Coming back to Oz from London put into perspective how far behind we are. With HN London now attracting so many people they've had to start charging a fee to get in, and the community built around Silicon Roundabout, it is very sad to come back home and see the fragmented efforts to build a startup group in Australia.
With Silicon Beach on and off, Startup Grind, lots of small meetups, and Fishburners in Sydney, there are certainly groups to build this community around but I still think we are years behind the critical mass of something like HN London. And that's just to talk about forums for people to gather in - it says nothing about our skills shortage.
I agree with Matt's points regarding our reliance on the resources industry. So many people head off to the mines on a fly-in-fly-out basis, and make incredible coin - but it won't last long-term and then our skill base will be incompatible with value-adding services industries.
However, I think we need successes before a great weight of people will shift towards STEM disciplines, in the same way that the dot-com frenzy saw Web Development course demand explode.
With Silicon Beach on and off, Startup Grind, lots of small meetups, and Fishburners in Sydney, there are certainly groups to build this community around but I still think we are years behind the critical mass of something like HN London. And that's just to talk about forums for people to gather in - it says nothing about our skills shortage.
I agree with Matt's points regarding our reliance on the resources industry. So many people head off to the mines on a fly-in-fly-out basis, and make incredible coin - but it won't last long-term and then our skill base will be incompatible with value-adding services industries.
However, I think we need successes before a great weight of people will shift towards STEM disciplines, in the same way that the dot-com frenzy saw Web Development course demand explode.