Business leaders recently came together for the Goulburn Region Innovation Network (GRIN) forum to discuss the city's business environment and ideas to innovate.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
One of the speakers on the night was Liam O'Duibhir from Bega Valley Innovation Hub who shared his story and discussed Bega's goal to establish 1000 jobs by the year 2030.
As a software engineer, he said there were no jobs for him in that town.
"I started a social networking group for those in technology and grew from seven to 60 people over a period of time. We started working for clients in Sydney, Canberra etc for startups," he said.
"We started getting lots of support and received funds from the Council in 2016 to run regional innovation in Bega Valley. We ran events and invited Chief information Officers (CIO), Hackathon and game development jams, among others, and by the end of it had 10 new businesses."
On setting up a similar hub in Goulburn, he said it would be a good forum to encourage unusual and unique businesses if it got going.
"Maybe there are ideas in the minds of school leavers and young people which, with some encouragement and seed capital, could potentially realise that dream. If this tech hub gets going, it will be a good forum for that. It would be nice to have a younger cohort who might take some leadership and ownership of this themselves and drive it," he said.
Speaker Brigid Kennedy spoke about the initiative undertaken by the Moss Vale Chamber of Commerce, which was based on Renew Newcastle to help draw businesses and consumers into the town's central business district.
It involved offering local boutique businesses a rent-free shopfront for a 30-day rolling lease period.
"It's a multi-pronged approach. It needs to have landlords leading the market, innovation, and enthusiasm from Council to enable business, which is present in Goulburn," she said.
"It needs to have innovation and excitement in the area to then make people want to have businesses. It will happen organically if these ingredients are there. If you add those ingredients, people will be excited to do the rest themselves," Ms Kennedy said.
The forum included discussions on how empty shops could be used and re-purposed and calls for greater support of businesses.
Darrell Weekes from Purple Thread Marketing spoke about empty shops on the main street.
He gave an example of how former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani fixed the broken windows and how it changed people's perceptions that it was a much safer area.
Did you know the Goulburn Post is now offering breaking news alerts and a weekly email newsletter? Keep up-to-date with all the local news: sign up below.
