The Fetch Blog

Curated reads and events for professionals

Tag: Awesome Foundation

Interview: Sydney Local, Scott Drummond — June 25, 2012

Interview: Sydney Local, Scott Drummond

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This fortnight, our Community Ambassador, Annette Slunjski (GM of Lucidity Marketing Communications) chats to Scott Drummond about social interactions, creative ideas and how his young son’s successful blog inspired a photographic exhibition.

Name: Scott Drummond

Website: http://scottdrummond.org

Twitter handle: @scott_drummond

Works: http://hostsydney.com

What are you working (work-work or play-work) on right now that makes you jump out of bed in the morning?
I’m always trying to work out new ways for brands and people to come together socially and make each other’s lives better, so that’s a great daily work-work/play-work challenge that I’m always up for!

How do you keep up with what’s happening?
I try to listen and look out for interesting happenings in all the usual online haunts, but to be honest most things come to me by way of people I know. The best recommendations always come from the friends I have – they are into all sorts of wonderful stuff and I’m always learning from them.

What is fastBREAK and who would get the most out of it?
fastBREAK is a series of monthly short breakfast talks produced by Vibewire, an innovative non-profit youth organisation whose mission is to help young people participate in the conversations that really matter. On the last Friday of every month 5 inspiring speakers speak for 5 minutes each in response to a monthly theme. There’s coffee and delicious breakfast supplied by the amazing Black Star Pastry in Newtown. fastBREAK is the perfect wake-up treat for the intellectually and creatively curious, ad it’s also a great place to meet fascinating people.

Which fastBREAK speaker was the most facinating?
Impossible for me to say – I’ve found so many of them fascinating for different reasons. I’m always hanging out for the next speakers. On Friday June 29 I’m really excited about our line-up: Lord Mayor Clover Moore is joined by Annalie Killian (Director of Innovation, AMP), Marita Cheng (2012 Young Australian of the Year and Robogals founder) and Luke Geary (Managing Partner, Salvos Legal and Salvos Legal Humanitarian). They’re all responding to the theme ‘Stuffed’ so I’m fascinated to see their different approaches.

What’s the most memorable creative idea you’ve awarded as part of the Awesome Foundation?
It would either have to be Physique, an 80s-inspired freestyle aerobics night that runs in Redfern weekly or Scott Brown’s project to build a sensory-feedback device for sensory stimulation between a young autistic child and her parent. Both projects are totally awesome for such different reasons.

Moving on the The {Tiny} Times (previously The Tiny Satorialist) – the blog where young Marshall (with some help from Mum Karla) photo blogs about his {tiny} world; what made The Tiny Satorialist gather such a strong following – enough to support the photographic exhibition?

[Enter Karla and Marshall, exit Scott]

Early on, wordpress.com put selected one of our posts for their “freshly pressed” homepage feature, which had a huge impact in terms of page impressions, exposure to the wordpress community and subscribers. This first bit of exposure is what also led to the great deal of press that has followed. I was lucky enough to chat with some people from the wordpress team this year at SXSW and their feedback was along the lines of: simplicity, consistency and original content is what attracts them to certain blogs. The {Tiny} Times has a very simple formula – photos and short captions with practical information about where we are and the clothes we are wearing. I post 3-4 times a week and use only my own photographs. And I love doing it – and love is contagious 🙂

What are you working (work-work or play-work) on right now that makes you jump out of bed in the morning?
Play-work projects are the real things that get me out of bed. Currently, I am knitting Marshall a purple Ziggy Stardust cardie and taking a photo after each row so I can turn it into an animated GIF, something like this.

How do you keep up with what’s happening?
I don’t really 😦 Conversations with different people in my industry (media) help me stay in touch with what is going on. I read sites like Colossal for creative inspiration, Wired to sit down for some good longer reads or good ol’ Mashable for the digital what’s what.

[Back to Scott]

Scott, what’s the coolest thing happening around community at the moment?
I think it’s exciting to see so many people getting off the couch and meeting up with like-minded people in person. I’m obviously an advocate of the power of digital technology to connect people, but I also think it’s great when those people are moved to meet up and create new opportunities together.

What is the one issue you are most passionate about?
How humans can connect with each other to build valuable relationships that help us to collectively address the most important challenges of our day.

What are some upcoming events you would recommend to the Fetch community?
It’s quite a long way off still, but I’m very excited about ISEA 2013.

