Trip Reports

So I did promise to report back on the past trips.

Well, there wasn’t much to say. The Indian Ocean Defence Symposium was classically flashy. It was a great reflection on my past career (draw your own linkages, though I guess that’s now pretty obvious).

Here’s what got my attention:

• There were some obvious local primes that chose not to make an appearance
• There were a lot of Australian businesses in broad fields that have offices in Brisbane and/or Perth but not Sydney (expensive real estate anyone?)
• The PitchFest remains the public highlight of these events (memories…)
• I did meet up with a couple of old colleagues, which was my primary intent, but not enough of them
• I tried unsuccessfully to win some prizes, this meant I had to quite artificially hang around
• I did however pick up a reasonable amount of swag, but students raided most stands before I got ruthless (don’t call me unfair)

The best swag hands down is Defence West’s Quokka with a Surfboard keyring.

If I didn’t mention it previously I used the opportunity to attend a couple of city-based meetups. One was Morning Startup which is extremely well done. Morning meetups work best for me. The second one was Perth Mobile App Developers - thank you for the free hot chocolate - and the inspiration around Flutter and name- dropping of apps (hello Transperth).

Maybe I can truly call myself a startup mobile app developer soon enough and deserve to be there… see the next post. ☕️