Pause Fest 2018

TechLever have a rather fond attachment, or one might even say addiction, to this annual February event – Pause Fest. In actual fact, Ben and Mike formed a physical attachment with an injectable Pause Fest ticket!

What is Pause Fest about? Well, the value at its heart is not so much the array of technology, the fact that the cutting cliché edge is not needed as phrase as the stuff here is newer-than-new, but it’s the people that turn up. Its not just the people talking on the stage, but the people sitting next to you – yes – I would not call Pause Fest an event, but a community.

Anyway, with introduction aside, here are a couple of snaps of sessions I attended from a jam packed program.

3 start-up pitch finalists

In addition to start-ups being able to Expo-se themselves at fed square, they had the opportunity to pitch. The pitchers were:

• Mine Excellence – blast software for …intelligent blasting.
• Choovie – online cinema ticketing system, price tickets accordingly to demand.
• Omny Studios – a suite of tools for radio and podcasters.

Quote of the session by Omny Studios, “I need to get to Silicon Valley, I have goals”

Just quietly, we guessed Choovie as the winner before it was announced – they did really well in addressing and defining their market as well as what they need to take the next step. Congrats to the team at Choovie.

9-5 is dead: the future of the workplace

The panel spoke to how the internet had changed the face of work.
A big thing to note here, the panel was not at all balanced. I’m not talking about from a diversity perspective, no, that was perfect. With the likes of Jan Owen AM, CEO at the Foundation for Young Australians, Brigid Loudon, CEO at Expert 360, Tim Fung, founder of Airtasker and Tony Wu, co-founder of Weploy. I am talking about the representation of businesses here, really 1 out of 4 opinions voiced were those of businesses that rely on it for a business model. However, in saying that, it was a quality panel of very well articulated people who clearly understood the political and social issues considering a nomadic and casual workforce.

Couple of interesting insights gleamed:

• The last time there was a big change in the workforce was in the 1980s where there were men in their 40-50s who never worked again
• At the moment there are 3 broad categories of work, fulltime, part-time and casual – policy makers are trying to stop progress just to be able to catch up
• There are many ways to cultivate social interactions and meeting people, new technology enables this
• Inter-generational workforce, this is the first time where we have people working with great grandchildren. Many people can’t afford to quit
• Continual learning is required to keep up with this change in a dynamic workforce – so rather than education its now ‘life learning’. Accessing online learning, seeing the democratising of education

Take two apps & tweet me in the AM

A discussion of health tech in digital space, with what I must say, one the best panels I’ve had the pleasure of being educated by. Thanks to the likes of the fabulous Michelle Gallaher founder of The Social Science who moderated the session with a graceful, knowledgeable unpretentious panel consisting of Michelle Goldsmith, Global Kinetics, Grace Lethlean Director of Programs at ANDHealth, David Bakker Director of Mood Mission and Sally Cockburn GP and 3aw talk show host and presenter.

They opened with the seemingly obvious, but unfortunately not practised; that healthcare cannot ignore social media and online. There was discussion of the gamut of reasons and discussion of complexities that followed, I’ve only mentioned a few;

• Social media can be scary for psychologist as they are shy and reserved, but mainly wish to be a blank slate as possible for clients, yet can present amazing opportunities with moderation in place
• GPs demonstrating Dr Google in action as to where the reliable, credible information can found
• When it come to digital services – who pays for digital? User? Government? Service providers? Hospitals? In the US user pays, in the UK within the NHS there is room for the system to pay for digital apps
• Digital healthcare is not regulated in Australia
• There is role for app stores in order to show credibility and clinical. Currently the rating system is all that exists. However, there needs to be a ethical system in order to show use by benefit rather then popularity
• Collection of personal data will allow the best opportunity for personalised medicine as usual treatment is based on the general populations
• When using personal data, there is no analysis of how practitioners use data and make decisions
• Challenging market place in Australia, one example is conducting R&D and pilot trials in Australia however sell into the US
• There has been research in psychology to show some people prefer talking to AI over a real person

Places of the future – digital disruption and urban infrastructure

I wanted to check this one out, because honestly it scares me to think the only way buildings are being designed with its main priority of $$ to go high as possible and to cram as many people as possible in to the one space. Listening to this panel gave me hope that digital was providing the opportunity to ensure that people were core to design. Panel with Evan Quick – Exec Advisor at GHD, Claire Dixon – Innovation Services Manager, GHD and Founder – Smart Seeds, Margie McKay – Manager, City Design Studio, City of Melbourne, Jessica Christiansen-Franks – Co-Founder & CEO, Neighbourlytics, Senior Program Advisor, CoDesign Studio and Jacyl Shaw, Digital Innovation Leader at GHD.

Smart Seeds have written a neat summary here. Some of the interesting tibits I noted:

• City of Melbourne with an app to predict future needs of infrastructure and changes of demographics with the example the affects of open spaces
• City swipe, tinder for buildings. Getting general population insights what they’d like to see
• Infra works (a program to build models and can build in rules for city planning)
• Generative design – approach for urban building
• Using VR & AR to look at shadowing effects

Meet the expert

Our Boss – Ben was part of a meet-an-expert session to speak people on the R&D Tax Incentive at this year’s Pause.