SheEO Australia Simulcast, If the Shoe Fits, Big Ideas Competition & Small Business Expo

Last week ended in a flurry of activities! I started Thursday early with the SheEO Australia Simulcast, where I got to listen to how SheEO has progressed in Australia since I attended the launch event last year. It was an inspirational way to start the morning, where I also put myself forward by asking for people to contact me if they need my services as a consultant CTO.

During the morning I found out about the “If the Shoe Fits”, a pop-up shop from The World’s Biggest Garage Sale. I ended up buying two shoes, both of which turned out to be Shoes of Prey shoes! I was thinking that they had unusual looks. But I didn’t realise that they were unusual because they were custom made! Shoes of Prey was a very successful startup that died trying to scale-up. As a startup enthusiast, I am glad I got a chance to get a hold of a pair of this part of Australian startup history.

Thursday ended with my regular meeting with Josari at the QUT Foundry, which is when I discovered that the Foundry was hosting the Big Ideas competition. I stuck around for two pitches. I wish I could have heard all of them but I had to get going. But the two ideas I got to hear were pretty cool. One was a robot that can be a companion to stressed university students. The other was about a shampoo bar with minimum packaging that can be sold by the homeless. I think both ideas are worth exploring further.

Finally, on Friday I checked out the Small Business Expo. I heard mixed reviews for the expo. So I wanted to check it out at least once. There was a good mix of businesses there, including some MLM traps! I didn’t have a game plan for promoting myself to the people there. But I was happy to take the scene in and hang out with Anne-Marie Walton of Kids Wantu, and Paul Buckwell of Josari. I’ll have a better game plan the next time I visit. But for now, I am glad to be enjoying my weekend. Also, Happy Diwali for those celebrating!

Breakfast with the QCE & Brisbane Innovate

Wednesday was a very busy day for me. I started the day having breakfast with my Impact Boom Elevate+ cohort mates. We were hosted by Leanne Kemp, the Queensland Chief Entrepreneur, and Craig O'Kane, the Director of the Queensland Chief Entrepreneur office. It was a great experience, I got an update on where everybody is, picked-up tips from the Leanne and Craig. The food was great too!

After the “Founders Breakfast”, almost all of us, plus Leanne, hoped on a maxi-taxi and crossed the river to attend the Brisbane Innovate 2019. Brisbane Marketing organised the half-day event to bringing together businesses and residents to collaboratively solve city-wide challenges.

This year, the summit focused on will focus on 1) Amplifying small business growth; 2) Innovating for effective, sustainable construction; and 3) Engaging out of town students.

I was in the Amplifying small business stream. There was a lot of ideas generated. Being an idea-vampire, I took pictures of all the idea boards. I also put my name down on a few boards that I was interested in and let’s see if there is enough interest to take those ideas further.

Finally, being a Wednesday, I was able to buy lunch from the Brisbane City Markets, which was great fuel ahead of my last meeting for the day. Wednesday was a good day!

Creative3, The Awards

Last Thursday, I had the privilege of attending the Creative3 Awards. It was my first time going to the Awards. But I did get to the Creative3 Dinner last year. Indeed, I believe the Creative3 Awards replaced the Dinners because the Creative3 teams like to keep things fresh by mixing things up. The event was extra special because the team was celebrating ten years of Creative3!

I always enjoy activities organised by QUT CEA because they bring the most interesting speakers. But before we get to the four speakers, here are the four winners from the afternoon:

• The Rising Star, Creative Tech: Creatively Squared

• The Innovator, Creative Tech: Toast VR

• The Rising Star, Fashion: Buluuy Mirrii

• The Creative Trailblazer: Monica Davidson

Congratulations to all the winners! They were a great cross-section of the creative industries sector of Australia. But now, on to the speaker!

The first speaker was Carolyn Miller, the founding director of communications consultancy: The Honeycomb Effect. She gave a fascinating talk about brands and how important and emotive it can be. She also touched on how we often define ourselves by NOT following brands, but that still involves acknowledging brands. As I was sitting there, I was thinking about how I consider myself an Android person and partly define myself by not buying Apple products. I enjoyed her talk that’s partially captured in the article “There Are No Boring Brands, Just Boring Marketers“.

The next speaker was Nick Rakis, who is a business designer and founding Partner of Accelio. He is one of the mastermind CSIRO’s ON PRIME program. His talk focused on the fall of Blackberry, and now Microsoft was heading that way after losing the mobile wars to Google and Apple. But he pointed out that Microsoft had quietly bounced back, overtaking Google and Amazon in market cap during our current cloud and AI wars. He talked about how the current CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, hand changed the culture of Microsoft so that it could better tackle current and future challenges. The central message of listening to customers is one I have heard before. Still, unfortunately, it is a message that businesses just don’t seem to do! After his talk, I added Satya Nadella’s book, Hit Refresh, to my wish list.

