That's a wrap on 2022 for Innovate Moreton Bay!

Creative Industries Demo Day

Kicking off our 2022 major events calendar was May’s Creative Industries Demo Day. Held at the Caboolture Hub, the region’s epicentre for creative businesses, Moreton Bay Regional Council and Innovate Moreton Bay hosted the inaugural Creative Industries Demo Day on May 4.

With an aim to unearth Moreton Bay businesses working in the creative industries sector, looking to grow, and access new markets and customers, the event featured six business owners, from a total pool of 17 applicants, pitching in front of a room of industry-leading judges and invited guests.

While there were many outstanding pitches delivered by participants, Pia Robinson from The Culture Crusader and her project Martin and Friends: Enabling through Augmented Reality, was announced the overall winner of the day.

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Techstars Startup Weekend Moreton Bay

Another first for our region, June witnessed the first ever Techstars Startup Weekend in Moreton Bay hosted at the USC Moreton Bay campus. From 10 - 12 June, individuals with big ideas worked together to turn their start-up ideas into a reality, founding and building a new business.

Five teams of groups of 2 - 4 individuals worked with mentors, investors, and sponsors, learning how to develop their business idea into a sustainable business model, validate the idea to customers and pitch the business to the esteemed panel of judges.

Over the three-day weekend, participants received invaluable guidance from our stellar team of mentors, were treated to a series of Masterclasses, got some great swag, and shared in an amazing prize pool worth over $25,000+

Ultimately, the winning business pitch was Docusay – an automated document management system for small to medium construction companies using hands-free speech-to-text technology.

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Teacher PD Coding & Robotics Workshop

On 21-22 July, the Teacher Professional Development Coding & Robotics Workshop was held at USC Caboolture and Moreton Bay campuses. This event was aimed at providing Secondary education teachers within the Moreton Bay Region with the opportunity to better understand teaching tools and methodologies to support the development of new programs related to coding and robotics.

The workshop provided an in-depth insight into how teachers can access coding and robotics hardware as well as how to incorporate this technology into their own course curriculum. The primary objective of the Teachers Coding & Robotics PD Workshop was to create a collaborative network of teachers across both private and public schools in the region and aid them in developing their skills surrounding this topic to create further opportunities for youth innovation and entrepreneurship.

This training will allow teachers to deliver programs that use strategies known to increase student interest in STEM: hands-on learning, working as a team on real-life problems, and enabling students to showcase what they created and learned.

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Moreton Bay Region Innovations Day

And yet another regional first! On Thursday, 10th November, Moreton Bay Regional Council and Innovate Moreton Bay delivered the inaugural Moreton Bay Region Innovations Day.

Innovations Day was an exciting half day event where forward-thinking leaders came together to immerse themselves in seeing first-hand what innovative and advanced manufacturing solutions are right here in the Moreton Bay Region.

This event was a fantastic opportunity to highlight the amazing, innovative work happening in our region and delegates from sixteen local business took part - showcasing and pitch their products and solutions to an audience of key decision makers from the public and private sectors.

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Startups are Hard: Innovate Moreton Bay Workshop

On Wednesday, 16th November, Innovate Moreton Bay delivered the Startups are Hard Workshop with Peter Laurie.

Regardless of whether you call them startups, scaleups, new ventures, or just new businesses, they are always harder than you first thought. This is not due to lack of effort, preparation, or experience - they are just hard. But they needn't be that way. By approaching them with a learning mindset and a few different techniques we can reduce the risk and make them less hard

In this Innovate Moreton Bay Workshop, Peter Laurie walked participants through the challenges associated with launching your own startup – and provided valuable advice on how to navigate these challenges.

This included insight into starting a new venture, understanding the risks involved, models to help analyse your opportunities, ways to communicate your business with others (and why this is important!), and having the ability to reconcile different advice and opinions about your business.

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Other Highlights

And that's not all! This year we also:

* Hosted 12 Innovate Moreton Bay Monthly Social Catchups
* Led the #TeamMoretonBay delegation to Forward Fest
* Supported the 2022 Mayor's Telstra Innovation Awards
* Supported local teams at GovHack 2022 and hosted 'What the Hack is GovHack' - a briefing event for local participants
* Activated the Moreton Mentors initiative, which connects local innovators and entrepreneurs at beginning of their journey with experienced industry mentors

That’s a wrap on 2022 for Innovate Moreton Bay!

On behalf of Innovate Moreton Bay, we would like to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and safe New Years. We look forward to all the exciting things that 2023 has in store, along with the collaborative impact we can all achieve as #TeamMoretonBay.

Please note, our Regional Innovation Coordinator Steve will be on leave from the 22^nd December and returning to the office on Monday 30^th January

In the meantime, you can stay up to date on upcoming events and news by visiting our website and connecting with us on Facebook and LinkedIn.