Category: StartupHunter

hunting the coworking sweetspot

25/1/2018

(Originally posted in 2015, we've recently updated our recommended resources list for 2018).

As a small business owner, freelancer and coworking advocate, I've enjoyed watching the emergence of a bigger range of options here in the Hunter and Central Coast regions of NSW, with a nod to those who've helped to set up the pattern in other cities, or who are tracking the change in facility focus with new ways of working.

The Hunter and Central Coast have some great options for visitors to the region, or for freelancers who need to get out and connect with others, seeking serendipitous collisions and encounters that can create new business opportunities, or to expand your network of trusted associates. Whilst we do that in part with our DigitalMakers Meetup, others have set out to create compelling new workspaces that are worth a closer look. We run a little GoogleMap to track where they're popping up, with a bit more of a focussed regional perspective - there's also a bigger one done by StartUpAustralia at http://startupaus.org/resources/coworking/.

Whilst they might not yet appear on coworking facility listings like desks near.me or TheLoop just yet, they do still exist, with some great design thinking emerging which shows they get what it's about, with some sophisticated regional influences evident. What's nice is that these also reflect entrepreneur driven spaces, rather than larger facility manager centric spaces. Here's the list of who's active in this space in the Hunter + Central Coast at the moment:
Hunter

www.innx.com.au (CoWorking Space)
www.theroostcreative.com.au (CoWorking Space)
www.slingshotters.com (Startup Accelerator)
The Business Centre (Regional business support - Newcastle + Central Coast)
www.theproductionhub.com.au (CoWorking Space)
Eighteen04 (CleanTech focussed Incubator/CoWorking Space)
Three76Hub (UoN Incubator + CoWorking Space)
Dantia Smart Hub (DaSH) (CoWorking Space - Charlestown)

Central Coast

www.nexushub.com.au at North Wyong
Gosford Smart Work Hub at Gosford
SparkCC Makerspace at West Gosford

Whilst doing some recent work in this space, there's a clear continuum evident in the collaboration and facility design patterns. At one end of the scale are the entrepreneur driven spaces, small but engaging and personal - at the other end are the larger facility managers, seeking tenant occupancy and infill to boost their space utilisation and revenues. Importantly, both have their place, but the motivations differ, which we described in http://www.laughingmind.com/blog/smartworkhubs-and-coworking-spaces-similar-but-different. For both, they're clearly engaging with the concept of the workspace as a honeypot, drawing in talent and seeking to keep it there, engaged, present and productive. It's an important part of creating and catalysing entrepreneurial spirit.

For more on why that matters, you might like to check out http://www.virginmediabusiness.co.uk/News-and-events/News/News-archives/2014/UK-firms-embrace-remote-working-to-stay-competitive-/

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Incubating hunter-based healthtech talent for global impact

17/9/2017

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a 20hr digital health rapid prototyping challenge

Laughing Mind, with the support of University of Newcastles I2N Program, ran a HealthTech focussed innovation event at Three76Hub to tackle three event challenge topics. These included:

HackCare to transform Palliative + end of Life Care
HackMyCondition for Chronic Disease Management
HackLoneliness for better Mental Health care and connectedness

This venture catalyst event was designed to give early career exposure and cross-disciplinary team experiences to ICT, Design, Business and Health students, informed and shaped by experienced clinicians, consumers and carers on contemporary healthcare issues. Their challenge was to design + develop technical prototypes or outline a concept to address a healthcare problem with targeted use of contemporary technology, in a very short 20hr timeframe.

Image: Group photo of winning team of #HHT17UoN

With the winning team of #HHT17UoN

Our event winners

The contest of ideas amongst 7 teams saw three winners emerge from a high quality series of concept pitches:

First Place: $3000 to Team FeedbackLoop for their iCare4u platform, designed to close the feedback loop that is needed after a patient leaves their clinical appointments, helping physicians understand the efficacy of their prescribed treatment. This pharmacist led team of 7 developed a prototype that helps doctors receive patients' feedback regularly and provides them with treatment data and outcomes to improve their decision making.
Check it out at devpost.com/software/icare4u

Second Place: $2000 for Team Medius for their focus on addressing common root cause elements of the majority of chronic diseases with an app designed to increase the chances of healthy habit development by simple risk reporting and healthy behaviour tracking. With the Hunter region experiencing above average rates of overweight and obesity issues, their concept provides motivational elements to enhance the prospect of regular data tracking, reporting and behavioural change.
Check it out at devpost.com/software/medius-orl751

