WIM Conference 2019 - Day 1

A flaming Gold Coast sunrise wakens us. Lovely.

Coffee, scrambled eggs, a quick swim in the shaded outdoor pool, a shower and off to Day 1 of the 2019 Women in Media Conference at Bond University.

I manage to extricate the car, Bruce programs Siri and we follow instructions through the Friday morning traffic. Bond

University is massive. It is super moderne, architecturally striking, highly manicured and rich in beautifully designed vistas, many with a lake view. There is a lot of walking on wide paths and lots of sculpture as well as trees and sweeping lawns.

I find the Basil Sellars Theatre, the foyer of which is a seething throng of stridently excited women. The din is dire. Why do so many women have to shriek when they laugh?

They are holding cups of coffee and have WIM bags over their shoulders and lanyards around their necks. I find a queue and register to claim my bag which is stashed

with goodies: a snazzy monogrammed water bottle, a phone charger, notepad and pen, lollies, and hand sanitizer.

I wander around outside looking at my fellow delegates. No familiar faces. Arna is not here. She texts “walking” and I suddenly feel terrible that we did not go and pick her up. I find seats at the rear of the theatre and text Arna.

I watch the delegates walking past down the theatre stairs and am astonished at the high-end footwear I am seeing. Lots of very pretty and well-presented young girls are sporting perilously high and glamorous shoes. Casual is not the look of the day.

The theatre is 5/8ths full. Between two and three hundred women, quite a few of them Bond Uni student volunteers dolled out in t-shirts emblazoned with the new WIM logo which is now being unveiled. Ta-da. We committees have all seen and voted on the new logo and were happily in favour of the one I now see all around us. I love it.

After Welcome to Country, our two national convenors Cath Webber and Kathy McLeish officially open up proceedings with lots a whooping joy and hype. Cath is a potently vivacious leader with a self-proclaimed reputation for bossiness. She whips up the enthusiasm. Kathy is a character of gentle competence, more understated and a perfect foil for Cath’s flamboyance.

OK…before we get going, let’s do a selfie, they cry. The audience crowds down to the front of the theatre. I’m at the back. Oh, well.

National patron Caroline Jones AO and co-patron, WA WIM pioneer Vickie Laurie offer welcome speeches and Bond Uni Vice Chancellor and President Professor Tim Brailsford follows suit. He tells us that Bond University is a private entity and also not-for-profit. It is WIM conference sponsor and the conference features many of its lecturers. And thus into the sessions at this sterling women’s event which carries the title "Equip. Elevate. Empower”.

The Age of Influence introduces Caroline Graham, a Walkley Award winner talking on influences on storytelling. For this, I wish I had sat closer since I can’t decipher the words on the complex diagrams she is displaying. She talks of the way in which we tell our stories, she talks of the new digital landscape as a wild west and the potential for colonising it. She talks of “imposter syndrome” - and we all now quietly shudder at the truth of it. I tweet what I can but I am having immense trouble thanks to the SMS treatment on my nails. My phone screen can’t feel my touch. It is frustrating and distracting. Of all times to be handicapped. How ridiculous.

Arna finally arrives, hot, puffed and in need of coffee. It was a 45-minute walk from her digs. She says she chose to do it, and I recall that, indeed, she does epic work walks in Adelaide, too.

Next session is a panel of “Wonder Women” chaired by Marina Go. A powerful lineup of Weekend Australian editor Michelle Gunn, Vogue supremo Edwina McCann, Mahlab founder Bobbi Mahlab and Karla Grant of Living Black. They are telling the tales of how they rose to their places in their careers, by chance or by design. Then Karla Grant speaks. She grew up in Adelaide and it was hard, she says. Adelaide was a hard place. And off she goes to talk of the racism people experience in Adelaide as if it is uniquely racist. She had an insufferable childhood and then, she says, she went to The Advertiser looking for a job and was told she was very pretty but would never make a journalist. Whaaat? My jaw is on the ground. I can’t believe anyone trashing Adelaide in such a public arena; I feel deeply offended. I put out a Tweet that she has slammed Adelaide and swiftly get a response looking for further quotes from a former colleague. Of course the paper would never publish Karla’s bitterness.

"Finding your Mojo" with Rob Layton picks us right up. Mojo’s new meaning is “Mobile Journalism”. I love the idea the journalism has new “mojo” as Mojo. Having been a part of the very first footprints of newspapers coming online and of the training of print journalists to work to camera and learn the potentials of what is now being called Mojo, I am excited by Rob’s presentation and the absolute commonsense of all journalists learning these skills as second nature. How invaluable it will be to journalists operating in far-flung places. How transformative it will be in the hands of capable, ethical professionals. Of course, in the wrong hands, it also has potential to propagate fake news and propaganda. Hmm.

