 Dwi'n ddweud i'n meddwl y tîm, ond y peth yn y ffordd yn ddiddordeb yn ymddiadol yng nghymru, ond dwi'n ddiddordeb yn ymgyrchu gyda gyda'r ysgol. Rwy'n meddwl ymddiadol yw ymddiadol yn ymddiadol yn teimlo'r ddechrau, ac mae'n ddiddordeb yn ymddiadol y rowf i blyneddau'r ysgol. I've benefited by visiting professorships and opportunities to speak at most UK universities at one time or other, my career. I was seduced to go and take a job as executive director of the Australian Digital Futures Institute, which is based a place called Twwmba in Queensland, which is 100 miles west of Brisbane, right up high as the Australian range starts. So, when the conference organisers wanted to invite me to speak, we discussed the variety of things that it could be. I could have talked to you about research on my new book or all sorts of other things, and what they wanted was some sort of impression of Australia in my first eight months there. So, this is what I'm going to do, but I'm going to show you some of my impressions so far of the similarities and differences because, as you know, in making comparisons, hopefully there's lessons for us all, and I learnt something by reflecting on it as you often do too. So, I'm delighted to have the chance to share that with you. So, does everybody know what cookaburras are? You can see some nice ones up here. They're quite prevalent throughout eastern Australia, and the most characteristic thing really is that they have this amazing cackling laugh, and there is a YouTube video with it on Donal, so if we get time, I'll put it up. When I first heard it, which was in our garden, it reminded me of being in university really because there was people going around cackling about all sorts of things and continuing this over quite a long period of time, and I suddenly thought that they were pretty much like the cookaburras really. But the cookaburras are also extremely interesting because when you look at the aboriginal knowledge, cookaburras have been very much valued over the years. Mainly, I think, for their ability to get rid of snakes. I have got a fantastic video which is on YouTube showing a cookaburra catching, killing and eating a snake, but I just thought I wouldn't show it to you right now. But you can go and have a look. If you put cookaburras and snakes into YouTube, you do get some amazing pictures. One of the reasons for that, I think, is that they are very easily enticed into gardens. In Australia, it is a requirement that all swimming pools are fenced, at least a metre high in particular kinds. You'll see with some of the pictures I've got that this means that you've got just the right platform and they all sit along. Here you can see them in a branch, but they all sit along the top of the fence on our swimming pool and almost everybody else's as well. They're actually from the Kingfisher family, so they really, really like meat. They don't eat seeds. We also feed all the other birds and the roos and all sorts of other things in our garden. We've attracted a whole variety of parrots and parakeets by seeds, but the only thing we found that the cookaburra is minced kangaroo meat, raw. They don't like it cooked. Tried them with dog food and that, but they wouldn't eat it. They now come every morning and sit around waiting to be fed. They just really are a metaphor for being a university promisher. They're all lining up waiting for someone to sort the technology out for them. What I was going to talk about is a few personal snaps, but I thought I'd show you where I am. This is Australia, of course. What these green and red dots are is to say where Australia, and I'm going to say a bit more about this later, is just on the brink of rolling out a complete national broadband network across the country. The red were the pilot areas. This is up in the north of Queensland, and you can see some of the others. This is where we are here. To Wumba, where the USQ campuses are, one of them is going to be in the second wave, and that starts now. It's really interesting because we are being given the opportunity to truly test what it means to have effective high speed broadband, either in a rural or a small city area. That's fantastic in terms of the opportunity to try things. That's where I am about there. I arrived in January. My first weekend there, it was sunny for a day or so. We'd left England in minus 13 degrees and huge snowfalls, which thought just for a day or two immediately after Christmas, and enabled us to leave. Then very soon after our first weekend came, it started raining, and it rained and rained. I've never seen rain like it. As a result of that, on my first day at work, to Wumba flooded. This was an example of what it looked like. They called it a tsunami because what happened is that once these cars started floating away, they blocked all the bridges from the creeks and it simply backed up and went into a brand new shopping centre where our car had been parked the day before. It's just a chance event. 35 people lost their lives there. The water then went down the range and met with a very high tide at Brisbane and flooded Brisbane. That was my first introduction to Australia. Most extraordinarily, it also introduced us to how resilient and how collaborative and how community-orientated the Australian people were. We'd been pretty fed up, only just getting away and only just having roads and pavements to get as far as Heathrow when we left the UK in the snow last winter, only to find that the community spirit and the huge resilience in the face of extraordinary and unexpected disasters was quite remarkable. I don't really know what that is about, but I can promise you there was something very, very different about the Australian community's response to this particular disaster compared to the extreme conditions that we left behind in the UK. It's probably the subject of another conversation. Anyway, we got over that and when my daughter came out of Easter, she's an amateur photographer, but this is genuine. You can see the people on the bridge there. You know you can climb Sydney Harbour Bridge. Well, Paula and I were standing actually in the opera house looking back, and that was my husband up there, we think, as far as we can tell. We also, this was a harbour cruise on Good Friday, and it was absolutely fantastic and so easy, so you can see why people love these places, because they're just subtractive places to visit. This was in our front yard as I went out for my first professorial inaugural lecture. As you can