making it in melbourne critique

Today's seminar invited a panel of guest speakers from different media fields i.e Television, events and digital media to talk about their experiences in the Melbourne media industry. At the same time, they gave us invaluable insights on how to make it big in the competitive Melbourne working world.

Pre-seminar: Powerpoint slides were hard to read. They had black font against a colour background which were non-pleasing to my eyes. Refreshments were little as well, but this could have been due to the wastage of the (excessive) refreshments last week. However, it is only my personal opinion that it is better to have a generous and reasonable amount of refreshments than to have little.

Seminar: The guests invited were relevant to the topic. They were good in their content, explaining the ups and downs of the Melbourne media industry. They were also inspirational, stressing that nothing but hard work and persistence were the key to succeeding in their respective careers. Dwayne Thompson, promotions co-ordinator of youth focused company Future Entertainment was the most engaging amongst the speakers. Perharps it was his age that 'bonded' us with him, which only made us strive more to one day succeed like him. The only problem I had during the seminar was the emcee. He spoke well, though I felt that he was not engaging enough and was very distracting with his fidgeting movements.

Q&A session: There were some good questions asked from the audience and good answers were returned. All 5 speakers shared personal stories during their careers, which I felt was interesting and relevant to the topic.

However, there was a particular answer to a question that I felt was weak and perharps, ignorant.

There was an Indian student who asked (who spoke in a Singaporean accent): 'From your own experience in your own fields, do you think international students have a chance of making it here in Melbourne? What are your thoughts?' There were 5 speakers, all of whom who surely had some experience working with non-locals in their jobs (most notably Sabrina Jansz, production assistant from Sportsbrand). Yet, it was only Dwayne Thompson that spoke but the answer he gave was a standard answer that one would expect from any working professional.

To my memory, Dwayne answered: 'Well, we've worked with internationals before.. Europe.. Asia.. India *points to student*.. when it comes to succeeding, you know, you have to network and do alot of research.. sit people down and really talk to them about how you would go about making it...'

What Dwayne answered was relevant, but it was a generalized answer. More importantly, he did not give a clear indication of the 'chances' that international students would have of having a career in Melbourne. Given that international students (anywhere in the world) have lower priority of working in foreign countries, we were keen to know the answers from the 5 professionals sitting on stage. Instead, they had little to offer and it was disheartening. Also in my personal opinion, it would have been wise if Dwayne was more sensitive and asked the Indian student of his country of origin instead of assuming that he was from India.