A Hometown Keynote at the HIMAA National Conference
Gotta love a hometown event.
And I definitely loved this one for HIMAA at the Hilton Sydney.
Most of my events mean airports, hotels and being away from my beautiful family, so having a major conference right here in Sydney was already a win. Even better, I got to have the family with me for this one (the bestttt!)
I was brought in as one of the keynote speakers for the HIMAA National Health Information Management Conference at Hilton Sydney.
HIMAA originally reached out looking for someone with high energy who could talk around connection, positivity and performance, while still making it relevant to people working across health and care. Come to the right place!
After a couple of conversations with Naomi and the team, we landed on a session around connection, resilience, performance under pressure, perspective and the way we show up individually within a bigger organisation.
Pretty much my kinda stuff.
And being a keynote speaker in Sydney this one was a little different to the usual fly in, speak, fly out routine.
Naomi had organised accommodation at the Hilton for the night of the event, so I thought stuff it, let’s make a little family stay out of it. We headed into the city together, had dinner, walked around Sydney and then headed back to the hotel. Usually when I’m travelling alone for events I get a pretty decent sleep. With Bub in the room, not so much 😂. Small price to pay though. Having my wife and daughter there made the whole thing way more special.
The next morning we went down for buffet brekky and I started noticing people everywhere wearing HIMAA conference lanyards. In the lifts, around breakfast, through the hotel. I ended up chatting to a few of them and none of them had any idea I was actually speaking at their conference.
To be fair, I was walking around in activewear with a baby strapped to my chest and my beautiful wife next to me. Probably wasn’t exactly giving off keynote speaker vibes.
Another cool thing about this event was having my good mate Kyle Napoleoni from Cayen Media there filming the session. Believe it or not, after all these years speaking (over 12 years!), I’d never actually organised my own videographer to come along to one of my events. I’ve had plenty of in-house footage, phone clips and stuff sent to me afterwards, but never brought my own crew in.
It had become pretty obvious I needed to though. Corporate event planners are always asking for speaking footage and since stepping away from Instagram for a while, there wasn’t really anywhere easy for people to see what one of my sessions actually looks and feels like.
Kyle and the Cayen crew came along, sorted themselves out with the organisers, mic’d me up and made the whole thing easy.
Gotta love that.
After brekky with the family we went for a walk around the city, then it was back upstairs to get Bub down for a sleep and for me to get ready. I pretty much got the boot out of the room because when Dad is around she’s more interested in playing than sleeping 😂
I got ready, headed downstairs, met Kyle and Naomi and pretty soon it was go time.
What a session.
A huge room with more than 450 delegates. People leaning in, nodding, laughing, the occasional gasp when some of the heavier parts of my story landed, and then a beautiful round of applause at the end.
During the talk I noticed my wife and little girl walk into the room too, which absolutely made my day. I spend so much time travelling around the country speaking to other people, so having the two people who matter most to me standing at the back watching was pretty bloody special.
Afterwards we had a book signing and a heap of people came over to grab copies of Stabbed Ego and have a chat.
This is one of my favourite parts of speaking. The presentation is obviously the main event, but the conversations afterwards are where you really understand what landed. People tell me what they got out of it, something they recognised in themselves, a conversation they know they need to have or a change they’ve been putting off. Some people open up about things they’re going through themselves too.
That stuff means a lot.
A few days later Naomi left me this recommendation on LinkedIn:
“He is, without a doubt, the best speaker I have worked with in over 10 years of running events.”
She also mentioned the energy, the connection with the audience and the work that went into building something specifically for their 450+ delegates.
Pretty special feedback from someone who has been running events for more than a decade.
Big conference, beautiful audience, my family there with me, a good mate filming it all, and no airport afterwards.
Gotta love a hometown event.
Family back in tow and now it’s time to head north for a couple more interstate events.
More about those in the next one.
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