DIF Festival secured for another two years
08 September 2022
- The DIF Team
The Victorian Government has committed to hosting the popular festival for a further two years, keeping Victoria at the forefront of innovation and supporting our thriving innovation ecosystem.
The best of Victoria’s innovation and tech sectors came together for this year’s Digital Innovation Futures (DIF) Festival, celebrating our cutting-edge tech and inspiring innovation ecosystem.
From lively debates and startup pitch nights to innovation seminars and networking events, DIF brings together people and organisations focused on advancing innovation and technology in Victoria.
DIF2022 festival highlights
This year’s Festival saw over 200 events across the state from the opening night celebration of the launch of the Cremorne Digital Hub to the closing Top Tech Trends Debate.
Many annual events returned including the Committee for Melbourne’s second Public Libraries Victoria Showcase featuring makerspaces from Docklands to Wodonga.
The Pearcey Foundation continued the conversation on the future of work bringing together both sides of the market - the ICT professionals represented by the Australian Computing Society (ACS) and businesses via the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA).
Startups making a difference
The startup community was certainly excited to get together in person at The Commons Cremorne (pictured above) on Tuesday 30 August for Startup Victoria’s Inspiring Young Founders Pitch Night.
Four startups took the stage in the end, the Judge's Choice Award went to Why Hive for their platform to democratise data analytics for organisations to measure social impact and support innovation.
The People's Choice Award went to Virtetic for its game-based virtual reality digital therapeutics (VRx) for people living with limb loss, empowering the prosthetics community in Australia and beyond.
Hybrid events offer a choice to engage 
This year was a truly hybrid festival with in-person events for the first time since 2019. Most audiences and presenters preferred to attend online and so we worked with DIF event partners to develop a program of live-streamed and on-demand events in 2022.
Online content can be watched wherever you are and many of the team watched on their phone whilst they worked (pictured right).
Industry partner nbn Australia delivered a daily lunch n learn webinar across the whole two weeks. The benefit of webinars is that their national network of community and business ambassadors were able to present.
This year we had a ‘watch party’ at the Geelong DIF Hub Geelong with nbn leading cybersecurity expert presenting from Perth.
For participants who couldn’t attend in person, where able, sessions were recorded and then available on-demand. The NFP Tech webinar series by Infoxchange and Connecting Up returned with updated content for the community sector to better manage their digital transformation.
Reconnecting networks
The DIF community has remained connected online over the past two years delivering two fully virtual festivals. But our festival partners were excited to meet in person.
The DIF Hubs network was rebooted across six metro and regional locations. Thank you to our venue partners Melbourne Connect, ACS Victoria, Runway in Ballarat and Geelong, The Herd Warragul and Bright Coworking who not only hosted key events but also opened their coworking spaces.
The nbn team played an integral role in supporting the DIF Hubs network to bring together local business and community representatives to explore opportunities for digital transformation.
“It was great to facilitate this workshop in person, whilst hybrid workshops serve a purpose, there's nothing than can really replicate getting everyone into one room!”
Linda Wong, Runway HQ
Runway HR ran a Geelong Leaders’ Collaborative DIF Festival Workshop exploring elements of a community-led vision to be internationally recognised as a UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) city and region. The workshop was attended by representatives from City of Greater Geelong, Geelong Arts Centre, Circular Economy Victoria, nbn Australia, Geelong Libraries and the Geelong Chamber of Commerce.
Ballarat hosted a follow up event bringing together local business, government and community to explore how innovation can help the development of their own UCCN in the region.
Data privacy next tech trend
The closing night we looked to the future with the ever-popular Top Tech Trends Debate, hosted by The Churchill Club. In a photo-finish, it was Shaanan Cohney who was crowned the winner of this year's Top Tech Trends Debate with his trend of ‘Privately Sharing Data’.
Shaanan presented a spirited pitch on an emerging trend that he believes will explode into a ‘trillion dollar industry’ within the next 5 years, utilising PETS (Privacy Enhancing Technologies) to allow various personal data to be compiled without ever sharing that data publicly- an emerging tech trend that Shaanan identified as particularly critical to the future of healthcare that has the potential to improve outcomes and opportunities without compromising patients privacy.
Join us for #DIF2023 and #DIF2024
The DIF Festival will continue to showcase amazing talent, provide a platform for insightful minds to connect and create new opportunities.
We look forward to planning the next two years as we collectively explore how technology and innovation can make a difference for all Victorians.
Save the dates for the DIF2023 Festival: opening 23 August - closing 6 September.
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