Transcript
Speaker: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Otterly Positive Cocks. Today is actually a unique one. We're recording live at Dreamhack, Melbourne. I've never done this before, so this is pretty cool. And to add the icing on the cake here is we at Damien Anderson
Speaker: the founder and CEO of Crank, which is a great organization that's mixing gaming with mental health, social impact, and just making a change. Welcome to the show, Damian. Hey, how are you? Thanks. Thanks for having me. DreamHack's really busy this year. I'm really impressed by everything and it's exciting to be here.
Speaker: Yeah, it's crazy watching the people. It's definitely the gaming community in Melbourne is alive and well and so many passionate people. And that's really, I think a great segue into what you're doing because you're leveraging gaming to harness that emotion and that power to make a difference. So maybe you can tell us a little bit about Crank.
Speaker: Okay thanks. I mean we've got 30 people here from Crank this weekend so we are an organisation that helps people that love gaming to connect with their community we call it. People talk a lot about
Speaker: Gaming is a way of coming together and we're a NDIS registered provider helping people with autism to get somewhere in life and to kind of achieve those goals and those career aspirations that the entire world says you can't achieve. And when you think about gaming, gaming is such a great glue that brings people together and it helps us to create a family of
Speaker: shared interests and passion so a real safe space and as I mentioned we've got 30 people we call them crew and coaches here this weekend exploring gaming but we come together during the week to talk about careers, to talk about passions, to talk about what we want to do in life and so yeah so a crank is I guess an innovative coaching business but targeting those that love gaming with a disability.
Speaker: Yeah, that's pretty cool. And one of the misnomers, I think, with people who aren't in the gaming community, people view gaming as a very isolated activity. And I suppose in some cases it is. But when you come to an event like this, you realize that there's a lot of friendships and a lot of passion that's behind these games. And it's great to see. And for you to be able to leverage that to make a difference is huge.
Speaker: Yeah, I'd be curious to even dig a little bit deeper on how you're reaching these kids with autism and others.
Speaker: Well, we help our crew who are on NDIS plans. They are looking for a way of developing maybe their employment prospects or they're wanting to re -engage back at school or they're wanting to, I guess, explore tertiary education and careers. So we help a range of crew who are 12 and above. So we have a huge age group.
Speaker: that we help and we're really, the way Crank started was that people with disability are told they can't really amount to much in life and they can't have a great career. Whereas we started Crank by saying, hey, what if we helped people to explore esports careers, which is the opposite to what the career is that they are told to explore, which is usually getting a job at Bunnings or getting a job at the local bakery.
Speaker: So we started at that gaming side of let's help people be the best gamer and to see where that can take them and and Crank really evolved from that. Crank hired the best Valorant coach we could get in the world and it was Prince a guy in Sweden who was coaching 30 of the top 100 Valorant players in the world and we had our crew be coached by a pro level
Speaker: Valorant coach as part of our, I guess, exploring this whole esports world. And it just helped us to see that gaming is something that people can have a huge change in their life through, but it's also a social connector for everyone that comes to crank. And if you look around here, I mean, just everyone's friendly. Everyone's so connected in some interest, right? It's just absolutely magic and amazing.
Speaker: Yeah, I was having this conversation last night about, um, it's just wonderful to see groups of people who are passionate about anything coming together and sharing that passion. And then just like, uh, the laughing Otter and what we're doing at the Otter games is our vision is, is we can make social change by having fun. Why does it always have to be arduous to make change where, um, what you're doing.
Speaker: It's beautiful that you're using gaming, something that's a pastime, something that's enjoyable to change people's lives. Because as we were talking about earlier, the progression is to get into the gaming, they make a lot of connections, grow that confidence, and then they move on to a career progression within the industry. So maybe share a little bit more about that.
Speaker: Yeah so if you look at gaming itself it really relates to got about 25 different career pathways that we coach around so that can be anything from
Speaker: graphic design and UI design for game interfaces. It could be character illustration. It could be sound engineering. It could be game programming. There are so many areas aligned to gaming. And so I guess if you love gaming, you're going to be either artistic or you might be have an engineering brain or you could be someone that has a real social bend, but you're going to find a connector into a career pathway or into tertiary education, if that's your bend.
