“This was without a doubt the most successful conference I have ever been involved with and this feedback was echoed by all of the participants. FAST Meeting Co. was instrumental in designing and facilitating this success. The conference design provided us an enormous step up, and overcome many of the challenges of alignment and buy-in that are so difficult to achieve with a change in structure.
Michael Ehrentraut – Head of Transactional Business Group
Westpac Bank
"The facilitation of our conference made for a most engaging and effective off-site. The key themes of personal responsibility and support were clearly conveyed. All staff went back to the office individually motivated while feeling part of a much larger team. The customised BHAK experience was a real highlight as it crystallized the key themes in an extremely fun and interactive way."
Ed Goff, General Manager;Victoria
Vodafone
"FAST Meetings helped us achieve outstanding business results in a very focussed, tightly facilitated workshop. The FAST process was the best I have seen in 25 years of engineering and mining"
Allan Blood, Chairman
Australian Power and Energy Limited
“Through a one day Board Strategy Retreat, FAST Meetings Co. enabled IM Medical to focus our business model and reach a consensus on the strategy that best leveraged the company’s core strengths. In addition, and perhaps most importantly the sessions allowed ownership of the strategies that were well understood and supported by Board members. The 6 month plan that ensued has been implemented, and this has allowed us rapid growth whilst also supporting a sustainable business model”
Andrew Batty – CEO
IM Medical
“We thought we had our conference in hand, until DaPo helped us to see how much more we could achieve. They guided us from design to delivery and provided great value with the meeting exceeding all our expectations. The FAST Facilitation provided a powerful boost to our cohesion and focus, particularly encouraging people to work across groups within our business. This has helped us to achieve ambitious performance targets.”
Steve Rust – Managing Director
Ingram Micro
“Thank you for your help. We are really pleased with the momentum we have generated from our conference. It was a big investment, however it is already paying off due to incredible follow through we are achieving. We have always been pretty good at doing what we say we will, however I have never seen this level of speed and structure with which our teams are implementing their project priorities. Our international Vice President told me that it was far and away the most effective conference he has ever been involved with in his career.”
Michael Lofaro – General Manager
Mainfreight
"Congratulations on one of the most successful conferences for planners I have seen in my 25 years in the business. I suspect there are a lot of motivated Avenue planners today, as is the case for most planners the day after most conferences. Through your efforts, those of your conference team, and delegates themselves, the motivation will last significantly longer than 99% of other conferences I have seen"
Noel Corley - Vice President; Retail Sales
Deutsche Asset Management
“From the initial planning right through to the facilitation of the 2009 ACEA National Conference, the FAST Meetings team approached our event with absolute professionalism. Their vast conference experience gave us the confidence that we were heading in the right direction with our content and speakers. Their in-depth knowledge and hands-on approach helped us to deliver our first conference in 15 years and make it a huge success. We look forward to working with FAST Meetings again as we plan our 2010 conference.”
Megan Motto – CEO
ACEA (Association of Consulting Engineers Australia)
“FAST Meeting Co. helped us design and facilitate an annual leaders forum which had lost relevance and traction in the prior couple of years. The feedback was unanimously positive, and delegates returned home feeling they had achieved something worthwhile, and their time had been well spent. An indirect benefit we gained has been the closer working relationship and more frequent communications which have since occurred between the State Associations, and this has had widespread benefits in many of the issues we share”
Andrew Mc Kinnon – Executive Director
Optometrists Association NSW
“Our Conference was a huge success and the session we did with FAST Meetings was inspired on many fronts. It took away any opportunity for members to say they didn't have a chance to express their views. It got our best and brightest in one room for a shortish time to get the ideas out and our most obsessive members to get the words right. You did an excellent job and we will use you in future when the opportunity arises.”
Sue Richards – CEO
Family Services NSW
“Our inaugural Annual Members conference received really positive feedback, thanks to your input in the design and facilitation of the morning workshop. The FAST structure made a big difference in getting people involved, leading to lots of constructive conversation and exchanging of ideas. As well, your facilitation was extremely professional, and you demonstrated to the group a really sound grasp of our organisation. Next year, we look to extend your involvement in the design of our overall program to get even better results. Thanks again.”
Lee Christian – Manager; Member Services
ABL (Australian Business Limited)
“We were very pleased indeed with the outcomes of the work with you in developing new ideas for our annual conference, some of which we had not anticipated. First, the members of Council and the conference committee really valued the workshop day where we sampled some FAST approaches to meetings and conferences. Even the sceptics came away feeling they had learned some useful techniques. Many members reported that they had significant success in implementing FAST techniques back in school faculties and their classrooms. The feedback from conference presenters of the coaching they received confirmed that the skills they had learned enhanced their workshop presentations immensely.
During the year, we restructured several of the sessions at professional learning events to incorporate interactive methods, and we were delighted with the engagement of our members in these sessions. The feedback from participants was very positive indeed.
We are looking forward to further developing our skills with the help of FAST next year.”
Debbie de Laps – CEO
VATE (Victorian Association for the Teaching of English)
“English Australia initiated a major refocus for its annual industry conference in 2008 with the aim of transforming it from a teachers’ conference to an industry conference. Our ultimate aim was for the event to be recognised by sponsors, government and the industry as a “not-to-be-missed” event.
We engaged FAST Meetings to assist us with developing our strategic approach to the ‘new-look’ conference as well as some practical tools for implementing the changes we wanted.
The 2008 Conference was our best ever. We attracted record numbers of delegates across the broader profile we were targeting. 97% of responding delegates indicated that the next annual EA Conference would be a priority for them or their organisation. We exceeded our sponsorship revenue target in the following year as sponsors respond to the new profile of delegates.
The investment we made in sourcing assistance from FAST Meetings has been extremely worthwhile. Their strength lay not just in listening to what we thought our needs were, but also in understanding needs that we weren’t conscious of ourselves. They were able to understand, analyse and articulate the issues and then to develop strategies that were exactly what was needed to drive the development of the event.
Sue Blundell – CEO
English Australia
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