AUSTRALIA’S innovators will soon be opening their doors in a new festival designed to let the public explore the offices of Facebook, Uber, Airtasker, Data 61 and News Corp and learn how they innovate from the inside.
John Battelle, who co-founded Wired magazine, told The Australian he was bringing his global event, NewCo, to Sydney next month in a bid to dispel the narrative that innovation is stuck in Silicon Valley, and that it’s always technology.
“I started the festival as a way for people to discover these companies and get inside them, meet the founders, see what’s on the walls and get a deeper feel of how they innovate,” Mr Battelle said.
“The model is a bit inspired by Airbnb; you go travelling and stay in someone’s home and you get to know a lot more about a city than staying at the Four Seasons downtown.”
Mr Battelle said he’d spent a long time putting on big ballroom conference events, but reached a point a few years ago where he didn’t believe in the format anymore.
“I thought ‘wouldn’t it be cool instead of going to ballrooms, you go to an artist’s studio’,” he said.
“The logistics of it are terrifying. In San Francisco we had 150 companies opening their doors.”
The entrepreneur and author said he first beta-tested the concept in San Francisco with no intention of starting a business.
“We had a couple of people who attended that first one. One lived in Detroit and another in London, and they said ‘hey, could we do this in our cities?’, and I said ‘sure, go nuts’, and we did a ‘NewCo in a box’ manual and they went off and did that the next year in London and Detroit, then next minute it was Amsterdam and New York.”
The ascent of US President Donald Trump and his regular attacks via social media on fake news and traditional media has seen an upswing in newspaper subscriptions and Mr Battelle said that trend would not slow down any time soon.
“I also think the tech industry will get a significant comeuppance this year.”
“We have basically a hostile takeover of the communication channels by a sitting president,” he said. “That has created a thirst for good media that was maybe dormant for the past five or 10 years as everyone got a bit fat and happy on social media.”
As for the rest of 2017, Mr Battelle said he expected a significant splash from Snapchat, as well as a shift in the way we view the world’s tech giants.
“There’s something going on there that’s bigger than the next hot company to have an IPO. There’s something anthropological to Snapchat we haven’t seen before in how it integrates into the social geography, particularly of young people’s culture.
“I also think the tech industry will get a significant comeuppance this year. It has gotten a free pass from the public for a long time because it’s hip, it’s cool and it makes services we love. These companies now have enormous power but they’ve always taken the view that they’re neutral platforms and don’t have the responsibility of that power.
“There’s going to be a backlash and I think they’ll have to start taking responsibility.”
NewCo takes place in Sydney on March 8 and 9 and is presented by News Corp. Head here for tickets and further details.
Mr Battelle said he’d spent a long time putting on big ballroom conference events, but reached a point a few years ago where he didn’t believe in the format anymore.
“I thought ‘wouldn’t it be cool instead of going to ballrooms, you go to an artist’s studio’,” he said.
“The logistics of it are terrifying. In San Francisco we had 150 companies opening their doors.”
The entrepreneur and author said he first beta-tested the concept in San Francisco with no intention of starting a business.
“We had a couple of people who attended that first one. One lived in Detroit and another in London, and they said ‘hey, could we do this in our cities?’, and I said ‘sure, go nuts’, and we did a ‘NewCo in a box’ manual and they went off and did that the next year in London and Detroit, then next minute it was Amsterdam and New York.”
The ascent of US President Donald Trump and his regular attacks via social media on fake news and traditional media has seen an upswing in newspaper subscriptions and Mr Battelle said that trend would not slow down any time soon.
“I also think the tech industry will get a significant comeuppance this year.”
“We have basically a hostile takeover of the communication channels by a sitting president,” he said. “That has created a thirst for good media that was maybe dormant for the past five or 10 years as everyone got a bit fat and happy on social media.”
As for the rest of 2017, Mr Battelle said he expected a significant splash from Snapchat, as well as a shift in the way we view the world’s tech giants.
“There’s something going on there that’s bigger than the next hot company to have an IPO. There’s something anthropological to Snapchat we haven’t seen before in how it integrates into the social geography, particularly of young people’s culture.
“I also think the tech industry will get a significant comeuppance this year. It has gotten a free pass from the public for a long time because it’s hip, it’s cool and it makes services we love. These companies now have enormous power but they’ve always taken the view that they’re neutral platforms and don’t have the responsibility of that power.
“There’s going to be a backlash and I think they’ll have to start taking responsibility.”
NewCo takes place in Sydney on March 8 and 9 and is presented by News Corp. Head here for tickets and further details.
Originally published as Pick the brains of today’s top innovators
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