Biz Smart 2012 - Busselton, WA
Ever heard of Biz Smart? I hadn't but a recommendation from my business coach (John Matthew - Switch) led me to register a couple of months before the event and then I promptly forgot about it.
As always seems to be the case, workload, deadlines and stress seem to increase the closer you get to having time off from actually working. Then add to the mix 4 meetings in Perth and fun and frivolities with the AWIA Port 80 meeting the night before and my trip to Busselton was becoming less and less appealing.
Obviously tired, I hadn't even bothered to see how long it should take me to get to Busselton from Waroona so my estimate of 2.5 hours was an hour out, giving me plenty of time to contemplate if I would actually be feeling any better had I got up an hour later.
I stumbled half asleep into Abbey Beach Resort, found my name badge and then started checking out the stalls. At a rough guess I'd say there were about 50 stalls there, each with something interesting to offer and great prizes to win - including Busselton Telephones and Technology who happened to pull out my business card from their box of entries to win me a shiny new HTC 7 Mozart smartphone - thanks guys!
Two keynote speakers graced us with their presence. Rachel Green opened with the first session on Networking and what a session it was! Rachel is definitely "out there" and managed to get the whole room interacting and learning. Really impressed with her approach and learned a lot about how to network properly.
The second keynote speaker was Tom Potter, the founder of Eagle Boys. An absolutely amazing public speaker with a great life story to tell. Tom spoke during the last session of the day and engaged everyone from start to finish.(Tom also noted that he has started a new business, Crusty Devil Bakehouses)
Throughout the day there were 3 other session times, each consisting of 3 talks/seminars that delegates could choose from. I attended Branding Energy, Social Media and Resilience.
I learned a lot, ate some great food, met some really interesting people and would definitely recommend it as a worthwhile conference to go to next year, no matter how busy you are.