Last week I was one of the lucky few QUT students that attended the Creative3 Forum hosted by QUT Creative Enterprise Australia. The Creative3 Forum is an event that celebrates entrepreneurship, sparks collaboration amongst the creative community, and is designed to inspire individuals to execute their ideas. With my background in multimedia, digital marketing, entrepreneurship and technology; the forum embodied all that I am passionate about, in a day consisting of industry speakers, panel discussions and intense networking.
The Creative3 Forum hosted a number of international speakers from some of the world’s leading digital innovators. From media entertainment, to augmented reality and quantum computing; Creative 3 served as a platform of insight into global megatrends and technological disruptions.
The highlights for me included:
- Sanoop Luke – YouTube (Kid and Learning Content)
- Gwendolyn Regina Tan – Mashable (Director of Strategy and Business Development, APAC)
- Michael Fox – Shoes of Prey (Co-CEO)
- Ben Johnston – JosephMark (CEO)
- The networking opportunities with startup founders, venture capatalists and guest speakers
Sanoop talked about the growth of kid’s entertainment on YouTube and how kids under the age of 10 are earning more per annum than their parents. Gwendolyn touched on the influence of social media on today’s news content, and how Mashable is capturing the value of this data through their machine learning platform Mashable Velocity. However, Michael Fox’s company Shoes of Prey (in my opinion) was the most impressive of the day.
Shoes of Prey is a women’s shoe retailer that gives women the ability to completely customise their shoes from the materials, leathers, shapes and sizes. With over 900 trillion possible combinations, Shoes of Prey gives the consumer the power to design their dream pair of shoes at no extra cost. However, what is ingenious about the Shoes of Prey business model is that they hold no inventory. Their product is made on demand, eliminating the expense of holding stock. This means the company can offer their customers an enormous range of designs and sizes without having oversupply or leftover stock issues. Michael elaborated that manufacturing on demand will become the future of retail, and coupled with the commercialisation of 3D printing, the industry is set to be worth over $20 billion dollars by 2020.
Lastly, Ben Johnston CEO of JosephMark, an end-to-end venture capital, strategic design, and software development firm, gave great insight into the world of tech startups – and to give you some context, JosephMark was the firm tasked with the entire redesign and redevelopment of MySpace. Ben’s presentation stood out to me as there was a clear emphasis on design and presenting a story, his content was engaging and surprisingly insightful. Some key takeaways include, “Speed is the new IP” and “a better future happens by design, not chance”.
As a graduating student with ambitions to one day run my own tech startup, I could not think of a better opportunity to be inspired and motivated to one day be back at Creative3 presenting as an alumnus of QUT. Thank you to QUT Creative Enterprise Australia and QUT Business School for the opportunity, I’m sure I will be back again next year.
Sean (@sean_melis)
