Ideas Exchange 2023
This month I had the pleasure of meeting in person with many of you at our annual conference Ideas Exchange. This year’s conference hosted 90 participants from both industry and research. The conference was held in Adelaide on the 17th and 18th October on the edge of the CBD, right near the glorious parklands that surround the city. It was great to see you all and I thank you for making this year’s event a roaring success. The conference began with an update from me and the launch of a series of new training courses from our wonderful education officer Carissa Anderson. This was followed up by industry with talks from the chicken meat, egg and duck sectors, we also had an update on the current state of avian influenza.
Following a short break, we kicked off the panel session that was focused on sustainability through circular economy. The panel consisted of four speakers (Gal Winter, Chris Freney, Richard Eckard, Bede Burke) with diverse backgrounds who were able to introduce the topic and their perspectives followed by a Q&A session with the audience. It was an eye-opening session and I look forward to hearing and discussing more opportunities in this space. The conference dinner was a great opportunity to relax a little more and catch up with colleagues and also meet some new people. The room was a buzz with conversation and smiles. I certainly enjoyed the dinner and the great conversations had over a beautiful meal and a good South Australian beer.
Day two was filled with research updates and lightning presentations from students. It was fantastic to hear the science updates from our open call research projects. The researchers highlighted the importance and impact that science can have in our industry. It was also evident that the inclusion of an industry partner at the inception of every project is certainly ensuring that projects stay on track and have relevance in the industry. This year we saw some quick-fire presentations from the post grad students. This was an opportunity to highlight their projects and introduce them to the wider industry to enable them to more broaden their networks and collaborations.
Lastly the conference finished with our “Brains Trust” session, a question answer session where all participants were able to answer anonymously a set of pertinent questions for our industry. We have been running this session for a few years now and it was very interesting to see how the responses have changed or remained the same over this time. While in 2019 getting people to work in the poultry industry was voted as the biggest problem that our industry faces, this year sustainability was the top response. Some great conversations and ideas were able to happen at this year’s conference and I was thankful for all the feedback on PHA to date. This feedback will be invaluable as we develop our new strategic plan for the next five years. If you didn’t get a chance to provide feedback please don’t hesitate to contact us. I look forward to welcoming you to some new events as a result of these productive interactions.
For more information, please contact poultryhub@une.edu.au or contact us if you have another great idea for an event or simply want to have a chicken chat!