Speaker: go to TAFE, go to uni, be motivated in high school to finish just because there are prospects of your interests relating to something in the future and I think a lot of people that don't understand gaming and technology careers don't really see that opportunity but that's just a really obvious benefit isn't it?
Speaker: A gamer like your you develop a lot of skills you do have a lot of insight into a world that most people Probably think is a waste of time or it's a it's a kids a kids pursuit, but it's not it's every adult Probably every second adult in the world plays a game on their mobile without probably even knowing at some point
Speaker: Yeah, you're spot on. I even see it in my son. He plays games like Minecraft and his ability outside the game to
Speaker: to problem solve, to finish a project, to strategize. It all comes from gaming and it's exciting to watch them transfer those skills into the real world. And then also I think gamers just, they just have an appreciation for technology that as the world progresses, it will serve them well.
Speaker: And yeah, and I think in Australia, we don't really have a game development industry. We like to think we do, but we don't. So I think we've got to be really realistic in the sense that you're not going to probably work as a quality tester in a gaming development company, but your skills and your interests in
Speaker: playing RPG or a card game like even D &D could translate into something around character design and illustration or it could be that you really love the sound effects and the music in some of the RPGs you play in.
Speaker: That will be a connector into developing maybe a look into audio careers or sound engineering or being a music producer. It's about connecting, isn't it? It's about connecting the interests.
Speaker: Yeah for sure and I would guess and maybe you can touch on this a bit but I would guess that a big residual bonus to everything you're doing is just the self -confidence of for a group of society that tends to
Speaker: have their challenges, but then if you show them that you can do things and they're winning and they're improving and they're learning skills and they're connecting with people, that's got to affect self -confidence. I think there's a magic at Crank and we can't really put our fingers on it sometimes, but I think it's the inclusion and the
Speaker: the acceptance for people with autism who is our primary focus. They'll have a whole bunch of barriers like anxiety and depression and they've been told all their life that they're either not good enough, not fitting in, they've been ostracized at school, they found it hard to make friends. As soon as they come to crank they just have this
Speaker: natural inclination to kind of get excited and to want to participate which is really hard but they're through that too they're able to I guess find someone that likes a game they like or find a coach that is willing to listen to them about something that they're really passionate about.
Speaker: And to connect that to maybe the fact that they should explore cyber security. Have they thought about this? Have they thought about that? And it's really just opening minds from that point. So I think gaming connects people and gaming is just magic. And there's something that's just hard to describe, isn't it?
Speaker: Like, how often in your life have you just lost hours and hours in a game with friends, maybe? It could have been last week, it could have been when you were younger, I don't know. But like, we've all lost days and days playing with our friends, cards, board games, anything, right? Yeah, absolutely. It's a diversion from a stress relief and, well, there's an enjoyment there for sure.
Speaker: I think everybody, whether you love playing chess or CS2, it's not much different. You're engaged, you're connecting with others who also share your passion.
Speaker: Obviously this is an audio podcast, but everything you're saying while we're watching around this room, like there's just this vibrant community walking past the booth here and it's, and to explain it to people who aren't involved.
Speaker: It'd be really, really hard to the diverse community that's in front of us here, which is wonderful. I've said before that games like World of Warcraft and those kind of games were
Speaker: people from all over the world play with each other has done more to break down global barriers than anything the UN or any government agency has done. Like because people from all over the world make friends with the rest of the world. That's it. That's it.
Speaker: I've got a good mate who met his wife playing World of Warcraft. He was in New York and she was here and he didn't know that Joe meant Joanne, so he was in the clan for years and didn't realise that.
Speaker: that Joe was Joanne and that he flew out to Australia and they're married. And I mean, that's just one story of people meeting in a game and probably spending a thousand or two thousand hours with someone and getting to know them. And the barrier of geographic, even gender, nothing mattered. They were friends. They were best friends in that game. Really exciting, isn't it?
