Speakers
Talks, cases studies and workshops to inspire change
#SparkMEL’s program director walks you through the talks and workshops on our schedule
Speakers and Workshop leaders
As well as inspiring speakers, there will be 8 workshop sessions to choose from, so that you can take practical techniques back to your workplace, immediately.
Speakers

Gerard Murphy
Director of Gerard Murphy Consulting
“Great Teams”
The hallmarks of a successful, driven team are recognisable, regardless of context and environment. These things exist within high performing groups in professions and in sport.

Erica Hughes
Head of Change Delivery at Westpac
“Change and Revolution”
To deliver a revolution takes a revolution in the way an organisation operates. Erica explains how she came to realise that Westpac would need new ways of working and thinking in the quest to achieve their goal of creating a “service revolution” for their customers.

Andre Eikmeier
Co-founder of Vinomofo
Mission, Purpose and People
What happens when you build a company from 2 people (in a garage) to 80 people, with 300,000 members, and $40m annual revenue in just 4 years? Andre will share his hits and misses (but mostly hits) in this inspiring end-note talk.

Martin Andrews
CEO of Cogent
“Open Salaries”
What would happen if everyone in a company knew everyone else’s salaries? Marty will share some of his experiences in running a values-based business, with reference to the example of open salaries and commentary on the attitudes towards it in the industry.

Simon Dowling
Managing Director, 2engage
“Leading for collaboration”
Simon thinks that highly connected organisations have an edge. He wants to help you think about how you can make your business a workplace sans frontiers.
Workshop leaders

Alex Barreto
Development Manager at MYOB
“Team self selection”
MYOB’s Alex and Simon Bristow will run a team self-selection activity that give you the knowledge to do this at your workplace.

Simon Bristow
Technical Director, Experian
“Team self selection”
Imagine letting people choose the teams and projects they wanted to work on. What would that change in your organisation? Simon and Alex Barreto will guide you through a self-selection process in this workshop.

Layla Foord
General Manager at Envato Studio
“How to be your own disruptor”
How can you avoid the trap of creating products that no one wants or needs? How can you re-imagine solutions so that you achieve better outcomes before someone else does it?

Lorena Healey
Lorena Healey Consulting
“Organisational design”
How organisational design is like building a house – how to avoid constructing your structure on dodgy foundations. Don’t just start moving boxes and lines in an org chart!

Richard Harmer
CEO of The Holos Group
Holosophy: Four Meetings That Bring Organisations To Life
Learn radical meeting methods that create more responsive organisational systems and help bring our organisational cultures to life.

Therese Joyce
UniMelb, Centre for Positive Psych.
“Appreciative Inquiry”
“AI” has been called a “Positive Revolution in Change”. Experience a mini-AI summit in Therese’s workshop and learn why!

Natalia Manidis
Community Manager at Envato
“Community as a leadership discipline”
Natalia and Vanessa will explore how you can use community to re-energise your leadership practice and engage the people who work in your organisation.

Megumi Miki
Leadership Consultant
“Change your mind”
Leaders cannot make others bring their best talents. The best leaders create the environment that makes people want to contribute their best. The starting point for creating this environment rests within the leader…

Venessa Paech
Communications & PR Manager, Envato
“Community as a leadership discipline”
Vanessa is a pioneer in workplace Community Management and will run a workshop with her colleague Natalia Manidis that show you how it could re-energise your workplace.

Bronwyn Stocks
Principal, Buro Architects
“Workspace design”
Fresh thinking about workspace design. We don’t want to bore people by going over old ground but we do believe there are some new things to be said and some things you can try yourself.

Julian Waters-Lynch
Senior Partner, The Holos Group
Holosophy: Four Meetings That Bring Organisations To Life
Avoid endless meetings, unclear accountabilities and authority, inefficient processes and implicit power games, with Holosophy.

Paul Von Chrismar
Director of Büro Architecture
“Workspace design”
Fresh thinking about workspace design. We don’t want to bore people by going over old ground but we do believe there are some new things to be said and some things you can try yourself.
Graphic recorders


Christiane Anderson
Coach, Facilitator and Founder of the Inspiring Leadership Institute

Donna McGrath
Business Analyst, Visual Facilitator & Graphic Recorder