Third Place: $1000 to "Diamond Jim and the Celestial Four" - their Shedd App aims to "reduce loneliness, depression and suicide in young blokes by using Netflix's algorithm to match you with other nearby blokes who are interested in the same stuff as you". This was a great #menshealth focussed entry which has high relevance for its target audience and works to #hackloneliness - There's already expressions of interest evident for connecting them in with groups like SoldierOn.
Check it out at devpost.com/software/shedd

What a great crowd for #HHT17UoN Clinicians, coders, carers, students, PhDs + Uni staff. Thx for opening address @sallywaichichan pic.twitter.com/hNqQMAKrZn
— laughingmind (@laughingmind) September 15, 2017

positioning the hunter as a healthtech development centre

In wrapping up the event, Brian Hill, Founder of Laughing Mind, noted:

At a hackathon, people come together and use technology to transform ideas into reality. We've been working in this region over the last 4years to help connect the right elements together that position the Hunter as a regionally relevant Digital Health product development centre, testing and refining our venture catalyst event format. The ecosystem has all the right elements: strong Faculties of Health, Design, ICT & Business at UoN; an appetite for innovation and a growing capacity to nurture the next generation of entrepreneurs, with strong connectivity to regional audiences, places and population health needs.

As a UoN Healthcare Alumni who's had a chance to work on national and international digital health projects, I'm so excited by the quality we've seen in our 2017 event - the concepts presented address large healthcare market problems and the winners could be good candidates for an Accelerator program. We had the perfect mentor helping teams understand the value of focus and relevance - Jennifer Holland from Throatscope has been through the SharkTank journey and now has her product being distributed in 150 countries, so we were delighted to have her onboard. I think we're seeing the next generation of talent emerge that can make a real difference in Digital Health product development and we'll be working hard to build support for them to take the next steps in their journey. Prizemoney from our event is designed to help kickstart that process, but we'll be working with groups like TheHealthHorizon to ensure our region gets onto the map as a serious contender for HealthTech startups.

The HealthTech Solvathon can be seen in more detail using the hashtag #HHT17UoN or in a curated online story at https://storify.com/laughingmind/healthtech-solvathon. Planning is now underway for a 2018 event, with expressions of interest welcomed.

For people interested in building local DigitalHealth capacity in the Hunter region, consider signing up to our Hunter HealthTech Meetup at https://www.meetup.com/Hunter-HealthTech-Meetup/

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hunterhackfest emerges for hunter innovation festival

9/5/2016

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We're delighted to be heading back to the Hunter to deliver HunterHackFest as a city based Hackathon on 10-11Jun2016 for Hunter Innovation Festival, delivering the event with kind hosts Innx.Hub, who run a fantastic creative co-working space in Newcastle West. I popped into their studios for a visit a few days before opening, chatting with one of the founding brothers duo and this will be the first chance to run an exploratory event with them.

With a dash of MakerFaire spirit, a pinch of StartupWeekend spice and some heat from the crucible of TheEdwards Bar and Innx.Hub workspace, let's quicken the digital pulse of the Hunter region and its urban spaces with your creations as part of the Hunter Innovation Festival. Our Hackathon format is designed to stimulate ideas amongst Teams to help you prototype next-generation ideas and business concepts for Newcastle and the Hunter Region, leveraging their Hacker, Hustler or Hipster skills and contemporary tech tools. For more, head to www.hunterhackfest.com.au and grab yourself a ticket.

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hacking health tech for digital literacy with uon

25/2/2016

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The need for digital-savvy graduates who can collaborate in digital ways, across dispersed teams, to create + support ICT solutions that positively enhance our lives, has never been stronger. But are Unis turning out graduates with the right skills, ready to collaborate in diverse teams?

As someone who'd originally trained as an Allied Health professional, but took a sideways turn into a technology career, I've had a long-held interest with seeing how well graduates emerge from their studies with the right levels of digital literacy to help boost their career and productivity. We saw some interesting results in the 2015 Central Coast Startup Weekend, with local Uni of Newcastle students jumping at the chance to participate in a local hackathon in Gosford, travelling down from Newcastle to participate.

For 2016, I've decided to build on that by running a dedicated hackathon at the University of Newcastle that combines ICT, Design, Business and Health students into a cross-disciplinary event that we've called Hacking HealthTech. With two 2015 ICT graduates from UoN taking up UX and Software Engineering roles at Atlassian, fresh into their post-IPO journey on the NASDAQ, it seems like a great time to expose more people to contemporary platforms that support great teamwork. With Atlassian now running on NASDAQ with the TEAM ticker, we think they're a great fit as event partners.