see, it's quite a large carpet snake that was on the move across our driveway. They're not dangerous, but for Danelle's benefit, it's very beautifully marked across its back and very attractive. There are some dangerous snakes there, and one of the first things my colleagues at the Futures Institute did was show me pictures of them so that I know not what were dangerous and what weren't the same with the spiders. That was certainly just outside our front door. We were celebrating my professorial lecture that day. This is my daughter Paula and myself, held in a koala in Queensland. You're allowed to hold them in Victoria, you're not. This is a place called Lone Pine near Brisbane. Definitely worth a visit if you're in Australia. We had an absolutely wonderful time there. I thought you'd like to see. They're incredibly cute. They're so wonderful and gorgeous. Back to the cookaburras. This is our backyard. This is the fence around our swimming pool. This is one of the most gorgeous birds that visit us, as you can see. You can see, as I say, they're part of the Kingfisher family. The ones in that area of eastern Australia are incredibly blue, turquoise blue on their wings. This one is weighted to be fed, and there you go. That's my husband throwing a piece of mince meat. He now holds his hand out and they take it from his fingers. There he is. As you can see up here, we've also attracted a whole variety of other birds because the cookaburras quite often drop things. This bird actually comes down and takes it in there and there before the cookaburra gets it in his mouth. They're kind of big magpie type things. These pictures were taken by Ali who was sitting at the front here when he visited us recently on his iPhone. We've got lots more besides. Anyway, so that's just to tell you about something of the environment that's in. When I had a look round to see whether anybody had really thought this interesting phenomenon of higher education between Australia and the UK, I found there was quite a bit of comparative literature about, but it was mainly on government policy type of stuff. I really didn't find much, certainly in the time I looked, that made a comparison between the UK and Europe and Australia, which I thought was quite surprising. I'm sure somebody will tell me otherwise now, but I certainly didn't find anything much that was of interest. I think in view of some of our so similar roots, it's really quite an interesting study at the moment. In fact, so what I'm most of what I'm going to tell you is really experiential and starting to get involved now in certainly Queensland policy and certain to try and innovate in the University of Southern Queensland. I think if you look at Australia as a global player in higher education, there really are weaknesses and strengths compared to here. Most of them are to do with Australia's geographical isolation rather than the social structures, I think, and also the fact that it's usually dominated by SMEs of various kinds, which is more like Southern Europe in many ways. Most people are employed in very small companies, rural areas. That seems to have resulted in a very low propensity to network and collaborate across institutions and between universities and organisations. I'd say less than here. So that was one interesting thing that I first came across. There is the notion of collaborating to compete the same as there is here, but I think in practice there's rather less of that happening than you would think. However, another contrast is Australia has one of the really incredibly strongest economies in the world at the moment. I know that some people, mates and friends I've been speaking to, they're completely amazed that we're not being subject to some of the same things that are happening here. There's been really almost two decades of continuous growth without the dip that's happened almost everywhere else in the world. There's been a huge amount of structural reform in government and states, so you've actually got a remarkably flexible and resilient economy, which also underpins your ability to operate in the global markets. I do think the strength of Australia's economy has been highlighted in recent years, and they have managed to resist a number of internal and external events like major drought, housing boom and the Asian financial economic crisis. So you would then think that there would be a huge amount of innovation because you kind of think that you'd innovate more in the situation of that kind of economic strength. Regrettably I've been somewhat disappointed about that. Obviously there is a strong record of innovation and achievement in many fields, including science, medicine, industry and agriculture and of course mining, and a lot of the innovations and achievements are actually of a different sort of knowledge, or at least driven by this kind of the indigenous people and combined with the European settlers have led to quite interesting combinations of old style and new style knowledge, which is very, very interesting to work with, and has led to quite contemporary medical and scientific breakthroughs. However, when you look at Australia ranking, saying OECD rankings, they're quite low on innovation still. So there are some interesting things around the area which obviously spills off if you're trying to innovate in the university. I mean one of these is the kind of obvious one that the actual land mass is 33 times bigger. So I showed you just then where I was about here. That's how the UK plus Ireland would fit in. Okay, it's another take on it. This is Australia, how it would go over to Lithuania. So we are talking about a vast area. And if you haven't been there, it's so difficult to quite imagine what that means and how it impacts on people's thinking and actual lifestyle. Now Australia's population has grown from an estimated 350,000 at the time of British settlement in 1788 and there's been numerous waves of immigration during the period since. And at the moment due to these waves of immigration, the European component of the population is declining as a percentage although that is of course happening here in many other western countries. In practice Australia has scarcely more than two persons per square kilometre of total land area because most of it is actually desert, those are the states. And 89% of Australia's population actually lives in an urban area. Now we think about the south east of England starting to tip down. I can tell you if you see south east of England there'll be a lot more