 Hey, everyone, how's it going? And those lights are super bright. How did you speak up here with lights shining in your face? Anyway, hey, everyone, I'm from Australia. Woo. Let me just get this computer fired up, and we'll be all good to go. So it's pretty awesome being in Seahorse. It's the first time I've been here. Hopefully this will kick in in a minute. And I'm going to talk to you tonight about a few different things. When this gets up, the topic of my talk tonight is tech doesn't equal software. Now, what do I mean by that? I could have called it something like, tech does not always equal software, or technology isn't only software. So what I wanted to talk to you about tonight is something that we see a lot in our industry. And that's when people talk about tech and what they actually mean by that. And the fact that technology isn't only the things that we often talk about day to day. So let's see if we can get this fired up. Demo God shined down upon us. It was working just before this talk. Yeah, it's working. Can you all see it? Yay, woo! So technology isn't only equal software. Now, when Daniel introduced me to the last few ones, he talked about that little company underneath one, which is Baja Board. And Daniel finally knows how to say Baja Board, but we'll be talking about Baja Board during this presentation as well. So I'll just run through really quickly the context in which I'm talking to you. It's about Daniel mentioned on the Hackathon Queen back in Melbourne in Australia. I've done over 53 different hackathons now in the space of like just on two years. So kind of a season at it. I'm a founder, so I work a lot in the startup industry. And I'm a brand ambassador for this crazy off-road electric skateboard company, which I'll be talking to you a little bit about today. So let's start with technology. If I say to you technology, what do you think about? Now, unfortunately, I don't have any t-shirts to hand out, t-shirt vouchers, but throw out some things. If I say technology, what do you think of? What was that? A hand dryer, okay, that's good. What else? I can't hear. Young people. Okay, that's good. What else? Blockchain. Blockchain. What else? Buzzword. My show Buzzword. Any more Buzzwords out there? Yeah. Yeah, there we go. So when I talk about this in a lot of other places, they throw out like it's mobile phones and it's robots and it's artificial intelligence and it's self-driving cars and all that kind of stuff. So what they're talking about is information technology, which is like the hard tech that we often talk about. That's not necessarily what technology is. So what technology is, is the application of knowledge, is taking something and applying it. It can be both art and science and it can be a process, invention or a method, which means if someone comes out with a new way for making a cake, that could be considered technology. So technology isn't only the hard things that we talk about, right? Now back in the day, this was considered technology, a pen and paper, because before this, all they had was stone tablets, clay, cloth, whatever they could find out in the woods, right? So this was technology because at the time it was new. Now one of the reasons I wanted to talk about this is a friend of mine who started a company. Now when I put this slide up in Australia, everyone knows what it is, but does anyone know what this is here in Singapore? Vegetarian. It is vegetarian bacon seasoning. So it is seasoning that makes everything you put it on tastes like bacon. And the reason he invented it is because he really likes the taste of bacon, but he found out it was full of like sulfide and all these bad stuff. So he made this completely vegetarian one that tastes absolutely amazing. Now he presented this to a panel of judges at a startup pitch competition. And at the end of the presentation, the judging panel said to him, look, we like your idea, but we don't think it'll go anywhere because you don't have technology and therefore you're not a startup and therefore you won't get funding. And I was like, when I heard him tell me this, I was like, that's crazy. He's like, he's got a very, I can't do his accent, but he said to me in his very characteristic Norwegian accent, I know, do you know the amount of technology that goes into making something like this? Food technology he's talking about. He gave this formula to five different food experts and only after the fifth expert who has something like 20 years experience in food technology could actually break down the formula for this. Not only is this massive food technology, this guy has one of the number one e-commerce websites in Australia. The conversion rate he gets on his website is absolutely nuts. Now no one can tell me that's not technology. So this is where the kind of premises talk came from. Now this is a list that I quickly wrote down. I was like, oh, there must be other companies like this in Melbourne. So this is a really quick list that I wrote down of the companies in Melbourne that are doing not necessarily what people would consider technology. So there's ones on there doing shoes, there's companies that are doing couches, there's companies doing watches. Who's heard of Zero Latency? You guys actually have Zero Latency in Singapore. Who's heard of it? Few people? Has anyone been there yet? Zero Latency came out of Melbourne. It was a Melbourne company and now it's in Singapore as well. So it's got six locations around the world. They use some cool VR and you run around in a warehouse and shoot zombies. It's really cool. But basically I thought I'd just write down this quick list of startups just to show everyone that technology is all around us. And so is code. So even though people have all these physical products like couches and shoes and the Bahar board which we'll talk about in a minute, all those things are still underpinned by software. So I didn't say the word technology, I said software. By software of some way, shape or form. Everything we do today has some element of software to it, correct? Who has a mobile phone or a smartwatch? Pretty much everyone, right? Put your hands up, everyone, put your hands up. Yes, everyone has one. Now