Bondi Innovation State of the Nation 2023 + Feb social drinks

Thank you for being part of Bondi Innovation, may 2023 be a wonderful year for you!

This update on the state of Bondi Innovation is slightly longer than usual, but if you are at all interested in connecting to and supporting exciting innovation and entrepreneurship in Bondi, please do read through.

Also, our monthly social drinks are resuming! Come along and connect next Tuesday 14th. Yes we know it's Valentine's Day, but this is the place to be for those who transcend social norms for dating, there will be some great people to hang out with.  😀❤️

Where we’ve been

Bondi Innovation has already had an eventful life. If you want to catch up on our background our posts on the story of the launch of Bondi Innovation Hub, and after lockdown shut down the Hub the dawn of the next phase for Bondi Innovation tell the odyssey up until late 2021. 

In 2022 I was deeply absorbed in finishing and launching my new book and setting up a new startup. However we kept momentum going, co-organising Bondi Innovation Forum and each month running social drinks and Tech startup meetups.

Where we’re going

Our vision of Bondi region as a world-class innovation center remains. This consists of two major elements: 

* Catalysing a rich network of amazing people connecting and inspiring each other on the Eastern beaches

* Supporting the development of a substantial innovation precinct in Bondi Junction to transform it into a highly dynamic hub

We are an alliance of those who would like to see these happen. Thank you for being on the journey with us!

What to expect in 2023

Our basic intention is to continue positive momentum towards our vision, bringing more amazing people into the community and connecting them in useful ways.  

Our ability to accelerate that progress depends on the community’s support. Membership is free and almost every event we ran in 2022 was free. This is of course not sustainable in being able to grow our impact.  

2023 events

Events to help connect our wonderful members and grow the community will continue to be the heart of our activities.

Monthly social drinks

We will continue to run monthly social drinks for anyone to come and connect, every single time there is a wonderful mix of highly inspiring local entrepreneurs and fabulous conversations, be sure to come along!

Next social drinks next Tuesday 14th! Details here.

Group meetups

Our highly successful Tech startups meetup will now be quarterly. Be sure to read our emails for notifications.

Many of our members have expressed interest in group meetups on topics including health and wellbeing, green/eco/environmental, social enterprise, eCommerce, growth hacking/ social media, and AI/ML.

We need a host to be able to run any of these meetups - you will get connected to some awesome people! Steven Muller has put up his hand to host a health/wellbeing group. Anyone else? Please reply to this email if you’re interested.

Other events 

We are also planning a series of high-level Innovation Breakfasts in Bondi Junction and a Founders Lunch, among other initiatives. More details soon!

Team

To make anything of substance happen we need one or more awesome people on the team, focusing on events and community. We can pay within constrained budgets, we will be able to reward better as our initiatives grow!

Please get in touch if you’re interested in helping an awesome local community grow and connecting with the most amazing locals, or know anyone we should talk to.

Mentor program

We are looking for financial support to launch a mentor program. If you're interested please express interest in being a mentor or mentee here, we hope to be able to launch something before long.

Online community

We are looking into whether we will reinvigorate our Slack community or switch to a different platform. You can of course always engage on our Bondi Creative Entrepreneurs Facebook group if you have questions for the community or are looking for support. 

Help grow the community!

Please support us in any way you can, by coming to our events, telling the right people about Bondi Innovation, connecting us with anyone who has energy to help make good things happen for the community.

See you at one of our events soon!

Ross and the Bondi Innovation team