Eating: Breakfast with a dynamic table of wonderful people at the Business Chicks Breakfast in Melbourne last week. I don’t get out of bed at 4.30am for too many things (I had to drive into the city from the Yarra Valley that day) but hearing Ita Buttrose speak is one of them. Ita certainly didn’t disappointment. However, even more exciting was being able to share the experience with some amazing Melbourne peeps including wonderful Sydney Writers’ Centre graduates Anna Spargo-Ryan, Robyn Box and Rose Wintergreen.
I hosted a Sydney Writers' Centre table of writers, bloggers, publishers and awesome writerly types.
Yours truly with the gorgeous @planningqueen blogger Nicole Avery
Belinda Weaver from Copywrite Matters and Jasmin Tragas from Problogger
Sandi Sieger (organiser of Melbourne Writers' Club), yours truly, and talented songwriter Rose Wintergreen
Visiting: Innovative Melbourne startup accelerator AngelCube, which operates out of the co-working space Inspire9 in Richmond. I chatted to AngelCube founder and fund manager Andrew Birt (thanks to Steve Sammartino for connecting us!). Stay tuned for an upcoming article on what Andrew is doing.
This week I also dropped into Sydney startup incubator Pollenizer to chat to Mick Liubinskas and his team about what we’re doing at SocialCallout.com.
Hosting: The Sydney Business Awards Reception for finalists at the Town Hall. I love a good business awards event. I think there’s something truly energising about being in a room full of over 300 amazing entrepreneurs. The atmosphere is exciting and there are so many like-minded people in the same room. This is my third consecutive year hosting this event for the City of Sydney and it’s great fun.
I bumped into the lovely Suzi Danis, community director of the Australian Businesswomen's Network, finalists in the awards
Check out the unusual canapés. This was the "edible garden" although I wasn't quite game enough to try it
Reading: Then it was back on the plane to Melbourne where I opened Qantas mag to see Sydney Writers’ Centre mentioned in an article. Soon after, I opened marie claire and read about Sydney Writers’ Centre being a great place to do online writing courses. To top it all off, my new business SocialCallout.com was in this month’s PR Report.
From this month's Qantas magazine
marie claire September 2012
Yours truly, Katrina Allen and Michelle Palmer in The PR Report
Redecorating: In an attempt to improve my productivity here in the Yarra Valley, I’ve rearranged and redecorated my office here. Okay, I’ll confess. That’s just a fancy way of saying I’ve been to Kikki.K and Officeworks too many times.
Rocky exploring the new drawers
Rex has claimed my new reading chair as his own
Watching: Puberty Blues. I loved the book. I loved the original movie. And now I’m loving the television series on Channel 10. This is because I’m a “Shire girl” from way back. I remember when “Byron” came up to me after school to tell me that “David” wanted to “go around with” me. I said yes, but I must have lived in a parallel Shire universe to the one depicted in the show – because there were no panel vans or jars of Vaseline in sight.
Finally: Before anyone thinks I’ve moved south for good, I haven’t. I’ll be back in Sydney in a couple of weeks and am looking forward to the warmer weather!
