Behind the Scenes at SMS

Julian is an incurable romantic and he recently brought me home a surprise ... an adorable moodle (maltese X miniture poodle) puppy who was born on our wedding day.

This was particularly suprising to me as I was 5 and a 1/2 months pregnant at the time. It was also a shock as, due to my tendency to adopt strays, we already had 3 dogs in the house and I was on a promise not to rescue any more until at least one had moved to the big kennel in the sky.

So when he said he was bringing home a lovely surprise I was expecting a good Thai takeaway and a back massage. Or at least a pizza and a Macgyver DVD. Perhaps that explains Julian's own suprise when he got home and I called out "Bring it up, the table is set and I'm starving!"

Julian named the puppy "Awesome" for the sole reason that he is an awesome little guy. Despite my initial misgivings at the name I have to admit that he is pretty awesome and has quickly become a much loved member of our family. He's a bright little guy. About 5 seconds after he discovered liver treats he was the easiest dog in the world to train. I particularly appreciated how quickly he took to toilet training. My next training priority is getting him to step over it afterwards.

In the office Awesome snoozes the days away on the bottom shelf of the bookcase storing his energy for a good play in the evenings. What an awesome life!

Lunch with Matt Moran @ Aria Restaurant Brisbane

Our Lunch with Matt Moran at Aria Restaurant Brisbane booked out in just 3 days with 40 executives from associations, charities, foundations and other nonprofits from around Brisbane attending. Congratulations to Rori from Queensland Alliance and Penny from AFL Queensland who each won a signed limited edition of Matt's latest cookbook. With the phenomenal success of this event we will be running similar events in Brisbane and other locations again in the near future. Stay tuned!

New SMS Branding

Over the past couple of years we've found that the scope of our work has expanded beyond our name. So we've shortened our name to SMS and tweaked our logo and colours. Speaking of which, when talking to Belinda it's "pink" ... but if you are talking to Julian it's "ruby red".

We were robbed!

Last month we were running an event in Sydney and, after confirming with the venue that the exits were secured, headed off to lunch. On our return I was dismayed to find that my briefcase (containing about $10,000 worth of equipment including a new laptop) had been stolen as the venue staff had forgotten to lock the fire exit. It was a bit of a disaster as we lost quite a lot of data (I'm now a convert to the practice of religiously doing backups!). A couple of days later I related the story to a fellow delegate at the IMEX conference in Frankfurt who said that would have been preferrable to her last event where the keynote speaker died (of natural causes) at the venue the morning of the conference. Wow ... I'd prefer a theft of all the laptops to something like that!However, it make me think that there are probably quite a lot of funny, weird and wonderful stories about the various disasters that happen at events sitting out there just waiting to be told. If you'd like to share your story please use the comments section below to tell us your story.