The Future is Peeking Through...

This month I have been channelling the poetry of Rudyard Kipling by facing triumph and 'disaster' and treating them both the same......

Futures Conference (the very first of its type in Australia) was an event operated without profit and with some of my own (and one of my business partner's) personal investment, but it worked! We had content created by the community for the entire country. A network starting, conversations and creativity, cross-pollination and inter-disciplinary projects all hitting go on their hyper-drive. A raging success in many ways. Let's head to light speed!

Register your interest for future events on the website here.

But, it was also a thoroughly exhausting process for me, with 20 hour days sometimes. Physically and mentally I drained away, as many of my friends saw. So, I have taken a few weeks to get back to business. Consolidating, calling people, walks in the day between meetings, trying to catch up on my sleep deficit, and trying to not let my exhaustion-led anxiety get the better of me. Enjoying not waking up in a 'low flying panic attack'...

It was then an exciting moment this week when I got the email that Converge had been released on Audible as an audiobook, read by my very self. I am so grateful for the support people have shown for this little book/public engagement of science and tech project. It's been superlative. I hope you like listening to the audiobook if you've not managed to get your hands on the physical paperback yet. We are over 7,000 copies sold, and for Australia, that's actually quite big (so I am told). So, it's been a journey, and one I am contemplating doing again... watch this space.

If you are in SYD- please come along on 2nd August to the State Library to see me in conversation with Maria MacNamara as we chew through the opportunities and threats of the 'future peeking through' and the acceleration of technology via hybridisation and evolution (evolution is still a radical concept, right?).

Things I have been up to this month (other than organising a global, inaugural, tech event) include:

• praising the discovery of penicillin as I had strep throat that had headed to my neck lymph nodes and had to mainline the stuff (the week before Futures Conference no less). I worry about a post-antibiotic future but then remember the race to find new methods and weapons in this war include phages... we will be OK.
• Travel to Melbourne for the first time, on my own, for a really long time. Loving seeing all the eateries reopening and enjoying my vegan duck wraps at Ho Chi Mama... I recommend 10/10. Sit at the bar. Have a margarita. They make solo travellers feel safe and at home.
• Staying at the Ovolo Laneways - my favourite Aussie hotel chain continues to look after this weary traveller. Though I regretted not taking my hot water bottle- this Qlder is still not used to these cold winters!
• Watching the end of Star Wars: Andor. A series I will be calling the 'thinking woman's SW series"... such brilliant acting and character development. More Mon Mothma please... I keep rewatching Luthen's escape in episode 11: just brilliantly pure SW energy!
• I spent some wonderful time with (Dr ) Gill Hicks AM MBE Hon.FRSA and thoroughly recommend you hire her for your next event. Possibly to talk about building humans into technology, rather than removing humans from emerging and scaling technologies. Time spent with Gill is never time wasted. Her TED talk is worth watching but she has so much more to say. She is my favourite statistical anomaly.

So, we are preparing already for 2024 and getting a website and branding re-organisation going. No rest for the wicked.

Hope you are all keeping well, let me know what you think of the audiobook!?

Cheers!

Dr Cath