Partners in Grain celebrated 10 years of a very successful project at
- The Brassey, Belmore Gardens & Macquarie Street Barton
on 18th and 19th August 2011

The Conference was officially opened by – John Harvey, Managing Director, GRDC, John outlined the changes that were happening at GRDC and encouraged us to ‘what the space’ as final plans were put in place.

This session was followed by PinG in Practice with Merna Curnow, Jeanette Long & Mandy Strong recounting their stories to celebrating the success of PinG with particular emphasis on what being involved with PinG meant to them

Women and Leadership was the final session for the day with Lindy Nelson giving a New Zealand Perspective. Lindy provided great humor in talk in relation to moving onto a family farming and for six weeks being a shepherd. Her husband realized that was not for her, but her skills and talents have been used in many ways over 20 years to build reliance in the community, especially when the local doctor left the area.

Jenny Grigg followed and outlined her Pathways to leadership, giving the audience an insight into the small steps which lead to new and challenging pathways, these can be from handing out the flowers at a Women’s Regional Development Day to now leading the Business Management Unit of Sunraysia TAFE.

The keynote speaker for dinner was John Foss who provided a wonderful insight into his business and management of the whole value chain for the Chia Seed Company.

The second day began with Robyn Henderson, speaking about Networking to Influence. It was clear from her presentation that PinG is working towards networking to influence and has some positive steps to follow. Jane Bennett spoke of her the importance to her of ‘Mentoring into Leadership. Jane spoke of the many opportunities that she had been given and how she used her learning’s in one role to apply to another.

The final part of the conference gave people the opportunity to undertake two of three workshops

• Mentoring – Sharon Honner
• Electronic Networking – Tom McCue
• Networking – Robyn Henderson

PinG would also like to thank Rose Crane for her wonderful job as MC, Sally Brown for her Conference Organisation, the National Reference Group for their vision and hard work and most importantly the sponsors who made it possible – GRDC, Dow, Incitec Pivot, Wheat Quality Australia, Kotzur, AgriFood Skills Australia and Grain Growers.