WTF is West Tech Fest?

West Tech Fest (WTF) is like Christmas come early for entrepreneurs.

The energy level is off the charts and you’re pretty much guaranteed to find a topic you’re interested in being discussed by incredible speakers you’d struggle to access otherwise.

For example, this year’s standouts/headliners included:

• Peter Vesterbacka of Angry Birds fame, FinEst Bay Area and Slush
• Laura Clarke of Palau Pledge and Deep Rising
• Gigi Brisson of Attractor Ventures and Ocean Elders
• Bill Tai of ACTAI Global and Adjunct Professor at Curtin
• Steve Baxter of TEN 13 and Shark Tank Aus

It’s also an awesome place to learn about *all the things* without having to stay on top of the news.

I think of it as the shortcut to knowledge: I get my annual musical education by listening to Triple J’s Hottest 100 in late January; I get my annual dose of what the future could look like and all the ways we might get there at WTF in December.

I also get to chat with dozens of fabulous start-up ecosystem peeps I’ve not caught up with much during the year in one fell swoop, so the engineer in me loves the efficiency of attending.

Tickets sell out to most events – especially to the last one, Rotto Tech Fest – so you’ll want to make sure you’re on the mailing list to get yours as soon as they come out; subscribe here .

(Why would I encourage competition to sign up for the tickets I want to get? Because I have a free pass to them all next WTF – squeeee! More on that later...)

Personally, I can only take so much people-ing so the thought of attending 18 events in six days gives me the heebie-jeebies. In deference to my personal energy levels, I pick a handful of events and make the most of them.

This year I went to:

• The Women’s breakfast (Tuesday morning)
• Innovation Showcase and Young Entrepreneur Showcase (Tuesday morning)
• Freo Tech Fest (Thursday afternoon)
• Rotto Tech Fest (Friday)

Wednesday's conference is technically the main event around which the rest of the week is centred, so if you were only going to pick one thing, Wednesday would probably be it. I had a teaching commitment this year, otherwise I would have gone to that too.

And that's just what's on the calendar. There's lots of other fun stuff organised - I particularly enjoyed lunch with the Think & Grow and Functionly teams (thanks Kate Harris-Slade for that invite!)

WTF has lately been in the first full week of December. However, there’s a rumour that it’s moving to February, so don’t book out that calendar until WTF send their email announcement!

Highlights this year

The moment that will stay with me for the rest of my life was Laura Clarke’s keynote at the Women’s breakfast.

She spoke publicly for the first time about the events that led her to Palau and creating the Palau Pledge.

Calling what happened to her ‘burn out’ feels like the ‘Tis but a scratch’ scene.

It was Burn Out, or perhaps BURN OUT.

She spoke of things that embarrassed her, that she was not proud of, with such grace that I was simultaneously in awe of her tenacity and her speaking skills.

Maybe it hit so hard because it’s happened to me too, albeit a milder version (see my TEDx talk for that story ). Given the whole room was transfixed, I feel like it was more than that.

Side note for the men of WTF: You are very welcome at the Women’s event. In fact, I encourage you all to be there. It’s a chance to hear firsthand about the challenges women face, many of which you won’t have noticed by virtue of not being on the receiving end. I wish we didn’t need to hear people’s stories to connect the dots, but it still seems like the most effective method and that’s a great spot to get it. More of my thoughts on why men need to be at women’s events here .

At the same breakfast, I was blown away by Bill Tai’s response to how to get more female founders.

His response was not confidence (thank goodness, as the greatest red herring I’ve seen having been weaponised against women ) or anything similarly unhelpful. For that, he has my unending gratitude.

While he never said the words 'quotas' or 'regulation' and yes, he did prevaricate a bit, that’s essentially what he talked about.

He said he was most surprised to have seen in his lifetime the requirement for certain levels of 'gender representation' in leadership when listing a public company, and that it had the biggest impact.

Hear hear, Bill.

When asked the same question, the three exceptional female founders on that panel - Grace Wong , Sophie Doyle and Ajintha Pathmanathan - said more role models.

Basically Women in Tech WA’s #SeeHerBeHer for entrepreneurs . I couldn’t agree more (no surprises for someone who teaches entrepreneurship to kids).

It was fabulous to walk next door to the Young Entrepreneur Showcase (YES) and see so many young women, some as young as 11, pitching and promoting their businesses. More of it!

I was especially proud to see Communicare Academy's stand. They've been doing Maker Kids this semester under the guidance of Victoria Shakeshaft . So impressive!

Side note: there’s a bunch of articles and videos with young entrepreneurs on my Maker Kids site, including lots of young women . Share that?#SeeHerBeHer inspo wherever you see fit :)

Freo Tech Fest was, as usual, delightful. It’s such a fast-paced and fun event that I look forward to it every year.

Matilda winning the Golden Ticket there was *chef’s kiss*.

It’s an endometriosis solution (i.e. for women) amid some very impressive pitches, so I wasn’t holding out much hope – but it very much deservedly won!

And to see Murdoch Launchpad’s Pot Pirate get a special mention and the co-working space access was brilliant.

The discussion at Rotto Tech Fest was excellent, though I feel like the only person who sat through the whole thing diligently taking notes ('loose' is an apt description of the attendee approach to participation!)

