MORGO Barossa 2017 — Phew!
Bring together the leaders of high-charging tech companies and what do you get? Two days of intense discussion, debate, hilarity, shared moments of despair, incredible escapes from despair — and lots of new friends.
The first Morgo in Australia, in the Barossa Valley last week, brought together an eclectic group of high growth entrepreneurs to share their stories and hang out together.
And the themes? Data data data. You can’t talk about marketing now without talking about data. And everyone needed to talk about marketing.
Steve Gray of Mission Control Digital (US) told us how to use data to shape development of a game, Martin Brown and Suzanne Kendrick of Wine-Searcher explained how they are expanding the use of their data, Dave Whittle’s Lexer marketing company is just frankly ALL about data.
And diversity. From 25 year-old Jess Wilson of fashion app Stashd to senior entrepreneur Peter Farrell of top medtech company Resmed. There was Gower Smith of Swyft talking about automated shopping, Sam Riley about online data rooms, Justin Miller has awesome IQBuds — people were buying these online as he talked! Karen Sanders of Real Serious Games showed us how they use gaming technology to visualise construction projects and safety incidents, Linda Jenkinson enthralled us with her adventures as a serial entrepreneur — starting from the way she raised her pet lambs, and Andy Lark delivered us another wake-up call on where marketing is going.
And brain food. Andrew Dzurak’s talk on quantum computing was very well received, although there was a definite view that a few glasses of wine would be needed to understand the electrons spinning in both directions at the same time. And Alan Noble talked about his Aus Oceans project — and is rumoured to have got into an intense late night debate on climate change. Glad that was being led by someone who might have the data!
So what is Morgo? Morgo is a chance for the leaders of high growth companies going global to come together and learn from each other. (It’s mostly tech companies but who knows where tech begins and ends.) It’s intense, it’s exciting, it’s a trusted environment for sharing. It’s always held outside a city, and the beautiful Barossa got us all in a good mood to start with.
Being an entrepreneur can be lonely: who do you turn to when things are really going wrong and you have to encourage your employees, your investors and your customers? At Morgo people shared some of these experiences. And that’s when you see what great entrepreneurs do — they carry on. Energetic, creative, relentless.
The outcome? The idea of Morgo is to send people away recharged, re-excited about being in business. And it worked! The stories of what happened next will have to wait …
An enormous thank you to the sponsoring partners who made this possible: the Centre for Business Growth (UniSA), Gilbert+Tobin, Datacom, North Ridge Partners, Ansarada, the Government of South Australia. And the ones who added a bit of fun: Mollydooker for the fabulous wine and teaching us the Mollydooker shake, and Lux Group who donated two Luxury Escape holidays. One of these was a prize for the worst travel story — well, the best telling of the worst travel experience. This was highly competitive!
Next up: Morgo Bay of Islands 31 August, 1 September. Celebrate Xero being 10 years old — Rod Drury will be there to tell us what became of his “Morgo baby”. Lots more being cooked up too.
And it’s time to start planning the next Morgo Australia! See you there?
