Women Who Get Shit Done unconference

You can’t say Shit!

But that’s exactly what this 150 group of women from different sectors, backgrounds, ages and from different regions of New Zealand do. They Get Shit Done. Whether it is providing mentorship opportunities for Youth to working with young Maori mothers in the Bay of Plenty to reach their potential. They all get shit done. We all stand unitied in the change we wish to see in the world.

One interesting discussion that came out of the weekend was in the development of a Kakapo perfume. No Kakapo’s will be harmed in its making. Kakapo only breed at a certain time of the year, when all the right flowers are in bloom - the orchid, rimu and rata to name a few. It’s a beautiful scent and one that could be bottled to raise awareness of New Zealand’s only native parrot and inject much needed financial resources into perserving Kakapo’s environment.

A united and bi-lingal New Zealand

Many discussions and journey’s were shared each displaying our passions for our chosen areas. What was really exciting to hear, was all these amazing group of women calling for a united bi-lingal New Zealand, celebrating our cultural heritage and uniqueness. This was championed by the non-Maori women. Very suprising considering I’m Maori and want this too, but didn’t want to be seen as biased. As one Italian women said “New Zealand and it’s native people, stories and unique community should be celebrated; and something we should all be proud of”.

What’s an unconference?

An unconference, is the opposite to a conference. It is unstructured, in that, we the attendees decide what topics we want to discuss and we lead those discussions. On the Friday night, we were given post it notes and left to discuss with others and place our post it notes in the relevant timeslot over the next two days. You could choose which discussions you wanted to attend, and if it wasn’t working for you, you were free to get up and move to another. Topics ranged from “Who stole my kidney” to “How to implement gamification in your business”. These discussions could be structured in a way that works for us. Whether it was “writing a letter to your future self” to sharing our “imposter syndrome” experiences.

I’d strongly recommend everyone become involved in an unconference. You get to a deeper level really fast, and this only gets deeper as the conversation progresses.