On Wednesday afternoon, I headed down to Sydney, NSW for the Self Storage Association of Australasia’s (SSAA’s) Regional Meeting & Dinner and the Sydney leg of the Storman Training Roadshow (having just returned from the Cairns Roadshow and Melbourne Roadshow sessions recently).
Wednesday 15th May
After arriving in Sydney, I checked into the hotel, organised a projector screen from the hotel’s Events Team then responded to a few emails and prepared for the Storman Training Roadshow session that would take place tomorrow.
At around 6pm, I caught a cab over to North Sydney for the SSAA Regional Dinner Meeting at The Union Hotel, which was well attended, with about 30 self storage members joining myself, Dougal & Simone (from the Self Storage Association of Australasia; “SSAA” for short) and about 4 or 5 other Service Members.
Entree was a delicious avocado chicken salad – one of the best I’ve ever had (alternate dropped with prawns), followed by steak and chips (alternate dropped with crispy salmon) then a caramel & mango dish for dessert (alternate dropped with a chocolate brownie)… a nice venue and nice food!
Our guest speakers tonight were Simone Hill, the SSAA’s Legal Counsel, followed by a valuer from Urbis. Simone had a great presentation on the “Weird & Wonderful things in Self Storage… and how to deal with them in the sell-up phase”. I’d seen Simone’s fantastic presentation before (in Cairns recently) and, as such, I was “banned” from answering her question (only because I knew the answer already – haha!)… but it’s always interesting to hear some of the weird and wonderful stories that self storage operators have to share at these functions. When asked to recall some of the more unusual things found in storage at the sell-up stage, one particular storage facility opened a defaulted storer’s unit to find a dominatrix den. Needless to say, the cataloging and subsequent auction process for some of the… er… “equipment” was an interesting one for this particular storage facility. But, I digress.
Main course was followed up by a great presentation from Urbis, where they shared some interesting storage facts and the latest indices in terms of the self storage market in Australia vs. that of America. Very insightful!
The night ended with a few good laughs and a chance to chat to some of our existing Storman users to go through any issues or talk about upcoming releases and so on. A great night was had!
Thursday 16th May
Today began with a trip to the hotel gym, followed by breakfast and then I was all set for the Storman Advanced Training course! Today I’d be joined by Josh from Storage King Hamilton & Storage King Maitland, as well as Lisa from Kayel Self Storage. Lisa has traveled down from Wyong North on the train and Josh had driven all the way from Newcastle! We’d initially had a total of seven people registered for our Sydney leg, but sadly we had a few last-minute cancellations come through… not to worry!
After the course concluded, Josh & Lisa drove & ‘trained’ back home while I caught a taxi to the airport and ventured home – landing in Brisbane only 30 minutes late (#bnelateagain) this time!
Our Training Roadshow takes a quick break now, before heading over to Perth the week starting June 3rd. I’ll leave you with a couple of photos from my stay in Sydney (below). Until next time!
