While studying at ANU I found myself involved in a few different community groups and student societies that tested my ability to balance priorities (and stay focused on boring coursework) when I could instead be running fun events. This view has continued into my adult life with me doing lots of stuff, including some event management, outside my work
Delivering the Human Future
I was subcontracted by the Council for the Human Future in December 2020 to organise and run their inaugural conference ‘Deliverying the Human Future’ for March 2021. This involved compiling the schedule, doing pre-recordings with a dozen or so speakers across the globe, creating the online infrastructure (conference website, logos, Zoom meetings etc), coordinating the marketing/promotion, managing the conference on the day (playing pre-records, moderating Q&A, managing live-streams etc) and then doing post-conference editing on the presentations to be hosted on the Council’s YouTube page. This was still early enough into the ‘Zoom world’ for events so had to make up a lot of stuff as we/I went to pull it off. And it went really well.
GAMMA.CON Pop-culture Festival
After trying my hand at the Anime.AU festival that had been set up and then collapsed about three times in a decade and a half, I decided to start the GAMMA.CON Pop-culture Festival (although at the time we called it a Convention). I started it in 2013 as the President/Convenor of the event and over the course of four years grew it from a one-day event of 200 people hosted at the ANU to a weekend long event for 5000 people at the AIS Arena. At the beginning I led a team of seven people and co-ordinated their activities, by the end I had a team of 15 plus another 60 people who volunteered to help on the day. Activities that I directly did, oversaw and/or trained others in included (but was not limited to): creating sponsorship agreements, designing venue layouts, managing exhibitors, managing ticket sales, organising stage/panel/workshop/screening content, budgeting, merchandise, media interviews, marketing & promotion, set up & pack down, on-stage MCing etc. All as a unpaid volunteer while managing other unpaid volunteers. Also a fun fact- I am the only Convenor/President of a non-profit ‘pop culture’ convention in Australia to have a successful and amicable hand over to the next generation of organisations (as opposed to the exceedingly common a) coup d’état that happens when the person in charge stays in charge for too long or b) getting stuck in charge for decade(s) and having it take over your entire life)
ANU Anime and Gaming Society Weekly Events
I found myself in several leadership positions while at the ANU but while I was President of the ANU Anime & Gaming Society (in my day they had a slightly nicer website) there were multiple regular events that I was involved in running. Every Monday we would host console gaming events, every Wednesday we would have boardgames and anime screenings, and every Friday we would have the anime/boardgames plus a dinner. When I started only the Wednesday and Friday evnets happened, and we would only consistently meet during the university semester with infrequent events during holdiays. By the time I left, these events would happen every week of the year and typically only pause over the Christmas/New Year shutdown period. We won a couple awards from the ANU Student Association over the years too.
SCOM2001- Food for Thought Conference
Another science conference I helped organise, this one under the auspices of an scicom undergraduate course at ANU in 2012. It was sufficiently long ago that I don’t really remember much about it. My job was around venue management and scheduling, so I’m including it here just to show how far back me doing this sort of event work extends.
AFL Canberra Umpire Association
The AFL Canberra Umpire Association is the representative body of umpires for Australian Rules football in Canberra. It’s been around since 1963, however to be frank sometime in the late 2000s/early 2010s it basically collapsed. To the point that pay and conditions for Umpires had deteriorated quite badly- I started umpiring in 2019 and the pay rates hadn’t changed since 2014. I was elected as Vice President in 2021 and started a two year program to reengage umpires, more than quadrupling our membership such that it was the majority of active umpires. I concurrently drove negotiations to get us a 15% payrise in 2022 and a range of improved conditions, though I later learned from older members that the increased rates brought us back to the ~2003 pay levels. Anyway, currently resurrecting this group is a pet project of mine after being elected Vice President in November 2021. Since then I did one transition year as Treasurer in 2023 to allow the next group of engaged umpires to take over the Association before stepping away from umpiring in 2024 for other pursuits.