Held in Melbourne, 1-3 April, 2011, these are the highlights, awards, and audio interviews
An inspirational 3 days of speakers, workshops and comedy is how some are describing the National Speaker’s Association of Australia’s 21st Convention, which is also a celebration of 25 years of NSAA.
The NSAA Convention got off to a great start on Friday the 1st April 2011 with Andrew Bryant, and sharing his tips and experience on becoming an international speaker. Andrew was born and raised in the UK, then lived Australia before moving to base himself in Singapore.
Some of his best advice included considering these questions:
- Do you have what it takes?
- Are you prepared to spend a lot of time hanging out in airports, hotels and missing home cooked meals?
- Are you prepared to risk your own money? It takes an investment of your own resources to become a speaker in another country – and you have to back yourself first before anyone else will.
- Do you have good health? And are you prepared to risk it? Sometimes the lifestyle is going to affect your health – you’ll also be exposed to everyone else’s bugs too.
- Are you prepared to have your material adapted to other cultures?
- Are you happy to stay at 5 star hotels and 2 star hotels? Sometimes you have to take the good with the bad…
Andrew’s was only one of three pre-convention workshops before the main show started at 2.30pm,MC’d by (Dr) Scott Williams CSP, one of Australia’s best known comedian’s. First up was Malcolm McLeod CSP, The Handwriting Guru, who shared some exceptional methods of helping us all get to know each other, which included banding together 21 teams of speakers to oversee the delivery of bicycles to some very happy under privileged children. It was certainly a feel good moment for everyone.
The afternoon ended after a dynamic speech by Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide, Saatchi & Saatchi, who shared lessons from geese, the role of speakers to inspire our audiences and change the world, and encouraged us to never settle for being average. He also talked about love vs respect and the unreasonable power of creativity.
Laughter is the best feeling in the world, and a great way to start anything is to feel great. The comedy festival was starting in the great city of Melbourne on the same day and our Friday night was spent laughing (until some of us cried) with some of the best comedians MC Andrew Horabin CSP could muster.
Saturday dawned with some breakfast networking and then the day of keynotes, workshops and many great corridor conversations started.
NSAA Awards:
The 2012 Kerry Nairn Scholarship was awarded to Queensland speaker Sonya Falvo.
Nevin Award - Kevin Ryan
Lifetime Membership Award went to Lisa McInnes Smith, CSP CPAE
Education Award: Matt Church CSP
Keynote Speaker of the Year: Rodney Marks CSP
Some other highlight presentations were by Peter Sheahan CSP, Ngahihi o te ra Bidois, and Stephen Lundin.
The 2012 convention will be on the Gold Coast of Australia – details will be available on the GSF events page soon.
Listen to a series of ‘Corridor Conversations’ with Maria Carlton, interviewing:
Andrew Bryant CSP, Andrew_Bryant.WMA
Kevin Roberts, Kevin_Roberts.WMA
Scott Williams CSP, Scott_Williams.WMA
Andrew Horabin CSP, Andrew_Horabin.WMA
Lisa McInnes Smith CSP CPAE. Lisa_McInnes_Smith.WMA
Comment by Roberta Budvietas on Apr 5, 2011
I really enjoyed the whole conference, especially all the terrific people I met.
Roberta Budvietas, Auckland