2011 has been nothing short of incredible.

I’ve moved again – this time to Melbourne – and I have travelled more than I have ever travelled including stepping my foot in Europe for the first time. From the highs of launching Soften the Fck Up to the lows of losing my godmother, I sit here breathing a deep sigh of thankfulness as I reflect on all the achievements and loss.

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Three weeks ago, on my last day in Italy, I decided to dine at a nice fancy restaurant. Sipping wine watching people walk past me, I breathed several very deep sighs of relief and feeling an overwhelming gratefulness. It’s really, really hard to comprehend the fact that I was in Europe – let alone I was only told that I need to go to Italy for a meeting the week before. The fact that it is so easy for me to go overseas now and get on a plane is difficult to get my head around when 15 years ago, all I could do was to dream of being on a plane.

This year has been a really difficult year, but I have never felt more grateful. Every few days or weeks, I am challenged, inspired and overwhelmed by a deep sense of gratefulness because I have the people that I have in my life. People who inspire me every single day, challenges me every once in a while and more importantly, believed in me and push me that one step further.

Growing up certainly wasn’t easy, although it was one of the best times of my life. I am incredibly fortunate to have grown up in an environment that I did, learning the true meaning of a community and the essence of home.

To get from where I was to where I am now is, to me, an extraordinary privilege and I am eternally grateful. Sipping my beer, writing this, memories and names flood through me as I struggle to find a way to put thoughts into words in an eloquent manner. Or perhaps, I’ll never be able to but here goes.

Today I am grateful. I am grateful for all the opportunities I am given to change my own world. I am incredibly lucky to be given these opportunities and I am incredibly lucky to have the people in my life.

I am grateful for all the things I never had, I didn’t have and I still don’t have, but more importantly, today, I count myself very lucky to have all the things I have right now – the lessons I have learnt, the challenges I have faced and the people I have met.

The people I have met – the incredible people who believed in me, trusted me and invested in me. The people saw something in me that I didn’t see and encouraged me to continue to be the rebel that I always was and to put them to good use. I am very fortunate to call these people friends, teachers and some, employers who have been instrumental in all the sharp turning points of my life – Karen Burke da Silva, Deanne Gannaway, Jack Heath, Sarah Moran, Catherine Williams, Brad Krauskopf and Sam Thomson.

I am very fortunate because I have mentors who believed in me and, worked with my abilities to make me stronger, more capable and a greater, humble leader. They didn’t see me as a young person who needed guidance, instead they saw me as an individual who have the potentials of every young person to be who they want to be – Jan Owen AM, Stacey Monk, Steve Walz, Angus Stuart, Dawn O’Neil AM and Jeanette Miller.

And then I have two mentors who have walked with me, sat with me patiently and guided me every time I got lost – they never lost their patience nor have they ever doubted me (well, maybe quietly). They invested their time, energy, and everything they can including money into me so that I can be a better person and a better leader in the process. They very patiently, and with a lot of craft, skills and experiences, helped me shape my future that I have chose and guide me as I walk towards my vision. I am insanely, insanely grateful to call them my mentors and to have them in my life – Kerry Graham and Aleem Ali.

My parents believed in me whole-heartedly, love me unconditionally and gave me the trust I needed when I chose to go down an unconventional career path and took the road less taken. They nurtured me and they worked ridiculously hard so that I have all the opportunities to change my own world and for all that and more, I cannot thank them enough.

And last but most importantly, I am forever grateful to my very tight knit of friends who share their love, support and pride with me as I journey through the things I do. A few of them challenge me, enable me and inspire me and stuck by me even when others doubted me – they joined me on this crazy adventure and they are still with me a few months on as muddle through this difficult period with me – Lee Crockford, Mark Payne, Damon Klotz and all those who are a part of Soften the Fck Up.

If you’re reading this and we’ve been connected in some ways, thank you.

And on Thanksgiving and in honour of all of you, I am investing in a local entrepreneur in Tanzania so that she can help her kids shape their future and create the change in the world that they want to see. I hope that in some ways, you are proud of me for the person I am today, and the only way I can pay back is to be the best person that I can be and pass own this privilege that have been given to me by you.

This year, I am again a part of Epic Thanks, a global celebration that aims to change the world through the power of gratitude. This is very close to my heart because I feel these kids, and in many ways, I feel very connected to them. I know what its like to want to have your dream come true so bad, you’re willing to do all that you can to achieve them.

These kids have done their hard work – in 2006, we helped Mama Lucy, a former chicken farmer who used all her savings to build a primary school so that all the 500 kids in her village can go to school. Last year, they came second in the national exams out of the 168 schools in the village. They are not taking this opportunity for granted, and given the opportunity, I believe that they will do amazing things.

So, we are building them a secondary school this year. In honour of all of you, my amazing friends, family and mentors who have helped me transformed my life, I am investing $200 into these kids so that they can transform their lives. More importantly, I invite you to invest into these children as well through the widget on the right hand side.

