Every moment is a choice.

I often go through a book, "The Rhythm of Life" by Matthew Kelly that my Dad gave to me a few years ago as it has inspired both of us. We talk about it often and have a Father/Daughter book club about it. Mine is now very marked-up and full of sticky notes.

The first chapter is called "Everything is a Choice" - I tend to think in moments and sparks, so I amended Matthew's chapter title a bit above to the way I think. Semantics, but what I feel.

I have thought a lot about what it means to be authentic, to live an authentic life and how doing that revolves around what choices we make in all aspects of our lives because there is no true compartmentalizing of work, play, and love. In my humble opinion, anyway. I am looking at how we choose the life we live right now in this moment in every moment. And what we will see in five years, ten years, or thirty years from now? To me, there is no time like this moment to choose, to make decisions and live a life of joy, no matter what lot you were given, what anyone else has said or done to you. We choose who we are in the world.

I've been developing "The Maven Principle" for myself and others to level up life power skills. And as I like to practice what I preach, I'm acting as a guinea pig in developing this workshop. I speak a ton on inclusive workplaces, diversity, personal development, and personal brand, and there are times when my own best practices, morning rituals, and healthy habits falter. I'm human just like anyone else, and there is a myriad of reasons we slip off our paths.

To me, you have to be happy and fulfilled in all aspects of your life to continue to reach the ultimate goal of self-actualization, and being the most authentic human you can be. As I said above, I don't believe our work life, home life, and love lives are separate, and we can practice many ways to enhance all of them at the same time with some focus on each area.

We often have one or many parts of our lives deficient or on shaky ground, and I'm building this workshop to help when we are in those moments where we make choices about ourselves and those around us. When we have good practices, develop our skills, and have a principle to stand on and go back to, we have a better chance of sticking to positive choices. This workshop and the one I’m giving on end-user adoption are amalgamations of all the great business books I've read, all the people that inspire me, all the classes I've taken, sessions I've given, all the employees and clients I've served and good counsel from friends and family as well.

These two workshops will be the first longer-format type that I've given on the subjects. I'm grateful to Debbie Ireland and the Share The Point team to have allowed me to bring them to our Australian community. I cannot wait to receive feedback, spark many conversations, hear what attendees think, and bring these workshops to more folks in the future around the world.

I hope you join me for what I know will be a fantastic conference.

The Australian Digital Workplace Conference - Two days of unequaled learning! 

* Enhance your Digital Transformation journey
* Embrace New Ways of Working
* Learn about Communicating and Collaborating
* Explore how to build a Productive Digital Workplace
* Stay up to date with what's NEW in Office 365- ALL apps are covered
* Upskill at all levels including Deep Dive Technical content

I am beyond thrilled to be offering two workshops and present two sessions.

OFFICE 365 END USER ADOPTION: A DEEP DIVE INTO BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL END USER ADOPTION CAMPAIGN

AUGUST 5, 2019 | 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM AEST

Technology Adoption is an ongoing process, repeat, an ongoing process.

We all want to have our teams be more productive inside our business applications – simply turning on an application and letting employees “figure it out” leaves many people feeling frustrated, and they will go back to using the things they know well.

Adoption Campaigns are a case of if you build it, they will come. Do you currently have an adoption plan, a process, a campaign to roll out new applications and introduce new team members to what you already have? If so, is it working well? Either way, there is always room for improvement and different perspectives.

This session showcases a tried and true end-user adoption checklist and a detailed dive into building an Office 365 End User Adoption Campaign inside your Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Planner and OneNote in your tenant with proven strategies for success.

Speaker Heather Newman has been running end-user adoption campaigns for over 18 years inside Microsoft, its partners and Enterprise customers. This is a hands-on workshop where you will walk away with a campaign plan template set up in your tenant (if you so choose).

Attendees can also follow the steps at a later time. Heather will share stories, examples, and best practices so you can use what you learn in the workshop over and over again inside your business.  These strategies can be applied when new Office 365 Applications or any applications are launched and for when you need to train your new hires.