that piece of hardware is obviously driven by software, correct? So all the hardware like our virtual reality and our AI systems that are driven by software. You know what else is driven by software? Who's heard of Tesla? Everyone I'm assuming? Yeah. So Tesla is a, essentially, and they even put that on their website. It's a computer, a big computer that is driven by software. Now because of its electric motor, that car can go a lot faster. Who's actually been in a Tesla? Anyone here been in a Tesla? Couple of people at the very back. Who's done like the insane extreme sports mode? Have you done that? Yeah? So it takes off really quickly, like super quick. You go from like zero to 100 in like a few seconds. It is only possible for the car to do that because of the software that's programmed into it. If there was no software programmed into the car, the car would actually launch off like a rocket. The software is there to tell the power, sorry, the batteries to limit the amount of power that goes out of the engine, right? Now this is very similar to what one of the companies I work for is. So this is the Baja board. It's an off-road electric skateboard. Now I'm really glad Singaporeans work in kilometers per hour because I don't really know any miles, but this thing can go up to 60 kilometers per hour. It has enough power to tow a car and it can go from zero to 30 kilometers in about two seconds. So it's super high-powered and super fast and because videos always explain things a lot better, here's a little video that the guys did. So I'm gonna talk a little bit over it. So I hope we got a little bit of sound here. So I'll turn it up a little bit. So it's very similar to this off-road buggy and it can go up a gradient. If you get a run-up, it can go up a 60% gradient or it can go up a 46% gradient from a standing start. So there you go, that's it going 56 minutes. This is in China. The guys went over to China and did a trip around out back in Australia, which is really fun. Actually, there's a screen over here. We can go in the snow, which is even more fun. You can go along the road at night. It's got lights and all that kind of stuff and like tons of different modes. It's like super, super fun. Here's the car. It's like towing the car on. That's actually me on the water and being towed along. That's me again. I don't know why the guys put videos of me. That is me again. Again, I don't know why they're putting me in these videos. So yeah, it can go on the long beach. As you saw, it can go on the snow. It's just a ton of fun to do. So that was a project developed in Melbourne. But as I mentioned before, some of the coolest things about it, so it has a drift mode on the board, which means you can put in a drift mode. You can spin around and do like donuts in the sand. And it also has this crazy burnout mode. You can put on a burnout mode and like spray dust into your enemies. Now the way this board is controlled is by a remote hand. Who's actually ridden an electric skateboard here? Like even just an on-road one. Anyone? I saw a few around today. No one's even ridden one. Man, these things are so much fun. You've got to get on it. So it's driven by a remote hand controller. So the hand controller controls everything from the speed. So if you don't want to go to 60Ks an hour, you can cap it off to go like 10 or 20 or 30. You can control the launch. So if you don't want to be like thrown off the board when you hit the trigger, you can change that. It can change the brakes and settings and all those other kind of things. Now like a Tesla, the only way this sort of stuff is possible to control this board is through programming and software. So every single board that we make has to be programmed. Inside our board there, there's a PCB. So the remote controller talks to the PCB. It tells the PCB how much power to extend from the battery to the motor controllers to then to the motors for you to drive the board. This kind of stuff is really amazing. This is kind of like, it's only like in this era that we're able to do these kinds of things because the battery technology has come so far. But also the software and programming has come this far for us to allow us to do these kinds of things. Every single board that comes in, we have to spec exactly to our requirements as well, not to only find like coding all that in. But one of the other coolest things about our boards is like software is ingrained into every aspect of our board. So here's a part like one part that gets designed of our board. This part has to be printed exactly right every single time. The little holes there have to have the exact amount of width for the screws to go in. The only way this comes out exactly right every single time is because it's printed through software and code by a machine. It's like CNC milled by a machine that reads the code to actually print. So even in the physical product where there's no technology in it, for one of a better word, people say there's no technology in it, there is still that software and that coding, that aspect of tech behind it. All that aside, if we had no technology or no coding or anything on our board, we'd still need a website to sell it. So even if we made cane chairs like these lovely cane chairs down the front, we would probably need an online presence of some form, which means our company is going to be driven by software in some way, shape or form. Now this comes to some really exciting stuff. So on this website, it's not up there at the moment, but we're able to use GitHub to drive our website and also have to load all these crazy awesome things in Jscript and put it up there and test it all at GitHub. And when I told Sam about this, whoever Sam is up the back there, he's up there, he's waving his hand, Sam is like a semi-pro skateboarder. So when he heard about this and that we were interested in using GitHub and he's like, I have to come down and see this board. And Sam tried it out and he really loved it. He's like, do you reckon we can make a GitHub board? And I was like, yeah, totally, let's do that. So we made a GitHub bar hub board and this is me on one of our Melbourne Christmas rides. So that's why I'm dressed up like