This conference was held in Ballarat at the end of October 2013.  This was the first time since the initial Lakes Entrance Conference that it was held in a regional area.  BECS was asked to host a breakfast on the Sunday for early arriving delegates and around 100 people indicated their attendance.  Following the Conference proper Prof. Barry Golding had organised another shed crawl for mainly overseas visitors and we agreed to again host a breakfast for this event.  We were pleased that everything went very smoothly, and we acknowledge Wilsons Fruit & Veg, Coles, Officeworks for their assistance and VOICE FM 99.9 team for their outside broadcast as well as 5 guys from the car club who brought their cars on the Sunday.  Our volunteers also did a great job in preparations before and cooking and serving on the days.

Conferences are a great opportunity to network and catch up on what is happening elsewhere as well as overseas.  Every shed is individual and we heard about a shed in WA that has been given $1 million to get started (proceeds of WA lotteries), and a shed in Tas. that struggles to find $30 for state registration.

Some highlights

• Tour of Sovereign Hill, goldmine and gold pour.
• Talk by Jeff Kennett on mental health.
• Peter Fitzsimons ( well known author).
• Talk by Bettina Arndt at Conference dinner.
• Mike Brady entertainer at Conference dinner.
• Update on Irish Men’s sheds from our now good mate John Evoy.
• Update on New Zealand shed activities.
• Usual updates from individual men’s sheds.
• We were able to give a presentation on Marketing, Fundraising and Sustainability in one of the concurrent sessions.

Disapointments

• Only 500 attendees from the 1000 Australian sheds and possibly 500? O’seas sheds.
• Cost is an issue when adding accommodation.
• Not all presentations were entirely relevant.
• No presentations on applying for funding.
• No presentations on future directions eg where sheds place will be in 5,10 or 20 years?

The next Conference will be in Woollongong in 2015.