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Australia Travel Log: Day Two

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Well, this entry is mostly for the sake of continuity since I haven't officially started  my "holiday" here yet (the word "vacation" elicited some giggles last night). I gave a three hour workshop presentation yesterday. That "oh-my-gawd-I-am speaking-in-front-of-a-room-with-a-microphone-and-video-camera" kicked in right after I got started. But the session was fun and we filled the full three hours.

So despite Australians being so friendly, I learned a little bit about the culture during the presentation. When I present in the US, it's not problem to fill in time with Q&A and collaborative exercises. What I Iearned is that Australians aren't as accustomed to the raising their hand and sharing thing. It gave me a bit of a laugh but the attendees were good sports and participated. I keep hearing that Australians love Americans, but I imagine we seem a bit over-bearing to them. Anyway, I felt good about the presentation and  I hope the participants got out of it what they wanted.

There was a networking reception afterward. You might be surprised to hear that I am not very good at these mixer activities. I never feel super comfortable just walking up to someone and starting a conversation when you know you are there to "network". Put me in a bar and I'm fine. I'm not sure what the difference is; the fact that you are supposed to have conversations on consequence? I don't know. Anyway, all the people I met were absolutely lovely and so easy to talk to and I'd bring them all home with me if I could.

So now it's technically the wee hours of day 3. I'm still in my routine of sleeping only a few hours at a time. I'd call it jet lag but it feels like being at home. Except here I wake up hungry in the middle of the night because I didn't eat dinner and I am wreaking havoc on the mini bar (that stops tomorrow...a KitKat is not a meal!). Day three is for attending the conference and then heading out to the Microsoft office in North Ryde (whatever that means) and then back here for a speakers dinner.

So I am looking forward to finishing up my speaking responsibilities so I can truly start enjoying myself 100%. I imagine that if you are going to cut loose, this is a perfectly good place to do it. And I have no doubt that I have some serious cutting loose coming my way. And I'm sure I deserve it.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    April 15, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 15, 2008
    go out for some real food. you can gauge an area's culinary quality by its chinese restaurants. The best chinese food I've ever had oddly enough, was in spain

  • Anonymous
    April 15, 2008
    cam - I probably won't make it back out there. It didn't seem shady but I didn't get to see much since the Microsoft office is right off the freeway. RB - I'm not a huge Chinese food fan, I have to admit. I find it heavy. But I definitely plan to get out and try some things!

  • Anonymous
    April 15, 2008
    Hi Heather I attended your session on Monday, and I thought you were great.  The session was really relevant and practical for the audience.  You have really inspired myself and my colleagues to blog !  I work in the RPO space, and we're constantly searching for new strategies, which will help us to deliver great results to our clients.  We have a workshop tomorrow, which we have put together for our teams, to discuss some of the learnings from the ATC and whether there are ways we can work to enhance our client solutions.  Blogging is on the agenda !! Thanks for your workshop, I really enjoyed it, and I know lots of others did too.  

  • Anonymous
    April 16, 2008
    Dee- thank you so much for the feedback! You'll have to stop back by here and let me know how things progress with the blogging conversation! I hope you can get some people excited about it.

  • Anonymous
    April 17, 2008
    Hi Heather We are currently in our session, and we have the following questions for you:

  1.  Do you have to register your blog with a search engine to come up in searches?
  2.  Can you direct us to the best resource to find out how to set up a blog? Regards Dee
  • Anonymous
    April 18, 2008
    Hi Dee -
  1. You don't have to but you become discoverable more quickly if you do. I recommend it.
  2. Yikes, that's a tough question. I haven't seen any difinitive resource but I bet if you search "setting up a blog", you will find something. Most of the services out there will walk you through the process with their tool. Good luck!

  • Anonymous
    April 20, 2008
    Hi Heather, I attended your session on Monday the 14th April, I was the guy with the CEO you want to convert. From the strength of that I had to actually apply for a role at Microsoft, who knows if it will get anywhere, but really how could I not. My team at home are preparing for a lot of work with the ideas I have gained from this conference, one of which was blogging, I'll keep you posted Thanks again and enjoy the rest of your stay

  • Anonymous
    April 22, 2008
    Dan - that's great! I'm glad you got a lot from the conference. I thought it was really good!