“Burning Man for business” - TEDx Speaker

Dismantling the stage to facilitate radical intellectual collisions among unlike-minds.

Mission: I identified a ‘death of the keynote’ in the Australian business landscape, where traditional conferences failed to generate genuine connection. The mission was to bring together unlike-minds, connected only by their desire to ‘get shit done’, to solve for a more ambitious Australia.

Design: I created ‘s p a c e’, a 3-night ‘un-conference’ built on hierarchy-stripping architecture. By removing titles and traditional stages, we engineered a repeatable cultural scaffold where VCs, artists, and CEOs collaborated on equal footing. This was a ‘systems-first’ approach to community engineering, using unexpected contexts to drive radical ideas.

Impact: Achieved a $500k turnover in its inaugural year and established a cult-status brand described as having the “energy of the early days of TED.”

Quotes:

"Sensational" - Russel Howcroft, Chief Creative Officer, PWC Australia  

"s p a c e  changed the way I think" - Roy Page, Principal, Heathfield High School Adelaide  

"The Burning Man of Business" - Penny Locaso, Happiness Hacker, TEDx Speaker

"s p a c e  had the energy of the early days of TED" - Jon Yeo, TEDx Melbourne Licensee 

Blogs: 

Adriano Di Prato: Transformational Leaders Don't Start By Denying

Erin Collett: Ideation Constellations: A Method In Connecting Unlikely Ideas

Jodie Metaxiotis: Into s p a c e

Julie Anne Longano: So What Was That s p a c e Series Thing All About

Kate Fennessy: Returning From s p a c e

Lacey Filipich: Surprising s p a c e For Thought… And Action

Madeleine Grummet: Post s p a c e Series Synthesis

Mel Kettle: s p a c e - A Time To Be

Susie Hopkins: The Impact Of Going To s p a c e