Tech in the Cinema — An event spectacular produced by Inspire9 and General Assembly for Melbourne International Film Festival.
“The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.” — Elon Musk

On the 18th October 2017, Inspire9 and General Assembly partnered to present and celebrate one of Melbourne’s largest community events of the year.
Tech in the Cinema, held at The Comedy Theatre in Melbourne as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival program, hosted over 200 people who turned up on a wintery Friday afternoon to witness an engaging and enthralling spectacle.

The afternoon boasted a diverse and dynamic group of presenters and facilitators who shared their thoughts, ideas and experiences to inspire and empower the next generation of entrepreneurs, tech-heads and creatives. Think keynote presentations, live tech demonstrations and discussions from progressive leaders in the tech, startup, creative and innovation space in Australia.
We inspired, educated and enlightened our attendees on what the future of work looks like, how Melbourne continues to grow as a leading innovation destination in the world, and the types of digital skill-sets people should acquire to future-proof their careers.

The event opened with an introduction from our event MC Anna Reeves, Co-Founder and CEO of That Startup Show and a passionate advocate for a thriving startup culture in Australia.
“Today we’re peeling back the curtain and looking at the world of tech in the cinema. When technology works it’s a miracle, it’s like a magic trick. Like magic, tech is full of hidden figures and like magic, tech has it’s own theatre…” — Anna Reeves.
Anna’s commentary spoke about creators and technologists having a long intertwined history and that we are blessed to have one of the most active, dynamic and collaborative tech and startup cultures in the world right here in Melbourne.

We launched into a keynote by Dominique Fisher, a director of Australia Post and chairwoman of the Victorian Government Innovation Expert Panel. She’s also the CEO of CareerLounge which powers Paddl — a platform that helps students and graduates become job ready.
Dom spoke about how our world of work is changing and opened a dialogue about what jobs will survive as robots move into the workplace. Dom shared with us a online tool that shows what percentage of your job is susceptible to automation. She also touched on the importance of acquiring digital skills, incoming workplace innovation and future educational pathways.

Georgia Beattie, CEO of Startup Victoria, then took to the stage and spoke about the startup economy of Victoria and what kind of ecosystem we’re building together to create more founders and better founders.
She challenged the audience to look at the Australian landscape first when thinking about inspiring founders and startups rather than jumping straight to the usual global suspects.
‘We need to champion the people who have an idea and support these to prosper and grow in our own backyard.” — Georgia Beattie.

We shifted gears with our next guest, seasoned Kiwi filmmaker Annie Goldson, who captured a famous tech outlaw described as “one of the most wanted men on the internet” in her documentary screening at MIFF titled: Kim Dotcom: Caught in the Web.
Annie spoke about the irony of the documentary (especially with regards to piracy) and the commentary around copyright, the internet and hacker culture.

From cracking code to creating code, we welcomed Kasun Maldeni to the stage, lead web development instructor at General Assembly Melbourne, to walk us through a live introduction to coding. Kasun kicked off by sharing that the job of a web developer will only have 17% of their job susceptible to automation, so it looks like his job is safe — for the moment (thanks to the link shared by Dom earlier!)

Kasun covered the basics of HTML, CSS and Javascript languages, referring to each respectively as the bones, skin and brains of a website. Kasun encouraged the audience to take their learning to the next level and to try Dash, General Assembly’s free online coding platform.

Our future of work panel, also titled by Anna Reeves as ‘The League of Workologists’, featured the likes of: Jamie Skella from Horizon State, Conrad Tracey from Inspire9, Michelle Mannering from Bajaboard and Sarah Moran from Girl Geek Academy.
The opening premise for the panel to ponder was: ‘change is here, how do we prepare and deal with it?’
Designing our future workplaces was key discussion point - how we will work and who we will work with? On top of discussions around what industries or jobs will be relevant in the future, were further deep-reaching issues such as gender, age and cultural diversity within the tech industry.
Further thought-provoking questions were asked such as the future prevalence of virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence and what makes a great company culture.

Rounding out the day were some invigorating live tech demos from a series of local creative technologists.
Maize Wallin, Melbourne based composer, sound designer and audio programmer, showed us how spatial 3D audio works in gaming to enhance the immersive player experience.

Writer and producer Simon J Green, and artist Kaitlyn Paltridge, both from The X Gene, talked us through the structures of audience-centred storytelling with VR and showed us the segment of a horror film shot in 360 degree video on the big screen. This had the audience literally jumping out of their seats.

Last but not least, Gil Fewster, Creative Technologist, who’s allegedly spent over 20 years designing, developing and breaking small pieces of the internet, showed us how an AI be built is capable of writing it’s own film title and synopsis!

Tech in the Cinema was set out to show everyone in attendance that no matter what background or level of knowledge one has, from young and old to those starting out their careers or startups through to CEO’s — this was an inclusive event for all, highlighting the utmost importance of diversity in tech and supporting Melbourne’s growth as a creative, tech and innovation hub.

Check out more details from the event check out #techinthecinema on Instagram and Twitter.
To learn more about Inspire9 the original community-led coworking space for Melbourne’s startups, freelancers and creative entrepreneurs. You can register for a free trial day of coworking at either our Richmond or Footscray locations.
Full photo gallery on our Facebook page. Photo credit: Justin Pearson