Atlassian's mission is to unleash the potential in every team. Our software helps teams organize, discuss and complete their work. All of our product categories are focused on teams and the work teams do together.

In many of our consulting engagements, we see time and again how constrained team productivity has become by reliance on email, or overly diverse/poorly integrated tools. That becomes compounded when driven by management staff with limited digital literacy - an understanding of how great software is designed, built, deployed and sustained. That was abundantly evident when we participated in HealthXLs "Hacking Ageing" Hackathon in mid 2015. Agency stakeholders in the room were blown away by the cycle times that became possible with digitally literate cross-disciplinary teams. Winners of that event were then taken to Austria to pitch on the world stage.

It's time to till the soil, sow the seeds and add some sunshine to create the next generation of health technology entrepreneurs as part of our own #ideasboom focus for the Hunter and Central Coast regions.

Our mission? Grow the capacity of UoN ICT, Design, Business and Health students to collaborate on joint technology projects, with the guidance of experienced clinicians, mentors and carers/consumers for well targeted + responsive initiatives, leveraging contemporary technology platforms.

Our 2016 Hacking HealthTech event will run on 15-17April, 2016, with tickets available from Eventbrite and event details managed on DevPost at http://2016-hacking-healthtech-uon.devpost.com. The event is designed to draw together UoN Students from ICT, Design, Business and Health, with input from Clinicians, Carers + Consumers to tackle regional health problems with targeted use of technology. It should be an immersive event for all involved, with a 54hr timeframe providing a compressed challenge to deliver their first generation concepts and prototypes in a deep-dive learning experience that balances teamwork, time management, digital collaboration skills and clinically relevant technology.

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incubating a 'silicon coast' culture for business

11/3/2015

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I recently moved my companies to the Central Coast after over a decade of living in Canberra and a brief stint at Maitland from 2013-2014. Whilst there, I've worked with leading companies and startups, learning lots. In conversations I've had with a range of businesses and new graduates, what's clear is the gap between entrepreneurial readiness of new grads and the shift of employers towards a casualised workforce e.g. http://www.smartcompany.com.au/people/recruitment/45984-why-2015-is-the-year-of-the-freelancer.html

For new grads and youth seeking work, that creates a lot of pressure to be able to be ready for freelancing + casual workforce engagement, which requires a bare minimum level of small business competence + focus. In my own work with local Smart Work Hubs and regional co-working spaces, I've been doing some ecosystem mapping of what supports exist in the region + what possibilities exist with boosting inter-region linkages to foster a startup|entrepreneur focus, covered in the following blog articles:
http://www.laughingmind.com/blog/tracking-innovation-entrepreneurs-network-growth
http://www.laughingmind.com/blog/central-coast-startup-support-ecosystem

As a lifestyle choice and place for business whilst raising family, the Central Coast has a great deal to offer. I'm concerned that there appears to be little thought given as to how the region will prevent brain-drain of talent out of the region and help locals, especially youth, see that it's increasingly viable to run a successful startup venture in an area that is advantaged with early NBN connectivity. We need this sort of focus if we want to be internationally competitive, let alone regionally.

.@stilgherrian: "AU isn't up there with rapidly advancing countries [incl. NZ!]; slowly receding" #innovation pic.twitter.com/iP5Jhdnebu
— Steve Wilson (@Steve_Lockstep) March 11, 2015

My local candidates questions for the 2015 NSW State Election are:
1. What's your intention going into this state election to create the right conditions for attracting, nurturing and retaining the next generation of digital savvy entrepreneurs? (Hint: needs more than just physical infrastructure. Needs a community, business + cultural infrastructure as well).

2. How can we encourage those considering such a pathway to reconsider the region, noting a startup can increasingly be done from anywhere? (Great Startups Can Be Built Anywhere: A Look at Regional Entrepreneurial Strengths)

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Central Coast startup support ecosystem

1/3/2015

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In our last post on Tracking Innovation Entrepreneurs Network Growth we showed the value of tracking + mapping the entrepreneurial support ecosystem to see how it grows over time, using the Sydney StartRail map by BlueChilli as a starting point, with a need identified to provide a localised variation for the Central Coast entrepreneurs community.

Whilst the current iteration won't look like the finished StartRail map, it represents a starting point for conversations locally, noting the following issues that emerged during the mapping process:

Where do local startups go when seeking incubation + acceleration advice or support? Who are their local Mentor network? With nothing visible, its easy for young entrepreneurs to go elsewhere, rather than create their own local story;
How can bridges be built with larger regional centres North and South of the coast when wanting to raise capital for growth? To what extent are the Sydney VC's focussed solely on Sydney?;
Where is the local equivalent of USyd Incubate, that acts as a bridge between University and StartUp phase for graduates?

