Melbourne Sports Tech Event (Free): SIGNAL - AI Builders in Sport Showcase & Gathering, Fri Aug 7th

Hi, allow me to reintroduce myself and repent for my sins as a newsletter writer - I’m Gaz, and it’s been a couple of months at least since my last newsletter! 🙏

Won’t bore you with all the details, but I *thought* I previously knew (and knew how to deal with) chronic pain, until a new recent bout floored me - literally - and I had to adjust for a while there, reassessing everything processing through my lizard brain.

Been a very slow path to recovery since, and I wanted to ensure that when I leant back into projects - my writing via GROUPED and also the recently launched SEEDS, my events, podcasts, or the PR work I’ll dabble in - that I achieved some level of consistent output as part of the curation.

In more simple speak, the brains were a scrambled mush and I could only manage enough attention for some work and some small projects, all on my back on the couch at home. So needless to say, I was keen to get started again when physically able to, and that time is now, you beauty.

1️⃣ I’m now writing features again with GROUPED and will push out 1-2 a week. Shorter than before, but very much penned by me *with effort applied*

2️⃣ I’d mentioned previously that I was launching out an IRL classes model and publication with my SEEDS initiative. Just didn’t have the physical capacity to do that all, so will bring the classes back later, but continue to grow the newsletter side of SEEDS, which is focused on APAC Tech Builders, and learnings from how they grow their companies (prioritising their voice). That will be enjoyable to grow, you can see that HERE

3️⃣ And then there’s events. A thing I’ve done for the better part of 13 years in Melbourne/Australia, and quite a few have been on the ‘unique’ side of things, so I am keen to continue exploring this, just in a much more manageable way now! That’s SIGNAL, a showcase & pitch series of events in Melbourne to start, and part of my SEEDS stream. I’ll pop it in here every now and again. Starting right now.

FREE EVENT: SIGNAL - AI Builders in Sport Showcase & Gathering. Fri Aug 7th 8am.

I ran point on some PR & Comms with team Superstat recently, as they graduated from the recent Startmate cohort and locked in a cool $3.5million funding from Blackbird to bring pro-level sports stats to non-professional teams everywhere, now to move to Austin Texas to accelerate their growth.

I’m super choosy with the PR projects I do as it’s not something I enjoy doing F/T. I prefer to lean in when a project demands it, but probably like sitting more on the journo side of things personally.

Buttttt, I really liked this team immediately, and found myself a little nostalgic about my young days playing sport, and how obsessed I was with sports stats, and even reminiscing about my kids playing sport currently.

And also, the solution they’ve implemented is super appealing to me: Using computer vision to map video footage and be able to scale data analysis as a result, starting with basketball and moving to a bigger range of sports such as NFL, Volleyball, Soccer, Baseball & more.

Did you know there’s 6.1million basketball teams in the USA alone operating at a non-professional level, meaning that’s their starting addressable market in the states? jesus h christ.

So, I got down on one knee (back’s fucked), popped the question of whether they might also want to do a collab on SIGNAL, they said yes, and here we are, gathering a bunch of people in sports tech, or who might enjoy hearing more about it/ways to enter the industry, and now we have an excuse to bring a bunch of people together to chit-chat.

Presented by myself with SEEDS, in collab with Startmate and Superstat, on the 7th (all the S’s), Free to attend.

And there’s the crew right there, ready for Friday. Please do tell anyone who’s keen. Oh and FYI, they’re hiring a digital marketing specialist and founding engineer - locally in Melbourne probably - and taking them with them to Austin Texas. So that’s pretty great! So anyone looking for an opportunity like that as well, tell them to head along 👋 

Good Merch, or GTFO: DRIP DROP Newsletter

In a fun side note to a few months of excruciating pain, I actually had a really fulfilling and enjoyable project with Kayla Medica to keep me going that was purely for the love of writing, but not too onerous a commitment whilst I struggled to do some basic things like sit on a chair! (its a nerve pain thing, the body is marvellous but complicated)

Kayla and I launched DRIP DROP: ‘A Place Of Worship for Good Merch’ at end of April, it’s at 1000 readers, people really enjoy reading this niche angle, and we’re thoroughly loving shipping it every Friday at 2pm AEST. Sign up now, or exist in merch damnation!

(This means that I am currently designing my own clothing items if you can believe it - GROUPED ones to come, some SEEDS stuff too, a lil itty bit of DRIP DROP too)

A ‘Lil Curation For Ya

*Todays curation inspired by: Austin Texas, since Superstat are moving there

Been listening to A LOT of music lately. Very helpful, just zoning out with discovering great tunes curated according to mood. I actually used to write quite a few movie reviews and music reviews, so had sort of been itching to do that a bit more, and thought maybe I’d just simply start including that a bit more in my writing from now on.

I always like curating around some common theme, so I could find no better reason than picking some Austin artists I really like, on account of the Superstat teams move there imminently.

Now, this veers on the heavy and the extremely heavy side of things, be warned. Too ugly for a lot, but perfect for plenty- both are from Austin as I mentioned, and I had a hell of a time watching some gigs there at start of ‘25, loved it.

Die Spitz would be in that punk-rock, heavy realm. All women in the band, they’re producing some raging tunes and riding a bit of mainstream recognition currently as they sell out shows in Europe, getting huge support slots with Foo Fighters etc and even having their songs pop up in film trailers. Love this band. Track: Throw Yourself to the Sword

Portrayal of Guilt however are just truly ugly music, albeit with an experimental edge, not afraid to throw electronics and rapid shifts in tone and direction into the fray. Their new Track: Human Terror is guaranteed to get the heart racing and ironically has this insane amount of groove in it too, which leaves me categorising it as ‘Blackened HardKorn.’ Love this album.

PREV GROUPED: