Our Member Spotlight format is quickly becoming a fabulous addition to the SBNG calendar! Following the success of our first event at Ettalong, we brought the concept to our July meeting at Erina, giving three more members just ten minutes each to step into the spotlight, share their expertise and help us understand a little more about the person — and the passion — behind their business.

Irdzra Khairuddin-Bennett, Principal Architect and founder of Studio IKBA, took us behind the scenes of architecture and the reasons she established her own Gosford-based practice: work-life balance, creative autonomy and, importantly, the opportunity to build a direct relationship between architect and client. Through examples ranging from workplaces and healthcare facilities to residential projects, Irdzra showed us just how much thoughtful design can influence the way people experience and use a space. She also reminded us that architects don't work in isolation — their collaborators include families, builders, developers, real estate and mortgage professionals, and business owners.

Then Rory Gowers introduced us to a very different approach to something we all encounter: conflict. His message was wonderfully simple — conflict is part of life, but handling it well is a skill we can learn. Through Medianos Australasia, Rory is bringing an award-winning negotiation game to English-speaking audiences, where participants work through a real dispute together and explore how agreement can be reached without creating a winner and a loser. His vision is to make conversations around conflict fun, friendly and fruitful, with applications across workplaces, professional practice, families, schools and communities.

Finally, Bill Murch of IDM Consulting gave us permission to be a little bit lazy — in the most productive possible way! Bill hates wasted time, resources and money, particularly when we find ourselves doing the same computer task over and over again. His specialty is building smarter systems and using automation across software including CAD and Microsoft Office to help people work better, faster and more efficiently. His presentation left us with a useful question for any business owner: what repetitive task are you spending valuable time doing that your computer could be doing for you?

And that, really, is what makes Member Spotlight such a terrific format. In a short space of time we get to discover expertise within our own network that we may never have known was there. More importantly, we get to know the people behind the business — what they care about, the problems they solve and the people we might confidently refer to them. Congratulations and thank you to Irdzra, Rory and Bill for another engaging morning, and to everyone who came along to support them. We’re already looking forward to seeing who steps into the spotlight next!