DISRUPT YOUR THINKING
A
IME buyers got a small taste of what to expect from C2 Melbourne when it launches here in October.
Attendees at this year’s Melbourne Edge – Event Series, hosted by Melbourne Convention Bureau, had the
opportunity to experience a collaborative environment specifically designed to provoke collisions and spark
new ideas, using a combination of talks, workshops and experimental brainstorming sessions, facilitated by C2.
These included lab sessions for which C2 is renowned, such as the Ball Pool and In the Dark, which took
attendees on a sensory journey and explored how they solve problems in an unexpected environment.
The theme for C2 Melbourne will be Transformative Collisions, with Martin Enault, chief operating officer at
C2 International, saying he wants participants to walk away from the event having changed their mindset in a
positive way “that propels their business forward”.
Martin joined C2 after the second edition, but says the original vision by founders Cirque du Soleil and Sid Lee
in 2011 was to reinvent the business conference as they had done with the circus 25 years ago.
“They also felt there had to be a better way of producing events and engaging executives to show that the
future is actually positive, and market disruption is not a bad thing. All of that together became C2 which
stands for commerce and creativity,” he says.
Martin has happily swapped his hometown of Montreal for Melbourne as he helps set up the three day event
in October that looks to face disruption head on.
“Montreal and Melbourne are very alike as cities in many ways, you have the same kind of vibe in the city,
which is why we feel comfortable here,” he says. “But Australians and people in the Asia Pacific are very
different in that they are more positive about the world evolving than North America. Australia wasn’t affected
by the global recession as much as the rest of world and didn’t face the same level of market disruption, and
so it is bolder in some ways and yet more conservative in others, and that duality is very interesting.”
Disruption is often viewed in a negative light, but for Martin it has a positive side.
“We don’t want to unsettle people just for the sake it, we are doing it as it helps them see a problem from a
different perspective,” he says. “I don’t think we live in a world of constant disruption, we live in a world that we
have been avoiding for a long time. In the sense that for the last 25 years we have been trying to hold dear to
our old ways in a new connected world that is changing faster and faster. It has changed so much we see it as
a new form of disruption, but in reality it has been led by market demand.”
C2 Melbourne will be a three day event for around 2500 people in the first year, with the aim of growing to
around seven thousand people.
“The event will have around 15 different things you can do at any
given time, so you can create your own program,” says Martin.
“And we help them do that to make the most relevant
program for them. We have keynotes throughout the
day but we don’t want you to watch them back to back,
rather you should use the insight from one keynote to
go into another session or lab to help you apply that
learning into your own business. That’s the toolkit
that people create out of that event that they can
apply in their own business afterwards.”
C2 Melbourne will be held on October 17-19.
8 AIMEDaily Day 1, 2018