The great APAC customer visit tour – Part 2

It’s day 15 of the great APAC customer visit tour and it’s been a very busy tour for us so far. Since our arrival in Melbourne to start the Victorian leg of our tour, our journey has included 3 more flights and one hire car.

We started off this leg with a car journey to Geelong to see University of Deakin. Car journeys on the motorway here are interesting, apart from the very different scenery and colours to what I’m used to back home, it still freaks me out that big trucks and HGVs are allowed in the fast lane here. We got to Geelong a little early, and it was a really tough start to the week having a few minutes to appreciate a view like this in front of the University of Deakin library.

Not only is University of Deakin at a really picturesque spot, but the library is also housed in an impressive old warehouse with a nod to the original architecture by incorporating the original beams and brickwork into a modern internal design.

This was followed by a trip to see La Trobe university in their Bundoora campus. This was the busiest campus we had been to during these visits, with quite a few students around and a level of activity we just hadn’t seen elsewhere, all the other campuses seemed like ghost towns by comparison. It seems things get started early at La Trobe.

Our last customer visit in advance of Talis Insight Asia-Pacific 2016, was to Monash University at their Clayton Campus. Finding your way around here at the moment may be a little difficult as they have a lot of building and refurbishment work going on at the moment. The library is part of this and the designs for the new and improved library due in late 2016 were suitably impressive. Our final meeting with Southern Cross University was actually held in a coffee shop in Melbourne, as it was the day before the conference and Alison Slocombe was already in town.

Once again, it was great to put faces to names and meet more of our universities. As we did this second wave of meetings and heard more from our universities about what was important to them and their strategic direction, it struck me that we had consistently heard about digital agendas and strategies, an increased focus on online learning and also hearing more about digital literacy programs with a focus on enabling academics and building staff capability. This was a great set of meetings in advance of Talis Insight Asia-Pacific 2016.

We had a rainy day on the day before the conference, but that was ok as we set ourselves up in what we referred to as “Talis HQ Melbourne” to do some final preparations.

We then had a whirlwind 2 days of Talis Insight. This was a fantastic opportunity to meet all of our APAC customers. There were some great talks on both day 1 and day 2, and lots of thought provoking discussions which reflected a lot of the conversations Alison and I had been having with the universities.

After a chance to relax after 2 busy conference days, off we go to Brisbane for our final leg of the tour where we will meet with some of our universities in Queensland.

Read Keji’s blog – The Great APAC Customer Tour – Part 1, New Zealand
Read Keji’s blog – The Great APAC Customer Tour – Part 3