Joining A Lot To Say is Ben Keenan - Consulting Creative Director, Advisor and all-rounder with creative projects. He has led digital creative offerings at M&C Saatchi and Clemenger BBDO in Melbourne, and has received a significant amount of accolades for his work across multiple clients and industries. We go through his career starting with immersion in indie band scene, through to leading teams creating projects in-house at big agencies, to eventually branching out into his own consultancy...
Dec 15, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 32
In this A Lot To Say episode, Eileen Ormsby joins for a chat about her experience as a Dark Web expert. She's a lawyer, author and freelance journalist based in Melbourne and has written multiple books with her first, ' Silk Road' , being an in-depth expose of the black markets that operate on the dark web. Following that, Eileen wrote ' The Darkest Web' which established her as a go-person for all things Dark Web focussed. She’s a prolific author, contributor and journalist for a range of publi...
Dec 14, 2021•1 hr•Ep. 31
Mel Huang is an interactive designer and developer for the arts, culture & education sectors collaborating with institutions such as Dark Mofo, Science Gallery, NGV and Art Gallery NSW. She is a former sessional lecturer at RMIT teaching Creative Coding, founder of Technecolour which is bringing technical education to creative practitioners, and the novice, avid fermenter behind No Fun for Children hot sauce. A few points in the chit-chat: Diving into hot sauce and fermentation journeys The ...
Dec 13, 2021•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 30
Karina Utomo is a well-known artist fronting bands such as the award winning High Tension, as well as emerging extreme musical projects Rinuwat and Kilat. Referencing her Indonesian heritage and connection to country and cultural identity, Karina explores what recent context has inspired her recent projects and intentions, alongside a number of collaborators she feels a special connection to, helping the creative process and expression. By disintegrating the voice and using abrasion as a tool, K...
Nov 11, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 29
Scott Cooper is the COO of Versus Merch and has years of experience in scaling businesses in both Australia and the United States, including his past roles with Go1 and Drawboard. Coops dives into some opportunities he has created for himself over the years- from moving overseas and making a name for himself in new cities a few times over, to finding himself immersed in the NBA environment to form a pretty amazing vantage point of how professional athletes operate. Punk/ Hardcore/Metal sub-cultu...
Nov 05, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 28
Leah Heiss is an award-winning designer and researcher working at the nexus of design, health, and technology. She is the Eva and Marc Besen International Research Chair in Design at Monash University, as part of Monash Art, Design and Architecture. Leah grows the potential of practice based design research across disciplines, including Medicine and Engineering. She focusses on how design can scaffold major shifts in healthcare towards digitisation and personalisation of healthcare, while contin...
Oct 28, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 27
Emily Ulman joins A Lot To Say to talk about her experience creating Isol-Aid, an award-winning online music festival and community, profiling musicians – who would otherwise have had shows, launches, tours, and other appearances planned – to create content and stream live and online to an audience of their already devoted fans, as well as new fans who are there waiting to discover and connect. For over 19 years, Emily Ulman has curated stages and shows at venues across Melbourne, notably The Pr...
Oct 26, 2021•59 min•Ep. 26
Excellent to have Jamie Skella, technologist and outspoken distributed workforce advocate, join us for this episode as part of the re-launched A Lot To Say podcast. Jamie's spent 20 years in the design, building and advising of emerging industry businesses across blockchain, IoT, VR, and even future food. Formerly Head of User Experience at the AFL, Jamie's current appointment is that of Chief Product Officer at TRAVLR, a travel-tech business decentralising the consumer travel booking paradigm. ...
Oct 19, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 25
Joining as the first guest of the the relaunch of A Lot To Say is artist and adventurer Kate Berry, the founder of OK Motels, bringing Music, Art and Friendship down the highway to Motels all across regional Victoria. From Charlton to Geelong and beyond, OK Motels brings locals and out-of-towners together in the most memorable ways, set against a curated backdrop of Australia's best musical acts- Amyl and the Sniffers, Rolling Blackout Coastal Fever, Cash Savage, The Nation Blue to name just a f...
Oct 18, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 24
Brilliant chat to end 2020 with the guys from Funny Business Podcast (Lachlan Bradford & Robbie Hicks), who went on an absolute tear in 2020 launching out their podcast project to a budding (& big) audience who responded to what they put out into the world with big love. A natural, honest, unconcerned-with-perfection approach that sees some hugely organic conversations evolve with the storytellers who get involved. They get a good dose of props from this end for all their hard work pushi...