V0.2 of Central Coast StartupSupport Ecosystem - it's a starting point for discussions.

Before you go commenting, yes, we know the Central Coast has a youth unemployment problem and is seeing its manufacturing sector shrink. We do take the time to read Economy.ID Central Coast but that's also why we see upside opportunity for the area and chose to relocate to the region. In our Digital Maker chat series at Nexus Smart Hub, we keep coming across great little local examples of Digital Talent playing on the national and world stage. A mapping exercise like this helps to spot the gaps in a local ecosystem and think about the work required to address them.

To Grow Your Local #Startup Community, First Map it Out http://t.co/0eQTR35Sxj via Thx @founding A timely article for our own local journey.
— Quiet Rush (@QuietRush) March 7, 2015

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tracking innovation Entrepreneurs network growth

26/2/2015

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Entrepreneurs must lead the startup community.

The leaders must have a long-term commitment.

The startup community must be inclusive of anyone who wants to participate in it.

The startup community must have continual activities that engage the entire entrepreneurial stack.

We love the work that BlueChilli do in creating next generation businesses and their role in the Australian Startup incubation scene across Sydney and their visible leadership in Australia. Their StartRail map is based on a legendary piece of Information Visualisation, the London Undergound rail network map. Since moving my companies from Canberra to the Coast, I've been talking with a range of people+ businesses over the last 18mths about Entrepreneur driven networks, building on the findings by Brad Feld in his Boulder Thesis, where Brad states:

In related work, Kauffman noted a related + relevant set of findings in their study of the 1 Million Cups program, where their Think Locally, Act Locally: Building a Robust Entrepreneurial Ecosystem study found:

Entrepreneurship is a local phenomenon.

Entrepreneurs follow local entrepreneurs.

Local networks thicken over time.

Entrepreneurial demand is high for peer-based learning and networking.

Different programs reach different entrepreneurs.

With some of the work that we've done in the past using Social Network Analysis techniques and visualisations, we know that each sampling is only ever going to be a point in time snapshot, showing a networks state. Where it gets interesting, is watching how local networks thicken over time. Let's use BlueChillis StartRail map as a good living example, contrasting Version1 with their latest Version3 iteration - whilst it's not a true dynamic SNA view, its use of the UnderGround map visualisation technique still speaks volumes in providing some local examples of the Kauffman study.

In our #centralcoast #digitalmakers session, we'll be chatting about localising @BlueChilliGroup Startrailv1 map pic.twitter.com/Z48tyDKlKw
— laughingmind (@laughingmind) March 5, 2015

@BlueChilliGroup StartRail map is a good living example of @bfeld Boulder Thesis. V3 of http://t.co/HBd4biDZlD pic.twitter.com/NFKSgIFg77
— laughingmind (@laughingmind) March 7, 2015

In our 2015 DigitalMaker Meetup series (being run at Nexus Smart Hub) we're looking to grow the digital skills capability and network for 'Silicon Coasters' (digital savvy firms + freelancers based out of Sydney in attractive regional settings). The group recognised the value of maps like this one from SiliconValleyMap to help showcase an areas capability:

There's plenty of recognition that digital talent does not need to reside in city based superclusters like Silicon Valley, with the downside risks that come with cultural homogeneity, wealth concentration and disparity. Diversity is a good thing for Technologists, just as it is for regional and national economies (take a look at the RDAHunter Regional Economic Strategy to see how many assumptions in their core case have changed since 2013 with plummeting resource prices and pro-renewables signals from large capital markets e.g. http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/australia-rates-a-zero-as-big-solar-booms-around-the-world-61174) .

On that endnote, its time to go see what we can do about localising the StartRail map to cover DigitalMakers and Silicon Coasters on the Hunter + Central Coast regions of NSW, building on some of our earlier focus on CoWorking spaces. Come help us grow the pipeline of diverse digital destinations to create new futures from. Let us know who you think ought to be on a Hunter+Central Coast map in the comments block below, or tweet us.

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smartworkhubs and coworking spaces - similar but different

2/12/2014

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In recent conversations and presentations with groups focussed on boosting the uptake of Telework and Flexible Workplace arrangements, we often see the terms "CoWorking" and "Smart Work Hubs" used interchangeably. Whilst at face glance there are many similarities between the two, there also remain important distinctions between them. In a nutshell, it comes down to the extent of their focus on value creation, either within the facility, or the facility occupants community.