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About our Ambassador // After a long time in technology marketing and communications, Annette still loves the wonderful nerdiness and envelope pushing that is IT, especially the amazing things happening in the Australian startup scene. As GM of Lucidity, Annette helps tech companies tell the world about their goodness. Connect with Annette via @luciditymc

Event Review: Three Awesome Things about Awesome Soup — June 9, 2012

Event Review: Three Awesome Things about Awesome Soup

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What: Awesome Soup was organised by Sydney’s chapter of The Awesome Foundation as part of Vivid this year. Each month the group come together to read applications of local projects and then fund one of those projects with a $1000 microgrant. Awesome Soup awarded a $5000 grant to the winning idea chosen by all of the attendees. Your ticket to the event went toward the grant total. By contributing financially and participating in the voting process, attendees of Awesome Soup gained some insight into how the Awesome Foundation operates each month.

Where: Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) as part of the Vivid Ideas Exchange.

Overheard: Oh no, I said that ‘awesome word’ again.

Awesome Ideas

We heard five finalist pitches (narrowed down by the Awesome Foundation board). It was everything from a day of bubbles bringing random joy to Sydney-siders, to a business that would turn Japanese tattoos into wallpaper. Each project shared had its own level of awesomeness; however our champion at the end of the night was Oxford Street Design Store — a project that has already shown a promising start, and will continue to give back to the community.

Awesome People

One of the best parts of Awesome Soup was all of the wonderful people who it attracted. It was great to chat with some friends of the Fetch and also see some new faces. As part of the event, we had dinner (soup, if you couldn’t guess by the name) and get to know our table. We were bonded by good conversations and good food, a winning combination in my book.

Awesome Sydney

Hearing these ideas and being in this room surrounded by inspired people was just another reminder of how awesome the Sydney community is. I’m glad that this event was part of the Vivid lineup.  I wonder what other awesome, local, ideas we can support over this coming year.

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Have an awesome idea that needs some help getting off the ground? Apply for an upcoming grant from the Awesome Foundation. 

Interview: Sydney Local, Renae Mason — April 29, 2012

Interview: Sydney Local, Renae Mason

/Hannah DeMilta
Renae Mason

Name: Renae Mason

Website: awesomefoundation.org

Twitter handle: @awesomefoundsyd and @missnae

Works at: Boomworks by day, Awesome Foundation by night

Sydney has a chapter of the awesome foundation, which is awesome. Can you tell us a little about it?

The Awesome Foundation provides micro-grants for micro sparks of genius and creativity. Every month ten trustees chip in a collective $1000 of their own cash to fund a project, no strings attached. There are currently about 33 chapters in the world providing a great support network and sharing so many inspiring stories, it can be hard to keep up with all the good news!

What do you think is awesome?

Well that’s easy. Every month there’s something new to choose from in the world of Awesome! One of my favourite projects is The Oxford St Design Store, where a variety of quality, local and handmade goods are sold for $1, $5, $10 and $20 respectively. They are also hosting events, an artist-in-residence and a co-working space. It’s great to see this happening right in the heart of Sydney, where rental prices can make this kind of gathering very difficult to pull off.

Some of my other favourite projects just demonstrate what a big kid I am. In Awesome Boston, they built the world’s biggest hammock in a park for all to enjoy. In Awesome LA they installed guerilla swings in interesting locations all over the city (imagine the joy of swinging under a boardwalk as the tide rolls in!), and in Toronto there was a night of cardboard fort building. The designs were epic!

Who do you think is doing cool stuff in our industries?

I like a lot of stuff that’s happening at the edge of industry, with events like Pecha Kucha, TEDx and Trampoline Day. These events empower people to come together and share their unique perspectives.

Also, I’m a huge museum and gallery fan and the work of the White Rabbit Gallery in Chippendale really stands out from the crowd. The passion for Chinese contemporary art, cultural exchange and audience engagement shines through in everything they do.

Where do you get your information from?

All over the place! I’ve got to admit – my feed reader is bursting with loads of interesting things I will never get the time to read. Mostly I find great links and stories from people I know via Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Goodreads, Foursquare, Instagram, Path, LinkedIn. Yes, I’m an app junky.

What are some awesome upcoming events you would recommend to the Fetch community?

We’ll be holding an epic event as part of Vivid Sydney festival this year. It’s called ‘Awesome Soup’ and the idea is that folks will pitch their projects to the audience, who will then vote for their favourite project, whilst sharing a delicious meal. It’s going to be awesome! Anyone can apply to pitch their awesome idea on the night. Tickets are now on sale on the Vivid website.

How do people learn more or get involved with the awesome foundation?

We’re about to launch our own Sydney website, but for now you can find our more about us here. We’re also on Twitter and Facebook. If you’d like to be considered for a position on the board, we’d love to hear from you at any time – just email sydney@awesomefoundation.org. Likewise, we are open for applications all year round, so head over the website to apply.

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