Future Design Friday : Work in Progress
I was invited by the JamFactory, Stylecraft & CityMag to facilitate the first Future Design Friday for 2015.
The venue for the evening was Enoki's new digs on Wyatt Street off Pirie Street in the CBD and the liquid courage was provided by Hither & Yon.
The topic for the first Future Design Friday was 'Work in Progress - The Evolution of the Workplace' and the guest panelist represented the varying scale of models redifining what a working together looks like.
At the more intimate scale we had Tobin Lush, Creative Director at RODEO and co-inhabitant of a shared space in Kent Town TELL HENRY, a boutique coffee shop run by fellow creatives Brad Bonar & Sharon Mackay.
Next up was Susanna Bilardo, Designer/Director at ENOKI and CAPSULE PROJECTS, an alliance between ENOKI, GIORDANO & ASSOCIATES, and DESIGN THINK.
The third member of he panel was Heidi Angove, Operations and Development at BASE 64, Simon Hackett’s benevolent tech start-up compound home to online wine merchant VINMOFO.
Finally, from the largest conglomeration of the ensemble, Dr. Jane Andrew, Director of MATCHSTUDIO and ICT INNOVATION AND COLLABORATION CENTRE, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA. A partnership between UniSA, Hewlett-Packard and the State Government to be based in the new Health Innovation Building which will soon emerge along North Terrace.
I kicked off the panel discussion with a monologue of sorts to set the agenda for the evening and here it is in full:
Something I often advocate is that South Australia presents a unique environment to be an incubator for innovation. Our scale and ingrained ability to do ‘more with less’ as result of our geographic and economic isolation affords us with the opportunity to connect more effectively with one another and be a testing ground for new ideas.
This allows us to form mutually beneficial partnerships, across professions, across industries and across governments and leverage off the collective strengths of the state more easily, something which may not be as achievable for our interstate neighbours.
Inner city hubs, mixed use studios, industry clusters and collaborations are emerging in response to the need to be smarter in business, to elevate oneself above the pack. The imperative to continually innovate and provide greater value for our clients is essential to survive and thrive.
Thanks as always to Grieve Gillett Andersen for allowing me to take the time to work on projects like this.
