I met David Jay many years ago, at a cafe on Bondi Beach. Originally from California, he had moved to Australia for work, and for the last 20 or so years, had made a name for himself as a fashion photographer, whose work had been featured in international editions of Vogue, Elle, Cosmopolitan, Style and Shape among others. Then, about eight years ago, everything changed when a friend was diagnosed with breast cancer. Soon after, David began The SCAR Project which documented survivors of breast cancer. Following this series, David continued to dedicate his work to capturing often unseen aspects of humanity, including The Unknown Soldier, The Alabama Project, Grief Camp, and Naked Ladies. Jay’s photography has been published in the New York Times, BBC, LIFE, Forbes, USA Today, and countless other publications throughout the world.

Dan Anthony and Sean McKeever are architects and leaders of NBBJ's design computation team. NBBJ is the go-to architecture firm for when the world’s biggest technology brands – Google and Amazon in the US, and Alipay and Tencent in China - want to build innovative, new workspaces. Over coffee in their headquarters in Seattle we spoke about parametric design and how algorithms are now being used, in conjunction with learnings from neuroscience, to optimize workspaces for productivity, collaboration and wellbeing.

Bradly Trevor Greive is an extraordinary person. He has written 25 books, which have sold over 30 million copies in 115 different countries, several of which have appeared in the New York Times bestseller list, including his classic title, ‘The Blue Day Book’. But that is only a small part of a resume that reads more like the bio of the world’s most interesting man. A certified Cosmonaut, a former Paratrooper Platoon Commander in the Australian Army, a Polynesian Rock-Lifting Champion, and a survivor of 17 surgeries to date - comedian John Cleese once described his life as ‘one long suicide attempt’. Meeting up in LA, we spoke on the importance of conservation in his work, why Bertrand Russell’s essay in praise of idleness is so important in the 21st century, and the challenges of surviving Hollywood.

I caught up with Ross Dawson, a fellow futurist and an Australian native, on a recent trip back home to Bondi Beach. Ross is the author of four books including the Amazon.com bestseller ‘Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships’, and the acclaimed book Living Networks, which foresaw the social networking revolution. Over the famously strong, and excellent Sydney coffee we riffed on some areas of common interest, in particular the impact of AI on the future of decision-making and work.

For as long as I’ve known him, Brady Forrest has been at the very epicenter of whatever the West Coast alpha geeks think is going to be the next big thing. I met him around 2008 when he was running the brilliant ETech conference for O’Reilly Media - which incidentally, was one of the first public tech talks that I ever gave. Since then he cofounded Ignite, a talk series which has been held thousands of times around the world - as well as Highway1, a hardware accelerator which has helped launch over 58 hardware startups.