think, what they do, what keeps them awake at night and what brand of toothbrush they use. This means attending the occasional conference that is put together for energy users.

The first of these conferences was the EUAA Climate Change Briefing. Now I have attended a number of climate change briefings before (mainly around the time that the government told Tarong to switch off because Queensland was running out of water), but this was the first one that I had been to that was tailored for energy users.

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For the second time this week (following from Scott Ginsberg’s session), Adam and I were entertained, and intellectually stimulated, by a seminar focused on helping business do better.

This event was titled “Leading and Enabling Innovation through ICT” and was  presented by Zernike Australia in conjunction with Australian Institute of Commercialisation (AIC), Brisbane Technology Park, and QUT.

The event was part of the “Innovation Series”.

1)  Some great content

After having the session kicked off by Rowan Gilmore (CEO of the AIC), we were then treated to some great ideas from three top speakers:

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This is to follow Adam’s post on the Scott Ginsberg seminar, and specifically to follow Adam’s post with some more specific thoughts about what it means to us.

The post was initially made restricted, but I have now shifted some of the more confidential comments to a “part2” restricted post here….

1)  Be Remarkable

(in the truest sense of the word) – as in, present yourself in such a way that other people want to talk about you.

One of Scott’s most telling points (and he had stolen this from others) is that:
1)  If we talk about ourselves, the listener (naturally) assumes it is marketing, and is inclined to switch off.
2)  However, if other people talk about us, then this provides our name/brand some instant credibility, in the listener’s mind.  The extension of this is that the amount of credibility we gain is proportional to the listener’s view of the person talking about us. read more »

I just came back from a convention by the Australian Institute of Management (AIM) on “making a name for yourself.” The speaker was Scott Ginsberg, who has quite literally been wearing a nametag 24/7 for several years (he even has one tattooed on his chest). He was really quite interesting…

But forget all that. Because I won a prize. I got given all his books. Here’s me with his books with the greatest cheesy smile I could pull:

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Shane has been lightning-quick and beaten me to the punch (as it were) with his take on the seminar we both attended on Wednesday (29th) this week.

On the day I took 4 pages of notes (and not a doodle in sight) so I thought it might be of interest, to you, for me to waffle on a little, as well – even just to cure your insomnia.

Until they take it down, the IIB has a page on their website that explains a little about the seminar – which was focused around “Building a Resilient Company”.

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