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Episode 25
437 Plays1 year ago
No news just a review of day one of the 2023 RCSA SHAPE Conference on Hamilton Island.
Recommended
Transcript
00:00:07
Speaker
So
Day One Overview
00:00:08
Speaker
welcome to this special edition podcast from Recruitment News Australia. I'm here at the lovely Hamilton Island, which Ross, we are at the end of day one. And we're going to do just a quick summary at the end of the day. We will do a full synopsis of the conference next week, we think, because we've got lots of notes that we've taken and we want to share a lot more detail with you. But we did want to provide, as promised, a little bit of end of day summary at the end of each day. So day one, Ross, tell me what stood out for you?
Eddie Betts: From Challenges to Success
00:00:39
Speaker
Uh, well, hello there. And it's been a lovely day. The sun has been shining and of course we've been in the conference, but the best was left to the end of the day. Eddie Betts, for those of you who don't know Eddie, Eddie is a recently retired AFL footballer, 350 games with Carlton football club and the Adelaide Crows. And Eddie is an indigenous man from South Australia.
00:01:08
Speaker
And Eddie shared his story of growing up with disadvantaged domestic violence, a lack of education to the point where he signed his first professional contract with the Carlton Football Club at the age of 18. He could not read the contract that he was signing because he was illiterate. He could not read and he could not write.
00:01:39
Speaker
He shared about his journey and what he'd overcome. He shared about the power of his community and his family. He was brutally honest about the domestic violence perpetuated by his father against his mother.
00:02:03
Speaker
And then he cared about the instances of racism that he's experienced as a footballer and as an Australian, even... ..ongoingly. Recently. And I... I felt desperately sad. I felt ashamed that my countrymen would act in the way that they act.
00:02:32
Speaker
And the thing that really got me was when he shared the story about playing for the Adelaide Crows and they played their fierce rivals, the Port Adelaide Power, and then he kicked the winning goal for the Crows in the Ford pocket right in front of the Port Adelaide supporters and one of those supporters
00:02:57
Speaker
threw a banana onto the field and just yelled all sorts of abuse at him. And Eddie, I mean, you could see it on his face as he's sharing this, the hurt. And then the fact that every time he sees a banana now, it's like this PTSD in terms of
00:03:20
Speaker
that incident and I just I just thought what what sort of society are we where people do that sort of thing was just yeah so anyway I could go on but no I agree with you look I found it really confronting by its content and and hard to digest hard to hear
00:03:40
Speaker
But more so because he just delivers it so humbly. He wasn't lecturing. He wasn't trying to gain our sympathy. He was just telling his story. And in telling the story, you really understood what it was like for him. He really got audience empathy.
00:03:59
Speaker
in his honest, authentic way. Yeah, I really love that presentation. If you get a chance to hear him, I recommend it. Oh, and I'm going to get his book. I've not read his book, The Boy from Boomerang Crescent, so I'm now going to go and actually prefer audiobooks. I don't know if it's an audiobook, but I'm going to seek it out because it's very hard to convey the experience of that room because
00:04:29
Speaker
Like you could have heard a pin drop and then at the end he got a standing ovation. I like that's that's the impact
00:04:37
Speaker
And the thing that kind of struck me is he's out there talking about educating Australians, wanting to make a difference. And he's staring out into this room of everyone who's kind of looking like me, not you Adele, me, like a white person. There's not much diversity in the conference room. And that's perhaps a conversation for another day. Yes, it is. So anyway, anything else about Eddie's presentation, Adele, you might say?
Michael McLean on Tech and Work Evolution
00:05:07
Speaker
No, I think it was a really fitting presentation for the end of the day. It left us, you know, with a real sense of understanding, a great understanding of other people and other situations. And that's what I really loved about it. So, yeah, it was definitely a highlight as well. But I thought the top of the day was as well. I thought that the start of the day with Michael McLean. Yeah, Michael was excellent.
00:05:29
Speaker
Yeah, so he set the scene really well for the conference theme. I felt like he provided some really interesting information around some cool technology that is available and ways that we could use it. And I felt like he also was able to, you know, leave
00:05:49
Speaker
three key points which is always a good way to present something and leave people with three easily digestible points that they can walk away with. But it was a really good opener I felt.
00:06:00
Speaker
Yeah, of course, the first thing I thought about when he walked on stage was, oh, a bald, middle-aged, white guy with glasses. That's nothing against Michael, because obviously I'm a bald, middle-aged, white guy with glasses, although I think Michael's a little bit younger than me.