Dec 21, 2020•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 23
Alan Jones (the good one) joins the A LOT TO SAY Podcast for the 2nd last released for 2020, and the 2nd one recorded in-person thus far. Alan is regularly enlisted as an entrepreneur in residence for various accelerator programs and is an active investor, advisor and mentor for all matters pertaining to technology growth, investment, go-to-market strategy, marketing, PR and so much more. Alan is a part of the furniture in the Australian technology ecosystem, but in so many ways as he communicat...
Dec 20, 2020•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 22
Kunal Kalro joins this episode to talk through what he and his team are growing with Eugene Labs- helping people make smarter health care choices in a convenient manner, whilst advocating people take proactive investigation into their personal health and utilise preventative measures. We go into a bit of detail on the practical processes of building and growing a startup - courting co-founders, raising capital, managing a growing group etc. But also, we get into a lot of detail about the things ...
Dec 17, 2020•59 min•Ep. 21
SANDREW are well known in the street art scene in Melbourne (and beyond) for their voracious collecting of works by some of the world's best street artists. They've championed the street art scene loudly and have supported many artists over the years to help expose them to larger audiences/ ways to create a sustainable living as artists. We talk about what they are most passionate about, what drives their (usually competitive) collecting behaviour, their love of community engagement and the anti...
Dec 16, 2020•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 20
Georgia Frances King joins to talk both about her career journey (of which there is a stark delineation between a lifestyle career and a technology career) as well as talk through the experiences she has witnessed in 2020 from her front row seat in New York City as the USA experiences a time of great upheaval and struggle. Georgia talks about the micro-moments we experience, the perception of media outlets by a media professional, helping people craft their stories by honing their ideas and of c...
Dec 09, 2020•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 19
Andy Miller joins us to talk about the journey he and the team are taking with Heaps Normal- an independent NON-alcoholic beer company that have launched into the market with a bit of a bang, gathering a raft of supporters as they go. With growing the brand via some unconventional means such as startup accelerators like Startmate and other traditional ways such as strategic industry partnerships, it's the mission of Heaps Normal to normalise a non-alcoholic drinking culture that is certainly str...
Dec 07, 2020•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 18
Jaddan Comerford joins A LOT TO SAY to talk about his life's journey in the music industry and the many experiences and perspectives he has gathered along the way- reflections on leadership, artistic pursuits and livelihoods, projects, investment opportunities and even working side-by-side with his wife Rachael! We talk about the growth of UNIFIED involving the suite of services that they offer with a global focus, and how the tides have changed for the creative/ music industries in the past, no...
Dec 03, 2020•57 min•Ep. 17
Joel Connolly is Blackbird Ventures creative force, working primarily on building the venture capital group into a world-class business. Joel builds the brand & culture, and works on their social mission - to inspire young people through education and entrepreneurship. He is also the head of the Blackbird Foundation, which provides community grants and strategic funding to supercharge the creative capabilities of young people. But during the chat we dive into Joel's about-face of a career, p...
Nov 27, 2020•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 16
Giulia Giannini McGauran, or GG McG, is a creative director, artistic director, photographer and/ creative collaborator. Regularly photographing musical acts and artists in her highly distinctive style, Giulia relishes the collaborative nature of any project (and there are many) After returning to study with a niche focussed advertising degree, Giulia emerged with a sharper focus to her creative focus and a greater understanding of how her work could complement musicians in particular. She even ...
Nov 26, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 15
Oscar McMahon has been a touring musician, slung beers in bars, and even been categorised as a model for a fleeting moment. He is a business owner of The Unicorn Hotel in Paddington, Sydney and of course, is more commonly known as a co-founder of much-loved, independent, Newtown Sydney based brewery: Young Henrys. Like most good stories, Young Henrys one started over a beer. Meeting on opposite sides of the bar, Richard Adamson and Oscar McMahon got talking over their love of beer and music, and...
Aug 27, 2020•53 min•Ep. 14
Lisy Kane is a videogames producer currently making waves in the industry. In 2017, Lisy was recognised by Forbes in its prestigious top 30 list: Forbes 30 Under 30 2017: Games. Ranked alongside the world’s best game makers, Lisy was the only Australian to make the who’s who of the global gaming industry. In 2014, Lisy joined forces with four other digital professionals to co-found Girl Geek Academy with a mission to teach 1 million women to get into tech and launch their own startups by 2025. G...
