Looking for exceptional events/ sponsorship manager in Sydney: Future/ tech/ influencers – Part-time

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We have just advertised on Seek for an events manager. We have been less active in the events space for the last two years as other priorities have been taking our attention, but we are beginning to build back our activity.

Please pass this on to people you know who may be interested.

Exceptional events/ sponsorship manager in Sydney: Future/ tech/ influencers – Part-time

We want talent!
We believe in talent and we want exceptional people. We see a particularly deep pool of very talented people who do not want full-time work. As such we are looking for someone working around 8-16 hours per week.
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The spirit of Sydney: an extraordinary New Year’s Eve celebration

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Last night I was privileged to see in the New Year at the harbour-side broadwalk of the Sydney Opera House, at the Lord Mayor Clover Moore‘s party.

Personally, it was probably the best New Year’s Eve that I’ve ever had, not least because it was an absolutely fantastic party.

I wish I could do justice to the evening with an in-depth review, not least of the extraordinary fireworks and spectacle master-minded by designer Marc Newson, whose work I wrote about last year. Below is a brief excerpt of the display.


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PushStart launches new startup accelerator program in Australia

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The Australian startup scene continues to heat up. Arguably Sydney is already in the top 10 tech startup cities in the world, with activity rapidly growing through this year.

The latest news is that the mentor program PushStart (which I participate in as a mentor) is today launching its planned PushStart Accelerator program. I wrote about PushStart and the earlier startup accelerator Startmate at the launch of PushStart. Startmate’s first round of 5 companies has already had significant success, with shopping app Grabble already being acquired by Walmart and Bugherd quickly moving on to participate in the Silicon Valley-based 500 Startups accelerator program.

PushStart uses a very similar model, using the same legal structures as Startmate. There is unquestionably a deep enough pool of rising talent in Australia to fill both the Startmate and PushStart accelerator programs with high quality ventures, with plenty more left over. It will be great to see what comes out of this.

Here is the PushStart announcement:
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Sunrise: What to expect in 2012: transformation, social media divide, crowd work

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This morning I appeared on the Australian national breakfast TV program Sunrise in their ‘Ask an Expert’ segment, talking about the year ahead. Here is the 4 minute clip.

In the brief segment I draw on a number of the 12 Themes for 2012 I recently released. The key topics we discussed were:
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Want to buy drinks for a bunch of Sydney entrepreneurs?

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This is now the thirteenth year that I and some friends have organized the Annual Entrepreneurs and Self-Employed Xmas Drinks in Sydney. The reality is that many who are setting up companies, working solo, or running small businesses don’t have the kinds of Christmas parties that employees of big companies do. So we celebrate together, bringing our teams along.

This year we are running the event adjacent to a launch for my new book Getting Results From Crowds. In the end it wasn’t logistically feasible to run two separate events, and it made sense to do them at the same venue. The book is in any case highly relevant to entrepreneurs.

See the event page for full details, summarized below.
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Yelp leaps into the underserviced consumer review space in Australia

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Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO of Yelp, is in Australia for the launch of Yelp Australia. I was invited to interview him on Monday (embargoed until today) as part of a major media campaign to kick off the site.

Australia is the 13th country where Yelp has launched, with up until now all the action outside North America being in Europe. Stoppelman said that they are patient and take the time necessary to get quality data from the outset, so that users’ initial experience is positive.

In this case Yelp in July announced an exclusive deal with Sensis, the Telstra subsidiary that operates the Yellow Pages in Australia. This deal provides Yelp with the initial data to launch, plus a partner for monetization, with Sensis’ sales staff offering customers Yelp advertising options. Local search is a highly sales-intensive business, so the Sensis deal means Yelp can effectively build presence and monetize with limited local staff. It is in the process of hiring community managers in Melbourne and Sydney, where it is initially focusing.
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Latest data: Retailers shift to social media and online

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I am at a media briefiing by cloud-based ERP provider NetSuite at the very nice Quay restaurant in Sydney.

In addition to the interesting presentation by CEO Zach Nelson on the state of NetSuite, we have been given no less than 7 press releases, so a big news day for the company. One of these was the key findings from Frost & Sullivan of Australian retailers, conducted in October 2011. This includes a survey of the use of social media by retailers, showing:
– 34% monitor conversations on social media
– 29% use social media to promote their store
– 20% advertise on Facebook
– 17% use social media to publicize special offers or discounts
– 16% provide services to customers on social media
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Australia’s continued rise as a global hub for crowdsourcing

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Over just the last few years, Australia has established itself as a global hub for crowdsourcing platforms. Early last year I wrote about the phenomenon, pointing to leading service marketplace Freelancer.com, which is now based out of Sydney (see my interview of its CEO Matt Barrie on Channel 7 last week), 99designs, which recently raised $35 million as the top graphic design competition platform in the world, and DesignCrowd, another top player in the space. I followed up with a post about the innovative ideas broker Ideas While You Sleep.

Now late last week, further news pointing to Australia’s rise as a global crowdsourcing hub. DesignCrowd has raised $3 million to grow the business globally, including shortly hiring 10 new people. CEO Alec Lynch says:
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Breaking: Details of News Limited’s digital subscription plans

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I am at what would not long ago have been unimaginable for News Limited: a briefing by senior executives for bloggers and social media. What is even more surprising is that social media are getting the scoop on mainstream media in being briefed first.

The executives present include Richard Freudenstein, CEO of The Australian and News Digital Media, Ed Smith, Chief Marketing Officer of New Ltd, and Clive Mathieson, editor of The Australian. Many of the most visible people in social media in Australia are here, including @servantofchaos, @silkcharm, @GaryPHayes, @mediahunter, @tiphereth, and @katydaniells, with @bhowarth and @mumbrella crossing the chasm as both social and mainstream media protagonists.

Here are some notes live at the briefing.
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Creating the future of local government

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I recently gave the opening keynote at Local Government Association of Tasmania‘s annual conference. On the occasion of their 100th anniversary, they wanted to look forward to the future as well as to their past.

Incidentally, the event was just two days after I gave the opening keynote at the Institute of Public Administration NSW’s annual conference on the Transformation of Government. My presentations at the two events were reasonably similar, but many issues differ across state and local government. One of the key issues is that in a world driven by community, local government is (or at least should be) closer to the community than any other level of government.

For the local government conference my topic was Creating the Future of Local Government. The current issue of the association’s magazine, LGAT News, contains a write-up of my keynote:

In a defining era for government globally, councils are in the front-line of changes and challenges and are best placed to take the lead in turning these challenges into opportunities. This was the message to Tasmanian councils from leading business futurist, Ross Dawson, in his keynote address to conference delegates.

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