中文Former Fespa Australia conference keynote speaker Gus Balbontin will be back at this year’s event, but this time to run a live innovation workshop on solving common problems in the industry. Balbontin, the former executive director and chief technology officer of Lonely Planet, is the headline speaker for the 2026 conference, returning two years after a keynote that, by the association’s account, is still being quoted. His presence signals a deliberate evolution in how Fespa Australia wants its members to engage with big ideas.
Rather than deliver another speech, Balbontin will open the day with a short recap of the ideas that landed in 2024, then turn the room into a working session. Delegates will be introduced to a four-step innovation method he has refined over 25 years of building products and solving problems with teams around the world, then use it in small groups on real problems shared across the print, signage and visual communications industry, and pitch their solutions back to the room.
The change of format reflects a deliberate decision by Fespa Australia to build the whole conference around participation rather than presentation. This is our fifth year of delivering strategy, culture and leadership focused conferences that encourage connections among participants, and we wanted to change the mix, said Nigel Davies, president of Fespa Australia. He acknowledged that we have all sat through the day where one person after another stands up and talks at you, and argued that the easy thing would have been to book Balbontin for another keynote.
Instead, the association wanted something people leave with rather than merely listen to. The whole day is built around working on things together, and Balbontin’s session sets that up from the first hour. Davies framed the strategic stakes bluntly, noting that technology is moving faster than the industry and the opportunity is there for those who innovate, while disruption is what is left for those who do not. The takeaway, he said, is a method members can run with their own teams the following week and every time the next problem lands.
The interactive approach carries through the rest of the programme. Andrew Butow, co-founder of Earth2Mars and a specialist in AI-driven change, will run an Innovation Lab on where AI is taking business design and leadership beyond automation. A cross-generational panel facilitated by Bianca Martin brings together Sonya Beers, Karen Lawler, Nigel Spicer and Vincent Nair on what each generation of leaders sees that the other does not. Carl Harman, principal at Imago Leadership, leads a discussion on what leadership will require in a decade of AI and human judgement.
For those new to Balbontin, his experience is directly relevant to an industry navigating rapid technological and market change. At Lonely Planet, a business built on printed travel guidebooks, he helped steer the company through the disruption that transformed publishing years before it reached most other sectors. He is now an entrepreneur, investor and advisor working with businesses on transformation and innovation, making him a credible guide for printers confronting their own digital reckoning.
Fespa Australia Conference 2026 is on Friday 16 October at the Shangri-La Hotel, Sydney, from 8:45am to 3:00pm. The event is supported by Gold sponsors Durst Oceania, Easy Signs and Smartech, Silver sponsors IVE Group, Cactus Imaging and Mimaki, and Bronze sponsors Ball and Doggett and HVG Graphics Media, a line-up that reflects broad vendor confidence in the association’s direction. Registration is open, and the full programme is available through Fespa Australia.
Source: This article is a reworking of reporting originally published by Print21 (print21.com.au) on 25 September 2026.
The decision to replace a keynote with a workshop reflects a wider recoil against passive conference formats across many industries. Audiences have grown weary of sitting through a parade of speakers, and associations are discovering that members value what they can take away and apply far more than what they merely hear. For a sector such as print, signage and visual communications, where practical problem-solving is the daily currency, a working session built around real shared challenges is a natural fit. Balbontin’s pedigree, having steered a print-dependent business through its own digital disruption, lends the format added credibility; he speaks from experience rather than theory. The inclusion of AI-led sessions and a cross-generational leadership panel further signals that Fespa Australia wants its members grappling with the forces, automation and demographic change, that will define the next decade. In an industry often accused of looking backward, the conference’s design is a small but deliberate act of looking forward.
Whether the format delivers on its promise will depend on execution, and on how many delegates actually leave with a method they use the following week. Conferences are littered with good intentions that fade by Monday morning. Fespa Australia’s bet is that a structured, facilitated working session, anchored by a credible practitioner and reinforced through the rest of the programme, stands a better chance of sticking than another inspirational talk. If the members who attend find the method useful, the association may have found a template worth repeating well beyond this single event.