Aug 26, 2020•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 13
Rachael Neumann plays across many parts of the startup ecosystem, recently as the founder of Working Theory Angels - a new angel network designed to mobilise more investment into early stage startups and attract new investors to the space and previously as Head of Startups in Australia & New Zealand for Amazon Web Services. She is a strategic advisor and investor to a number of founders and their early stage companies and is a Partner in Startmate, Australia’s most ambitious accelerator. She...
Aug 25, 2020•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 12
Joan Westenberg is an award winning Australian PR director, contemporary writer, and creative. She is the founder of PR and communications firm Studio Self. Her approach to messaging, communication and semiotics has built her reputation as a writer, and she has been named as one of the leading startup voices in Australia by SmartCompany. Her writing has appeared in The SF Chronicle, Wired, The AFR, The Observer, ABC, Junkee, SBS, Crikey and over 40+ publications. Her regular work can be found on...
Aug 24, 2020•1 hr•Ep. 11
Tim Shiel is an electronic musician who is well known for his work composing music for video games such as Duet, Induction and The Gardens Between. He is a radio announcer on Triple J/ Double J, and has interviewed hundreds upon thousands of musicians over the years and programs regular broadcasts showcasing emerging artists and generally damn good vibes. Tim founded Spirit Level, an artist-run music label based in Melbourne, in 2014 alongside his long-time collaborator and friend Wally de Backe...
Aug 24, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 10
Jeremy Wortsman is the founder and director of The Jacky Winter Group, a leading creative services agency with offices in Melbourne and New York City. He also heads up its associated gallery space, Lamington Drive, and related artist residency, Jacky Winter Gardens. An active figure in the creative community, he is the host of the Melbourne chapter of Creative Mornings, a founding member of The Contemplary, and serves on the board of directors for Craft Victoria. In a previous life, he was the c...
Aug 24, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 9
As the world’s leading authority on sextech, Bryony Cole is fascinated by the way technology permeates every corner of our lives, even the most intimate ones. Since launching the top-rated podcast Future of Sex, Bryony has been on stages across the world forecasting trends in the sextech industry for governments, tech titans and entertainment companies. Her incredible body of research, global sextech hackathons and annual Future of Sex report are considered the pinnacle of industry insights and ...
Aug 23, 2020•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 8
Cormac Sheehan is the Editor in Chief of Green Planet, which exists to promote transparency, sustainability and equality in the cannabis industry, as well as the Founder & Managing Director of Purpose Communications - using data-driven insights and providing transparent, honest, values-driven marketing. Cormac has been a globally touring musician in the punk/ hardcore scene and having settled in Melbourne for the best part of the last decade, he has been at work in the cannabis information a...
Aug 20, 2020•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 7
Jeanette Cheah is co-founder and CEO of Hacker Exchange (HEX), a tertiary-accredited organisation connecting the next generation of startup founders to Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv, Singapore and beyond. Through HEX and her other projects, Jeanette is dedicated to helping young leaders grow as global citizens – developing entrepreneurship and innovation skills, and bridging the gap between academic curriculum and the realities of the rapidly evolving workplace. Jeanette also leads tech diversity pro...
Aug 19, 2020•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 6
Kaylene Langford is an entrepreneur and the Founder/ Director of Startup Creative. Kaylene runs Startup Creative as a business coach, inspirational speaker, facilitator and educator. She creates magazines, podcasts, blogs (and now books) and is a prolific advocate for ‘ how to start a side-hustle.’ An expert in bringing people, ideas and resources together, Kaylene has established a reputation for empowering individuals to harness their passion, create viable businesses, and ensure they thrive. ...
Aug 18, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 5
Sally Hill is an Experience Strategist, digital communicator and purpose-driven business expert. Sally’s founded and run two businesses, and is most well known for being the founder of experience design agency Wildwon and delivering the hugely regarded Purpose Conference in Aus. As well as being a leading authority in environmental sustainability and B-Corp advocate, she is also a big supporter of utilising personal branding when driving purpose driven businesses. A few points in the chit-chat: ...
Aug 17, 2020•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 4
Nick Crocker is a Partner at Blackbird Ventures - he runs the Blackbird Melbourne office and sits on the boards of Culture Amp, nura, Applied, Eucalyptus, XY Sense & Startmate. Along with launching Startmate in Melbourne, growing numerous startups and now with Blackbird, helping to supercharge Australian and New Zealand’s most ambitious technology company founders, Nick also produces an awesome curated weekly Substack newsletter ‘Branches’ which I highly recommend checking out! Previously, N...
Aug 17, 2020•56 min•Ep. 3
