AACP National Conversation Day, Sydney 10 May 2019

May 20, 2019 AACP News

On Friday, 10 May 2019 the Australian Association of Collaborative Professionals (AACP) held its inaugural National Conversation Day in Sydney.

The premise for the morning session, was to engage the collaborative community in a discussion to explore interests, needs and concerns, workshop options and identify action items. We were greatly encouraged by the numbers in attendance and in particular those who made the trip from interstate to take part in the day.

We thank our facilitators Danielle Lundberg, Shelby Timmins and Valerie Norton who put together an excellent survey, analysed the 74 survey responses to crystallise the interest, needs and concerns and who expertly facilitated the course of our discussions and kept us all on task.

The Board was also heartened by the feedback that the ICP community sees a solid place for a national body, to work as one loud national voice:

• To develop best practice guidelines
• To educate/market to the public, legal practitioners and other professionals about ICP
• To lobby branches of government
• To promote ICP as a model in curriculums at tertiary and secondary educational institutions.
• To provide a National Conference
• To get a segment at the Biannual National Family Law Conference

The afternoon session was Linda Mackay’s fabulous “Dynamics of the Conversation” a fascinating presentation about the dynamics that can play out in a collaborative meeting and the impact those dynamics can have on the outcomes. As well as being entertaining, the role play following the presentation very effectively illustrated the effect of the dynamics.

The day concluded with drinks and nibbles for collaborative colleagues from Western Australia, Victoria, Queensland and NSW.

Our thanks to Mills Oakley, Collaborative Professionals (NSW) and RateSetter for their sponsorship of the event.