At the end of the day, what matters to me isn’t about what we or I have achieved – what matters to me is what we can all achieve, together.

Thank you for being you and for being a part of my life.

Click here to find out more about Epic Thanks.

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Perth, 26 September 2011
for Social Innovation in Western Australia (SiiWA)
20 minutes

Although the title of tonight’s conversation is “social innovation”, you’d realise that throughout tonight, I’m using the word innovation and social innovation interchangably because I think its time to put human hearts into innovation. Innovation should be, I believe, around adding social values – otherwise, innovation for innovation sake is anything but self-indulgence.

Hyperconnectivity is a word often used to describe the wild extent of connections between human-to-human, human-to-machines and machines-to-machines as a result of the advancement in technologies and new media.

One of the outcomes of this is the way we consume information. We are now becoming more exposed to information, thus we are no longer trapped in ignorance. More excitingly, this also increase our ability to spread information, hence an increase in production of information. These aren’t just pure information for spreading information sake, but we are turning information into understanding resulting in knowing how to act on the problems, issues and gaps that our society or systems are facing.

The other outcome is an emergent effect and the increasing probability of this serendipitous innovation at the convergences of people, resources and great ideas. We all know this, when you put the right players, in the right field, with the right conditions and the right strategy, magic happens.

Although we’re recognising this (very slowly), there still need a lot of fine-tuning and understanding how we can best accelerate and best harness this rapid innovation.

A good example is StartUp Weekend a global movement where you bring together all the different geeks, give them a playground, lock them up for 54 hours and give them mentors and attractive prizes and at the end of the 54 hours, they pitch the product or their magic. One of the success stories out of that is Memolane.com – which if you haven’t checked it out, go do it – which was pitched at Hamburg StartUp Weekend. Since the weekend, the Founder has quit his job, formed his team officially, set up an office in San Francisco and raised $2 million from venture capital fund, not in that order. Although there have been a number of other success stories, comparing it to the number of StartUp Weekend events and ideas that have been pitched, it is relatively low – and I believe that’s because we haven’t found the right environment for these innovation to grow and prosper, not because these aren’t good ideas.

Why is this the case and what are the opportunities for us? I’ve summarized a few points and these are far from complete.

1. Understanding the process
A lot of us focus too much on the ideation/creation/invention stage and we spend too much resource, in my opinion, investing into this stage. The big gains, really, come from the execution/implementation, adoption and dissemination phase and I think this is the part where we need to put some serious investment and effort into.

The development of technology and hyperconnectivity also means that the product development cycle is significantly shortened. Customer engagement or development is now also becoming an essential part of our ventures and the hyperconnection allows quick feedback, customer involvement in in he adaptation, refinement and evolution of the initial idea at a much greater and easier pace. This means no good ideas will ever be good enough unless you execute and constantly reiterate.

2. Understanding the cause and framing our language
Although Australians are faring well, I think that we’re also close to a tipping point of social problems – an increasing ageing population, chronic diseases, unstable financial system and recession and an energy crisis not too far away and climate change.

The way we frame and look at these challenges also have a profound impact on the innovation process. I believe when we approach problems, we need to also start viewing it from bottom-up rather than just top-down (improving systems, processes and approaches) based to meet the needs of those at the bottom lines. I could be wrong but I think there is a synergy between a bottom-up and top-down approaches.

Although we’re at a tipping point of social problems, we’re also at a tipping point of economic shifts – the rich are coming out asking to be taxed more and the superannuation fund in Australia is more than $1.3 trillion and there are a lot of conversations around how to make these savings more useful – they have never wanted to invest any of these money into the social sector because of the word “social” (and the absence of economic return) but there is also conversation around “impact investment” which is more around socio-economic returns. It’s an awesome synergy between the top-down to bottom-up and an interesting space to watch out for.

3. Connecting the disconnected and making the right connections
Beyond connecting the right people, we need to connect those who are disconnected and personally, its the different sectors, and organisations and individuals – there is still an “us vs them” mentality whether in our everyday practices or language – many still have not fully recognise how interconnected we really are.

One of the learning from the SoCap Conference in California last month is the need for a common language between the three different sectors – how do we bring them together and put the human heart into all our work. At Hub Melbourne, our biggest value proposition and one that we are starting to review, improve and understand is the diversity of our members – of the different sectors, disciplines and interests. The other one is our connection to the 28 different hubs around the world and the connections within those hubs.

The implication of these diverse connections is the trans-disciplinary, cross-sectoral, inter-generational influence of the emergent ventures that is born out of connections. This offers an opportunity for the propagation of innovation through unchartered domains.

If all the different sectors start to speak one common language, which I think is possible given the infrastructure we already have, social inclusion is very possible and the acceleration of innovation at that point will be unimaginable.

I think the question and challenge for all of us is to constantly challenge the norm and push for a common language. And the questions to answer are what are the physical and virtual infrastructure and environment that nurtures and push these innovation forward but more importantly, how can we propagate these behavioural changes. Getting the right players and putting the right resources in at the right time is a tricky process but one that we need to understand better.

