I didn't have a chance to catch the whole talk as I went to a Google Wave/Google Maps lecture which was organised by the Warren Innovatin Centre.  Michael Doneman talked to The Hive Brisbane attendees and he was kind enough to provide some points from his talk post-event.  Please get in contact with him if these interest you.

I also decided to add in a few points which I think Brisbane Creative Industries readers are interested in.  Enjoy, be enlightened and have a great Sunday night!

THE HIVE BRISBANE
Life is a Project.
HS: We go through life with projects coming in and out - whether they are ideas or these ideas have been massaged into reality.

Teaching Entrepreneurs is like Herding Cats Blindfolded on Acid.

Entrepreneurship – risk, weirdness, and ethics and tell-tale signs of creeping entrepreneurship, ways of taking your own entrepreneurial pulse ... I want to do this from the point of view of my direct experience with Edgeware
HS: Michael is Director of Edgeware

Edgeware Creative Entrepreneurship is about three years old as a stand alone company but it’s based on about 25 years of practice. (Arts, cultural development, community services.  Strongly influenced by experience working with Indigenous people and by a Danish group called the Kaospilots.)
HS: Who else here engages in arts cultural practice fused with a specific focus on entrepreneurship?  Who else engages in programs to hone their entrepreneurship skills?  Who here has been to an Edgeware or Kaospilots program?

The Edgeware motto is Make money, have fun, change the world.

HS: What is your motto?  The motto for Brisbane Creative Industries is "The professional development of emerging and established professionals in the Brisbane creative industries."

Edgeware is radically customer focused, and constantly evolving. Why? Because we’re teaching entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurship can’t be taught. Because each person’s pathway is unique.

You don’t teach entrepreneurship. You resource it, challenge it and accelerate it.

Risk

Entrepreneurs calculate risks. They don’t gamble. You don’t succeed without risking, and risks mean failure. Hopefully only occasional failure. You have to learn to deal with failure. Sometimes failure is a learning experience, sometimes it’s just a complete fuck-up. Welcome to entrepreneurship – if you don’t like it, get a job.

HS: I think that many stand-alone creatives can agree to this sentiment...there is the crossroads of either 'going for it' or not.

Another sign of creeping entrepreneurship: the development of resilience, which I define as the capacity to deal skilfully with failures and set backs, either to learn or to accept a tactical defeat and move on and persist. That’s another sign of creeping entrepreneurship – a growing capacity for resilience, related to a willingness to learn and sheer bloody persistence and hard work.
HS: What are your examples of being resilient for your creative practice?

Another tell-tale sign of creeping entrepreneurship – a growing recognition of Deep Weirdness. A psychographic, not a demographic. Feedback from Edgies – valuing each other. This networking (like the Hive) happens anyway, but you can resource it, challenge it and accelerate it .

HS: I recall something that my housemate told me a few days ago: Hannah, you are so weird.  I can't remember what triggered her to say it. 

HS: What are your networks?  How do you find the other weirdos out there?

Ethics

Moral philosophy is a big subject. Important for Edgeware due to the ‘change the world’ bit of our DNA.

You don’t ‘adopt’ ethical practices; you can’t operate without ethics, even if you couldn’t name them and you don’t have a code. We make moral judgements all the time and they’re the basis of our actions a lot of the time whether we recognise it or not. Question is: good ethics or not so good ethics, action which is good or action which is not so good?

‘Business is a baby’ – babies get different parenting. Some want their baby to grow up faster, smarter, richer than the other kids, some want them to grow up to be loving, compassionate, generous, maybe even happy, some want all of those things.

HS: Do you see your practise as a baby?

One final sign of creeping entrepreneurship: when it comes to your own business, there’s a real danger you’ll talk too much.

Thank you to MD and the Hive Brisbane organisers for the talk on June 30.  Make sure to subscribe to their site and keep in track of future events.