Transcript
Christine 0:00
Hi, everyone, I’m Christine Doan, I have recently either been promoted or demoted to an honorary position on Startup & Innovation Tablelands and I must say I’m enjoying that, I would like to tell you about some of the programmes that we’re going to have running the rest of this financial year. So up until June of 2021. And three of them are being run by Seamus Campbell, and Leah Stevenson, Seamus being our chair at the time, and Leah is one of our up and coming leaders. So I’d like to introduce Leah Stevenson, who’s now doing her PhD, and has done a lot of work on the theory of collaboration, and the practice of collaboration, and now is about to bring her innovations in collaboration to the table and Leah, take it away.
Leah 0:48
Thanks, Christine. Yeah, I’m really excited about doing these workshops that are starting next week’s workshop is on the 24th of April. And then we’ll be running two more workshops, one in May and one in June; three workshops. And each one will back on to the other as we get a better understanding of collaboration, and how to develop software that can actually help improve collaboration within local communities. So in our first workshop, we are actually going to see what all the different businesses that are interested in coming to these three workshops and seeing what their services are, and what sort of needs what sort of services they need in return to improve their businesses. People often go Oh, I really need someone to help me fix my website, or, gee, my book works not quite where it needs to be. Or I’d really like a mentor that could actually help me get me over this hump at the moment. So they’re the sort of needs that we’re hearing at Startup & Innovation Tablelands. And so people would like some support, we want to see how people in the local community might be able to meet those needs. So another business might find, oh, I’m really good at this part of my business, I could share that with you. And that other person might say, well, there’s something that I need in exchange to be able to improve my business. So it’s sort of formalising that process of working together and finding people finding business owners that would really be able to be a good match to support each other.
Christine 2:28
It sounds a bit like business bartles doesn’t. So it’s an exchange programme, which is fantastic. So the range of services could be absolutely vast, not just the typical business services that we think of but quite an expanded list of business of services that support a business, I guess what I, what I would think of in the first instance would be that so many entrepreneurs are totally stressed out. So many business people are totally stressed out. It might be mental health work that you could, who knows, it might just be a shoulder to cry on, a listening ear? Would that be part of the programme?
Leah 3:05
Yes. So there will be opportunities where people might really be keen to mentor another, another business owner, in different parts of their business. And it might be potentially, you know, coping with that stress in the beginning stages of starting a business. It may even be as simple as realising that the services or products that you have, could actually complement each other and potentially have co-marketing or reciprocal marketing something as simple as that might be something that you might want to do together.
Christine 3:40
So you’re pulling people together, sharing their interests and their needs and their wants, such that they can start to collaborate at a deeper level. Is that right?
Leah 3:49
That’s right.
Christine 3:51
And then tell me about the technical aspect.
Leah 3:53
The second workshop is backing onto the first where we learn about how we can collaborate better as a community. And then we’ll actually create an app that can help that come together. So the technology will allow people to put in what their services are, what their needs are and what they’re able to exchange. And it will be enough that will help connect people, the right people to each other. It’s almost a quicker way to move forward in that negotiation process and finding the right people to work with that will meet each other’s needs and be a mutual benefit.
Christine 4:36
Be a good match.
Leah 4:37
Yeah, for sure. Right.
Christine 4:39
Great. That sounds good. In the end, you’re going to help people create their own app. Is that right?
Leah 4:43
Yeah. So the third workshop is going to apply what we learned at the beginning around developing an idea and how that would work. And then being able to transfer it over into technology and developing an app that you could use for your own business.
Christine 5:09
Fabulous. This sounds just great. And I’ve got your first participant can’t wait to put his little paw up and say, I want to come to these workshops. I want to learn to collaborate better. Thank you so much, Leah.
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