#thingswelearnt

The one thing I learnt is Gene Roddenberry nailed it! If there was ever a person who put pen to paper to describe what a modern futuristic universe would look like, it was Mr Roddenberry.

As the radiant sun set slowly behind the Yarra river, shining into the eyes of inquisitive designers, technologists, and social entrepreneurs and their weary bodies, getting set to return home to their daily lives. What they leave behind is an exhausting couple of days that has been packed with presenters, panels, printing, poetry, painting, people, and fireworks!

Well not so much fireworks but there should have been. In short, and in my opinion, the Link Festival was a complete success.

From the opening presentation by Tane Hunter and Angus Hervey from Future Crunch, and their view on the multitude of amazing new innovations the universe is using and is “almost” close to using (sorry no replicators yet), I have to say, I’m full to the brim with inspiration and new ideas.

The way that Tane and Angus took us on a journey through an enormous amount of emerging technologies and innovations from 3d printing to holographics, to nanotechnology, to biomimicry, to digital innovation in communities, to open data and security, to the wealth of information on how we’re living longer and healthier, to the stamping out of disease and disease prevention and so much more, was mind-expanding!

Not to stop there, the smaller plenary sessions were brilliant to. I especially liked how the day started big and broad and then gradually got smaller as we hit the nuts and bolts sessions.

I sat in on a session on big data, digital auras and informatics and how it is being used for both good… and evil. I found the discussions on information and town planning particularly interesting and I let my thoughts wander towards how information on utilities and its related services could be used to help and study remote Indigenous communities. Think smarter as in energy and water efficient smart, remote Indigenous communities. (I’m not implying they’re not already smart, just asking: can we be smarter?)

Rolling into day two, I was able to sit in for while on the opening morning presentation about operating in the extremes—whether it be shooting documentaries in a conflict zone, designing at the molecular level, building space start-ups or engineering for deep sea discoveries and found it all just as interesting and motivating as Tane’s and Angus’ presentation. I have a love for the ocean and knowing that we’ve only explored 6% makes me wonder what else is down there?

Next up was my turn. I had the pleasure of sitting on a panel discussion about what innovation in communities looks like and I was happy to share my thoughts and experiences. We had a great mix of perspectives from people like Tom Dawkins from StartSomeGood, Bessi Graham from The Difference Incubator and Kea Pheng from RainWater Cambodia.

Tom and Bessi drew a good picture of how innovation looked in the social entrepreneurship world and Kea gave us a good presentation on how new water storage innovations are helping out in Cambodia. I talked about communication and language and how digital innovation and social change is helping Indigenous communities to connect, learn, grow and preserve their culture.

I also found the audience genuinely interested in how they could go about learning an Indigenous language, which was great. I’d love to start building that framework on something like duolingo with a little bit of help.

Okay, I’d planned to keep this short and so I’m going to skip forward past more amazing presentations and panels and simply say, there was a lot to the Link Festival that deserves to be mentioned and my words probably aren’t going to do it justice. However, if you work in design or technology or social change or even if you don’t but have an interest in those areas, do go along next year!

I found the people eager to engage, open and genuine and I have met some friends who I’m keen to see how their efforts and adventures pan out and I hope that they’re able to share in mine.