Speaker: Yeah, for sure. And people in countries which are quote unquote traditional enemies, realizing actually those people are just like me and they're my pals now. We're in a crew together. We're in a squad together. We share jokes together. We talk about
Speaker: like our worlds together. And it breaks down so many barriers and that's great. And what you're doing at Crank, it's bringing in another group in society into that fold and opening doors for them. That's fantastic. And I think we don't know where this world will go. I think we must be at the beginning with
Speaker: the technology of AI and
Speaker: and everything that's coming, I feel like there's huge changes. So maybe it's the gamer brain and all that world will become more and more powerful as jobs disappear, traditional things disappear and other new opportunities open up. Like what do we know about the future? We kind of can't see much ahead, can we, at this stage? No, it's, I have a six -year -old, so it's kind of laughable when people,
Speaker: people are talking about well it's important he does this for his future you kidding me by the time he's 25 he'll be doing a job that we've never heard of so like let's let's relax a little bit and with something like gaming like um with the games that he's playing like the idea that of um problem solving
Speaker: creative thinking, strategizing, those are all skills that are transferable no matter what job that you have. And the whole online kind of digital life where I guess
Speaker: One of my daughters was in grade five at the end of COVID and they were running teams, meetings, doing collaborative PowerPoint projects, presenting and collaborating better than most corporate workplaces, right? And I remember thinking, this is a whole new generation of people that are completely comfortable being remote, being online and not meeting to
Speaker: be sitting next to the person to have a meaningful relationship or to get things done and I still love an office environment sometimes or I love a workshop and a meeting but I mean this is not what is happening in the real world like out there there's that younger generation crave something else right yeah for sure and where that line is we have to be a little bit careful I think everybody's
Speaker: there are concerns that we're losing that human touch. Um, and so, but when you come to the event like this, well, maybe this is the answer is make sure whatever industry you're in, make sure that there's enough in real, in real life events and reasons to connect so that, uh, it
Speaker: so that people can formulate those meaningful relationships that aren't superficial and real. And I think that relates to crank. We have really two different
Speaker: types of people or crew that are engaging with our program. We've got people that are coming in every day or as many days as possible if they're not at school and we provide lunch and we've got this amazing headquarters on St Kilda Road here in Melbourne and that allows them to have this real rich face -to -face connection with their coach with
Speaker: other crew just generally feeling like the space is their space and it's an amazing thing to see and then we have a whole bunch of other people that are way out of Melbourne that could never reach our office or are at school and need something to engage with after four or five o 'clock in the afternoon and they'll just be at home
Speaker: and it's interesting both of those models get something out of crank but they also are both experiencing the same games probably playing together and it's just whatever the situation is in life right you kind of just adapt and go with it and that's what people do they kind of
Speaker: Yeah, for sure. Now, I'm going to do a bit of a pivot here in our conversation because we, prior to going on air or starting the recording, you and I share something very similar, is Crank and the Laughing Otter are both companies with a real strong vision of making a difference in the world, but we're for profit.
Speaker: And I think we should talk a little bit about this new model which is growing significantly around the world, which is the idea of profit for purpose. Having a business that has a moral conscience
Speaker: but yet still is profitable, which then leads to being able to properly fund sustainability without having to constantly be looking for donations and funding from the everyday person. So yeah, we talked a lot about just that different mindset. So maybe share your thoughts on that a little bit.
Speaker: Yeah, I think for us innovation is huge because there's not really a lot of R &D, there's not a lot of thinking and development in the space we're in, so we're being an NDS provider. We don't call ourselves a disability provider as such, we serve people with disability. But we kind of think of ourselves mainly as a coaching business and that area of kind of pseudo -education coaching, support,
Speaker: for people with severe barriers in life. There's just really, there hasn't been any major innovation or development in this space. I guess back in the 50s and 60s you had huge amounts of a lot of organizations which could have been faith -based, they could have been traditional not -for -profits that were serving this market.