a Santa Claus. I don't usually ride around like this day today. But it was a really fun project to work with Sam and the team on building a board and putting something that's so digital, like GitHub, everything that you do on GitHub is so digital. Bringing that and putting it into like physical and being able to like ride on it and say, no, this board is driven by software that can be hosted on GitHub. It's like really, really exciting. And that's one of the really exciting things I find about working in companies like this. And this brings me to the second part of my talk is that working with companies like GitHub and working with Sam and the team is brings us real aspect of community. And it's only with community, with the people around us that we can actually create and do amazing things. You know, we wouldn't be able to create that board and do all this amazing stuff without software, without GitHub to back us up, without big companies to help us. Now, one of the things that I've found as I work within my different era, like different roles within the community as a hackathon person, as a founder, as a bar hub board ambassador, as helping out other companies is I've kind of identified these three different sectors that kind of sit within the community. Now, you've got startups and not-for-profits, so government or non-government organizations there. You've got industry and corporates, and you've got university and government. Now, what I've seen is that each of these different sectors, while they have something amazing they can offer to each one. Like, for example, startups are lean and agile and they often have the latest way of thinking. Industries and corporates often more often have the money, the resource and the personnel to execute ideas, and university have this huge wealth of knowledge and resources through their research teams, but also through their students that are coming through the system, and then the governments have the power to actually make changes through legislation and policies. I've realized a lot of these sectors often don't fit together, like they play in completely separate environments, and they're not really talking to one another. So the cool thing about what I do is I can kind of sit in this middle section, so I sort of see how every single one of them is playing, and I can kind of bring them together. And so I'll give you a few examples of how, like, I've seen different things work together so far. Cicero is myself and the team, the Bahá board team at the Formula One Grand Prix in Melbourne last year. Yeah, you have a Grand Prix in Singapore too. Cicero is a Grand Prix in Australia, and we had this guy in the middle, Craig Scarborough, who ran a F1 tech journal from the UK. He came out and supported us by talking with us and presenting with us. We were able to be in this precinct at the Grand Prix because of the University of Melbourne and the University of RMIT, who sponsored this sector of the Grand Prix. And then we were also able to work with the Grand Prix because we're working within this environment. So you saw this mix of, like, a big corporate, like the Grand Prix coming together with a startup such as ourselves and Craig working together with universities to make something happen. And we're able to, over the course of in Australia, the Grand Prix runs over four days, not two or three. So over the course of the four days, we were able to speak to tons of students and startups and actually talk about technology and software and engineering. It was really incredible. Well, the other things we got to do in Melbourne is we did this really amazing ride day with Subaru. So I approached Subaru and said, hey, you guys have a very similar kind of audience base as us, very kind of off-road and tacky and, you know, adventure and get out there. Maybe we could do something together. And they said, yeah, we got our latest car coming out soon, the X-V. So why don't we do, like, a ride and drive day? So we went down to the Subaru Docklands. This is us up in the top corner there. And you were able to, on that day, ride our skateboard around their off-road track and then a half an hour later jump in a car and drive around the same track in a car. So that was really amazing to be able to do that with those corporates. So this is what I've started to see happen more and more in Melbourne and Australia in general. I haven't really had a chance to travel overseas. So I can't speak too much about the overseas market. But what I'm seeing is all these different sectors are now coming together. They're really coming together to be able to make change. And it's only when they come together and work together can we actually make real changes within our societies and our communities. If we all work in different and separate silos, nothing will get done because one part is always missing. Something will always be lost if you don't work together. Now I'll give you one more example. It's not bar hardboard related so you can show that just not my company is doing this. But we've got this amazing software VR augmented reality company in Melbourne that worked with the city of Melbourne. So government organization working with the startup to create this amazing experience for the city of Melbourne around Christmas time. Now this startup partnered with IBM to produce this project and Telstra came in to provide all the wifi and internet access for this project to run. This was a really amazing collaboration between a startup which was powered and driven out of a university with a government organization and a big corporate to actually make something happen. And every single company who was involved in running this was so impressed. They're gonna run it every single year from here on out. And you just saw people like going through the city and experiencing our city in a completely different way which is really exciting. Now as we come to the end of my talk I thought I'd throw you a couple of little quotes that I really, really enjoy. And this is one from Helen Keller and that's only together. Can we actually get things done? So what I want you all to do today is to go away and think about how you can work together to actually get