Transformative Tech with Seamus and Christine
Seamus Campbell: Okay. Hi, everybody. This is Seamus Campbell and Christine Doan from Startup Tablelands, but wearing our Connection with Direction hats, which is a subset of Startup Tablelands. And what we’re-
Christine Doan: Actually
Seamus Campbell: … looking at…
Christine Doan: I have the appropriate hat.
Seamus Campbell: Oh, right. Yes, exactly. Well, that’s a special hat.
Christine Doan: A sorcerer’s hat.
Seamus Campbell: Yeah. Well a special transformative technology hat, and that’s what we’re interested at the moment, and I thought rather than giving you a dry, boring definition, perhaps you, Christine, could just talk about what transformative technology can do and a few questions that people might be thinking about.
Christine Doan: Well, mostly none of us really gets what does transformative technology mean? And it can be anything that you may be using already from a Fitbit, a simple Fitbit that tells you how many steps you’ve taken in a day.
Christine Doan: Because when we’re talking about transformation, what are we talking about? We’re basically talking about changing our brainwaves, changing our function, changing our performance, changing our energy levels, changing our stress levels, all the rest of that. Oh, performance, productivity, energy and then stress. And how can we do that?
Christine Doan: Well, one way to do it is simply to quantify whatever it is you’re doing. How much are you sleeping? How well are you sleeping? Maybe you have a sleep app. How much you walking, how long are you walking? How energetically are you walking? And just raising the awareness is the thing that starts to bring about the transformation. So, quantifiable tech, quantifiable biology precedes transformative tech.
Christine Doan: But look, transformative tech has gone from the point where there are some crazy people implanting stuff in each other’s brains.
Seamus Campbell: Yeah, yeah.
Christine Doan: I mean, that is transformative tech. But we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about how do we fit in between a Fitbit and a brain implant and still increase productivity, increase performance, increase harmony in groups, increase flow, increase energy and decrease stress. How do we do that using pieces of technology?
Christine Doan: Look, it can be as simple as grabbing your mobile phone and putting a free app on it. It can be as complicated as installing something in your brain. But for us, it’s going to be something like, you know, I haven’t got my focus band right here, in a personalized electroencephalograph that basically reads your brainwaves in real-time.
Christine Doan: Well, how exciting is that? Do we know when we’re really hitting an alpha state or when we’re in high energy state like now, and when we’re able to let our alpha brainwaves take over? Because that’s where the creativity is. That’s where the flow is. That’s where you can communicate better and more deeply and more trustingly. It’s not in this high interview state. It’s in a deeper state.
Seamus Campbell: And we’ve never been able to truly measure this before, have we? That’s one of the things that transformative tech has been able to do.
Christine Doan: In a laboratory, yes.
Seamus Campbell: Yeah.
Christine Doan: Back in the ’50s, they were sending astronauts up with heart rate variability monitors. These days you can buy a heart rate variability monitor for zero, if you get the app, which are not very good we found out-
Seamus Campbell: No.
Christine Doan: … for $100 or maybe a couple of hundred dollars, and it goes up from there. But the fact is that transformative technology has had a breakthrough in actually the last 10 years and less, that allows us all to be able to afford some form of transformative tech.
Christine Doan: And our question at Connection with Direction is, can we incorporate this into what we’ve already been doing in a way that makes it quicker, easier and more comfortable to increase the things we want to increase, all those productivity, performance, energy, and decrease the stress? Can we do that?
Christine Doan: Well, that’s our exploration at the moment at Connection with Direction and our business mastermind with a difference, and now a second difference, transformative tech.
Seamus Campbell: Yeah. And this is really extremely applicable to an awful lot of alternative healers and healing professionals, isn’t it, that we’re hoping that there’s potential for a lot of these people to be doing or working with this sort of technology. And it’d be interesting to see how many people are already using technology to measure these things.
Christine Doan: I think you’re right. I think that often we have a lot of alternative healers on the Tableland, and a lot of people are there because they have high sensitivity, they can’t live in big cities, they like to be in nature, they like to be connected to a place like this and to a community like this, and some of those will be already tuning in to this transformative technology. Some of them will be just using their intuition.
Seamus Campbell: Yeah.
