Over the last 3 days, the unpredictable Melbourne Spring has played host to leading voices from across Australia’s tech industry as part of this year’s National Tech Summit.
The Summit, which is the annual flagship event of Australia’s peak industry body for the industry, the Tech Council of Australia (TCA), saw three days of important conservations, opportunities to facilitate connection and collaboration and most importantly a spotlight pointed directly at both the light and dark side of the country’s third largest industry.
I had the privilege of representing Hype Man Media across the 3 days, getting to meet the people that are driving the growth of our industry and to hear the conversations that will impact how it involves next.
The recurring sentiment was one of pride for what we’ve already achieved.
Hope for what the future will bring.
Yet concern over what that future will look like if we don’t change our current trajectory.
“Every company is now a tech company”
In his opening address, Board Director of the TCA, Anthony Eisen, who also cofounded Aussie fintech unicorn Afterpay, set the tone for why we should all care about the Tech sector. Telling us that “ there’s no such thing as a tech company anymore”.
A message that seemed superfluous to an audience of tech evangelists, though the unspoken is that the sector still has to fight for its relevance, in spite of its omnipresence throughout our lives.
Australian Tech has its big winners, many of whom now have board roles with the TCA and were paraded over the 3 days, though the chasm between the top and the bottom is as big as ever. Which is why events like this are the important stake in the ground we need.
Arguably it’s biggest success story, Mike Cannon Brookes (cofounder of Atlassian) would spell this out in economic terms via a video fireside chat on day 2.
Explaining to a packed room, with standing space only, that Australia’s tech output does not match up to its potential.
The country is 22nd out of 38th in the OECD, with the 9th highest GDP in the world.
Meaning that we make up roughly 1% of the world’s economy.
Yet we’re not building 1% of it’s tech.
With only 1.8% of our economic spend being contributed to R & D. Over half of what is getting spent in the US or more worryingly in comparison Switzerland.
This message would be echoed by the enigmatic Dr Catherine Ball of the Australian National University who passionately explained that although we’re 4th in the world at R & D, we’re actually 78th of transferring that into technology and ultimately commercialisation.
Therein lies the crux of the sector’s problem and why a call to action like the National Tech Summit was so critical.
“With great power comes great responsibility”
Also high on the agenda was how we make sure that Australian Tech is being built and accessed by a diverse group of people. With inclusivity and equity at its core.
The topic (which covered most of Day 1’s Partner Summit programming) was particularly pertinent given the recent Richard White scandal. The Elephant in the room that no one wanted to directly talk about.
Minister for the NDIS and Minister for Government Services Bill Shorten MP told us that tech can be the key to getting access to the services his department provides.
Explaining “if you access this through your smartphone this opens up the level of access and inclusion with the community”.
Jo Dooley, general manager at Microsoft Australia, borrowed the above proverb from French philosopher Voltaire (or Spiderman writer Stan Lee depending on your disposition) when describing the Tech giants responsibility to building out an ethical AI industry. Also announcing a recent commitment to building 9 new data centres across Australia, as part of a $5 billion investment.
And Chenoa Stockton of Deadly Coders, speaking on first nations entrepreneurship, was passionate in her advocacy, stating ”I want Mob not just to be consumers but creators of technology”.
Though it was on a panel hosted by Aubrey Blanche-Sarellano, VP of Equitable Operations at Culture Amp (another Aussie Unicorn) where this message reached its pinnacle.
With Blanche-Sarelleno announcing that “If we want Australian Tech to be successful on the global stage, we cannot leave it open to just a small subset of people” and that “Hope is a discipline and equity is a choice”.
Emma Jones of Project F (who later in the day released a set of D & I standards for the sector) left us with a positive perspective of how far we’ve already come.
“100 years ago 5% of the participants in the Olympics were women, this year in Paris that was 50%”.
Tech has a long way to go still to get its gold medal in diversity, though big voices supporting the fight is a good start. We now need to take the intentions laid out at the Summit and see them translated into big actions.
“With great responsibility also comes great opportunities”
Dr Aengus Tran, founder of Harrison AI, who develop, commercialise and deploy AI tools that support clinical diagnosis, pointed out that while we’re fixing the way our sector operates, it’s important not to take our eyes off the prize.
In front of us is an opportunity to be world leaders in specific verticals, futureproof our economy and provide work for our ever growing population.
One of the TCA’s core missions is to help support the 1.2 million Tech jobs that are predicted by 2030 in Australia (with recent figures showing we’re currently at 935,000).
This is the opportunity.
With software, automation tools (AI) and services businesses all needed to support that growth and a core of invention, entrepreneurship and Innovation being a product of it.
As Cannon Brookes also pointed out “We’ve always had the tyranny of distance in Australia, it doesn’t exist in the tech industry”.
As a country we’ve often limited ourselves due to our geography, humble approach to doing business or lack of ambition outside of our four walls. Something that’s very common for many island nations!
“Australia, let’s stop underselling ourselves we need to step it up!” exclaimed Julian Lincoln, a partner at Herbert Smith Freehills, the firm that represents many of Australia’s biggest exports’ interests.
A sentiment that was echoed in the room and by yours truly.
Though the irony of a lawyer providing the best call to action for Australian Tech is hard to ignore (spoken as an ex-lawyer myself).
The last supper
The Summit came to a fitting end, late on Wednesday evening, with closing drinks at digital art gallery “the Lume” at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.
Surrounded by the brilliance of Italian painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect Leonardo Da Vinci.
As the last stragglers of the conference came together surrounded by the ahead-of-their-time inventions and artistic masterpieces of one genius, to discuss the takeaways from some of the modern geniuses who littered this year’s summit.
It was hard to ignore the circularity of the setting and pose the question “who will be our society’s Da Vinci?
Who future generations will look back on as transcending time through innovation.
There’s a few people that come to mind and likely many who have yet to be conceived.
One thing is for certain, our next geniuses need to have the inspiration, infrastructure and be part of an inclusive society which allows them to succeed.
With that in mind, the National Tech Summit delivered in spades. As it’s positive outcomes no doubt will for years to come.
- Dickie Currer is the Hype Man for Australian tech & innovation.
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