What I'm doing
Updated September 2026 · Adelaide, Australia
Inspired by Derek Sivers' /now concept - what you might tell a friend you're catching up with.
We ran the first one. August 26, Brisbane, part of Something Fest. Six categories, a seven-member international jury spanning Hollywood and AI-native practice, and a room full of Australian AI filmmakers who had never all been in the same place before. Winners, films and judges are at aifilmawards.com.au.
I came into this as a practitioner - two years of making the work, learning the tools, developing a feel for the medium. What kept bothering me was that extraordinary work was being made here with nowhere to take it. No peer group, no recognition, no industry context. So we built the stage. We judge the maker, not the machine.
I also moderated The Next Frame, a live panel on what actually changes when the tool becomes the medium, with Screen Queensland's Julie Eckersley, Kenny director Clayton Jacobson, and Jennie Zeiher of AI-native VFX studio Alussein. The disagreement in that room was real. There's a recap of the day on LinkedIn; the full panel isn't online yet.
Built with my co-director Jamie van Leeuwen of Absolutely AI. Year two starts now.
Two days, 17 and 18 March 2027, South Australia. The theme is Fields of Possibility, and the 2027 cycle is where most of my week goes.
Day one is the city and choice: venues running in parallel, a cohort room for founders and capital, one convergence in the evening where every ticket is finally in the same air, then dinners across town. Day two is The Field Trip - out of the city, down the road, one departure point and a fleet of buses.
You don't choose your bus. We do. We match on sector, stage, capital appetite, interest, geography, and who you haven't met yet, and no partner can buy their way onto your bus.
The product was never the programming. It's the proximity.
Eight years of designing for the in-between taught me the real architecture is everything around the content - the long lunches, the ten-minute walks between venues, the collisions nobody planned. 2027 stops treating that as a byproduct and builds the whole festival out of it.
I'm in SF from 4 to 10 October on Tribe Global Ventures' US market exploration mission, then Toronto 10 to 15 with family.
The days belong to the mission. The evenings are the part I care about: speakers and partners for SOUTHSTART 2027, people making serious work in generative film, the Adobe and Flash-era crowd I came up with, and whoever is building the interesting thing this month. SF Tech Week runs 5 to 11 October, so the city will be full of the right rooms.
If you're there, say so. Coffee, dinner, a studio visit, a room I should be in. This is the most open my calendar gets all year.
The quiet one. LifeStory records the people you love telling their own life, one question at a time. It asks, they talk, and their children and grandchildren end up with the actual voice rather than a summary of it.
I started building it because the stories in my own family were going one funeral at a time, and every tool I found wanted to turn a person into a profile. This one just listens.
It's in private beta with real families now. If there's someone whose stories you're worried about losing, tell me and I'll put you in the next round.
Still making something every day. The daily AI film practice that started in 2024 has evolved into WYRLD - a world-building framework for the generative age. Tools and systems for building rich, consistent creative universes with AI as the instrument, not the author.
The film work continues alongside it. Solara was a finalist in Runway's GEN:48. The output is the proof of concept for everything else - the awards, the talks, the way I think about what AI creativity actually is.
I've started publishing the thinking I've been doing for years - on what we trade when we hand making over to machines, and how to stay the author of your own life while you do it. The Medium Is Learning Us and Reality Doxxing are the anchor pieces; Letters to My Children is a newer series. It's all on Substack.
Speaking. Creative direction. AI strategy. SOUTHSTART 2027 partnerships. AI Film Awards partnerships. Conversations with people building interesting things - especially if you're in San Francisco the first week of October.