AWS SDG Innovation Roadshow

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) highlight the need to build skills in students across the globe.  During this session David shared the role that EdTech entrepreneurs can play in helping schools build this capacity in their students.

The past eight years leading YABBA has been a great personal privilege and incredible honour.  

In 2013 I became YABBA President with the passing of Graham Davey who left me a huge legacy to build upon.  The Council back then, and each since, entrusted me with the leadership of this fantastic organisation. 

Throughout my tenure as President, I have worked at moving the organisation forward in delivering our mission of amplifying children’s voice across the Australian literature landscape. Leading YABBA through this time has been an incredible workload, but an enormous reward. 

I thank each and every YABBA Council member during the past eight years. YABBA would never have achieved the heights we have without a concerted team effort. 

Some of the huge things we did together include:

• Children nominating and voting has increased 10-fold
• We have grown our author and illustrator participation at the Awards Ceremony from 15-20 back in 2012, where today we have 35-45 children’s creators donating their time each ceremony
• We have had to implement strict ticket limits at the Awards Ceremony to ensure we cater to the 20+ schools that come along today
• We conceived, launched and now sustain a Virtual Author Program that brings Australian children’s authors and illustrators to children across the entire school year via our virtual sessions
• YABBA was in a precarious financial position and today we have a strong balance sheet and a pending contract that will secure YABBA’s financial future for many years to come

Today I handover YABBA Leadership to Michelle Nye.  

In 2014 Michelle was our Awards Ceremony Host at Hillcrest Christian, this is where I met her for the first time.  During that year I asked Michelle to take the Awards Ceremony to a new place – one that set a new benchmark and a legacy for all future ceremony hosts to exceed.  Michelle not only accepted the challenge, she delivered on it and more; most importantly she did so with great respect for the YABBA ethos. 

I can think of no better person to take on leadership of YABBA and the custodianship of the vision to amplify children’s voices across the Australian Children’s literature sector.  

I wish Michelle, the YABBA Council and community the absolute best for the future.  What a wonderful organisation. 

Thank you!

David Linke
YABBA President (2013-2020)

This post was first published on the YABBA website

For five years now I’ve had the great honour of leading the Young Australians Best Book Awards Council (YABBA).  The YABBA Awards is a children’s choice book award.  The awards were founded by a team of volunteers in 1985 that believed children need to have great Australian books to engage them.  Today our mission is the same, we want to have Australian children Recommend, Read, Rate and Reward Australian books.

Leading a not-for-profit volunteer run organisation has been truly transformational for my leadership.  Nothing will test your leadership skills more than engaging volunteers and ensuring they have valuable work to actually do and actually deliver on.  Anyone that has lead a volunteer organisation will understand how that simple challenge isn’t that simple.   I personally love the enthusiasm and the drive the team bring to their work.

I never joined the YABBA Council with the view of leading it.  I simply wanted to add my skills to the organisation in the area where I could help the most – Sales and Marketing.  I started with a review of the sales and marketing processes.  This lead to a rebranding, the development of a brand promise and ultimately a new website.  That website has since been replaced and the branding refined, but the journey continues towards a strong sales and marketing driven organisation.  But I’m truly honoured to work with the people that I do, they are a great team of custodians for the YABBA brand.

The 2016 Awards Ceremony was a truly fantastic event.  We had a sellout this year, with 380 children, 65 teachers and 30 industry representatives in attendance.  The scramble for tickets this year is a new thing, certainly in my time on the Council, which has presented challenges.  But all organisations have challenges, I certainly prefer this model of having too much demand, instead of too little.

The Awards Ceremony gives me a some personal reward.  The reward of all those days and days and days of work across the year leading the awards is getting to be Masters of Ceremony.  Graham Davey the YABBA President of 20 years was the consummate MC, so I’ve used his 20 years precedent of the President MC’ing the day.  I truly love the fun of leading a room of 380 children and 35 authors/illustrators that are true entertainers.

The Awards Ceremony day is a true celebration of books and a huge reward for everyone that gets to participate.