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Business Development Program Open for Applications

By Business Development Program, City of Fremantle, community, Event, fSpace, Special Offer, Startups

fSpace recently celebrated our 4th birthday with an event that included a visit from Mayor Brad Pettitt.

The mayor was on hand to formally announce funding for a third Business Development Program – a collaborative program between fSpace and The City of Fremantle that provides financial support to businesses within the creative industries.

Mayor Pettitt said, “The Business Development Program is a unique collaboration between the City of Fremantle and fSpace designed to promote the local creative and knowledge economy, assist start-ups and small business to grow and to encourage innovation in Fremantle.”

“This program has been a great driver in attracting individuals and businesses from outside Fremantle, with the majority of participants still going strong here in Fremantle.”

fSpace owner, Sabine Albers, said that over the two previous years, this program has helped over 20 businesses develop and grow in Fremantle.

“In addition to the financial support towards a professional workspace, businesses have benefited from the inspiring energy, collaborations, and strong sense of community at fSpace.”

She added that some former program participants have grown their businesses and are now in larger, dedicated offices in Fremantle.

“Our members, including former program participants, are doing ground breaking and award winning things in a variety of industries, including creative, health, professional services and technology.”

The Business Development Program offers qualified businesses and start-ups three to six months of subsidised workspace at fSpace.

To be eligible for the program, a business must fall within the creative industries sector. These are businesses that are primarily focused on individual creativity, skill and talent.

Curve Tomorrow was one of the first participants of this program when they expanded to Western Australia from offices in Melbourne.

Mo Jaimangal, a cofounder and director of Curve Tomorrow, previously explained during an fSpace Talks Event that they seek to positively impact the lives of 1 billion people by applying their knowledge of technology in health and medical services.

 

When the mayor asked for an example of this, Mo spoke about the work they’ve done with leading autism researchers to automate the diagnosis of children on the autism spectrum.

He explained, “We’ve taken what they were doing – a very manual process with psychologists observing children playing with toys, timing them with a stopwatch and making notes with pen and paper – and created a game that can be played on an iPad.”

“In addition to a quicker and more efficient diagnosis that leads to earlier treatments, this assessment can be done anywhere. We collect and store the test results on a secure cloud, where psychologists can look at them and decide on treatments.”

The Business Development Program is available to new business start-ups as well as existing businesses that are looking to develop and grow from Fremantle.

This year’s program has added optional coaching and mentorship towards developing a formal business plan – a crucial step for any new business start up.

Sabine Albers said she loves the diversity of the people who share and make her fSpace what it is.

“It’s really exciting to have such a mix of passionate people doing so many interesting and helpful things. The energy this creates is just fantastic.”

Sabine added that values of empathy, respect and support continue to create an inspiring atmosphere that not only helps maximize productivity, but also creates an environment that people want to a part of.

To learn more about the Business Development Program, visit fspace.me/business.

fSpace Talks – Curve Tomorrow

By community, Entrepreneur, fSpace Talks, Profiles

Think about the business you have or work at.

What goals does it have in terms of reaching and impacting people?

Curve Tomorrow is a fascinating international business that exists to improve the lives of people by solving challenging problems. Their humble goal is “to positively impact the lives of 1 billion people”.

Mohinder Jaimangal, a founder and director of Curve Tomorrow, readily admits that their goal of 1 billion is incredibly ambitious, but also notes that with the nearby populations of India and Asia, it’s not as farfetched as it might first seem.

Curve Tomorrow was founded in 2009 by a group of university friends in Melbourne, Australia. To understand the business, it’s important to understand a little about these friends and how they came to work together.

After perhaps wisely moving on from dreams of a career as a professional basketball player, Mo studied mechatronics – technology combining software, electronics and mechanical engineering – at The University of Melbourne.

After graduating, he joined Object Consulting, a consultancy that specialized in software development. While expecting to work on robotics, he spent most of his time creating apps for banking and telecommunication clients.

This consultancy led to an interesting role in a decidedly larger company, Holden. Working with a good friend and future cofounder of Curve Tomorrow, Mo helped lead an innovation and development team for Holden and General Motors worldwide.