In this workshop you will take away:

• A step by step end-user adoption checklist, comms plan and work back schedule built out inside your Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Planner and OneNote

• Real-world examples for each check in the checklist

• A communication plan with templates you can use for your end-user campaign

• Practical tips and tricks that you can adapt and re-use

THE MAVEN PRINCIPLE: MASTERING POWER SKILLS FOR PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT AND BRAND

AUGUST 8, 2019 | 8:30 AM - 12:30 PM AEST

Become the Expert of You

Soft skills are defined as personal attributes that enable us to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people. But there is nothing soft about mastering what we are renaming “Power Skills.”

Join Heather Newman, CEO of Creative Maven as she takes you through The Maven Principle, a workshop of power skills for personal development and personal brand. Vulnerability, authenticity, and integrity are at the core of who we are and who want to be at home, work, and play.

In this workshop, we will delve into a hierarchy of power skills to match up with how we satisfy our basic needs to reach our full potential as humans and employees. What better investment to make than one in yourself? We spend over half our lives at work, and leveling up your power skills gives you a confident edge in your career and more positive experience in your day to day life. The workshop will take attendees through the following:

• The Maven Principle: Power Skills for Personal Development 101 – Learning a Methodology for Becoming a Deeper Expert of You.

• Communication Nation: Tell Them All About It – Speaking with Conviction in all of your Meetings, Presentations & Pitches

• The Success Leap: The Start to Your Day and The Why You Do What You Do – Defining Your Personal Why and Your AM Ritual

• Leadership Lifetime: A Look at the Qualities and Patterns of Legends, Leaders, and Leapers – Modeling Successful People and Practices

• The Brand of You: Either You Create It Yourself or It Will Be Created For You – Making a Favorable Impression In Person, In Interviews and Online

• Social Media Hacking: Dipping in, Diving in or Dropping Out – Developing and Enhancing Your Social Motion on the Internet Ocean

SESSIONS

BECOME THE EXPERT OF YOU: POWER SKILLS FOR PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

AUGUST 6, 2019 | 4:45 PM - 5:45 PM AEST

We hear the term “soft skills” as the definition of personal attributes that enable us to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people.

Top soft skills employers look for are:

• leadership

• teamwork

• communication

• creativity

• work ethic

• problem-solving

• self-confidence and include your personal brand

• presentation/meeting techniques and pitching

However, there is nothing soft about mastering these skills; there is “strength” in the practice of developing these “Power” skills that are more intangible but critical to your working and interacting with the people around you effectively.

Join Microsoft MVP, personal development leader and Chief Marketing Officer of Content Panda, Heather Newman as she takes you five skills that are essential to each of us becoming stronger employees but also better humans. We will discuss leadership, communication, presentation skills, public persona (LinkedIn & social media), and self-confidence.

The best investment you can make is in yourself and practicing power skills helps you produce the results you want at work, at home, and in the world, building that expertise in the most critical person in your life, you.

TRUST-BASED CORPORATE CULTURE: HOW TO KICK FEAR AND TOXICITY OUT OF THE WORKPLACE

AUGUST 7, 2019 | 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM AEST

A Practical Guide

Fear and toxicity are words that have no place in meetings, our workplace or our lives. We live over half of our lives at work, and we all want to be productive, successful and happy while we are there. Everyone wants to be appreciated and respected for the contributions we make to our jobs, careers, and organizations.

Join Heather Newman, Microsoft MVP, and CMO of Content Panda as she talks through the whys of fear-based and toxic workplace behavior and how to combat this negativity with practical examples and guidance.

The session will dive into the topics of the lizard brain, impostor syndrome, doubt language, and the CYA email combined with action steps for each one to take back to your teams and organizations. Creating a healthy work environment is up to each one of us and leads to better collaboration and enhanced creativity that empowers everyone to be their best selves and to produce our best work. If you are attending with your co-workers, this is a pivotal session to attend as a group.

