October Update – The Gold Coast Hub

Hi everyone, Sharon here with another Gold Coast Hub update.

It’s been a massive couple of months behind the scenes as we work towards an official launch of the central premises.  Support for the Gold Coast Hub from the startup and tech community, investment community and our wider corporate networks just keeps on growing and in response to this our vision for what we can achieve for the Gold Coast has grown too – I’m really excited to be sharing the latest news with you.

What are we working on?

• The announcement of the State Government funding for the Gold Coast Hub brought incredible excitement and a new wave of enquiries and supporters to the Gold Coast Hub.  With this new influx of interest from all facets of the innovation community we decided we needed to GO BIGGER!  We pressed harder and raised the bar higher. We moved on from thoughts of the 700m2 Surfers Paradise space and set upon a new search to find the best place on the Gold Coast for innovative businesses to develop and grow and WE FOUND IT!  The Gold Coast Hub central premises has been secured and will now occupy a whopping 2000m2 building in an iconic location around the southern Gold Coast region. Keep your eyes peeled over the coming weeks for when we unveil the exact spot!  With a huge event space and loads of offices, meeting rooms and desks the Gold Coast Hub will be home to up to 500 of the most promising companies on the Gold Coast who want to leverage the investment, programs and connections to build their businesses.
• Startup Weekend will be on again from the 10th-12th November to coincide with Global Entrepreneurship Week. Startup weekends are run by the Gold Coast startup community, for the Gold Coast startup community if you or your company is interested in sponsoring, mentoring or volunteering for the event you can contact the organising team at goldcoast@startupweekend.org
• We are working with the team from IntelliHQ and Gold Coast University Hospital on the Intelligent Health Innovation Showcase this month.  Running across 2 days, the event seeks to bring together local and international leaders in health technology innovation and provide opportunities to interact, showcase and build solutions that address key challenges faced by hospitals.
• We are pleased to welcome Sean Braybrook to our leadership team.  Many of you already know Sean from his great work running and organising the Young Professionals Gold Coast Group, he will working with the team on communication, marketing and PR strategies for the Gold Coast Hub.
• We launched the search for our first community managers a fortnight ago and had an incredible response to the advertisement.  We are currently reviewing applications with our operational partners Little Tokyo Two and will start interviews next week.
• The Gold Coast Hub Kokoda Challenge cohort started their training for next year’s 96km trek last weekend with an early morning hike up Mt Cougal. The cohort will be undertaking regular hikes on Sunday mornings, with the next 3 planned on October 15, November 5, and November 19.  You do not have to be participating in the Kokoda Challenge to join the training hikes and they are a great opportunity to get outside, challenge yourself and get to know some more of the hub members – email kokoda@gchub.com.au if you would like to be added to the communication channels.

What’s Next?

• Plans and artist impressions of the new space are due to be released this week – I had a sneak preview today and it looks amazing. We are taking member pre-registrations now so if you’d like to register your interest please go to our registration page.
• We are looking for people within our community with trade backgrounds that may like to showcase their goods and services by donating toward the fit out stage of the hub.  Every dollar that we can save at this stage is an extra dollar we can spend on programs and activities to drive the ecosystem forward.  In particular we are looking for painters, electricians or businesses with a lighting background, carpet layers and tilers – I’ll provide more information in a follow up post.
• We are aiming for a late November/early December launch of the hot desk space with Startup Weekend earmarked as the first major event to be held at the Gold Coast Hub.
• We have started building out membership features on the Gold Coast Hub website so that we can begin to showcase some of the businesses within the community and open up online communication channels.
• We will be calling our first community event planning session in October.  This will be an opportunity for community groups, partners and members to share their ideas and contribute to the creation of the year 1 activity plan for the Gold Coast region in collaboration with the federal, state and local government.

Thank You!

A massive thanks to all of the companies that have contacted us to pre-register your interest in taking some space in the innovation campus and to everyone that has donated time and services so far – a special shout out goes to Yaazam, McLaughlins, Prime Financial and Little Tokyo Two for all your work in the past month to help us establish the space and get initial activities underway.

Thank you also to each of you in our growing hub community for following our progress and spreading the word – I look forward to bringing you another update soon as the countdown to launch and roll out of activities and programs occur.

Sharon Hunneybell – CEO Gold Coast Hub