The National Future Work Summit was a 10/10 and here’s why we loved it

The National Future Work Summit was an event you should not have missed out on. We attended it and believe us when we say; it was an essential and insightful event on every level.

Future of Work is definitely the buzzword right now and this summit will keep it buzzing on because it made us excited and inspired for what the future of work will be like.

Topics that tackled different organisational levels

Let’s start with the talks and the themes that were being discussed.

For starters the themes were on point, it attacked the topic with various perspectives, and that’s what a good summit is all about. Challenging and understanding all the different views and opinions that can surround a specific topic. To be fair, Future of Work as a topic can be quite daunting when you are trying to decode or tackle it, but the summit did a seamless job of doing it by breaking it down to different levels so we can understand it and discuss it with detail.

There were talks tackled the theme on a border level like The State of the Nation by Sally-Ann Williams from Google and a panel with Hon. Craig Laundy and Hon. Ed Husic on the Australian National Policy perspective. David Platt from Resilient Future gave a talk on Decoding Disruption which tackled the summit’s theme perfectly and gave us a better understanding of this buzzword of late, disruption.

The panel on Australian policy was beyond insightful because out gave us a chance to hear from our Government that innovation is indeed something they understand and is working towards. And the talk by Sally-Ann from Google set the tone of our discussion as she was the first, not only did she talked about the importance of technical and disciplinary skills, she highlights the importance of ‘soft skills’ like teamwork and leadership.

There were talks tackled the organisational level as well, with a talk by Tim Reed from MYOB on Leading the Workplace of the Future and Monica Parker from Hatch Analytics talking on Designing for Organisational Change. Kids were even brought into the discussion with a panel on Above and Beyond School.

If you’re wondering how Future of Work will impact your organisation or how can leaders prepare for this, your questions were answered during the talk by both Reed and Parker. They tackled how workplace might change and the core value that needs to be grounded for this disruption.

And a charming panel of kids was brought up as well, to view it from their perspective and their excitement for new skills that they are exposed to. But the take away for me was that the kids that are growing up with technology do have the basic knowledge of this disruption as compared to us who didn’t grow up with it.

Finally, panels that discuss individual perspectives, like a panel on How to Rewire your Brain for the Digital Era, which gave us an insight into what we can do as individuals. Like everyone, we wonder how this disruption will affect us individually and how we can prepare out skills and most importantly our mindsets.

The final keynote speakers were Dr Angus Hervey and Dr Tané Hunter from Future Crunch. And if you are a pessimist of the future, they will change your perspective as their talk was filled with optimism and excitement back with statistics and actual news.

The theme that rounded up with all the talks was collaboration. Collaboration was talked about in literally every panel and keynote, which shows highlights the importance of it as we step into the unknowns of the future.

The guys from Future Crunch summed it up really well.

“Collaboration trumps genius.”

I mean the talks would have been great as the speakers and panellist all range from major companies like Google, General Assembly, LinkedIn, MYOB, BlueChilli and even the Australian Parliament. Not saying that big corporation would give better content, it just meant that they would have prepared well as the reputation of the company is heavily attached to it. And boy did they deliver.

The wonderful crowd

But let’s not give all the credit to the speakers and the event organisation, the summit would not have happened if not for the crowd that attended.

I had a mingle during the breaks, and the conversations I’ve encountered were insightful. There were guests from bigger corporations to startup founders to just someone who’s interested. It was definitely great to see such a diverse crowd, which goes to show that this event was vital as it impacts us on all the levels that we had concerns with.

The event did just that as well, with a crowd that came in to hear what they were concerned with or interested in, the event matched their desires perfectly and gave more than we bargained for.

During every break, all the guest were networking and discussing all the topics that were covered. The hustle and bustle of opinions, ideas, inspirations that were thrown around were inspiring itself. I must say it was a perfect opportunity to network as we were all from various organisations, but bonded over a topic that we are passionate about.

Plus, fantastic food was provided during these breaks which of course, help in every way. Good food and good content and good vibes made it all rosy and perfect.

Major FOMO?

So if you are feeling the dreaded FOMO (fear of missing out), it’s perfectly normal, because this was an event was educational, inspiring and just a well-done summit in every way.

But fret not, they will be heading to Sydney and more event surround this topic of Future Work will pop up in the months after. So keep your eyes peeled or subscribe to their newsletter to keep up with their future events.