2018 Off To a Great Start At The First Quarterly Activity Planning Session

The Gold Coast Hub team hosted our first activity planning session last week at KDV Sport with a wonderful room full of contributors from diverse backgrounds all providing input towards the vision and impact for the Gold Coast Hub.

Sharon Hunneybell kicked off the session by outlining the key objectives for the Gold Coast Hub over the next 3 years.

The conversations began to flow as we moved into some brainstorming on what innovation actually means to everyone and the different people within the community whom the Gold Coast Hub can support and assist – students (primary through to university), parents, academics, inventors, entrepreneurs, startups, scale ups, existing businesses wanting to innovate, corporates wanting to support innovation, angel investors, VC and investment funds, and the pain points that we should address to improve their opportunities to innovate and grow businesses.

Our favourite part of the session was the personal introductions from our contributors. It was incredible to see the diversity, knowledge, wisdom, experience, inspiration and passion that was in the room. Every participant shared their background, passion for the city, how they would like to be involved with the Gold Coast Hub and how they can contribute to the community. From an international IT business owner, to a start up founder, to an investor, to an employee who would love to contribute to the entrepreneur scene of the Gold Coast but does not know where to start – every story and motivation to get involved was different and symbolic of what the Gold Coast Hub is all about – creating a supportive community that is there when you need it, full of open, helpful, giving individuals driven by contribution and growth.

In the second part of the evening, attendees were invited to form focus groups around their area of interest: commercialisation, investment or education.  They then used the requirements gathered in the first session to create a more granular list of activities by asking: How do we meet the community needs? Who should deliver the activity? When should it be delivered – Year 1,2,3?

The leaders of each focus group then presented the top concepts that came out of that brainstorming session including  pre-accelerators, getting started packs, mentor programs, investing in innovation workshops to name a few – these will be shared in more detail in an upcoming post along with our activity plan.

We are very grateful to these focus groups who mapped out at a high level the key activities the Gold Coast Hub should undertake in the next 12 months to build awareness and capacity for the sector.

For everyone who has expressed interest in joining the 3 committees to help us drive the activities forward we will be in touch this week to provide more information on time commitments and expectations for committee members and will finalise committee members by the end of next week.

Thank you for everyone who contributed to the evening, for those that were unable to make it, we will be hosting similar sessions quarterly in order to review and adjust plans as we move forward.  These are open, community input meetings with the next session scheduled to be held on the 18th of April – we hope to see you all there.

 

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