This week's candidate is Ai-Ling Truong, a public servant with a passion for food and events organising. Ai-Ling began working at Spacecubed in 2014 on a community membership in support of the Spacecubed crowdfunding campaign to open up more space on Level 9. She regularly frequented the space for TEDxPerth meetings and continues to support Spacecubed by using it for her own projects.
What are you working on?
I am currently working on Western Australia’s first ever Food And Drink Symposium (FADS) on Sunday 28 May at Jim Webster Pavilion, Claremont Showground. FADS will be a day long program of talks, panel discussions and workshops covering a range of topics including the real cost of food, mental health in industry, challenges of chef owned and operated restaurants, seasonality and availability of food across the State, examining the history of the WA’s alcohol industry and much more.
What do you love most about the Spacecubed community?
I work full-time as a Policy Analyst in a government agency and have a community membership with Spacecubed which I use to work on my other projects outside of my job. I appreciate a space to drop in while I am in the city and work on my projects, connecting with different people, attending various workshops and seminars held at Spacecubed and the monthly breakfasts/Friday drinks to hear what other people are doing. It’s incredible to hear about the diversity of projects people are working on and to bounce off ideas/get advice.
How did your journey into the startup/SME space begin?
I work full-time and like to use my free time to pursue creative projects, mostly involving food! I am the founder and organiser of Perth’s food truck festival Food Truck Rumble. I’ve co-founded with my friend Katrina Lane, Western Australia’s first Food And Drink Symposium. I’m just trying to make sh*t happen in Perth.
Who are you looking to connect with?
Anybody, lots of people are doing really interesting things and you can learn something from everyone.
Can you share with us a success story you've achieved during your time at Spacecubed?
To raise the funds to cover the costs of running Western Australia’s first Food And Drink Symposium, I started a crowdfunding campaign on the platform Chuffed.org. We are using Chuffed to sell tickets to the Symposium and also the Masterclasses we ran in the lead-up.
When I was researching what crowdfunding platforms to use and came across Chuffed, I emailed Chuffed with questions and found that Marlies Kimpe, who I had worked with previously as a committee member of TEDxPerth, is the Growth Manager at Chuffed. Marlies also worked on the Spacecubed Chuffed crowdfunding campaign when she was working here as the Business Development Manager.
Serendipitously, during the time I was enquiring about Chuffed, Marlies happened to be visiting Perth from the UK and we were able to catch up and she gave me a lot of great advice to start my campaign and has provided support throughout the journey. The crowdfunding campaign is still running and I’m certain of achieving success with our target before the event.
For more information, check out www.wafads.com.au and the Chuffed crowdfunding campaign https://www.chuffed.org/project/fads
