FinPro Professional Development Seminar – 26 May 2016
May 27, 2016
A great range of speakers presented at the 2nd FinPro Seminar for 2016. The day was cold, the weather was awful, but the room for full of people, conversation, information, networking and sharing.
72 Council’s were represented at the seminar, with a turnout of 246 attendees. What a great audience for our speakers to present to.
Graeme Emonson led the day, speaking about his new role as Director at LGV and the work LGV currently have on their agenda. Not only is this important information for our members to hear, but it is also a wonderful opportunity for LGV to be able to get their message out first hand to the sector. A copy of his presentation is attached.
Presentation – FinPro Seminar 26 May 2016 – Graeme Emonson, LGV
Deb Ganderton and Phil Coyne from Boroondara City Council then spoke about Public Participation and Community Engagement. They provided a wonderful example of how this is done and shared a useful tool called the VAGO MP Compliance Estimator which follows. Deb encourages all councils to make use of this tool when working on community engagement.
Rate Capping and Variation process is a really ‘hot topic’ at the moment and many were interested to hear from Andrew Davis and Kathryn Seirlis from Casey City Council on their experience. If anyone wants to learn further about their experience please contact them at Casey City Council
Following lunch, Shane Marr, President FinPro and Noelle Kelleher, CFO Vision Super together launched the 2016 Financial Management Leadership Skills Program. This is a fantastic program and all FinPro members are encouraged to read further about it. Details are listed on the News page of this website.
Kevin Sheedy then spoke to a full audience, sharing his tips on Leadership in general, and on leading during times of change. Kevin spoke with passion, enthusiasm and wisdom and was certainly one of the highlights of the day – regardless of whether you were a football fan or not.
The day ended with two more technical sessions:
Martin Thompson from Crowe Horwath gave a ‘big picture’ but very important lesson on Accounting Standard Changes, New Guidelines for Landfills and also Operating Leases and Revenue Recognition. A copy of his presentation is attached.
Presentation – FinPro Seminar 26 May 2016 – Martin Thompson, Crowe Horwath
The final presentation was ably performed by Remy Szpak from VAGO and we thank him for taking the time to not only present, but also for he and his team to spend the day listening to the different issues and challenges facing our sector. This certainly assists in VAGO performing their functions and getting a deeper understanding of the sector.
A copy of his presentation is also attached.
Presentation – FinPro Seminar 26 May 2016 – Remy Szpak, VAGO
Thank-you to all who attended and made it a great day.
PS apologies that the room was a little colder than we would have liked. The management at The Centre Ivanhoe have had an ongoing issue with the heating system and we have been assured that they are working on improving it.