SEVENTEENx Sydney Wrap

Drink Beer - Eat Steak - Save the Planet....

Stop #2 of the Aus tour landed on stage in Sydney , with our hosts Torrens University welcoming us back to an amazing room in Surry Hills. And we were treated to some special presentations!

Sydney is always a special event because we get a real mixed crowd thanks to our partners, specifically Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand. Scattered amongst the Sydney crowd is always a strong contingent of students.

The next generation of leaders , lapping up every syllable from the speakers and by the end of it, are buzzing with enthusiasm to go out and fix the world. .... Which when you think about it, that's what it's all about.

This event was interesting as we had 6 , truly "born to impact the world" speakers on stage who whilst incredibly diverse in their business models, all shared an almost DNA code to want to make a difference.

From tech companies, to education, to beer , plastic mermaids, impact investing, data capture, community driven philanthropy, playfulness and even cow farts... yes cow farts, the dialogue was incredible and the crowd played their part in joining the conversation.

Some of my takeaways....

1st up we had Cat Long , Co-Founder of climate tech company Trace engaging us with the business journey to Nete Zero, why it matters and how progress over perfection is still progress, and we need to progress more than we need to be perfect.

Next we had Co-founder of Be the Future; Sally Giblin with a super engaging story to bring playfulness into our climate action approach. There is no doubt about it, anything with the word climate involved is almost an immediately heavy topic. Sally's unique approach to bring playfulness , joy and creativity into the equation has a sliding doors type flip of perspective into the opportunities that lay ahead in the link between climate and climate based solutions.

With our 3rd speaker we switched to people, mental health and elevating human potential through education. Dr Graziella Thake the founder and CEO of the Optimisation Hub, taking a global approach to working with humans and human centred solutions. Graziella's story is as a global citizen. A child of a diplomat, and thus the world, which I think in her story provides that link between think global and act local. A key takeaway is that we are powerful beings when we believe in ourselves.

4th was possibly the quote of the night.. Drink Beer , Eat Steak, Save the planet. Richard Adamson , founder of Young Henrys beer. A B-Corp beer company and an industry leader in circular manufacturing. Richard's talk shared the deep thought and patience to work through their entire business, use science to pave the way and create solutions to bring scalable change to not just their business, but the whole industry.

OAM recipient Laurence Marshbaum was up next, and shared his story of being a young banker in London to founding 10x10 Philanthropy, a model designed to build philanthropic grant funding via engaging a community. Then comes Community Capital, in what feels like a scale up , maxed out version of his original plan to get real, changemaking capital to grass roots impact lead organisations. Laurence's talk showcased the 101 of business with an impact twist. What is a problem I see in the world and how can I build a product that solves the problem. Innovation can sometimes be simple. Still hard to implement, but simple non the less.

Wrapping up the show (after a late withdrawal of our 6th speaker due to family) we welcomed back to the stage our partners SDG Align Co-founder and CEO Willem Overbosch. And whilst the plastic turd made another appearance (watch his talk video), the fundamentals of Willems work were load and clear. We need to measure our work and approach to sustainability and use that data to help ourselves, our suppliers our customers make real time , actionable decisions to bring sustainability into our overall business strategy.

Overall the event was a great dialogue on innovation, climate, people and data, with a highly engaged crowd who were bubbling by the end of the show.

Huge thanks to our partners for helping bring this event to life in Sydney!

Great to see also some speaker alumni from pervious events and our Sydney audience returning back for another year. I'm so grateful for your support.

We're onto Perth now, August 28 and Gold Coast Sept 4, with Adelaide Oct 10 and Melbourne Nov 20 wrapping up the tour.

Jump over to www.seventeensdg.com/tour to find a ticket in your city.

See you there!

#sdg17 for the win!