Working out of Melbourne and GM headquarters in Detroit with eye-popping budgets, Mo worked on concept cars by developing 10-year innovation plans with trend analysis and user interface designs for vehicles of the future.

After Holden, Mo joined Dius, a startup technology company that specialized in pure agile software development. Coming in when there were nine people in the company, Dius has since grown to over 125 employees. It was here Mo experienced the roller coaster ride of how a start-up transitions into a small-medium enterprise.

Throughout all these roles, Mo came to realize the importance of two factors that would influence the direction of his career. One – doing work that contributed a positive social impact, and two – appreciating the value and enjoyment of working with good friends.

Both these elements were present when Mo helped start Bliss, a luxury chocolate label and retail chain in India. In addition to marketing a luxury product, Bliss had significant social reinvestment and worked towards breaking barriers and creating opportunities for the disadvantaged.

This of course led the same university friends combining to create Curve Tomorrow. Now, less than 10 years later, they’ve expanded to have offices in Australia, USA, India, Sri Lanka and France.

Their main focus is currently on healthcare, however they have plans to venture into education and environmental areas as well.

Incorporating best practices from previous businesses, the directors of Curve Tomorrow have implemented three key strategic principles: lean startup, design thinking and agile development. This approach has led to multiple awards, which has raised their profile and opened doors to funding opportunities.

Curve Tomorrow is interesting in that they do not focus on job titles. While each director has a role that relates to responsibilities normally associated with a CEO or CFO, they are in such constant communication that there is substantial overlap. They also promote an open, equal culture where everyone is valued, which is why ‘junior’ or ‘senior’ titles are not used in their company.

Projects range from process automation improvement in hospitals to automating existing research processes. Research into these areas has afforded them full access to all aspects of health care delivery, including even into operating theatres during surgical procedures.

Curve Tomorrow has worked with world-class health organizations around the world to improve efficiencies, solve clinical problems and commercialize intellectual property.

One example is the development of HeadCheckTM, an app that helps parents and coaches recognize the signs and symptoms of concussion in children. Designed by leading child concussion experts in Australia, this app is endorsed by the AFL and is available for free download.

An example of improving efficiencies is their development of a Q-MaxTM, a desktop app that enables a team at the Victorian Clinical Genetics Services to perform research and screening for epigenetic mutations (a genetic condition) more accurately and efficiently.

Q-MaxTM took a practice that routinely took four days to process thousands of samples over multi-step spreadsheet analysis and reduced it to a seamless ten-second task. This new process also eliminated data entry error, which results in better outcomes from the research.

Curve Tomorrow also co-developed PeersTM, an iPad app that is the first digital and objective assessment tool to enable early detection of social disorders in children. Traditional detection processes typically include observing children, documenting findings on a written report, and then inputting the information into a program for analysis. PeersTM is an age appropriate game that children play while being automatically assessed for primary characteristics of autism spectrum disorders. This lets health professionals detect social behaviour problems more quickly and easily, leading to critical early intervention treatments.

It’s work like this that makes it easy to hope Curve Tomorrow reaches their lofty goals as soon as possible.

Check out www.curvetomorrow.com for more information.

fSpace Talks – Troy Gerwien

By City of Fremantle, community, events, fSpace Talks

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Troy was the latest to present at our fSpace Talks series, but he took his presentation in a different direction.

Troy is an IT consultant, software developer and web developer. He’s worked in and consulted for a variety of businesses, NGOs, as well as in the health & education sectors. Troy recently started his own company, Structable, but instead chose to focus his talk on some interesting volunteer work he’s involved in.

CoderDojo is a grass-roots charitable organization that was created to provide free mentoring to children aged 7-17 on how to code software. CoderDojo was founded in 2011 by a teenager, James Whelton. In 2010, young James enjoyed 5 minutes of fame for successfully hacking an iPod he’d won.

Just a few years after opening the first CoderDojo, there are now over 1000 locations spread across 63 countries. CoderDojo has a goal of 1500 locations teaching coding to 100,000 children.

Each Dojo club operates independently and while there are some structures, there are no curriculums or strict frameworks. Kids can (and are encouraged to) create whatever they want, including games, apps, music, and websites.

