I’ve been to New Zealand once before, but it was a very rushed affair!

On this occasion I was facilitating the Voice Leaders Forum, (November 10)an industry gathering of companies and organisations who use voice recognition for parts of the customer experience. It was sponsored by Salmat and TelstraClear and had a range of speakers discussing their experiences with the technology.

That technology has come so far from the early days that it is now quite easy for a caller to a company’s main number to navigate their way in a few easy moves to where they want to get to.

I managed to take two days off for a look around Wellington and surrounds. What a beautiful city! I took the cable car from Lambton Quay to the entrance to the Botanic Gardens. It was only $6 return, but I walked all the way back down to the city through the Botanic Gardens. (Calves were a tad tender for a day two!) It’s an awesome walk with so many areas of interesting…er…vegetation to see. (I’m not a gardener!)

I also took a trip to Bulls, which is about two hours’ drive north of Wellington. My good mate, Bronwyn Meads, is the community co-ordinator there and she showed me round with great  pride!

Playing tourist by yourself is not much fun, so my next trip will be with my wife. And I would like to spend some more time there.

I just got back from a week in Brisbane where I MC’d two conferences; the GBTA AUS/NZ and Mining 2011.

The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) event was held at The Mercure and had a really interesting program. First up was finance journalist and commentator, Michael Pascoe, with whom I’ve worked on a number of occasions. His theme was essentially that we should stop whining in Australia because our economy is very strong, despite was politicians with self interest would tell you.

Remember Bob Ansett from the 80s? The man who brought us Budget car hire is a popular speaker and consultant these days. Bob talked about customer service and about “customerising” our business. He was one of the first people in Australia to wake us up to customer service. Good speaker and a very affable man.

After the GBTA event, I moved to the other side of the river for the 3-day Mining 2011 Resources Convention for Vertical Events. This event had outgrown its previous venue and had moved to the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre. This was huge!

The mining exhibition with one of the two tented auditoria in the background

A busy 3-day event, it was jam packed with miners, explorers, ministers and mining services presentations in what is now the largest resources event on the eastern seaboard.

I’m just back from Toowoomba where I MC’d the bi-annual BeefWorks conference. This is the conference that alternates with the much bigger BeefEx held on the Gold Coast every second year and run by the Australian Lot Feeders Association (ALFA).

This was my first visit to Toowoomba, which you may remember suffered awfully in the floods of early this year. There is little evidence of that horrific period in this town of around 100,00 people.

The town, which is dubbed “The Garden City”, is one of the neatest and cleanest I have come across in Australia. I walked from the City Golf Club to The Spotted Cow with my good friend and keynote speaker, Jon Doust, on the eve of the conference and loved the heritage nature of the houses, the cleanliness of the streets and the general vibrancy of the town. Verges are neatly mowed, parks are in pristine condition and the place is generally abuzz.

The conference program was excellent. Arron Wood from Kids Teaching Kids is an environmentalist who admitted he had some views about feedlots that were not very flattering of the industry. Before he addressed the conference, he spent time on a feedlot and in his address readily admitted that he’d got it wrong. Feedlots were sustainable, he said. He was impressed with the low carbon footprint and attention to animal welfare.

Much of the conference was devoted to issues of animal welfare. These guys and girls do care for their animals, not only because its the right thing to do but because it makes good business sense.

Other speakers included 6th generation US rancher, Trent Loos, who does six radio programs a day in the US discussing agriculture and “de-mythifying” some of the rubbish that is spoken about animal production. Ryan Kasko from Alberta gave us a picture of his family owned operation and another Albertan, Alison Sunstrum, talked about the amazing technology they had developed that was helping lot feeders accurately feed their stock while identifying potential health issues.

Entertainment at the conference dinner was provided by comedian, Marty Fields, whose material was fresh and original and he certainly won over the audience in a 30-minute spot.

The conference was another triumph of excellence in organisation for Esther Price and both she and ALFA President, Jim Cudmore, would have been more than happy with the the program and the general vibe of the event.