{"id":3001,"date":"2013-04-29T14:16:15","date_gmt":"2013-04-29T04:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/?p=3001"},"modified":"2013-04-29T14:19:56","modified_gmt":"2013-04-29T04:19:56","slug":"rockhamptons-beef-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/rockhamptons-beef-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Rockhampton&#8217;s Beef Week"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Rockhampton's Beef Week website\" href=\"http:\/\/beefaustralia.com.au\/\" target=\"_blank\">Rockhampton&#8217;s Beef Week<\/a> is next scheduled for 4-9 May 2015.\u00a0 Today someone asked me why I attend.\u00a0 Good question!<\/p>\n<p>It is the biggest Australian event of it&#8217;s kind and has a special buzz about it; helped by the fact that it&#8217;s only held every 3 years, thus efficiently concentrating attendance and the money involved. Here&#8217;s why I think every Australian with an interest in cattle should attend Rocky&#8217;s Beef Week:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Excellent quality <strong>seminars, workshops, tours etc<\/strong> &#8211; great speakers; interesting discussions; useful, new information.\u00a0 It&#8217;s always a full-on programme, day after day. Tough choices have to be made between enticing options!<\/li>\n<li><strong>Networking<\/strong> &#8211; around 85,000 people attended Rocky&#8217;s Beef Week in 2012.\u00a0 They came from other countries and all over Australia, and all have one thing in common &#8211; an interest in the beef industry.\u00a0 And you&#8217;ll know at least some of them, possibly dozens or even hundreds.\u00a0 Each time I attend, in addition to meeting people in person that I&#8217;ve only corresponded with by mail or over the phone, I catch up with people I haven&#8217;t seen for years (sometimes decades).\u00a0 They are scattered all over Australia, and make a special effort to attend Rocky&#8217;s Beef Week as it&#8217;s only on every 3 years.\u00a0 Miss one, and you have to wait another 3 years to attend.\u00a0 It&#8217;s one big gab fest of the most enjoyable kind &#8211; mixing business and pleasure; talking with people you have a lot in common with, but that you see infrequently.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Tradefair<\/strong> &#8211; Around 300 exhibitors are included in the tradefair. Most people who sell anything specifically related to the Australian cattle industry can be found at Rocky&#8217;s Beef Week.\u00a0 You get to meet suppliers etc that you may otherwise never meet in person &#8211; a great way to negotiate a good deal.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Social events<\/strong> &#8211; because I&#8217;m working on a trade stand for long hours daily I don&#8217;t get into the entertainment side of things (night time is for recovering!) But I know most people love this aspect, as there is a huge range of functions and events on offer, day and night. Many companies involved in the beef industry seize this ideal opportunity for Australia-wide staff to get together, for both meeting and social reasons.\u00a0 The one event I make sure I always attend is the<a title=\"Qld Rural Press Club Website\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ruralpressclub.com.au\/\" target=\"_blank\"> Queensland Rural Press Club <\/a>breakfast, as they always have a first class speaker and it&#8217;s amongst great company (at a time of day I can squeeze in). I have noticed the eateries have improved a great deal over the years &#8211; I had some excellent takeaway tucker last year!<\/li>\n<li><strong>Competitions<\/strong> &#8211; there are various well-attended competitions held.\u00a0 As far as I can tell, every single breed of cattle found in Australia can be seen at Rocky.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Overseas visitors<\/strong> &#8211; quite a few overseas visitors attend Rocky&#8217;s Beef Week, along with Austrade staff etc who hold special gatherings to help Australian exporters make connections etc. So it&#8217;s ideal for anyone interested in exporting genetics or beef industry-related goods as well as businesses that already do so.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I can&#8217;t recommend it highly enough. For anyone involved in the beef industry, if you have never been to Rocky&#8217;s Beef Week, it&#8217;s more a matter of &#8216;why not&#8217; rather than &#8216;why&#8217;.\u00a0 The only tricky bit is finding accommodation. Book early.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rockhampton&#8217;s Beef Week is next scheduled for 4-9 May 2015.\u00a0 Today someone asked me why I attend.\u00a0 Good question! It is the biggest Australian event of it&#8217;s kind and has a special buzz about it; helped by the fact that it&#8217;s only held every 3 years, thus efficiently concentrating attendance and the money involved. Here&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,5,12],"tags":[158],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3001"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3001"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3005,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3001\/revisions\/3005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}