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Day 11 – The Aussies weren’t lying after all

posted on Monday, March 03, 2008 01:24 PM

Flying over Sydney at sunset was about as beautiful a site as I can recall. The harbour was much larger than I had imagines and with its natural curves and iconic buildings like the Sydney opera house and bridge nestled in its midst, it really is quite a site to be hold.

My purpose in Sydney is to attend the Oxford Health Alliance summit which is looking at the affect urban design has on our health. The programme is packed with experts in health and urban design but I am most interested to hear from the winners of the Fit City competition. In my role as head of the youth stream of the Alliance which I perform as part of my role as a director of Equator Media, I designed the competition and am delighted that we had over 200 mostly high quality entries from over 42 countries.

The five winners presented on the first day and I think most objective observers would agree that it was the most refreshing and stimulating of the presentations. My only regret was that I did not argue harder for them to be given more time because there was no real opportunity for the Summit delegates to quiz them on their insights.

Overall the summit was interesting and led to the adoption of the Sydney resolution on chronic diseases but some of the speakers and presentations were deathly dull. Quite why speakers flick through endless PowerPoint presentations beats me. PowerPoint has become all too often a barrier between speakers really engaging his/her audience. For our summit, these kinds of presentations are simply banned!

The conference also reminded me of my two other pet hates which are air conditioning and corporate style hotels. “Air con” as our American cousins like to call it is ghastly and leaves your skin feeling dry and torrid. And I dislike corporate hotels because they rarely give you any feel for the country or city you are staying in. Everything feels bland and the same. I would much rather stay in somewhere that feels authentically local or original. The indigo pearl in Phuket is a unique hotel, not least from its incorporation of recycled wood and tin from local Phuket mines in its design.

Most conferences have their boring moments and this was no exception. Thank goodness for the Fit City five winners who were mostly hilarious as were the film crew form joosetv. With out them, I may not have survived.

After the conference in Sydney I moved to a beautiful apartment kindly donated to me by Matt Williams of Making Waves who will also be in Thailand as one of our investor den panellists. The views over Sydney and its harbour are amazing and it’s a very nice place to work from in the final days running up to the i-genius world summit. On Saturday, some of Matt’s friends invaded the apartment to host a Mardi Gras party. For almost four hours we ate, drank and viewed the street party from above. Led of by the Dykes on Bikes, we saw just about every extraordinary costume and dance routine imaginable including a parade of police officers supporting officially taking part in the gay parade. A fine sight!

The rest of my stay here is mostly work, work, work as we enter the final stages in preparing the Thailand summit. Slowly, the long ‘to-do’ list is becoming shorter and I hope to grab a bit of sight seeing before I return to Bangkok. I had always assumed that the Aussies were lying when they claimed that Sydney was the most beautiful city in the world. They could make this claim in the full knowledge that it is too far for most mortal souls to travel to find out the truth. But having made it here, I have to confess I may have been wrong. Maybe it’s not thee most beautiful city but its certainly in any top list. They were not lying after all.

Footnote: fantastic news: just had an email from the British Council saying they will be attending the Summit after all. I’m very pleased.

Comments

Barry Crisp

Friday, March 07, 2008 03:56 AM

Oh, wow - the BC will be attending! Fantastic news indeed! Being in Sydney made me think of London a lot. Really miss London indeed. All is not doom and gloom... if I find a good job with good pay... then I would fine myself back in London in no time soon. I would have to agree that Sydney really was a suprisingly beautiful city. But of course London is the best city in the world to me. And yes yes... glad to help brighten up the summit. ;) Hopefully you and I can work closely together in redesigning the next summit, whether it be i-genius or OxHA.