In June my friend Trent Yeo calls me with an audacious idea to go some way in addressing the tourism deficit of Queenstown. His pitch was simple: in March 2020 this year, if you had a job you suddenly became part of a global tribe called ‘remote and flexible workers’, lets build out a learning experience around this, attract different humans to the area to explore working from here in the future.
So after some early scoping, tweaks and iterations plus LOTS of conversations, RemoteTogetherNZ was born:
Join us for RemoteTogetherNZ, a festival of professional development, networking opportunities, and wellbeing activities which explore the themes of flexible and remote working in one of the most beautiful places in the world.
The remote world is here to stay and New Zealand has a great opportunity to be a global leader. We are in a privileged position to be able to reflect back on lockdown and despite the challenges it brought, it also revealed humanity, kindness and focus on what was important. If Aotearoa is to lead the world as a global citizen and a regionally progressive nation, then what are we doing with the largest single effort humans spend their waking hours doing – work?
We’re trying to do something which can’t and / or shouldn’t be possible: pull together a world-class, vibrant and compelling, two-week festival, in about 3 months, with over forty different learning opportunities exploring the following themes:
Have been working my fingers off curating the current offer and it’s been a wonderful journey of collaboration with such open and good humans:
Trent – the visionary, energetic catalyst for the whole endeavour.
Scott – on-the-ground logistics ace making sure what we plan is doable,
Jess – leading on MarComms and the weaver of complex narratives.
Cuillin – utility superstar, covering off so many other things the rest don’t have time to do.
So if you’re interested in these topics, work in an organisation or business which is still exploring how to react accordingly to this new epoch, someone in charge of redoing policies and strategies, a leader still getting to grips with this different approach to leading etc., register now and snap up the ‘cheap-as-chips-early-bird’ options!
Slowing down, reflecting on the current landscape and previous events plus being bold in saying no.
Have decided to press pause on this years Creative Leadership NZ conference. The three-time-sold-out experience for visionary humans looking to connect into a creative community to solve contemporary challenges will take a break for 2020 (check out 2019 / 2018 / 2017 event reviews).
The venue was lined up along with speakers and audio visual (AV) services. The idea was to drop the costs to $350 per person to make it accessible as well. Although, as you know I take an unusual approach of paying the speakers well for their contribution, and the ‘hard costs’ remain at whatever price I set it at. Therefore, 140 spots would have to be sold just to break even.
There’s a definite appetite out there for it again although in this current climate of restrictive professional development budgets, not the resources.
As I say: saying ‘no’ is a powerful ‘yes’ to something else.
Ergo, my energies will be devoted elsewhere which will be announced next week… oooh!
Flag displayed at the departure dinner held for Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his officers in the Royal Hotel in Cardiff on 13 June 1910, two days before the expedition sailed for Antarctica. It was flown on the mainmast of the Terra Nova when the ship returned to Cardiff at the end of the expedition on 14 June 1913 (ref).
A jumble of superb digital content and links to spend your good time on.
Caffeine & Aspirin is Wellington’s weekly arts and culture fix. From 10am-1pm each Saturday tune in and hang out with one of our hosts – Jay Hollows, Mark Westerby, Janan Jedrzejewski, Meredith Robershawe, Brigid Connor and more – as they present a show filled with interviews with makers and shakers from the Wellington arts world, news and views on the culture scene, and a playlist of their personal music faves.
Always fun to react to good questions and we mainly focused on my current side project, Creative Welly.
Sorry about the audio quality as was interviewed via the phone and should’ve used different headphones for sure (lesson noted) plus move away from the windows as it was windy and you can hear the whistles.
Thanks again to Janan and Mark for featuring me and allowing me to share my stories.
For the past few months I’ve been honoured to be MC’ing the online Teulo Talks events which average 400 humans attending globally. We’re now into double figures of these full day online experiences and the platform which curates them all is now live:
On this platform, industry thought leaders and knowledge-seekers can create and find CPD-accredited videos, webinars, podcasts and presentations to share expertise and upskill on their own terms.
This is a result of one impressive human and her effort to manifest something which doesn’t already exist:
Big props to Janelle (above, middle) and her superb vision, heart-intentioned-actions and wonderful energy in making all this happen, truly believe this is just the start of something big (read her origin story here)!
As the MC it’s been amazing to learn and be inspired by so many international leaders in this space whilst also taking my online and public speaking practice wherever I happen to be: whether from a friends house in Queenstown or at another pals place overlooking the Wainuiomata Coast:
Thank you again Jay for this incredible opportunity to collaborate!
If you’re an architect, designer, construction industry human, check out Teulo now.
This is what happens when you allow a digital artist and a cocoa bean hunter to share their stories and insights (full bios here).
Another two episode have already been recorded and will be out in the coming weeks so subscribe and catch the other episodes via Creative Welly plus learn more about the background in this ‘Creative Welly Launched | Learning Out Loud‘ post.
Another two good souls exploring all manner of wonderful topics, ideas, stories, experiences etc.
We curate and collide intrepid talent from the coolest most creative little capital in the world (with a few out-of-city friends as well from time-to-time).
Subscribe and catch the first episode via Creative Welly.
Again, this project is totally self-funded and wouldn’t be possible without these amazing collaborators:
All episodes are shot and edited by the wonderfully talented Jono Tucker, Empire Films. An extremely diligent and personable soul who has added a polish to the resulting video which I never could’ve achieved, thank you Jono.
Hosted at Xequals, a centrally based web development agency who provide us with a kick-ass office which totally gets kitted out for the shoot. Thank you Alex Matthews for being so gracious with your space.
