Business set for big day out

EARLY bird tickets for this year’s Business Day Out are on sale now, and Commerce Ballarat has once again crafted a fun and functional program for the annual event.

With the day-to-day challenges of the workplace often at the forefront for management and staff, Commerce Ballarat CEO Jodie Gillett said Business Day Out was a chance to step back and get fresh eyes on things.

“It’s to encourage businesses to take a day out and think about their business, work on their business, and learn some new ways of doing things,” she said.

“It’s an opportunity to get inspired for the following year and we have people who block that day out in their calendar every year.”

This year keynote speakers include Dave Dixon, the founder of African women’s empowerment and education not-for-profit One Girl.

He’ll be joined by Lucy Bloom from Doing Business Differently and Shane McCurry whose talk ‘The Big Five’ for Sport & Business brings in actionable experiences from the sporting world for the workplace.

“The concept of Business Day out is about offering a conference that has the quality of a major metropolitan event but is affordable for all business,” Ms Gillett said.

The guest speaker panel will be facilitated by Federation Business School dean, Professor Christina Lee, and includes Provenir co-founder and CEO Chris Balazs as well as Rodney McErvale, co-founder of Leroy Mac Designs.

Business Day Out is not just for management and executives. The event offers learning and networking opportunities for all levels of a business, whether they be large, small or in between.

“We’ve got quite a number of attendees who come along and bring one, two or a number of their staff, from the most junior to the most senior,” Ms Gillett said.

“They find that at each level they learn something different and learning it together is good thing.

“Often the owner of the manager of the business may not be as tech-savvy or as marketing-savvy as some of their younger people, so they can actually learn something together, which is really exciting.”

This year’s Business Day out is set for Wednesday, 27 May.

You can buy tickets from commerceballarat.com.au, with early bird bookings at $205 for Commerce Ballarat members and $245 for non-members. Early bird cut-off date is 22 March. After that prices are $230 for members and $280 for non-members.