It was a privilege to be invited back to keynote and support the CreateWorld Conference in Brisbane at the Griffith University, Queensland College of Art.

The theme this year was “The Creativity of Things” – a play on the internet of things, and (as it says on the conference site) an exploration of how innovative people are using small, ubiquitous, connected devices to create art, to stimulate learning, to inspire, and to share.

This event involved educators from universities from all over Australia and New Zealand. It also, for the first time, included a number of arts and media related teachers from K12 schools in Queensland.

A personal and professional highlight for me was hearing from and meeting Natalie Rusk from the MIT Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten Group.

Two of my biggest education heroes come from this group. Its founder Seymour Papert and its current director Mitchel Resnick. Natalie, a research scientist,  has worked with both of them for many year. She is a lead developer and co-founder of Scratch, a graphical programming language that enables students to design and code interactive animations, games and a range of other creative projects. She also started the Computer Clubhouse after school which has over 100 sites in 20 countries.

I was very pleased to be able to complement much of Natalie’s messaging during my keynote presentation  with supporting quotes from Seymour Papert and Mitch Resnick. A quote from Resnick that we both consequently shared was, Success in the future – for individuals, for communities, for companies, for nations as a whole – will be based not on what we know or how much we know, but on our ability to think and act creatively. Resnick said this in a webinar hosted by Adobe Education in 2014 (http://bit.ly/mitchresnick-adobe14).

My friend and colleague, Brisbane based Adobe Solution Consultant Richard Turner-Jones, shared some of the new developments at Adobe that came out of the 2016 Adobe Max conference.

JB Tinker from XCERIO (Adobe’s certification partner) talked about the value of doing Adobe certification and used this event to launch the 2017 Adobe Certified Associate World Championships competition.

Richard and I ran a series of very well attended workshops throughout the conference including:

• Adobe’s 3D Solutions with Photoshop, Fuse and Project Felix
• Great looking Websites without coding using Adobe Spark Post, Spark Page,
  Photoshop & Adobe Muse
• HTML Animations & Mobile App Development with Adobe Animate CC
• Simple Video Solutions with the free Adobe Premiere Clip (iOS & Android) &
  Adobe Spark Video
• Mobile App Design with Adobe Experience Design

The day 2 keynote was Adam Jefford, Head of Creative Industries at Pimpama State Secondary College. Adam talked about some of the really creative ways his school is challenging the traditional curriculum and inspiring its young people to think outside the square and prepare themselves for an unknown world. Earlier this year, Adam was awarded a Good Design Award for Jump Start – a design thinking and social entrepreneurship program he co-founded empowering school students to make a positive change in the world through design-led creativity and entrepreneurial endeavours.

Another highlight for me was catching up with my friend Hohepa Spooner from the Auckland University of Technology (AUT). Hohepa did a presentation titled Creating Apps and eBooks for Education with Adobe Experience Manager Mobile and the Adobe Creative Cloud. His presentation looked at the Mobile Apps and eBooks that have been created at the AUT Centre for Learning and Teaching, and the Faculty of Māori and Indigenous Development – Te Ara Poutama and how they are used in teaching and learning in various faculties and departments within the university with a focus on the use of Adobe Experience Manager.

Another feature of this event was The Shed where a number of vendors had displays for the participants to tinker and play. I enjoyed playing a 3D printed electric guitar.

Universities involved in CreateWorld 2016 included:

• AUT University (NZ)
• Charles Sturt University (NSW)
• Griffith University (QLD)
• University of Auckland
• The University of Queensland
• The University of Waikato
• The University of Western Australia
• University of Newcastle
• University of Wollongong

Congratulations to Daniel Della-Bosca, Seth Ellis, Dale Patterson and Tony Gray for putting this conference together.

Adobe resources shared at this event can be found via – bit.ly/adobe-createworld16