dropping in that way. Whereas the population itself is less than half of ours. There's 40 universities compared to our 109. So I just wanted to talk a little bit about the impact of the national broadband network and accessibility. If you can see along here, this is the main railway line. Most of the, there just isn't railway or infrastructure in most of the rest. So it's very significant. People drive, the roads are highly drivable and empty. And so putting this national broadband network in is going to be such a significant change over the next few years. Now some similarities. There is dependency on overseas students just the same as here. And interestingly as I was leaving Leicester so they were just creeping into the Middle East market and University of Southern Queensland is also creeping the other way. So I'm starting the next time I go to Dubai or somewhere like that to meet students both from Leicester and USQ. The situation in Australia itself, I think from my observation that there's quite a major rush towards the market competition and the push then to replace in many forms of academic governance. They are all becoming much more entrepreneurial and corporate life. And that seems to be happening even faster than here, I'd say. So as deregulation again next year, it's not as strong as here but it's still causing a little bit of shake-up. So essentially we are moving from a Republic of Scholars to kind of stakeholder organisations. So just a little bit about creativity and innovation. Of course if you go to Australia, then you will find that it's incredibly creative and artistic. This is the way I'm actually using the four approach to innovation that I used at Leicester. This time it's a space metaphor. I haven't got time to show you this but I hope you'll take a bit of a look. Those of you are familiar with the four quadrants that we used at Leicester and they're still in use there to innovate across the university. Then you'll see I've taken a similar approach and it seems to be working at EOSQ. So thanks very much for listening. I'm happy to answer questions and I hope you'll practice the Cuckabara laugh when you return to your offices from tomorrow. Thank you very much, Julie. Thank you for coming all this way. It's a lot further than it used to be. Are there any questions that you have for Julie that you'd like to ask? They're still thinking. Anything online, Matt? Not yet, we'll just do it in time. That's always a good sign. Have you got your video? Oh, I'm sorry, there's a question here. Can you just tell us who you are and where you're from for the... Nigel Aclesfield from the Learning and Skills Improvement Service. Just a quick one, Julie, and I'll ask you to reflect on the possibilities for collaboration between Australian and UK institutions. I mean, there's a lot of light, sort of heat generated by this, but not much light so far in terms of gaining from our shared perspectives which you indicated in the talk. Yeah, well, that was one of my... the ideas, really, that if we... I think in any partnership we do need to work out what your strengths and weaknesses and what each of you bring to the table. And that's why I was quite surprised to find that there really wasn't much about this. And that's why, obviously, I'm in a great position to start to explore that. So I think we do need to understand better what each brings to the table rather than just assuming we're both working in the same kind of environment. I also haven't found much funding so I think it's up to us as individuals to get this ball rolling. On from our virtual delegates. This question comes from... Let me just try that. This question's coming from Manish Malik in Portsmouth. I mean, he's asking about the Australia students' rating of teachers and is that something that might would be innovative for the UK? Yes. I think that because of the slightly stronger orientation towards managerialism that there is in Australia, it's probably more acceptable than it would be here. It would be my guess. Maybe that would be something we could have a go at Nigel. There's just one up there. There's one up there for Rich. Rich Ranker from Lancaster. I've forgotten the question in his transit up here. No, I'm teasing. How many universities are there and you said that there's very little collaboration and I wondered, is there kind of an equivalent of ALT in Australia? There might be some Australians who cannot do this better than I can, but there's ASCALITE which is probably the equivalent to membership organisations similarly. There's also ACODE and there's been a number of smaller organisations. I'm only just starting to get involved with these organisations so there's probably people who can answer better on this. However, they don't seem to have the policy impact that ALT has started to have in the UK but they are certainly communities of practice. There are communities of practice that are very strong in Australia so I'd say between individuals working together there's no problem but I was thinking more on large-scale collaborations not a lot of evidence of that either within Australia or with overseas organisations. Did you know a bit more about that? Yes, somebody did know. Matt Rill from the Tribal University in Melbourne. I thought members enjoy reciprocal arrangements with ALT members. They're just about to start doing C-Mult as well. Anybody who's an ALT member who'd like to come to the conference you can get the member rates and that sort of thing and there's actually quite a number of people who do like yourself who are aware of ALT in Australia and vice versa. I'm keen writing an ASCALITE conference in December. However, I would say that the University of Southern Queensland where I'm working is the first overseas member of ALT. So it has to work both ways, doesn't it? Maybe some sort of live link up for next year's ALT C would be quite fun. It would be, wouldn't it? It's a good idea. There's so much to learn from each other. Thank you, Julie. The photos look so absolutely wonderful. I can kind of understand why I might want to go to Australia but I wondered if you could expand a bit more as to why you went to Australia and what your strategy is what learning purposes have you got there? I think it was just a bit of an adventure and as you can see we're having that. But also because the University offered me a serious approach, well-funded approach to imagine in the future and it was just irresistible. Can I ask you to join me in thanking Julie very much for coming all this way?