The two I enjoyed most from a very impressive day were:

...the Circular Economy discussion, especially Huia Adkins ' analogy for what we're doing implementing linear and inherently wasteful processes like disposing of batteries.

...the chat between Bill Tai and Gigi Brisson , beautifully led by Meri Fatin . It's excellent to be reminded of the long term vision investors have, especially when we founders can be focused on just getting through the next 12 months.

And although I didn’t attend, I was filled with joy to the see For Blue event line up. I gave the organiser a hard time a few years ago about not having women on the panel, and this year he’s done an absolutely BRILLIANT job of getting impressive speakers who are also women. Hats off to you for that, Andrew!

I also had a LOT of fun playing a new game this year, called Ambassador Bingo.

The six WTF ambassadors – Danelle, Greg, Isabelle, Tim, Kali and Oliver – were harangued all week by those of us entering the competition to win an all-in pass next year.

Which I am delighted to say I WON!!! Hooray!!!

Thanks so much for playing along team, your willingness to be silly with me was greatly appreciated :)

What grated and what I’d love to see next year as a result:

These all centre on gender representation (*see end note):

In the Freo Tech Fest Pitch Frenzy, the ratio of male to female entrepreneurs pitching was around 3:1, despite there being lots of women in the room. It's a free-form event for which you line up when offered. Ladies, stand up. We need to hear and see you at every opportunity.

The Pitch Frenzy recap to award the winner mentioned only men. Out of (I think) five or six specific callouts – all opportunities to amplify one or more female entrepreneur – none were taken. And it’s not like there weren’t any good enough for a mention – I thought Elizabeth Knight’s pitch for No Code Odyssey was a standout. Whoever’s in charge of the recap next year, please use that power wisely

The pitch session at Rotto featured all (three out of three) male entrepreneurs. Time to even up the odds – how about an all-female pitch line up next year? Tease Industries (sexier than sex), Industry OneCard (keeping directors out of jail) and Our Kinds (circular economy personified) all spring to mind as excellent candidates for the audience and themes at Rotto.

I would love to see a viewing of Picture a Scientist attended mostly by men. WA’s Start-up Land needs as many Robert A Brown types as we can find, and I think watching that doco is the shortest route to catalysing the latent potential I’ve seen in some of the fabulous men in our ecosystem. And no, that’s not just because Brown is a fellow chemical engineer! #MaybeABitBiased

Bravo and thank you

Everyone involved in WTF should be basking the glow of a job well done this week - that is, if they're awake yet.

Thank you founders Paula Taylor , Bill Tai, Rohan McDougall and Larry Lopez , the event coordinators, the speakers, the ambassadors, and the behind-the-scenes team such as Maya Kavanagh , Josh James , Terina Litchfield , Angela Pua and Suzette Morris

And a very special thank you to Charlie Gunningham for donating prized WTF merch to me. I shall wear it with pride.

Y'all rock. Can't wait till next WTF!

...and for good measure, one final selfie - this time with my youngest and a mum-baby pair of quokka near our tent.

* Of all the hats I wear – founder, business owner, mentor, board chair, volunteer, ambassador, parent, wife, friend – self-appointed crusader for gender equity in Start-Up Land is my least favourite.

I deeply dislike making people uncomfortable or embarrassed. I do not enjoy audience heads turning my way whenever there’s a gender faux pas on stage, waiting on my inevitable response like ‘the show’s about to start!’

I do it because I can’t not do it.

But it’s not compulsive.

Each time I engage to point out imbalance, I’ve run through the risks in my head:

…of embarrassing someone or causing them pain.

…of upsetting someone with the power to make my life difficult.

…of finding myself no longer welcome in places I love.

I do it having considered all that.

The injustice is too big to just let it wash over us, and we don’t have time to tend to fragile egos.

We need swift and comprehensive progress in this space and we need it yesterday, or we’ll fail to save humankind’s existential dilemmas and – sorry – we’re all going to have much less enjoyable lives. So, I’m more bulldozer (or perhaps an annoying mosquito is a better analogy) about this stuff than one who uses the honeypot.

Start-up land is the most gender discriminatory industry I’ve even been in by a very large margin. I say that as a chemical engineer who worked in the mining and management consulting industries. That should give you pause, as both have been notoriously uncomfortable places for women to work, and in some workplaces, still are.

Female entrepreneurs don’t fall under Fair Work rules.

We don’t have recourse through that channel like any other worker in the country does. And let’s face it – even when we do come under those rules, they’re not terribly effective.

When someone harasses or stalks a female entrepreneur, she leaves the ecosystem for her own personal safety. She does so without fanfare or anyone asking why. There’s no investigation or standing the perpetrator down. They carry on their merry way.

When someone questions a female entrepreneur’s ability to run a business while (gasp) birthing and raising progeny, it’s fobbed off or she’s not believed. The person who says she can’t run a biz and raise a baby, and the person who says ‘no way that happened’, gets away with it, without reprimand or repercussion.

These would not happen in a workplace. I’ve proven that to myself this year when I had to force an investigation into unprofessional conduct at a large organisation.

The stalwarts will say ‘But that’s business – if you’re gonna play in this space, you gotta have thick skin and be prepared for it.’ Which completely negates the outrageous imbalance of power. With 0.7 per cent of VC funding flowing to female-founded businesses worldwide in FY22, the numbers don’t lie.

Misogynism is rampant and, in my opinion, getting worse in some key places.

#RantOver