Christine Doan: But isn’t it interesting that your intuition can fail you, and we might be able to use transformative technology to correct and hone our intuition and our creativity and all kinds of things so that they become easier and more accurate.
Christine Doan: I think that’s something that probably every healer on the Tableland would, well not everyone, because everybody had the different way of connecting to what they need to get done, what their lessons in life are. But some of us sort of, you know, I at 70 feel like, “Hey, I have to take advantage, because I’ve done this my whole life, this self-development stuff and awareness and whatnot, meditation, all those things. I’m really bad at most of them. Why not have a cheat sheet and use-
Seamus Campbell: Exactly.
Christine Doan: … some piece of technology that helps me get there quicker? Because I’m feeling like I’m a college student at the moment that I need to speed up my student [inaudible 00:06:46] of life.”
Seamus Campbell: Yes, it’s a fascinating area, isn’t it? And so many applications that we just haven’t even dreamed of yet. That’s where I find it fascinating, and also the fact that it’s really using technology to help the inner work of humans, whereas in the past we’ve used technology for the outer work, the speeding up your tasks, et cetera, et cetera. This is looking at the inner stuff, which really to do it properly you need to do the inner stuff before you do the outer stuff.
Seamus Campbell: So I think this is absolutely fascinating with potential this is going.
Christine Doan: I think that’s right, and I think that you can do both at the same time, and that’s-
Seamus Campbell: Yes.
Christine Doan: … probably the productive, that you’re actually working on your inner stuff as well as your outer stuff and that’s how you get the biggest gains.
Christine Doan: But it is interesting that there’s endless scope for this, but there are also the ethical problems to think about, you know?
Seamus Campbell: Yeah.
Christine Doan: What happens when we get to the point that for a half a billion you can put a chip in your kid’s brain that makes him smart enough to go to Harvard, whereas he wasn’t going to make it even through high school before?
Christine Doan: Well, all of a sudden there’s some ethical problems there, aren’t there?
Seamus Campbell: There is.
Christine Doan: We’re back to the same thing of technology has taught us how to have three people be the parent of a baby. Well that’s not really part of normal human biological technology, and how do humans work on that?
Christine Doan: So we have a lot of different aspects of this to deal with in Connection with Direction, and we will go in the direction that the group wants to go in.
Seamus Campbell: Yeah.
Christine Doan: Because we haven’t started. We’ve only just started.
Seamus Campbell: Yeah, that’s right. So we want to know what people think and how they’d like to proceed with all of this. So our Connection with-
Christine Doan: Yeah, how they might use it, how they could use it-
Seamus Campbell: Exactly.
Christine Doan: … and how ethically? How to be used-
Seamus Campbell: Yes. Very important.
Christine Doan: A better life by using technology.
Seamus Campbell: Yes. So our next Connection Direction meeting is on Saturday the 19th of October, 9:30 for a 10:00 AM start at our Tablelands business hub, which is 49 to 57 Loder Street in Atherton.
Seamus Campbell: We hope to see you there with lots of ideas and questions we can all discuss that at the time.
Christine Doan: And we’ll be bringing along some examples of transformative tech and looking for you to bring your examples that you’re already using, or your curiosity and your sense of exploration and adventure about what we could be using.
Seamus Campbell: Yep. Okay. We’ll see you there, hopefully. Goodbye.
Christine Doan: Look forward to it – less than a week.
Seamus Campbell: Yeah.
Jess Fealy About Leanne Kemp
Hi everyone. I’m Jess Fealy. I’ve been doing some work with Startup Tablelands over the last few years and have my own business – Back Paddock Business and I’m really passionate about rural businesses and startups, particularly in country areas like up here on the Tablelands.
I just wanted to make sure you all knew that Queensland’s Chief Entrepreneur, Leanne Kemp is coming to the Tablelands on Saturday the 2nd of November.
So there’s a great event happening. It’s only $10 so I’d encourage all business people, startups, want to be business students to come along and meet Leanne, she’s got an amazing business story. She runs a multimillion-dollar business as well as being Queensland’s Chief Entrepreneur. So she’s got some great tips and advice to share and she’s just a really down to earth lady, so terrific opportunity to come along and meet her. I know she’s really keen to get to know as many of us here on the Tablelands as possible.