Troy volunteers at the Fremantle Dojo and he shared how he applies the fundamentals to coding (steps, loops & decisions) in helping kids learn how to code. Troy showed that unlike the typical black screen with all the lines that professional coders live in, CoderDojos use Scratch – a visual and intuitive coding program created by some very smart people at MIT.

Some good reasons for kids to learn coding include:

  • It helps opens doors
  • Much like our smartphones, technology is becoming simpler
  • It provides an endlessly creative outlet
  • It promotes systematic thinking
  • Lots of kids love it

Another good reason is the surprising prediction that by the year 2025, roughly 50% of all jobs are likely to be obsolete. Creative thinking and the ability to break down steps to work out options and processes will be critical skills as new jobs emerge.

Troy showed us that coding with Scratch is much like playing with Lego – you can select options, move things around and create a lot of different things.

With our input, Troy created a basic spaceship game from a blank screen in about 10 minutes. As he would with a kid at the Fremantle Dojo, he described each step in creating the game as he used the intuitive drag-and-drop blocks the Scratch programming tool provides.

Visit coderdojo.com for more information or visit the Fremantle Dojo, which meets every Wednesday from 3:30 pm to 5:00 pm at the Fremantle City Library. Anyone interested in becoming a mentor or enrolling a child can stop by during these hours.

Thanks Troy for the presentation!

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fSpace + Loop

By community, fSpace, Special Offer

Screen Shot 2017-01-17 at 11.15.52 AM

fSpace is pleased to announce a partnership with Loop!

Loop is a cool group of people who are linking coworking spaces around the world. Loop offers monthly plans that lets its members work at over 90 (and counting) coworking spaces for free or discounted rates.

fSpace members receive a free membership to Loop.

For more info, check out Loop at https://loop.space/

fSpace 3rd Birthday

A Healthy Choice on Leake St.

By community

Australia Royals

fSpace is excited about the new trendy Melbourne style cafe in our very own little courtyard.

On top of being the newest addition to our building and serving up fine quality coffee and healthy, great tasting food, former MasterChef contestant Wade Drummond is also embarking on a unique new project in 2016 tackling nutritional education in WA schools and empowering children to feed themselves and their families.

Wade’s Cooking For A Generation Project aims to launch between February and April in the new year and will be targeted towards students between 10-12 years old in lower socio-economic schools around WA without access to things such as market gardens or proper food education.

They will lead the project which will be accepting volunteers with anything from basic to advanced cooking experience to help educate school children around Perth.

Volunteers will teach groups of students how to prepare and cook a dish over the course of an eight week period. By the end of that time, volunteers will have managed to teach kids the basics of nutrition and how to cook a decent meal.

“Ideally at the end of the project they will be able to make a simple meal for themselves and their family.”

Wade spoke to fSpace about his concern over how many children live off a diet of fast food and don’t actually have a clue what a fruit or vegetable even look likes.

“It’s important to teach kids how to make healthy food choices,” he said.

“How are they going to choose to eat healthy food they haven’t seen or tried them before?”

“I want to empower kids to feed themselves the right thing.”

The Leake St. Cafeteria owner also mentioned the fantastic local support he was receiving for the project after reaching his $15,000 Kickstarter goal with lots of people still hoping to contribute.

The plan is to add components of the project where if volunteers had even only basic food knowledge, then they could still take that and teach it at a school over the course of an eight week period.

“By the end of that time, volunteers will hopefully have managed to teach these kids the basics of nutrition and how to cook.”

“Ideally at the end of that they can make a simple meal for themselves and their family,” he said.

Wade is currently loving his recent sea-change living and working full-time from Freo. With the amazing produce from right next door’s grocer Kakulas Sisters, this ex-MasterChef contestant assured us he is never short of inspiration.

“The people curious enough to venture down the back of Kukulas or down a little secret laneway on Leake St. to find you are already willing to try something new,” he said.

If you like to know more about this awesome project stop by for a coffee or healthy bite to eat and a chat at Leake St. Cafeteria by walking through Kukula’s Sister on Market St. or following the yellow painted line through the alley way on Leake St.

 

More about Wade’s Cooking for a Generation project, click on the link below:
Wade’s Cooking For A Generation KickStarter