Another panel follows. “Feel the fear - get prepared - and do it anyway!” What a powerhouse, positivity title. It involves some interesting women moderated by Emma Macdonald of Canberra WIM. Shelly Horton steals the show with her wit and vivacity. Everyone falls in love with her. She left the mainstream and set up her own business. But it is freelancer Yaara Bou Melhem who thrills. She is an understated speaker, quietly at the top of a courageous game. She has worked in war zones and says that fear sets in after the fearful event. Others may be crying PTSD but she is simply moving intelligently forward, perhaps the scariest thing being what will be the next story. She says she picks and chooses carefully these days. She is a filmmaker of some repute. Margot Anderson and Louise Davis complete the panel.

My usual steady stream of Tweets has been compromised by this fingernail business. I am being distracted from the content upon which I would like to comment by absurd perversity of my iPhone which does not respond to the touch of SMS nail. I have lost my fingers. Dammit. I have always been a contributive Tweeter. I need one of those soft-ended pens. What a lesson. Sigh.

Lunch is served in the Princeton Room with its superb vista over the university lake. Tables sparkle with wine glasses and centre towers of sweet delicacies. They feature black and white centre runners with newsprint motif, reflecting WIM reports in the mainstream media. Classy.

Rachel Berger, the comedian who has been instrumental in setting up WIM in Tasmania, takes to the stage and does a long and very amusing stand-up.

Then we repair to workshops.

By now, our fellow SA committee member, Louise Pascale, has arrived along with LJ Loch, with whom she runs Outspoken Women. We’ve also found the Adelaide journalist Steph Richards who won the Connector free trip to the conference. From inDaily, she is a fresh, bright young woman seemingly of easy disposition and self-confidence. She had quickly found her metier among the delegates and showed no need for our company. Annie Hastwell, similarly, had come from Adelaide - but we see little of her, despite hunting for her several times.

Both Arna and I have chosen Rob Layton’s presentation on smartphone pictures using computational photography. He’s a Bond lecturer and an underwater and surf photography specialist. He has a bit of movie star panache to him, exquisitely dressed in suit trousers, fitting waistcoat and open-neck shirt. He fits the bill of the stylishness we are noting in Bond University staff and students. I’m betting lots of students have crushes on him. He informs us of the best Apps for journalists: Halide, Focos, Spectre, Night Trail, what popup mikes work, how Lunar Fusion is good for editing. It pays to work with an iPhone, it seems. Androids are not as well served.

Then comes the most breathtaking session of the conference: "Trust and Truth" with Sandra Sully talking to News Corp’s star political reporter Annika Smethurst about her headline experience of being raided by the AFP. On stage with her are likeable Brisbane crime reporter Paula Doneman and media lawyer, Sophie Scott. All three are gripping and Sophie makes it abundantly clear that journalists should watch carefully what they put into print and how they say it, and always have legal advice. Annika speaks of the stark horror of finding the federal police on her doorstep. It was a carpet cleaner she was expecting when the doorbell rang. She warned about how much data one should and should not have on the mobile phone. This becomes more and more a point of vulnerability for journalists. And it was clear that she was soldiering on with professional courage and integrity despite the daunting shadow of potential jail time which hangs over her head. She is a class act and the hapless but vital core of our #journalismisnotacrime #pressfreedom movement. I think we are all grateful to her for appearing at the conference. Hopefully, our powerful solidarity is some comfort to her.

The next session is about finance and neither Arna nor I are still in the area of journalism in which such career advice is relevant. We tip-toe out.

Bruce collects us and Siri directs us, rather oddly, back to the Ultiqa and its challenging carpark. We have sunset G&Ts and dissect the conference thus far.

Move to wine while Bruce prepares a Bruce hotel apartment dinner; not his finest since he experimented with ready-made rub and a plastic oven bag, but it is a decent dinner with masses of gorgeous kale and a tomato bocconcini salad, followed by diet jelly and yoghurt. We loll about and talk into the night and then organise another Uber to get Arna safely home.

This little apartment is pleasing us no end. The roar of the sea is the most exquisite lullaby and the radiant reds of dawn are the most beautiful of all possible awakenings, albeit we have to lower the blinds when the sun takes to the sky.

I love this place.

Note: Goup Selfie WIM shot copied from WIM page.