00:06:21
Speaker
But Michael was very engaging with his presentation, like he talked with us. He didn't talk at us. And I think people who I've seen over the years as conference speakers, when they become a bit too rote with their presentation, it can be a bit talking at you. And I know Michael is a very experienced speaker, but to his credit, he clearly
00:06:45
Speaker
He's got great modulation in his voice, he's easy to listen to and I know it's probably easy to say that. It's 9am in the morning, you've got adrenaline, it's the first day of the conference, you're probably more likely to be listening but I thought Michael made it very easy to listen to him and to
00:07:04
Speaker
use visuals effectively to again as a professional presenter you would think that he would be able to do that but he had some very good screenshots of headlines of points that he was making about AI and generational differences I think I mean just to sort of go over the three points briefly he spoke about the importance of AI, the importance of the
00:07:30
Speaker
remaking of work or sorry reworking of work in other words for example four days work for five days pay as an example though we didn't go into that remote work and the third point was generational transition talking about the different generations and although none of those topics are sort of brand new I think the way that he articulated it was
00:07:57
Speaker
you know, made an impact on the audience. And again, as a professional presenter should, didn't overwhelm the audience with too much information or too much detail. And he made it quite digestible. Agree.
Panel Sessions: Mixed Effectiveness
00:08:11
Speaker
What didn't work today? What didn't work today? The panels, it's not that they didn't work.
00:08:26
Speaker
I just think that you've got to be quite specific with some of those. So I think the first panel didn't work quite as well as the final one. So the first one was the CEOs, MDs of large recruitment businesses. So we had a Deco manpower and program represented.
00:08:52
Speaker
And not anything wrong with what they said, but I just prefer to have a deep dive into one topic. So for example, I reckon the room was probably ready to hear how the large recruitment agencies dealing with remote work, given that they've got multi sites, they've got different streams of businesses, they've got temp, they've got perm. Like how are they dealing with that? I think the room would have really wanted to hear that rather than some of the topics that were covered.
00:09:18
Speaker
The final panel with Martin from Job Adder talking about the execution of AI. I thought that was much more on points because it was quite specific and there were very clear examples. And it's probably not a fair comparison because the final point there were visuals and it was a bit longer.
00:09:36
Speaker
that I'm always suspicious. I'm not suspicious. I approach panel sessions with trepidation because they can go wrong. So I'm just not sure whether as many panels as we had was quite the right thing. What about for you, Adele? Yeah, I think that's a new format that they're trying out. So maybe the second one was better because they're kind of
00:09:59
Speaker
got better at it at picking time was different speakers in the second panel, but it seemed to sort of be easing its way. And I get your point about maybe a bit more of a deep dive on the narrower topic might have been better, but you also with the panel, I guess you don't know what it's unscripted. You don't know what they're going to say.
00:10:16
Speaker
So you raise a topic that you maybe think is going to be a little more detailed and they go off a little broader than they should have. So I'm happy to talk to James directly about that. I know that that was his baby. So I'm sure it'll be something. But look, I love hearing those case studies directly from the field. I think that makes the conference really practical when you're hearing from fellow peers. That's what a lot of people come here for. It's not just to hear those keynote speakers.
00:10:43
Speaker
you want some more practical takeaways and that's what you get from those small panels as well. Agree.
Lunch Feedback and Minor Issues
00:10:49
Speaker
A couple other things that didn't at the lunch. I don't know, like we got this pre-packaged lunch which was poached chicken and glass noodles. It was sort of a Vietnamese style thing.
00:11:03
Speaker
it was nice don't don't get me wrong but there was nothing else it's like we've got this box and i felt like we were kids out on a school excursion where we were given our box and we go outside to eat sort of thing not a big fan of that prefer the buffet what if you're really hungry like you you need a few like where's the cheese plate i don't know maybe i'm just being fussy but i don't know the lunch just it's
00:11:28
Speaker
did not really work for me. Morning tea. It's like, again, first day with some pies or something. We've had a few drinks the night before. Not that I went out and had a big night, but again, it was just the, what was it? Some sort of cake. The food is a little light on. The food is not as extravagant as you probably expect at a conference like this. And so we wait to see. We're going for dinner shortly from here and we'll see how that goes, I suppose. And we've always got tomorrow.
00:11:58
Speaker
Yeah, and look, I know I'm a pedant about these sort of things.
00:12:03
Speaker
the very impressive sort of video slide they had with the lapping water showing effectively, I don't know if it's Hamilton Island, but sort of a tropical scene. And they had principal partner, Prime Super, who are, of course, the principal partner, but unfortunately, they used the wrong principle, it was principle L-E, not principle A-L. They used the correct principle for all the other slides, but that one kind of sort of escaped the attention of the...
00:12:33
Speaker
Lose their head over that. The proof checkers. But hey, I'm the pet ant. Most people probably didn't know that. So anyway, any other things that were jarring for
Conclusion and Future Content
00:12:42
Speaker
you? No, I think that's a great summary for day one. We look forward to going into greater detail with all of you and finding out a bit more. We've got some more questions of the week that we are going to be doing from the field, which may appear in future conversations of our podcast. So stay tuned.
00:13:00
Speaker
and we'll be back with a similar high level summary of the day to tomorrow. So look out for that in your podcast feed. That's a wrap. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts from, Google, Apple, Spotify, or on our website.