Speaker: and now we've got a big end as business our industry here in Australia but not a lot of innovation or change to create something meaningful for the clients that they're serving so for us we look at being a profitable business is important because it allows us to reinvest back into the best experiences the greatest lunch that we can put on the
Speaker: the the new product ideas the fact that we um you know the only the other week we thought well drones are such a great career area and such an alignment to gaming that we're going to start drone coaching so we've now got a suite of drones and we're just trialing how we coach drones and racing drones and and we'll be buying camera drones and everything so we're able because we are a for profit with a focus on
Speaker: delivering meaning and also having some form of profitability to reinvest back into the business, we're able to actually change and innovate. And I think that's really important because a lot of not -for -profits can't do that. They don't have the freedom to just add a new service line or think of a new part of a business and turn it on and actually and grow it in a way. And I think it's really important to have both mindsets, but it's really hard.
Speaker: I think you're agreeing. I've spent a lot of time working with not -for -profits. In most cases, they're very well -meaning, but a lot of times, they are so handcuffed by the board, by their annual report, quote -unquote, where people will scrutinize every dollar that's been spent as it should be,
Speaker: But to the point where it handcuffs the decision makers, where they're afraid to do anything different than the year they did before because of the risk that, well, maybe this time it didn't work out. Whereas the Laughing Otter is, well, we're
Speaker: we're constantly trying new things and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But because we're for profit and we're not getting that scrutiny, we can pull a lever and see what happens and then adjust accordingly. But if you're never allowed to pull that lever in the first place because of the fear of failing, that that makes it pretty tough to be innovative and to try new things. I think, um,
Speaker: Yeah, having the mindset that financial outcome is just a measure, it's not an outcome, which a lot of businesses, I think, think they either have to be there for a financial outcome, growth and profitability, or they're there for purpose, but I think balancing those two.
Speaker: is really important. Part of what we think about at Crank is how do we measure outcomes? What are the analytics that we need to build? And we've aligned things like our product innovation to be able to measure the outcomes that NDS measure themselves. So we want to be able to measure
Speaker: the eight ndas outcome domains which can be anything from you know having relationships and being independent and being out in the community and things like that to the outcomes that we achieve in our coaching so it's kind of like i think you need to start with how you measure what you're doing and finance and profitability isn't a measure it's just a way that you're assessing the health of the business along the way um and i think that's that's
Speaker: maybe a bit of a mature way of looking at it. I don't know that it's, but it's important. Otherwise you, you're North star. If it's making money and margin, then you're going to be in trouble, right? And if it's just outcome, maybe without the good measures too, you're going to be in trouble because if funding changes or if something happens, you're just going to fall over.
Speaker: Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head and we've seen the other extreme. I use it metaphorically, but in the Silicon Valley model, which is we need to get 10 X in three years and get out.
Speaker: Well, that mentality destroys more businesses than it helps because you're slashing and burning and everything is for this very limited short -term gain and then
Speaker: And then it ends up being a house of cards that falls down. And one of the things that the Laughing Otters, what we're really trying to do and what we see is this making a social impact doesn't have to be mutually exclusive to making a profit. In fact, in this day and age,
Speaker: There's a lot of consumers out there that demand a conscience from the companies that they are engaged with. And so being good and being ethical and being moral and making a social impact actually is profitable.
Speaker: We always talk about being on the side of the angels where what we do for our participants or crew, what we do for their families, what we do for other providers, employers, and even NAS should all be really net positive gains because we want everyone to benefit from crank existing. So I think if you can think about
Speaker: all of the stakeholders and how you build value for everyone so you know we want to measure outcomes like NDIS might measure because we want to show to NDIS that we're a good corporate citizen achieving and aligned to the same things that they're wanting to achieve.
Speaker: And I think it's just a matter of aligning to all those stakeholders, right? Because yeah, our stakeholder isn't a bank and an investor, it's who we serve, and that's more than our customer, it's the community, it's their family, it's the NDIS, it's education sector, and it's employers, it's everyone that we need to touch. Yeah, I think that's a big issue within Silicon Valley, again, quote -unquote, is
Speaker: In too many cases, the only person that matters is the VCs and the investors. So nothing else matters as far as establishing long -term sustainability. As long as you can get the returns that are demanded by the investors, well then you're all right.
