December 1, 2022 | By Bronwen Largier
Tasmania is joining the growing number of Australian states looking to leverage their academics, entrepreneurs and industry experts to attract conferences to the destination.
Business Events Tasmania is pulling out all the stops to encourage Tasmanian-based industry leaders to sign up to its new Visionary ambassador program, having the state’s Premier Jeremy Rockliff make a personal invitation to potential candidates for the program.
“Tasmania is a small island, big on innovation, passion and enthusiasm. We need you – our scientists, our researchers, our industry experts and our entrepreneurs to work with us to secure major conferences of importance to our wonderful state,” he says in a new video.
“We need you to share with your industry peers and colleagues exactly what it is that makes this place so special in our quiet pursuit of the extraordinary.”
Business Events Tasmania will support the ambassadors in its program to secure industry-aligned business events to be hosted in Tasmania.
Visionaries already on board include Andi Lucas, managing director of X-Hemp and founder of the first fibre processing factory in Tasmania to turn the plant into a concrete-like building material. She helped bring the national conference for the hemp industry to Tasmania in March this year.
Another of the ambassadors is Pat Wongpan, a quantitative sea ice biogeochemist and ecologist – a sea ice algae modeller – who helps predict what will happen to the food source that underpins the whole ecosystem of the Southern Ocean as the climate changes. As Wongpan points out, expeditions to Antarctica can start at Hobart’s port, 10 minutes drive from the city centre. He was also a co-convenor for an Antarctic sciences conference that was to take place in Hobart in 2020.
Potential ambassadors are being invited to apply to join the program via the Business Events Tasmania website.
The Visionary program sits alongside the Tasmanian Business Events Attraction Fund which offers financial incentives to events to bring them to Tasmania.