things done within your community, within your society because it's only when we work together can we achieve amazing things. Now going back to the start of my presentation to recap don't forget technology doesn't always equal software. It can equal software but it's more about the processes and the change in the thinking that we have. Now my final quote to end before I open it up for maybe one or two, do we have time for one or two questions or we wanna cap it off? Yeah, I still got five minutes, I'll have some question time but I wanted to end on this quote from one of my Facebooks who knows Pixar, everyone knows Pixar, right? Who's read the book Creativity Inc? Anyone yet? Yes, a couple of people, fantastic. So his book is amazing on like changing the culture of work environments and how they're able to get amazing things done at Pixar. And he says this, Ed Catmore is the founder of Pixar. Making the process better, easier and cheaper is an important aspiration and something we continually work on. But it is not the goal. Making something great is a goal and making something great together is the goal that we should all strive for to make our society and our community a better place. So on that note, I will open it up for a couple of questions. We've got four minutes and 39 seconds. Who would like to ask any questions? Yes, we've got a microphone that's gonna roll over. Oh, yeah, back there, is there a person with a question or are you just waving to the abyss? So folks, if anyone's got a question, we've got a mic wandering around in the audience. If just pop your hand up if you have a question. It's really hard to see from up here, so. It's really hard to see from the light so we need some help up here. It's really weird. Any questions? Because if nobody asks, oh yeah, Sam. Sam. I was gonna ask my own question, I was. I'm not a fan. Okay, yeah? So I have a question, because Misha, I know you do this with a lot of large organizations. Yeah. And tonight is around community coming together and talking about how we use great tools and collaborate in the worldwide. How important is it for organizations to look at the culture in their business to support better practices? Yep, yeah, definitely. I think if you try and make changes and start working with other companies before making that cultural shift in your organization, I don't think you're really gonna get anywhere. It's really important to get your organization on board with the changes that you wanna make, either as a C level or as a board member to make those changes. Because if you try and make changes purely from the top down and just enforce changes without that culture shift, you're not gonna get anywhere. You need everyone on board. And I'm gonna say that probably one of the most important things about changing the culture is having a culture of collaboration. If you don't have that culture of collaboration within your organization, you can't really expect to go out of your organization and collaborate with another organization, a company or a startup or community or anyone to be able to get something done if you can't collaborate properly internally first. So that's definitely one of the number one things that's added. Sam's got another question. I have another question, completely unrelated. Can I get the Baja board to go fast in 60 kilometers? Baja board to go fast in 60. So I was chatting to one of the electrical engineers and he said, because of the way we spec it, it's actually capped off to only go 60 k's an hour. We can actually make it go up to 92 or something ridiculous like that. Same concept as a Tesla. Tesla is also capped off. So Tesla can't actually reach its top speed while you're driving, because it's far too, you can literally take off like a rocket, it's far too dangerous. So I hope that answers your question, Sam. So Sam does have his amazing GitHub board. So if you ever come to Australia and come to Sydney, hit up Sam and he'll give you a ride. Or if you come to Melbourne, you can hit up me and I'll definitely take you out. Any other questions? We've got a minute and 55 seconds. Again, it's really hard to see with all the light. I'll just do this and I can see. One more. Amade, do you want to give out a T-shirt if someone asks a really good question? There's one over this way. Hang on a sec, let me pass this across. I'll answer in a short time. Okay. You mentioned that the Baja board was 3D printed. Is that 3D printed? Not quite. So it's a mixture and this comes back to technology. So when people say technology, it's not just all about like, you know, the other stuff, like people saying carbon fiber technology and stuff is also a tech. So it is a mixture of CNC milling, machine routing and also, yeah, there's a couple other processes they use which I can't mention because it's proprietary. Yeah, it's either titanium as a premium version of the board, machine aluminium or carbon fiber. So yeah, we've got a few different bits and pieces. I see. So some parts of the board are 3D printed? No. So we use 3D printing mainly for prototyping purposes but we don't actually 3D print any of the parts because 3D printing titanium is super, super expensive and yeah, it's just, it's not worth it. Oh, okay. Thank you. Thank you. Can I get a volume? Yeah. So maybe if we clarify, when Misha's talking about CNC, she means computer and numerical construction or something like coming to the actual thing. What it is, it's things like lathes and drills that are driven by computers. Yeah, so somebody doesn't sit there and route out, like I think of it like driving a jigsaw or a hacksaw. So nobody sits there and does that. It's all driven by machines now. So do you get that really precise stuff too? Yeah, so it's kind of like the predecessor to 3D printing where you'd have like a sheet and then you'd have to cut it out. But instead of doing it as a 3D print where you're kind of drawing it essentially, CNC basically does things like it knows how to cut exactly down that line, exactly drill here and things like that. I'm out of time. So you can keep talking, but I'll exit stage one. So thank you very, please join me in thanking Michelle. Thanks for having me here, everyone. Yeah.