Speaker: But that doesn't lend itself well to an organization that's going to be around 20, 30, 40 years from now, which. And you've got a big, I guess the other issue with the tech company and the tech world is the concentration of power with major companies that stop innovation anyway. So, you know, it's when Facebook put a wall up and stop you from
Speaker: collaborating from a data perspective or a system perspective with them, Google does the same, Microsoft and Apple, then there's a huge concentration of power. That got a monopoly and they have to protect it. I guess in a way, we see technology as being really important.
Speaker: What impact does it have on smaller companies trying to innovate? Well, you know, it probably makes things a bit tougher to kind of innovate from a tech perspective as well, that attitude. But going back to the whole changes in the world, I think technology is a major area that companies should be innovating or should be investing in. And that's the other thing that I find not -for -profits don't do very well. Most businesses don't. They buy an off -the -shelf product to manage their invoicing and billing.
Speaker: They have an accounting product, but they're not really thinking what's the unique business model? What's the unique customer experience? How do I build the best mobile app or the best thing for these consumers of the service? Because everyone's technology literate, right, that we're serving.
Speaker: even if you've got a 65 -year -old customer who has a disability, they'll be at home online at night, at 10 at night, and that'll be the best time that they want to access services or advice sometimes, and you need to make yourself available. So yeah, there's so many layers to this. Yeah, and I think that, yeah, that speaks to the - Bit of a tangent, but yeah. Well, it speaks to the handcuff
Speaker: uh, or the anchor that traditional not for profits have having to, there's to being able to, to, um, to provide value immediately to their, to, to their end stakeholders while still having the ability to invest in the future. And a lot of times that just does not align. I could see there, you know, we can house these people or we can buy a new.
Speaker: we can invest in a new app and it puts them in a rock and a hard place. Whereas the models that we're building is let's sell things and put out things and provide value
Speaker: that at a cost or at a price, that cost is more than what it costs to produce them so that you create that traditional business model around your deliverables. And I think that then it becomes a self -fulfilling prophecy. That's it. And I think a good example of that in our industry is the fact that if you engage with a service provider, an NIS service provider,
Speaker: They might keep a time sheet and notes of what's happened and happened, but they're going to literally keep that record in case someone queries an invoice, but there's no data that's driving into reporting of outcomes or justifying the plan that someone has or helping NDS understand the value of your service or giving family and friends a measure of how things have improved. So there's just very little thinking about the analytics and the measurement of outcomes.
Speaker: And so you can have great experiences but if you're not measuring it then probably it's very hard to justify your model so i think there's a lot of reasons why companies need to invest in technology just so they can show people what they're achieving even and that's not something that we talk about that often in in companies like prank.
Speaker: If you look at education, you know, they focus on the major NAPLAN results and the exam results, but we can kind of, we can, we know from a human perspective, there's a lot of other growth that isn't measured, right? During a schooling life, social competence, community, a whole bunch of stuff. And so being able to measure that is really important. Yeah. That's, I think that's a, uh,
Speaker: That's a debate that's been, well, not even a debate. I think everybody's in agreement, especially all parents are in agreement that there needs to be more focus on those kind of soft skills. But the challenge is how do you do that? And then maintain a fair schooling system and the way, you know, entrance in the university and all that sort of stuff. So that's a tough one because the irony is
Speaker: as you know you have staff I have staff I really don't give a shit if somebody knows the capital of the Philippines or I don't care if they can name all of their
Speaker: how photosynthesis works. What I do care about is their EQ and their level of problem solving and the ability to work together, productivity, creative thinking, all of those things. But I will say, we don't measure those well, but just engaging with all the teachers in my, with my son's school,
Speaker: there's a real focus on it. So it may, maybe it doesn't necessarily show up on a test result, but the focus on those skills is definitely there. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Well, you've chosen a good school. It's a great school. It's one of the beauties of living in Australia is that it's a government school. I couldn't be happier.
Speaker: It's, uh, the teachers are wonderful. Um, yeah. So where, what's, what's next for crank? I think, um, for us, we're wanting to move to a, we call it sort of a world of personalized coaching and personalized reporting. Um, we've spent the first two years of crank getting the model of coaching and.
