Helen Blunden is a passionate advocate for helping people and organisations thrive in an ever-changing workplace through collaborative learning.

She does this through helping them use the workplace as the learning experience drawing upon the use of social networks and communities, tools and technologies to build the new skills and capabilities needed for a modern workforce. These experiences then allow the individual to drive their own professional and personal development.

With over 25 years experience in business, she practices what she preaches when it comes to continual learning at work, in work and through work. She helps people learn techniques to incorporate learning into their every day work so that they could build a network, manage the information overwhelm and collaborate on projects that drive business outcomes.

In 2014, Helen was the Inaugural recipient of the Internet Time Alliance Jay Cross Award for Social Learning. She also founded Third Place, a co-working and networking community of over 500 Learning and Development professional across 6 Australian cities to meet, network and learn from each other. She has presented in conferences nationally and internationally on learning and development and recently, in collaboration with her colleagues at Adopt & Embrace, written a book on helping organisations to collaborate in Microsoft Teams.

Paul Woods is the General Manager of the Adopt & Embrace team at Rapid Circle. The Adopt & Embrace team focuses on helping people get their day back through sustainable, relevant, and focused adoption of Microsoft 365 that results in real business outcomes.

Prior to their acquisition by Rapid Circle in July 2021, Adopt & Embrace was announced as a finalist the Employee Experience category of the 2021 Microsoft Global Partner of the Year awards. In 2018, Adopt & Embrace was recognised as a Microsoft Global Partner of the year after just two years and nine months of operation.

Before staring Adopt & Embrace in 2015, Paul held various marketing and management roles at a major Australian Microsoft Partner, and was a Technology Specialist at Microsoft Australia. He recently completed research as part of the Work/Industry Futures Research Program at the Queensland University of Technology, focusing on technology-enabled mobile work and the porosity of work/life borders. He has also been a member of the teaching team at the QUT Business School for Strategic Management and Negotiation Across Borders.

Awarded Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award ten times, Paul is a regular speaker at community-based events as well as at regional and global Microsoft Conferences like Microsoft TechEd, Microsoft Ignite: The Tour, and Microsoft Inspire.

Find him on Twitter as @paulwoods or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulwoods.