Today I spent a good part of my day at the Leading Lights Conference, an event held by the Department of Industry and Resources.
Firstly, let me say that I’ll be excited about any opportunity to hear Steve Wozniak speak. So it was a joy to be at an event he was keynoting. It should also be noted that he stuck around the rest of the day, attended the other presentations, signed laptops, and posed for photos.
My only real complaint about his keynote was the direction his presentation took, and was largely out of his control. I’m sure many people enjoyed what he had to say, so I’m not about to complain (more than I will on my blog), but the presentation was interview-style and drifted through the history of Apple, which I’m already fairly familiar with.
Regardless, I got to pose for a photo with The Woz. That alone was worth my time 
.
There seemed to be several aims for the conference, mostly around connecting innovators with investors, with a bunch of education thrown in for the former. I think that was largely a success.
Other than some fantastic networking, I took a few other things away from day one.
Wozniak is a brilliant engineer. However, Apple would not have existed without Jobs. That’s obvious. But describing what Jobs did to progress was inspiring. He was seriously a brilliant entrepreneur and sales-man. It doesn’t sound like anything would have stopped the man from succeeding, and I think other successful business people are exactly the same.
The Government struggle, in a major way, to support entrepreneurship.
Several of the presentations focused on accessing funding from overseas. Most suggested that to access that investment, the entrepreneur needed to move away from Western Australia, to places like Silicon Valley.
Interestingly I got to ask Steven Goh, the cofounder of Mig33, a question. Steven started Sanford Securities in Perth in the nineties. He then went on to start Mig33 in Perth, but moved to Silicon Valley. I asked, “what other than moving to Silicon Valley would he suggest a technology entrepreneur in Perth should do.” His answer, in a nut-shell, was “get traction.”
I was sitting next to Jacqueline Shervington, of ex-CEO of ineedhits and now Founding Partner of Future Partners, and she suggested this was Goh’s way of saying, “get traction by moving to Silicon Valley.”
I also chatted with one of the department heads at DOIR. I explained that I wanted to open up a communication channel with them to make them aware of some of the initiatives I’m involved in in Perth, including AWIA and the Edge of the Web conference. I was told to contact them after Christmas, because of the recent election.
I hate to say it. But as an entrepreneur, several months can mean life or death. It’s obvious that the Government can’t operate at that sort of speed.
All up day one was a great event for networking. I was disappointed I had to leave part of the way through. I’ll be heading back tomorrow to see what else I can glean.
One Comment
Great post Richard – I was impressed this morning when I received my google alert to see you had prepared a blog – like we said, this just comes as second nature to you.
I also loved Steve Wozniak’s insight into the partnership he had with Jobs. In particular Jobs entrepreneurial ways are inspiring. I think as keynote speaker it sets the scene – if there is demand for what you want – there’ll be creative ways to achieve success – his example of buying parts on consignment to build the 100 orders – a perfect example. Sure eventually there was funding but without this early stage creative business thinking we might not have the apple.
Closer to home I loved Christians colloquial story of Neptune a success story all achieved Perth.
I loved the conference for its inspiration and new discoveries as well as some great new connections.
Some ideas for future:
1. A 101 on financing with slides to provide newbies on the terminology, fit of different solutions. (maybe advanced and novice streams to financing)
2. More presenter slides
3. I would have loved to see a case study analysis of a new innovation business and have expert panel critique & analyse it – that soccer games site would have been awesome especially to hear Tristen Langley’s views. They do a similar thing at SES in the US called “pimp my site” a guru panel comment & analyse a site for free – it can give you some of the best insights.
Looking forward to next year. And maybe one day Jobs will come out. I’ll join the queue for him to sign my Apple.