Nice Niche! November feat. Purpose Conference

I still remember hearing about Purpose Conference back when I began a new phase of my career in the technology space (2016 I think?!).

The tech space was an exciting one to be in for sure. It still is, for the most part, but I just after beginning in it, I had some levels of cynicism personally about particular elements of grand-standing and curated media releases that portrayed one thing but were at odds with what I was quickly finding to be the reality behind the scenes.

In particular around this time, I was particularly keen to understand more about the impact space and the ways people would work and collaborate with intention on this impact focus collectively. (New finance apps bored me for the most part if I'm to be perfectly honest.)

How did impact-focussed people gather and coordinate with an emphasis on initiating projects that angled towards a better future as important themes of climate change and sustainability and reverence for our Indigenous history and social justice and equality and tech ethics and more were moving from nascent conversations to front and centre in the curated realm.

I wanted to know, and there Purpose Conference was.

And then I met Sally Hill .

And what I was looking for, was now in my grasp, and I've been holding on ever since.

Via Purpose, I came to understood the world a hell of a lot more than I had earlier, thanks to the power of curation that assembles like-minded people together and accelerate the intake of what you might need to know to then be able to do something about it, incrementally or in one big action.

You can check out Purpose here, by the way, which runs at the beautiful Carriageworks on Gadigal Land, as it did last year:

https://www.purposeconference.co/

Purpose has been running since 2015 - exploring, celebrating and amplifying the growing momentum of ethical, regenerative and social impact business. I'm lucky to now be speaking on the actual program in 2023 as it veers rapidly towards a sell-out, and I think back to how many different contexts I've thought of Purpose over the years.

This years program is extensive as per usual and covers a wide spectrum. I'm loathe to profile too many people individually, as all are doing their own important work and it's unfair to profile one talk above another. Plus, the article becomes many thousands of words then, and no-one wants that noise.

What I will do, is profile the extensive action the team have taken to platform and profile Presenters, Artists, Performers, Convenors, Advisors from a First Nations perspective, and seeing a few close friends of mine on there such as Dr Kyle Turner & Kaylene Langford is extremely heartening to me personally: https://www.purposeconference.co/first-nations-purpose-23

Looking at my own involvement to ground this in some context, I'll be speaking on the program on day 2 of the program - Thurs 9th November.

I'll sit alongside Adam Milgrom of Giant Leap , Catherine (Cat) Long of Trace | Certified B Corp? & Jeanette Cheah ????♀? of HEX , and we will dive into 'Demystifying Startup Investment.'

*We will bring our A-game diving into the void of being as unfiltered as humanly possibly to completely demystify the realities of the funding process so that people who are looking to fund, grow and scale their impact can get the best possible lens and pathway to actioning the impact they desire to achieve. And I won't hold back on being completely open and available for everyone on the day who wants to ask that question from my corner of the funding world.

I'll then sit alongside Marque Lawyers , Victoria McKenzie-McHarg of Women's Environmental Leadership Australia & Mele-Ane Havea of B Lab Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand as we five into 'Reimagining Leadership: It's Time for a Candid Conversation' and that's my favourite type of conversation.

*Candid, which in my mind, is a combination of open, transparent, considered, considerate and intentional.

I'll spend the rest of my time wandering around, talking to a number of people about the unbelievable projects they are working on, and become inspired each and every time. I'll eat plenty of Ben & Jerry's and drink plenty of Heaps Normal and chug a tonne of ārepa .

Happens every time.

I'll see a Wizard open and close proceedings, see people from a minimum 10 countries flying in that I can count from first glance, and chat about everything from psychedelics to the Symbiocene to Biodiversity focussed investment and getting into nature (on that, actually heading straight to an Unyoked stay after the conference, so that's just. bloody. good. timing.)

And now I think back on how I came to be here and how Purpose has invaded my thoughts over the years, knowing that I will hear some other anecdotes from other travellers where it is different, but long-present, and we are there with the same intention, hoping to action some type of measurable difference.

I think about my time in General Assembly with Emma Forster when Purpose personally inspired me/us to think much deeper about the type of curation to action on events, and I took particular inspiration in doing exactly that. Lots of focus on experience design and thoughtful curation and profiling and platforming people that were often not handed the microphone or tapped on the shoulder for a news story. I wanted to do that for sure.

I think about my time running FuckUp Nights in Melbourne and Sydney when we would have lots of people attend storytelling events and human themes were discussed (privately & not filmed, but in a room full of strangers ironically). Failure and mental health were incredibly important topics to address, as they always have been at Purpose. Myself and Josh Lipscombe ?? were also lucky enough to collaborate with the crew as a Sydney side event in 2018!

I think of running Inspire9 for a time there and having a large amount of social impact people co-working from the locations in Richmond & Footscray. Groups like Engineers Without Borders Australia and Impact Investment Group and Giant Leap and Eugene and plenty more. That was always cool to observe.

I think about my time helping curate Pause Fest & Awards with George Hedon & the crew, and my time volunteering with the CreativeMornings Melbourne crew c/o Jeremy Wortsman of The Jacky Winter Group at the time. Curation of speakers that should have a voice amplified was of particular importance to me, especially on extremely important societal topics (of which a new social media platform was not one of them).

I think about my time in as the Creative Producer of Innovation at 澳大利亚墨尔本大学 , where I worked alongside teams such as Science Gallery Melbourne and we dived, with careless abandon, into some more salacious topics and provocations that just simply needed to be explored, and I felt that started to become the closest type of kinship to Purpose that I had felt in some time (with the science, research and arts layer involved).

I think about my recent time as a co-lead of the Melbourne chapter of SENVIC Social Enterprise Network Victoria , where I began to get involved with more B-Corps and social enterprises creating the means to a more just society.

And I think about my time now with Tractor Ventures of course, where we fund lots of tech enabled companies that generate revenue, and it's nice to see that plenty of them are working on materially important sustainability initiatives, and plenty of B-Corps (or soon to be, including us I would say) and I can see some of our own involvement extending to these incredibly admirable impact focussed companies. More of that please.

My kudos, for the creation and curation of this niche, is to the organising team themselves:

Kate Hurst , Natasha Ritz , Holly Horne , Daisy Jane Elnasin , Geraldine Chin Moody , Andy Marks , Susie Bayes , Michael Bradley , Grant Show and naturally, Sally Hill .

Onwards to Purpose 2023. See you if I'm looking at you.

https://www.purposeconference.co/