We love telling stories so it was great to host Clark St Coffee Roasters and Augmented Reality application specialists OneFatSheep and hear their own thoughts and ideas on driving innovation in their own spaces.

Set as a casual breakfast hosted in Melbourne at Ways and Means Café, an intimate espresso bar pouring coffee from boutique local roaster Clark St there was a good mix of technology, innovation, digital and marketing professionals attending to expand their horizons on two hot topics – coffee and augmented reality.

First up was Tom and Melissa from Clark St Roasters @ClarkStRoasters in Richmond. Operating under the Clark St and Syndicate Espresso brands they are specialty roasters with a passion and focus on innovation and sustainability across the coffee supply chain. Tom and Melissa spoke about how they have managed to create strong partnerships direct with coffee growers in regions such as Brazil, Colombia and Costa Rica, working with farms that share their focus for sustainability and being eco-friendly. The increase in direct to trade relationships over the past five years have heavily benefitted the growers as they are able to get more in return for their product and push their own farm/region as brand attached to quality and great tasting coffee. Talking around innovation, they explained how they have created a number of biodegradable and fully compostable packing products whilst maintaining quality and freshness along with cups and lids that also are friendly on the Earth.

Next up we had Digital producer Jonathan Keyse from Trans-Tasman digital and technology agency OneFatSheep @oneFatSheep talking about the rise of augmented reality and what that means for the future across a number of industries and professions related to technology, marketing, innovation, design and product development. Jonathan took us on a journey from where AR had come from (Arnie was rocking it back in the 80’s as the Terminator), its initial mini-rise and subsequent drop off due to poor enabling technologies back to its renewed love and how it might look in the future. What stood out for us was the fact there were 60 million people using AR based applications last year, set to rise to 1 billion by 2020 which is twice the current global newspaper subscription! We also had the chance to play with some of the technology, specifically their award winning Zombies from Hell campaign, a virtual residential apartment tour and a construction based AR application that enables you to view a potential structure and see attributes such as where the plumbing goes and where the heat patterns are due to sunlight, some very practical stuff!

This was a successful event from our point of view as most people left with some good stories and takeaways from both topics. It was also awesome to support Ways & Means who have a social conscience and strong focus on helping people in need and giving opportunities to those that they may not otherwise have. Thanks to everyone involved!

To learn more about the contributors please see below for more information:

http://www.onefatsheep.com/
http://clarkstroasters.bigcartel.com/
http://www.waysandmeans.org.au/

Author

Matt Smith works in MitchelLake’s Melbourne office and leads the Australian team for MitchelLake Consulting, working with an awesome team of humans who source talent across emerging technology, experience and service design, product, digital marketing, growth, data science and analytics.

Matt’s domain expertise leans towards hiring senior roles in experience and design and he enjoys the balance of working with fast growth, early stage organisations and larger scale companies going through digital transformation and the unique challenges they both bring.

Originally from New Zealand, Matt spent time living in the UK before moving to Melbourne where he enjoys playing basketball, rearing indoor plants and incredible access to some of the world’s best coffee.