The conference, presented by Regional Development Australia in Dubbo and simultaneously broadcast to Mudgee and Bourke, was designed to give attendees a taste of what the new network’s faster broadband speeds would mean for businesses.

The Mudgee hub of the conference was sparsely attended, but those “early adopters” who were present agreed it was definitely worthwhile.

Peter Munroe of Leadership Management Australia said keynote speaker Brad Howarth had shown him that faster broadband speeds would enable clear, instantaneous communication with clients around the world and open up an international potential customer base.

“Brad’s presentation opened my eyes to the global potential, as opposed to the local potential that we currently think of,” he said.

“It’s a shift in thinking, from what can we access locally to where can we get what we need.”

Already, he said, from Mudgee he could be part of an online discussion between a supplier in Canada, a distributor and New Zealand and a potential client in Orange.

Mr Munroe’s colleague, Kim Ferguson, said the speakers each offered something different, with gadget guy Peter Blasina offering excellent explanations in layman’s terms, while Brad Howarth was good at “making you stop and think about its real application”.

She said the talks con-vinced her that Leadership Management Australia was on the right track with its technology use, as well as providing some opportunities to “fine tune” and expand.

Ms Ferguson is also secretary of the Mudgee Chamber of Commerce, and said the conference would allow the Chamber to keep its members better informed.

Connor Munroe, who said he was part of a generation that had grown up with technology, was excited to hear more about the NBN at the conference and said the rate and potential of current advancements made him say, “Wow, what does the future hold?”

“The world can change faster than we can possibly imagine,” he said.

The conference was streamed to Mudgee by Dubbo audio-visual specialists Audio Plus, simulating the streaming speeds of the National Broadband Network by breaking up and compressing the video files in Dubbo before reassembling and screening them in Mudgee and Bourke.

The feed started in Dubbo on an optic fibre line which was only running at 18 per cent so it wouldn’t overload the old copper lines still in Mudgee, showing that the NBN’s minimum speed would still be around five times current broadband speeds.