Well the 2018 conference has come and gone. From our perspective in the ‘convening mob’s balcony’ for 2018, we hope you enjoyed yourself as much as we enjoyed hosting the conference. If you weren’t able to attend, thanks for your well wishes. For those who weren’t able to attend, we hope the Facebook posts and social media telegraph captured something of the conference experience.
I think we were blessed with great weather for the conference in conjunction with an excellent setting, venue and partnership with Duchesne College. Duchesne really does work as a great base for folks when they come to Brisbane as everything is on the one level and easily accessible.
One of the delights of convening the conference has been building a warm up together, seeing each phase of the conference come together, imagining folk arriving, and then members populating the conference with their own style and grace. As each person registered for the conference I certainly experienced anew a good sense of meeting with everyone again. One of the things I was aware of in myself and certainly we focussed on this as the convening mob, was keeping a positive tele towards all our conference attendees. Hopefully this came through in our connections with you all.
We’re a member run organisation and it’s always pleasing to see how our folk put themselves forward at conference time – from roles we take up in the organisation and the roles we enact when we meet.
We were delighted with the program for 2018, created from the various offerings. We continued some experiments from previous conferences – including the “no frills” approach to hosting, offering a wide variety of formats for people to put forward proposals for conference sessions and utilising the conserves that have been developed over the years in regard to our conferences.
The social aspect of conferences always appeals and feedback from many quarters indicated that the band for the dinner dance really hit the mark for people – we think they may make a return appearance for 2019.
Pre conference workshops were well attended and assisted people warm up to themselves, each other and the conference.The post conference workshop worked a treat for continuing to build our ‘artistry’.
The approach our Executive has undertaken in the AGM has developed an increasing involvement of members during the meeting. This was demonstrated in 2018 with direct testing of the pulse of members in relation to refining and crafting our vision and expressing possibilities for upcoming conferences. Members expressed enthusiasm and thoughtfulness as the various options were explored.
Thanks again for each of your generosity and welcoming spirit. Here’s to the psychodramatic stage we create with our conferences …. let’s continue to express as Moreno said our “aesthetic demonstration of freedom”