It’s only $10. So see you there!
The Ethics of Transformative Tech
A conversation between Christine Doan (Co-Chair of Startup Tablelands)
and Scott Fittler (Pastor of Destiny Church).
So, Christine Doan again from Startup and Innovation Tablelands. And I’m here with Scott Fittler who’s representing this whole Destiny complex, where our new Tablelands Business Hub is located. And I just wanted to talk to Scott about my latest thing – I’ve always got a latest thing and my latest thing is Transformative Tech!
Now, this is the beginning of a movement where technology is used increasingly for wellbeing, for not only for physical health but for mental health, and spiritual health. This is something that hasn’t been built out and now it’s going to be built out. This is really going to be a big thing in the future and I’m sort of curious to hear how you would see this fitting in with your complex of businesses and where are we going to go with it with Startup and Innovation Tablelands, because this seems to me to be one of the more innovative aspects of the whole startup movement, the whole technology movement right now.
So what is transformative tech? Well, it’s tech that, if you think about it, the lowest level – is that a Fitbit you are wearing? It’s an Apple watch. So it does all those things. So instead of thinking that you’ve done, I’m sure I’ve done 8,000 steps today. you look at it and it says 3,500. Well, my subjective impression wasn’t quite accurate. I think I didn’t sleep at all last night and your aura ring says you slept like a baby! Don’t worry about your sleep. You had eight hours of it like you were a two year old and that shifts the mind and allows you to stop being anxious about the 8,000 steps – get walking and be honest with yourself.
But you know these technologies are going to become something in the future where you’re going to have to make the decision of will I have a chip implanted that makes my eight year-old smarter? Will I have a chip implanted – I might have a pacemaker, I don’t have one, but I might have a pacemaker that keeps my heart going. What about these optional items that are going to make us smarter or more compassionate or more understanding or more creative or whatever it is. This is going to be a big thing. We need to learn to deal with all forms of tech, including Transformative Tech now because if we don’t do it now, first of all, we’ll miss the bus. And second of all, this great opportunity for the Tablelands to be a step ahead on the world stage is going to be missed out on. You know, you see this from a possibly different point of view than I do. What’s your perspective on this?
I think the ethical issues are huge, massive ethical issues and we haven’t even talked about it. Did you hear this in the last election? No! Was this a topic? No! Why isn’t this a topic, this is so important.
Do you know what’s interesting for us? You know, obviously as a pastor coming from a church background, there’s been discussions around microchipping and that for the last 30 years. And I think in other smaller sort of silo kind of thinking, I think now with the technology, the way that it is, the opportunities that are coming up before us, those things are now really, we need to be having the discussion, they are right here, they are not out there- they are right here and we already have wearable tech and there are people who have installable tech already.
There is a whole town in Switzerland who are chipped and they have all of their information that they have key locks and that sort of thing and they have access to their buildings and that through the chips that they have implanted. So that tech, it’s already happening. It’s already here. We have to learn how to deal with it. And so I think rather than, you know, I think if we say put the ethical issues to the side for a second, there’s going to be a lot of people that are going to be talking about that and that’s going to be done to death over the next few years. but it’s going to be largely a knee jerk reaction because we need to be talking, rather than talking in on an ethical level, we need to be talking about the opportunities and we need to be talking about the threats.
I think when we talk about ethics, we largely only talk about the threats and we really need to be talking about what are the opportunities. How is this going to improve humanity? How’s this going to improve our relationships? How’s this going to improve our connectivity with one another? And how can we make sure that it doesn’t land in our laps the way that smartphones did, the way that Facebook did, the way that every social media has now. We didn’t anticipate the disconnectedness that was going to come from all those connections. Exactly. So the polarity, you can’t have connection without disconnection. It all fits together. And how can we make sure that we’re anticipating, and I think the best way to anticipate is to look at the opportunities and to go, okay, what opportunities are there? And then what threats does that give rise to and what are we actually looking to achieve? Because ultimately I think if we just go, we’re looking to get more connected and we’re looking to improve humanity, if we’re in agreement on that, then we’re going to be having a clearer conversation because we’re going to be rallied around a singular vision of improvement. And so we’re going to be not talking about what’s right and wrong. we’re going to be talking well, does this fit with improving and actually accelerating human progress and is it a real improvement or is it not an improvement.