4. Understanding behavioural change
I think we need to put behavioural change into the equation of all innovations – whether this is consciously or subconsciously. The hyperconnectedness that we’re experiencing offers an unfounded opportunity to propogate behavioural change that either build better futures or create opportunities for us to build better futures.

We need to understand what are the motivations, ability and trigger to create these behavioural change – whether its physical behaviour or our perceptions – in order for us to amplify and accelerate change. We’re all inherently selfish, vain and love attention so don’t underestimate the power of nudges and peer influence in a hyperconnected, very visible world.

5. Investing into a pipeline of innovation
Lastly, although this is linked to point number one, I broke this up because I know you’ve forgotten what point number one was already, let alone 2, 3 and 4 so if you don’t remember anything, remember this.

I think we need to increase our investment into creating a pipeline in supporting innovations through the process rather than just at the ideation and creation phase – ensuring that mentors, capital and other support mechanisms can work around supporting ideas as they scale

By understanding the processes and right conditions needed to allow for these innovations to prosper and succeed, we have a better chance at solving more social problems.

I hope that gives you something to think about. If you have been tuning out the past 15 minutes because you were too busy tweeting and facebooking in your own little hyperconnected worlds, what I hope you take away is that we need to start putting the human hearts into innovation (or in other words, social innovation as innovation) – in order for us to solve some of these 21st century social problems and issues, we need to see innovation as beyond technological innovation.

Many people argue that we need build a Silicon Valley in Australia, or Australia can be the next Silicon Valley but my argument is that we don’t need a Silicon Valley and we cannot be a Silicon Valley – we don’t have enough critical mass (24 million vs 300 million), we have a completely different geography, we have people of very, very diverse backgrounds and we have a very different economy. However, that is an opportunity in itself because I think what’s going to set us apart is our ability to drive, accelerate and amplify innovation through unchartered domains.

Our unique link to Asia in terms of geography, resources, relationship and economy provides us with a different market. Our small population means that our convergences are insane and our connections is pretty much 2-3 degrees. If we get it right, our diversity and insane hyperconnectivity is going to allow us to build and create innovations never thought about before. Our small population means that the chances of serendipitous innovations are more likely and our very diverse crowd means that the propogation of these innovations is unimaginable – beyond all sectors, ethnicities, language, generations, disciplines and so on. Our link to Asia also means that we have a large enough market, to attract capital to the innovations that we simply cannot find a big enough market for here in Australia.

We know that magic happens at these convergences, we now need to recognize our strengths and use those to amplify our magic.

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You meet the most random but coolest people at The Hub Melbourne and recently, I met Michael Leahy, a social entrepreneur in his free time and a full-time ski lodge manager and your typical young person in his other time. He’s working on 3BL a profit-for-purpose social enterprise that imports plastic bottles from developing nations and turn them into recycled furniture.

We had a chat and after a few chats, he invited up to Mt Buller where he runs a Ski Lodge. I’ve never seen snow before, let alone ski or snowboard but we picked up some gears and off I went to learn snowboarding from the pro. After a day of tumbles, I finally got the hang of it on my second day and on the third day, I can snow from the top to the bottom without getting down on my knees or bum.

So, what have I learned about learning to snowboard that’s similar to executing your ideas?

- you can learn all the theories but at the end of the day, its jumping on the board and out into the slopes that makes all the difference – implementing is more valuable than knowing all the theories to get it perfect.
- constant reiteration – you’ll fall a hundred bazillion times but its all about constantly picking up mistakes and change them.
- trust you instinct and feel it – I sound all wishy washy and I probably don’t make sense but I’m one that has to feel it to get the hang of it and its pretty similar in this case. You jump on the snow and you’ll slowly pick up things that no one can tell you like the co-ordination of your bum, knees, toes and back, steering and all these tiny adjustments. Trust your gut instinct and go with it even when you think something doesn’t seem right.
- in the beginning its okay to ignore others – I was constantly worried that I might run into someone and kill someone but Sam’s advice was to worry about yourself first and not get paranoid about those around you.
- practise by yourself if that helps – and somewhere along the way, another lone nut will come and ask you for advice and you can practise together.
- getting a mentor or teacher is very important – esp one that’s supportive and gives you very honest feedback.

And at the end of the day, have fun.

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I came out of Startup Weekend, feeling exhausted and just slightly insane.

Going in, I wasn’t sure what to expect of the weekend, and from the pitches, it was clear that there were quite a large number of tech genius in the crowd so I might feel a little out of place but it was all good in the end. I was hoping to hear more ideas more in the social innovation space but was slightly disappointed that most of them were only ideas that we want, not need.

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People often ask, when and how did you get over your fear? I often answer, I don’t think I ever got over my fear. I just became comfortable with them because they never really went away. As I look back now, they have always been there and still is there but they keep me accountable and if anything, force me to be thorough and detailed because I am scared shitless of failing and also maintain my friendships with utmost respect.

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