To differentiate from routine commercial real estate offerings, both need to create value but each go about it in a different way.

With a long background in conducting detailed workplace assessments as part of our Empowering Business Wellbeing services, we tend to take a fairly close look at the visible facility (what we can see and touch, or the facility hardware) and the underlying (less visible) elements of a workspace (culture, strategy, demography, human factors, acoustics, messaging architecture). These are important contributors to business value and the business ecosystem that operates within a physical space.

With a current NSW Government Smart Work Hub Pilot actively underway, creating value for NSW communities with the introduction of Smart Work Hubs to act as an intermediate space between Work + Home based workplaces, there is a Corporate Real Estate disruption and renewal pattern at work, seeking to create meaningful solutions to a range of business pressures.

These are what we see and experience as the Top 3 Differences:

Smart Work Hubs are pitching at larger businesses, but are also viable for SME's: A salt + pepper distribution of SMEs and larger anchor tenants can make for an interesting facility mix of occupants - each of them will have differing needs profiles, which the facility may be able to support but collaboration anti-patterns can also work against them;
CoWorking spaces are fundamentally more attuned to Freelancers, SMEs and startups, often bolstered by the presence + creation of a services ecosystem that value-adds to the experience, with education, incubation and business accelerator functions to help members outgrow the space quickly. However, those spaces can also exist along a continuum of value-creation, with low end offerings of deskspace only vs higher end offerings of a value creating ecosystem of partner businesses;
A SmartWorkHub, with its focus on larger anchor tenants will attract occupiers with an established level of value + stability created within their business, creating a corresponding risk of lower levels of service-seeking + innovation. That level of stability also comes with a bigger issue of inertia, as larger firms struggle to come to terms with how to manage remote workforces and embed ways of making remote work visible. Conversely, smaller co-working spaces with higher variability in their occupancy mix and more of a bias to SMEs are more likely to be attuned to and responsive to needs for value creation.

Here's our take on the Top 3 Similarities:

Both experience occupancy and vacancy management pressures against a background need for inherently flexible spaces. Corporate Real Estate businesses represent an immediate adjacent market that competes for mindshare and $ from the occupants of CoWorking and SmartWorkHubs as alternate places of work. We've worked in a range of spaces over time that have peaked and waned or disappeared altogether in the face of cashflow pressures - spaces that create value, listen|respond and enjoy ongoing patronage from their occupants or have low turnover or good vacancy management processes will enjoy stronger cashflow;
Both need effective community managers + data - the community manager within either facility has a key role as a PlaceMaker, needing to remain curious, attuned and responsive to the needs of workspace participants. The Community Manager is the person best placed to understand the daily rhythm and pulse of the facility and the community it encloses, backed up with an eye for detail and data. Facility Management as a professional discipline is recognised as well-intentioned but poorly informed (1) with a lack of evidence driven data about Occupancy patterns - it's also part of why Google places such a premium on measuring everything it does in managing their workspaces;
Both help tackle the problems created by workforce drift from home regions to places where the work is performed, addressing traffic congestion, work-life balance issues and the need for greater levels of workforce flexibility and local economy stimulus. For that focus alone, they deserve to be supported and used.

This is not about managing facilities. This is about enabling communities. And as far as I am concerned, that is an aspiration a world away from our current collective capability; from any perspective. The greatest productivity measure of all? Perhaps it’s the smiles on people’s faces.

Alexi Marmot observed that the Great Place to Work® Institute recognises pride, camaraderie, credibility, respect and fairness as key attributes to the very best workplaces they are aware of. What of the role of physical space then in this complex socio-spatial milieu? Hints toward an answer might lie in the ‘equation’:
workspace + culture = workplace (2)

EndNotes
1. Ian Ellison, providing an Event Review of 2014 IFMA Workplace Strategy Summit, in Work and Place Journal #4, p4; http://workplaceinsight.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Work+Place4mje.pdf
2. Ibid, p5;

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hunting the coworking sweetspot

Incubating hunter-based healthtech talent for global impact

a 20hr digital health rapid prototyping challenge

Our event winners

positioning the hunter as a healthtech development centre

hunterhackfest emerges for hunter innovation festival

hacking health tech for digital literacy with uon

incubating a 'silicon coast' culture for business

Central Coast startup support ecosystem

tracking innovation Entrepreneurs network growth

smartworkhubs and coworking spaces - similar but different

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