28 April 2009
FISH@6 on Youth Innovation
Our last FISH@6 workshop on Youth Innovation presented some amazing young innovative people who shared their projects with us. It was inspirational to see what young people are doing to change our world:
Rachel Beaney spoke about the development of MobyMag, a magazine for mobiles, which gives a voice to emerging artists and writers. Interestingly this great innovative idea emerged from the passion to provide a platform and exists as such, without the need to transform it into a big business yet. It just shows that great innovations do not always have to be developed with a commercial aim in mind, but are working just as well on a small scale. MobyMag is a great innovation and will most likely grow slowly as the mobile phone technology develops. For more information about MobyMag see http://mymobymag.com
Donnie Maclurcan, the founder of Project Australia talked about apparent gaps in infrastructure for emerging social entrepreneurs in Australia and showed how Project Australia’s model will address these gaps. Interestingly the discussion following Donnie’s presentation once again circled around the question of profit, here in the context of social innovations. Social innovations can implemented on a large or very small scale and both are equally important. What we probably often forget is how small improvements also contribute to make the world a better place.For more information about Project Australia see http://www.projectaustralia.org.au/
Rachel Hills, a young writer, social commentator and media strategist talked about Innovation in Journalism and the differences between heritage media and new media with some insight into the world of new media. Rachel explores what heritage media can learn from (good) bloggers in her blog ‘Musings of an inappropriate woman’, please see her blog http://rachelhills.tumblr.com/post/96955756/what-can-heritage-media-learn-from-good-bloggers for more information.
Daniel Dominguez, an IT Manager at i-azul and an entrepreneur in designing robots, joined us via Skype from Colombia, even with a 15 hour time difference. He talked about innovations in IT and Marketing in particular about Proximity Marketing, a new technology which picks up mobiles in the proximity (for example passers-by at a shop) and sends out information as a new form marketing. The group discussed the technology from the customers’ point of view with its implications on privacy and possibilities of a more targeted way of using it. More information can be found on http://www.i-azul.com (Spanish only).
David Beaumont, entrepreneur who works for the City of Sydney, talked about new solutions for indigenous problems in Australia. He spoke about a few projects that were implemented together with government bodies. The fact that was new about those projects was that they consider the people as they are instead of trying to change the indigenous population of Australia. The projects which are assisting them to live sustainable with their traditions in their communities are both helping the indigenous people to live better lifes by embracing what they have as well as teaching everyone else about indigenous traditions and the value these can have to the whole Australian population in terms of sustainable lifestyle.
In conclusion it was a highly interesting evening which showed that there is much to learn from young Australian innovators and entrepreneurs. It may be time for some change in thinking and time for more collaboration across generations.
