ACE Leadership Competition - Second Day

This second day was about COMMUNITY. We were gathered in 183 Campbell Street, Surry Hills at 7:50 AM. It is known as Table for 20, an italian cafe. We used its upper floor. This morning we got a T-shirt and a breakfast with various choices.

Picture 1 Preparation for breakfast

The upper floor looked like a bar, but in fact it is also a base for Hope Street, a social organization. People from Hope Street gave us information about homeless while United Way (our sponsor) gave us the case and the tasks.

The tasks were about homeless people and it was basically:

1. to engage with people and raise awareness of http://www.commoncause.com.au

2. to create a fundraising structure

A moderator was assigned to follow us during the day and make notes about us. We were given AUD50 to cover all of our expenses, including the moderator. We were given time to work in there until 11:00 AM. We brainstormed and left from there a little bit late.

Problems:

1. We decided to buy a concession TravelTen card to travel by bus to Apple Store in George Street. When we got in the bus, three men dressed in blue got in and they asked for our card. After they looked at the card, I did not get concession. So they asked for my driving license and to noted my address in his book. My teammate kept speaking to one of them. I was relieved when they told me that this time they let me go, but later I would not. Two of us got caught, two others had concession, and one managed to get out of the bus before asked.

My thought: a team should care about its team member and each others condition. In that way, we may avoid the group to make decisions that make others uneasy.

2. After we reached The Apple Store (the store has lots of display products and internet connection), we tried to implement our idea about the first task that was to engage with people through facebook (create a group for the website) and twitter. Each of us worked with a display laptop. Just after we started our moderator told us to re-read the task and we just realized that we misinterpreted the first task. We made a sudden plans and moved from there to find a printing service. It was Saturday, so it was difficult to find one. Fortunately we found it in OfficeWork, so we could print and also use their display laptop to design. We were about one hour behind the schedule.

My thought: External resource is important, in this case at least it is to check whether we got the right idea or not. I was thankful that our moderator played her role nicely, otherwise we might have lost our points for the first task. Allocation of spare time is important.

3. We worked on our presentation slides (power point) and finished it just before 4:00 PM in Marriott Hotel. Each of us prepared our presentation while other groups presented. After I made up my speech, my teammate had an idea to not use the presentation slides because many groups did not manage to finish theirs. We agreed and we re-arrange the part that each of us had agreed before. I had to re-prepare within about 16 minutes (each group got 8 minutes) and then when we presented it, I just realized that my part and my other teammate part was overlapped. We worked as a team, so I did not do everything that I have prepared and I did some of it spontaneously. With this plan, we still did not manage to finish our presentation. I was disappointed because I thought that we had so many great ideas but we did not able to communicate those because of time limitation.

My thought: For presentation, especially when it is so much to talk about within a short period of time, I think it is better use put pictures (as proof or illustration) or diagram (to guide the audience and help them to get our idea) than write down all the words, pictures, and everything else (so we can just read those in presentation slides).

After presentation self-service dinner was served for us.

Picture 2 Dinner

After dinner, Doug Taylor (judge and keynote speaker for today's program/competition, CEO of United Way) gave a speech to us. The thing that I remembered from it was that we could start from anywhere and take a step, it would direct you.