Speaker: our SDA's programs like the 30 people that are here this weekend that's that's called a short term accommodation holiday program so we've been experimenting with all the services. We are turning on a couple of services so school or group based program for coaching so a lot of schools want to
Speaker: have Crank come in and also a couple of other little services that we want to offer like coach for a day where we give you a specialised coach in whatever area you want for just a whole day just to immerse yourself. So we're turning those on but then we're really investing in the whole personalised
Speaker: year -long program design system which is kind of a crank system. So we want to give badges to people for everything they achieve along the 12 months and each month we want to give people a badge but we want to show people what that plan looks like 12 months ahead and we want to design it around the goals that people have and the interest people have whether or not that's gaming or careers. So there's been a lot of thinking and planning
Speaker: in the office but we're just wanting to be a world first in this area and we even though we are
Speaker: serving people that traditionally are given second rate services, people with disability, NDS participants, we want to open up to be the best business in the world in this space and we want to give the NDS participants, we serve the absolute best coaching, solution and service that we can. And so yeah, that's all just innovation and a lot of thinking and design and
Speaker: Um, yeah, it's really exciting. Like, yeah, that sounds pretty cool. Cause it, it, it actually makes a lot of sense to, um, to put gamification into a program that, that is tailored towards gamers. So the badges, that's a brilliant idea. So that sounds cool.
Speaker: Yeah, thanks. I mean, it's how we started, but we started with a generic program, right? And now we've got over 100 crew and not every crew is the same. So we now want to give everyone their own program.
Speaker: And so it's really just building the capacity to do that, which will take a little bit more time, but we're getting there. And we've got a research program with Monash and CSIRO kicking off with data science. So that will be really good to support that. And I guess the other area is as we scale, we're moving to having sort of squads. So instead of having one crank community, we're starting to formulate.
Speaker: these squads of micro communities where those communities get to design the program their way. And if they want a career expert coming in talking on a Wednesday, for instance, they get to design it, or if they want to play a game together at night, they'll design it and we'll give them money for competitions and prizes. So yeah, so it's just yeah, it's it's yeah, that's yeah, that's pretty cool. So
Speaker: Well, it has been awesome talking to you. You obviously share the passion of the Laughing Otter and the Otter Games and what we're doing in gaming. It's great to be working together and having this conversation, isn't it? Thanks for everything. As soon as I heard about Crank, I went,
Speaker: We've got to get involved with these guys because they love gaming. They're making a difference in people's lives. They're, they're giving kids and young adults a fair shot in life. And so, well, that's just about the vision of laughing on her. So it's been a real pleasure. Um, where can people find you if they want to learn more about that?
Speaker: if you want to come and learn more just go to www .crank .com .au we've got a fairly comprehensive website which will take you through some of the things that we do and on there's a form or a number you can call to contact us that's probably the easiest or just send an email to hey at crank .com .au and we'll respond so
Speaker: Fantastic. They want to reach you. I assume you're on LinkedIn. Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn as Damian Anderson or Mr. Damian Anderson. I've been on LinkedIn forever, so I might reach the top of the search results, but look for Damian, D -A -M -I -A -N Anderson and I'll be there and I'd love to connect.
Speaker: For sure. And you can always reach out to the Laughing Otter as well and I'll put you in connection. So here at DreamHack, we're closing it off here now and I'm looking around and still the parade of people walking by is just fantastic. It's been a great chat. The quality of cosplay is insane this year, isn't it?
Speaker: It's just the outfits. I love it. It is mind boggling. I love it. The cosplay community is so creative and so passionate. It's just wonderful to see. And if you've never been to DreamHack, come on down.
Speaker: It's open tomorrow, right? Yeah. Well, it depends when you launch this podcast. Yeah, next year. Yeah, next year. But yeah, there'll be photos on our website and on the Finestar Discord, the Otter Games, and we'll have photos there as well. So yeah, well, thanks for being on the show here and to everybody else.
Speaker: Follow us on the laughing otter .com or you can find the otter games on Twitter and on discord. And just remember, we all deserve to be having a lot more fun. Thank you. And thanks again, Damien. Thanks.
