The harvest

Stronger Ground, and my first self-produced event series Future Shakers is in many ways the harvest of a 17 year story, which continues to develop and flourish. This is part of my journey walking along the path that's taken me here, where I am now, creating Pain Futures Summit and the many other positive change focussed gatherings to come. There are many ways to bring people together to work towards better futures, many people who are doing this work, and this is how I've become one.

17 years ago my housemate came home with a huge lush bunch of flowers. Grinning from ear to ear, Sim filled a vase in the kitchen and gushed about how well the day had gone, how fun it was, how it was so much more engaging and full of life to do events work compared to the usual PR and comms projects she’d worked on for most of her professional life. It was her first event gig, she’d nailed it, and she even got rewarded with a bunch of flowers at the end to boot. In that moment, I saw something I knew deep inside that I wanted for myself that I couldn’t quite put words to except, “events job”. Hell, I love flowers, and as an awkward, weird, autistic wallflower, events seemed like a logically odd choice for a profession, but… did I mention the flowers?! Something inside me knew more. About 6 months later I took on my first events job. My immediate prior employment obsession was “business research”, which also stemmed from envy, when one of my former fungal biology classmates in my Bachelor of Science degree in biological sciences got a grad job with one of the big 4 as a “business researcher”. Conference production promised “business research” and “events job” in one neat aspirational package, and after I failed my first job interview by not being able to spell liaison properly, I applied for every single conference producer job I could find until I got one. Marcus Evans was my first step into a world of shiny suits, fast talking sales calls, harder deadlines than I was reasonably built for, 5pm Friday drinks that would put uni college benders to shame, and learning to map a situation, map a territory, find all of the stakeholders involved, and bring something big and meaningful together. My first taste of it got me hooked so hard. Understanding the challenges people were facing, the learning people needed, the gatherings people wanted to meet their peers, share their highs and lows, take on shared goals, and explore opportunities to build bigger and better things together.

17 years later, I’ve produced and run over a hundred of these kinds of gatherings, I’ve used soft power to guide influential people in better directions in ways I couldn’t have possibly foreseen. Having agency in the world has come to mean a lot to me and I’ve taken the opportunities to wield soft power for purpose that I can.

I’ve been stalked and bitten by the lions and tigers and bears of labour exploitation, having to work as a mercenary on derivative boring events with no purpose besides profit, bogus contracting arrangements that should have been an employment contract, POLITICS, intellectual property theft, betrayal, unpaid and underpaid invoices, failure to back myself at times and letting people down, pressure to work through serious injury, groupthink, projective scapegoating and exile, and bullying, oh my! I've built wonderful lasting friendships, working relationships, connections and contacts, and helped become part of the fabric of many different industries, ecosystems and causes. I’ve fallen into long side quest rabbit holes of the evolutionary consciousness, psychedelics, permaculture, food security, disability and mental health advocacy, deep ecology, maker, DIYbio and burning man movements which have opened my mind to different ways of knowing, gathering, connecting, and sharing knowledge and working towards building a better world, with all of the very human joys, traps and wobbles along the way. I’ve brought the lessons of my events life back into science, for better and for worse at times (I learned a lot of tough lessons about patent protection, let me just say!) and they’ve helped me to trigger change in the plant / soil / microbe / climate impact space as well in my way.

This career path has been scary, it’s been growth promoting, it’s been grounding, and it’s been overall really satisfying, in a “Satisfied Mind” sense, where the sum of what I’ve contributed my hands and mind to over the years has left me feeling deeply contented.

I also eventually got a couple bunches of flowers to boot.

Stronger Ground, my consulting and self-produced event and media production business, and Future Shakers, our first launch series of events is in many ways the harvest of the last 17 years.

I’ve gotten to the place where focussing on positive change has to involve me taking a more solid gaze towards a better future, day after day, and empowering myself to overcome some of the serious fair work valuation and workplace safety challenges that are rife in my industry, both for myself and everyone who is collaborating with me.

Taking the leap to build Future Shakers, and my first launch event, Pain Futures has been a fulfilling and inspiring process so far, and I’m excited to see how this will grow and unfold over time.