As part of my Advance Queensland Hot Desq tenure, I was granted the unique opportunity to visit a remote Aboriginal community, Aurukun, to encourage kids into STEM and enterprise.  Aurukun is in Far North Queensland, a 2 hour flight north of Cairns.  Here's a famous Aurukun dog, which the men make at the Men's Arts Centre.

I travelled with Anna Guenther, Chief Bubble Blower of PledgeMe from the Hot Desq program, and others from the community.

We were there for two days and one night.  On the first day, we spoke with a women’s group about starting their own business, and visited the Women’s Craft Centre.

We then played with drones and gave the kids the chance to experience VR at the Regional Community Centre.

On the second day, we went to the local school and simultaneously held a VR experience, Ozobot activity drone sessions, videography skills, and most excitingly, the kids used the National Broadband Network connection to Teleport into the Aubot R&D office in Melbourne.

The kids were super respectful and well-behaved and tried their best to navigate Teleport through the sea of robots.  It was fantastic!

Thank you Advance Queensland for the amazing opportunity!

I’m fortunate to be invited all around the world to deliver speeches. In February, I was invited to the MBN Y Forum in Seoul, South Korea for a keynote speech and panel. Hosted by Maeil Broadcasting Network (MBN) under Maekyung Media Group, one of South Korea's leading economic media groups, MBN Y Forum has taken place since 2011. The event is a platform to discuss the major issues, ideas, and trends of politics, economy, technology, leading industries, and media.

Boy do the Koreans know how to put on a show and make you feel really important - by putting huge photographs of you up everywhere. Here I am outside the stadium.

Here I am inside the stadium - see the giant posters hanging from the ceiling - in the upper part of the photo.

And here we are outside for people to take photographs next to us. The other speakers in my panel were Peter Stone, founder of RoboCup and a professor at The University of Texas at Austin, and Pindar Van Arman, winner of the 2018 Robot Arm Prize, who creates art using AI and robotics.

Also, a boy band were invited to speak as well, so there was a gaggle of teenage girls (numbering in the many hundreds!) who appeared just for them. :)

I attended CES with members of the Aipoly team.  Aipoly were fortunate to be awarded a CES Best of Innovation Award for the second year in a row!  Last year was for our Aipoly Vision app.  And this year it was for Aipoly’s autonomous store product.

As a result, Aipoly got this great booth location right near the Eureka Park entrance.  Look at the horde of people waiting to enter before the show officially opened at 10am on Tuesday 9 January 2018, the first day of CES.  I took a video just after they were allowed to enter - it's a 2-minute avalanche of people, before I stopped filming.

Over the 4 days, 40,000 people visited our booth.  We know because we tracked and counted each person who walked by and the counter surpassed 10,000 each day!

I was invited to participate in a book, "200 Women: Who Will Change The Way You See The World" earlier this year.  The result is this beautiful tome that contains the stories of 200 amazing women from around the world.  These 200 women include Gillian Anderson, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Whoopi Goldberg, Jane Goodall, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Roxane Gay.  I encourage you to get a copy and read all about the stories of these amazing women from around the world.  10% of revenues will go towards charities nominated by the 200 women.  Here is my entry on their website.

(Kieran E. Scott)

I made the back sleeve.  Woop!

It’s so exciting seeing our robots make a difference in the lives of others.  Six-year-old Freyja has a suppressed immune system, so coming into contact with other kids puts her life at risk.  Our robot, Teleport, appeared on ABC News and the Project recently, showcasing Freyja going to school remotely, to give her the social experience, without making her sick.

(ABC News: Jon Healy)

If you know a child with cancer, longterm illness or disability missing school, get in touch and we may be able to supply them with a robot to go to school remotely, free of charge, with the robots generously provided by Missing School.

Here are the media mentions for you to see the robots in action:

The ABC’s Facebook post is here (over 130k views):  
https://www.facebook.com/abcnews.au/videos/10157645132279988/

The ABC online article (with embedded social media piece) is here:  
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-21/robo-classroom-helping-educate-seriously-ill-canberra-girl/9176204

Channel 10’s The Project (Thursday night).  It starts at 1’45:  
https://www.facebook.com/TheProjectTV/videos/10155114988643441/

Well done, Missing School, on your amazing mission, work, and for making this happen!

(ABC News: Jon Healy)