And now: A fashion interlude!

(I swear the audience missed it’s cue to clap on the day but that’s another story!)

After a short break and a short fashion show, we were back with Mareile Osthus, who is the Chief Category Management Officer, The Iconic! Her talk focused on “new retail” now that we are no longer bound the old limits of geography. She talked about how, when she was growing up in a small town in Europe, she could tell a classmate who was wearing a particular brand had most likely been to the US recently. You can’t do that anymore. I mean, obviously there are still places where Amazon does deliver or the Iconic is not available. But for the most part, brands are not geographically bound and we can shop any brand, any style and at the price point of our choice. So what becomes the differentiator? Mareile suggested it will be around values, customer experience and aspirations. I agree and I think new retail will be exciting!

Finally, the last talk of the night was delivered by Adam Elliot, the Oscar Award-winning independent stop-motion animation writer and director. Unlike the others, he’s talk was more motivational and less educational. But it was a great way to end the afternoon. I enjoyed all the talks, and I look forward to seeing what Creative3 does next year!

Another RCL Pitch Afternoon!

Team Josari took advantage of the River City Labs open day to work from RCL last Friday. Naturally, that meant we ended the day taking in some pitches while eating chips! Okay, the rest of the team was drinking. But I, of course, don’t drink anything harder than coffee and even that is usually drowned in milk and sugar! But I digress.

I am not going to go pitch by pitch. But I am going to highlight two pitches. Firstly, it was great to hear once more from Anne-Marie Walton of Kids Wantu. She’s in the middle of a crowdfunding campaign. I have already pledged, which acts as a pre-order for her family activity app Kids Wantu.

I cannot wait to get the app, so I can use it to do activities with my niece and nephew. My niece is 4 and spends at least 3 days with me. But at the moment she spends way too much time watching movies and tablets when she’s over. My nephew is under 2, and it would be great to be able to be prepared to entertain him as he grows older!

The other pitch I wanted to highlight was from Joshua Savage about his two cannabis-related businesses. I have noticed an absolute explosion of cannabis-related startups. I like Joshua’s approach to the explosion because he’s on the support side. His two companies are helping growers and consumers, grow and consume good quality cannabis. I think that’s a smart approach. His two businesses are 1) Australia Cannabis, and 2) Disruptive Industries.

Finally, there was a pitch on the night that was for a consumer-facing app. The pitch made me realise that we need to stop thinking of users as the product. We live in a post-Cambridge Analytica world that’s already drowning in data. I don’t believe this is an environment into which we should be launching another app that tries to make money by monetising user data.

Especially as there are movements afoot to force companies to share the revenue generated by selling user data with said users, I don’t think selling data is a viable business model for new ventures. For long term success, I think it’s time we moved beyond treating our user as the product. Maybe I am wrong in this. Only time will tell!

September In Review: A bit slow but got better!

September was a slow month for me as I was very sick! I had to go to the hospital for an iron infusion as my blood haemoglobin had dropped to dangerous levels. But I did do a few things. Given how this month has gone, I decided to make a list of everything that I did as a general life update!

The first thing I managed to this month was on the 16th. That was to attend another talk organised by the Connect Collaborative. I met a few more people, but it wasn’t a good night. I was still suffering from the after-effects of Gastro. But I am glad I went. I haven't completely decided what to do with “the Hub”. But I understand the importance of networks. So I am likely to visit again. Hopefully, I won’t have Gastro the next time I make it to the Hub!

Later that week was my birthday, on the 19th. I started celebrating on the 18th, going out to dinner with my family. But I continued to celebrate on the 19th with cake while relishing the ability to eat without throwing up.

My iron transfusion took place on the 23rd, which was just-in-time for me to be more myself during the Breakfast with the Angels. It wasn’t a great start as my Uber driver did not know the city area. So blindly followed the Wave navigation app to turn what should have been a 15-minute ride into a 45-minute ordeal! But I got there eventually, had smashed Avacado with feta with Brisbane Angel’s Gianni. Inndox’s Andrew, and Energy Lab’s Camille. The conversation was good. I loved hearing about Andrew’s journey with Inndox. I picked up a few tips from Gianni. I had a good morning. My Elevate+ cohort mate Andrew Chow of Shenovi was also there, but I didn’t get a chance to speak with him.

After breakfast, I walked to QUT Foundry and officially joined a team taking on the Alexa Skills Challenge: In-Skill Purchasing. I don’t have a picture of my team yet. But I’ll make a point of snapping one as we undertake the challenge. 43 days to go!

I met my team again on the last day of September at the Precinct. We are all members of the Brisbane Internet of Things (IoT) Meetup. So after our meeting, we head down to Avestix Lab, which yet another innovation hub and co-working space for a pizza and a talk on industrial IoT. Not a bad way to end a slow September.