Key takeaways:

• Identify fear-based and toxic behavior,

• how to address these behaviors

• how to move towards a more trust-based work environment.

View all the Office 365 sessions and workshops on offer.

POWERAPPS

• Give your PowerApps and Flows some Vision, Language and Feeling – Rich Burdes

• How to Govern PowerApps and Flow – Paul Culmsee

• Adding Voice Interaction to your Apps – Brian Farnhill

• POWERAPPS One day Workshop – Admin in a Day: Govern the Power Platform with Confidence – Paul Culmsee

FLOW 

• Introduction and how to build everything with Microsoft Flow – John Liu

• Give your PowerApps and Flows some Vision, Language and Feeling – Rich Burdes

• How to Govern PowerApps and Flow – Paul Culmsee

STREAM 

• Authentic and accessible employee engagement with SharePoint, Yammer, Stream Live Events and Microsoft Teams – Darrell Webster

SHAREPOINT 

• Bringing Human Emotion into Workflow Automation to Drive Customer Success – Chris Ellis

• Authentic and accessible employee engagement with SharePoint, Yammer, Stream Live Events and Microsoft Teams – Darrell Webster

• How to build a Project Hub with Hubsites and Sitedesign and Sitescripts – Knut Reble-Moe

• The Evolution of Finding Stuff – Tracy van der Schyff

• No-one really likes their intranet, but that won’t matter: A financial services organisation case study – Cairo Walker

• How to Build a Digital Workplace in Office 365 in 3 Weeks – Milan Gross

• SHAREPOINT ONE DAY WORKSHOP– Build an Intranet AND Become a Creative Digital Guru – Tracy van der Schyff

YAMMER 

• Authentic and accessible employee engagement with SharePoint, Yammer, Stream Live Events and Microsoft Teams – Darrell Webster

• Success Factors in a Thriving Yammer Network – Rebecca Jackson

TEAMS

• The LEGO approach to implementing Office365 – Debbie Ireland

• Microsoft Teams Deep Dive – 29 Practical Tips and Tricks – Lee Stevens

• Authentic and accessible employee engagement with SharePoint, Yammer, Stream Live Events and Microsoft Teams – Darrell Webster

• How to build a Project Hub with Hubsites and Sitedesign and Sitescripts – Knut Reble-Moe

• Making Teams work without understanding Information Architecture – Alistair Pugin

• MICROSOFT TEAMS Half day Workshop- Meet Microsoft Teams – Shannon Donovan

MICROSOFT OFFICE

• Necessary Steps to Adopting a Digital First Business Mindset – Tracy van der Schyff

• Bring Line of Business Systems to Where Your Users Work – the Opportunity of Extending Office 365 – Cameron Dwyer

• ONE DAY WORKSHOP– Build an Intranet AND Become a Creative Digital Guru – Tracy van der Schyff

ONENOTE

• ONENOTE Half-Day Workshop- OneNote for Productivity – Shannon Donovan

• Adoption stories from the Field! – Kirsty McGrath

OFFICE 365

• A Framework for Office 365 Lifecycle Management – Seb Matthews

• The LEGO approach to implementing Office365 – Debbie Ireland

• Actionable Strategies to Manage Content Sprawl in Office 365 – Thomas Jamed

• Authentic and accessible employee engagement with SharePoint, Yammer, Stream Live Events and Microsoft Teams – Darrell Webster

• Office 365 User Adoption – 5 Simple Steps that will Send Your Users into Orbit! – Lee Stevens

• Information Protection – Safeguarding the Digital Workplace – Alistair Pugin

• Take a Business-First Approach to Deploying Office 365 – James Robertson

• The Evolution of Finding Stuff – Tracy van der Schyff

• ONE DAY WORKSHOP : Office 365 End User Adoption: A Deep Dive into Building a Successful End User Adoption Campaign – Heather Newman