LEARNING NEW SKILLS: AN AUSTRALIAN ASEAN START UP STORY

And the good times and excitement just keep rolling in like the thunder storms of south east Queensland. A very busy and productive week starting with meeting TAFE Queensland international manager and hearing about their exciting plans across Asia in regards to employment outcomes for their students. Thanks to Martin from TAFE! IAJN is looking forward to our continued partnership in 2018.

The fun of being back in Brisbane!

The fun of being back in Brisbane continues and while there is a bunch of sadness from missing my family (I missed both our wedding anniversary and my eldest sons 4th birthday day) the times catching up with old friends and meeting new ones have been truly remarkable. Brisbane’s nightlife is great and topped off with Christmas carols in the park and with the apartment I have been staying with my great host with the most; Susan!  

Family arrives this week and looking forward to some time off and to jump in a car and explore north as we head up to see my parents and family for Christmas. Also i got glasses for the first time!

Writing a government grant application is like learning a new skill!

This week I focused on applying for the EGI grants from the federal government. Writing a government grant application is much like learning a whole new skill (like writing an academic party or reading an insurance document). A bunch of new skills, wordings and phrases and terminology to master and all under a tight deadline to submit by 4pm on Friday. The IAJN team came through as always and we were able to submit on time.

Banking in Brisbane

Next on the to do list was setting up a corporate bank account for our recently incorporated IAJN company entity in Australia. Again the paperwork was all digitaland very simple and easy to complete and we had a fully opened and functioning bank account in just under an hour. First payment to the account was made the following day for a copy of the IAJN International Student & Alumni Satisfaction and Employment report 2017. Easy as.

Feeling a bit nervous!

A big week of speaking engagements where I was honored and more than a little bit nervous to speak to the QUT bluebox founders about growing membership in their start-ups. While I did have to follow an amazing start-up founder who is miles ahead on users (getting over 90,000 new users a week for his app clipchamp), it was a good opportunity to speak with the other founders on tactics IAJN has used to grow our membership across Asia. A lot to learn from the other founders and the start-up legends who have gone through the program over the last 5 years.

The second speaking engagement was with the great team at Trade and Investment Queensland where I was very fortunate to meet with the whole international education team and go through the IAJN research findings and how they specifically relate to universities and learning institutes in Queensland. A major finding of our research was the relationship between experience and satisfaction living in Australia and how that compared with the satisfaction of the university experience. A lot to be learned from this research as we support higher satisfaction with the return in investment of an international education in Australia.

Exciting IAJN News

Lastly we had some super amazing awesome news in terms of investment into IAJN. The paperwork is not quite complete on this yet and hopefully we can announce the news in the next blog.