That’s the conversation that needs to happen. And so rather than the right and the wrong of it and I think we get bogged down in the ethics of it and like you said, we get left behind because we’re too busy trying to figure out what’s right and what’s wrong rather than going, do we agree on what improvement looks like? And you touched on that earlier saying, you know, spiritual and emotional and physical. Are we looking at it holistically and saying okay, yes, there’s a physical advantage, but that it’s affecting me spiritually or it’s affecting me emotionally. I think that’s the conversation that needs to happen first and foremost. What is improvement? What is not improvement because that will give us clearly what is not an improvement and that’s the conversation that needs to happen.
So let’s see if we can find a couple of people in Startup and Innovation Tablelands and a couple of people from Destiny who are interested in this subject. Yeah. And we’re all going to get together, a small group right here at the Tableland Business Hub at the Destiny complex, and we’re going to start to work on this. Sounds fantastic? Up for it? Absolutely. Done!
Christine Doan: Chair
Christine Doan – President
In an entrepreneurial life driven by purpose, Christine has tackled all of her campaigns with gusto, adopting an approach, which is alternative, sustainable, innovative, and just plain different. The causes may have looked disparate, such as what links riding a horse at the Olympics and building up a multiple bottom line property development!
In wildly different disciplines, she consistently faces the future seeking to uncover where it is leading and has always been willing to stand out from the crowd and point the way. A personal mission is to be part of creating a Tablelands which thrives economically without sacrificing its exquisite environment and cohesive communities.
She sees that the 21st century offers new business-based avenues to achieve that goal by incorporating purpose, design and technology. Christine promotes Start Up Weekends as one of the bootcamps to shape the apprentices who will build that vision along with her and other innovative, entrepreneurial spirits collaborating for a vibrant Tablelands.
Calum Kippin: Co-Chair
Calum has been interested in supporting and growing regional economies and businesses since completing his Bachelor of Economics in 2010.
From working in politics and economic development at a local government and regional organisation level to running his own business offering comprehensive marketing and communications support to small and medium-sized enterprises, he has built a career around advocating for and helping North and Far North Queensland businesses.
He is particularly passionate about the opportunities for Tablelanders from innovation in agriculture and is proud to be leading the organising committee for the StartUp Tablelands’ Future Agro Challenge in 2019.
Seamus Campbell: Vice Chair
Seamus has been a driver on the Startup Tablelands committee for 4 years now.
His working life has included labouring and various semi-skilled jobs, working for 8 years in Govt, working in the book trade as bookseller, publishers agent, and owning bookshops, as well as several internet-based-businesses.
He has owned and run Boldacious Digital since 1998 (last century!). Boldacious Digital consults and trains small businesses in Cloud Collaborative Software and Business Apps, as well as building bespoke website for businesses.
Jan Hannan: Treasurer
Jan is still wondering how her life’s journey of theatre, dance, choreography, costumes & stage makeup took a sudden turn after just one phone call that landed her in the hot seat as Startup’s new Treasurer.
Her time with Startup Tablelands has been an exciting and at the same time challenging one that has taken her from the old fashioned format of applying administration skills she was used to from her previous businesses into the new tech cloud-based wonder she has had to navigate here at Startup.
Jan said retirement after such a colourful, energetic and full on career was difficult to transition into but her life has a purpose again especially working alongside such a wonderful group of volunteers within the Startup Tablelands community.
Shartara Hampton: Secretary
Shartara is the Community Leader at theSPACE Cairns; her role is to deliver hands-on support to members, co-workers and theSPACE Australasia operational team across various projects and events.
Before joining theSPACE she spent 3 years as an au pair and also completed a Certificate III in Individual Support.
Alison Eaton: Driver
Alison Eaton comes to Startup Tablelands with a long manufacturing, wholesaling and retailing history, both in New Zealand and Australia.
With varied interests in the Ageless Wisdom teachings and meditation, she is bringing the insights garnered from these practices to two new businesses that she and her team are bringing to market shortly.
Alison also brings a cornucopia of organisational and other skills that have already been of service to Startup Tablelands in recent years.