With the first day of the Inaugural Godolphin Flying Start Conference coming to an end, the alumni headed to The Glonville Hotel for a reception and the presentation of awards for Business Excellence and Leadership Excellence. These awards were voted on by all Darley Flying Start European Alumni with French training sensation, Franci
s Graffard, taking home a beautiful bronze for Business Excellence and Darley Ireland General Manager, Gerry Duffy, winning the award for Leadership Excellence.
Beginning at 9:30 am this Friday morning, the conference pushes forward again picking up on yesterday’s panel discussion with a presentation focusing on navigating the information age by Page Group Regional Talent Director, Beverley Nicholas, titled Your Digital Brand and Business Network. With both personal and professional social media networks becoming more integrated part of our lives the alumni were extremely interested in how to manage these channels leading to a very interactive presentation. One of the ideas that was focused on was that word of mouth can quickly become world of mouth, meaning that information travels and becomes viral like at no other time in history, making it imperative to be cognisant not only of what is posted on social media but of what happens in public settings. An interesting observation that Beverley made based on her 20 years in talent acquisition is that a danger of the social media age we live in and a problem that the Page Group are seeing is that many candidates from the newest generation entering the job market are very skilled with online communication but have a serious skill deficit when it comes to in-person relations and interpersonal relations. In addition to interpersonal relations she also highlighted personal authenticity and the ability to strategically network as two key traits that the most successful individuals have.
Following a short coffee break the conference moved into its final phase by welcoming Ronny Helvey, the Marketing Director at Joules Clothing, to the stage for an intimate sit down chat show style interview led by MC Jocelyn Targett. One of the ideas highlighted by Ronny was the importance of brand authenticity and that reputation is won or lost on the ability to deliver your vision. The theme surrounding the importance of authenticity was a common thread woven throughout the day and seemed to strike a chord with the attending alumni. As many of them own their own small businesses or are in positions to make hiring decisions at the companies they work for, how to portray the values of their brand and how to determine the real values and character of potential hires was of particular interest.
Day two wrapped up by revisiting the question posed on the previous day, Global Horseracing; What’s Our Brand? The alumni again broke down into small groups to pick up where they left off the day before to try and get concrete ideas down which could then be discussed among the larger group. The ideas and potential answers discussed in this session will be collated and presented to the International Federation of Horse Racing Authorities as a proactive impetus towards continuing to unite and lift the thoroughbred industry to even greater heights.
Based on the quality of speakers, engagement, and atmosphere, the Inaugural Godolphin Flying Start Alumni Conference was a resounding success. The conception and fruition of the event was spear headed by Clodagh Kavanagh and Joe Osborne with support throughout from Martin Larkin. The event was also supported on the two days by Godolphin Flying Start’s First Year Trainees in the following roles: Delegate/Guest Liaison- Lauren De Arias Huep, Carrie Hu, William Freedman, and Hannah Marks; Video- Jackson Buchanon and Conrad Bandoroff; Interviews- Alayna Cullen and Brittney Dixon; Social Media- Patricia Bowman and Cherry He; Photographer- Mary Ellet; Reporter- Michael Smith.
