In December 2010, Martin Lack & Associates sold its ConferenceIT business to arinex pty ltd.

Jackie and I are now retired. Arinex graciously agreed for us to remain as volunteers on the various organising committees. After all, we had been running the Talent2 User Group since 1997, QUESTnet since 1999, AusCERT since 2002 and a precursor to eResearch since 2001 and therefore had formed very strong personal relationships.

We’ll miss you all …

All the staff moved to the new company, all the event contracts were similarly transferred. We’d like to formally thank Graham Haeusler, Director, KSA Capital for identifying the opportunity for us and negotiating the sale. He is very professional.

2011 became a transition year for us as we worked with arinex to hand over the business. It was an excellent year; compared to 2010 itself a record year, delegate numbers increased by 22%, registration fees by 17% and sponsorship dollars increased by 28%. We went out on a high.

We’d particularly like to thank and congratulate our staff. They were told when they joined the company that we would push them out of the comfort zone and teach them exciting new skills. We also encouraged them to be critical of all parts of their operation and make suggestions about how we could be one of the best conference organisers in Australia. They delivered in spades and many of them over the years confided that they had worked longer for us than any other company. A win-win all round.

We’d also like to thank our clients - including the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA), BIS Shrapnel, the Queensland State Government, e-learning and e-Research, Talent2 User Group (HR) , AusCERT (IT security) and QUESTnet (networking) plus CAUDIT with CCA-EDUCAUSE (university IT directors). Together we pushed the envelope and ran our conferences and events very differently to a conventional conference organiser. This meant streaming all our sessions, providing extensive stakeholder interaction via smart phones, naturally bringing speakers in via Skype. It was intellectually challenging and a lot of fun.

Finally we’d like to thank all our suppliers, you stepped up to the mark. We were a demanding client but you readily acknowledged we were very well organised and a pleasure to work with. Thank you. We know we changed many of the hotels we worked at by allowing us to install 100’s of megabytes of network into your premises. You could experience the future through us. Well done.