You might have heard of the notorious storytelling event FuckUp Nights Melbourne. Thousands did, and thousands attended over the seven years Josh Lipscombe and I ran it. Well, now we’re letting go of it, content with the impact of it in Melbourne. Long live Fuckup Nights Melbourne.
FuckUp Nights Melbourne was a chapter of a global movement, with some 200 chapters worldwide after its original beginnings in Mexico.
We started this event series in 2016 as a little experiment in running a bit of a cheeky, anti-event that had a DIY, punkish storytelling vibe.
People would gather together to hear stories of failure by a variety of people from all walks of life, and we took glee in curating a diverse range of speakers who would freely express the way failure had impacted their lives in business, projects and relationships contexts and their health.
We were never not aware that we were doing something starkly different. When 500 people would regularly turn up to an event that was marketed unconventionally with that very blatant ‘fuck’ in the title, we would shake our heads in amusement that this ‘little’ event was responded to so well by so many.
We would never film it out of respect for our speakers. You would simply have to be there, that simple. And what appeared to be an antagonistic event from the outside was quickly found to be a warm, respectful, welcoming environment. There were tears, and there were laughs and tears of laughter.
Some 200 speakers shared their stories. Thousands of people attended this at locations like the top floors of towers at the top end of town to little shanty basement bars that double as pizza restaurants. I think we did a good, independent thing here.
We had high-profile speakers such as founders and leaders of companies like Culture Amp and Vinomofo and Young Henrys and Linktree and Eucalyptus and Good Design Australia and Giant Leap and July, and way too many more to mention.
And we had actors and musicians and performance artists and visitors from overseas and creative technologists and high-performance athletes and designers and chefs and social impact figureheads and way too many more variables to get into.
All sharing a bonding experience with a room full of strangers, storytelling about failure and their definition of it in the context of THEIR lives.
Sometimes it was money focused. Sometimes it was relationships focused. Sometimes it was business partnerships, and sometimes it was failed marriages. Sometimes it was capitalist pursuits, and sometimes it was their inability to talk to a mental health professional when they really should have been doing that.
I think we never fell into the usual lazy tech industry tropes when it came to the curation of speakers. We never once prioritised only big-name speakers at events and were never so lazy that we would not focus our curation on a considered ratio of women or people of colour, or people of disadvantage at our events.
We barely had any people appear more than once so that we could have a platform for even more diverse opinions, sharing personal stories for a room full of people there for storytelling.
Everyone was always very welcome at our activations, and we had a ‘No Dickheads’ policy always expressed at the start of every event to ensure respect for speakers and each other, and triple checking to ensure there were no dickheads present.
Mental healthiness was a consistent theme throughout our time running the event, and we’re happy to have opened up a broader forum to talk about big feelings, difficulties in finding peace to be able to move on, and also to find solace in the generosity of people, and connection, and stories. We had some very heavy themes & some overwhelmingly joyous ones too.
Many speakers found the opportunity to take a moment and look back over their lives for once, and that ended up being a bit of an emotional experience for them. We were very touched to see how much it meant to plenty of people when they got up there on that stage, vulnerable, opening up.
We also got incredibly tired of the narrative around failure in recent times, i.e. people prophesying that ‘failure rules’ and ‘hail failure!’ and ‘isn’t failure fun?’.
Fuck off.
It’s soul-destroying for the most part, and the only reason most people were happy to laugh about it in a whimsical nature in our events was that it was in retrospect, and they’d gained some newfound perspective off the back of it. But they did connect with plenty of people in the audience that needed it right then, and that’s meaningful.
That might explain why this was never something we sought to parlay into workshops or other paid opportunities off the back of the enormous activations we were running. We’re not qualified to speak to people about psychological factors relating to their mental health — that’s what mental health professionals are for.
So, we actively rejected leaning into that and being ‘the failure guys’. We were there to provide a platform for people with a lot of warmth. I’ve rolled my eyes too many times over the journey at other charlatans running copycat engagement efforts and posturing as an edgy alternative to self-help for people who just needed a connection, not workshops.
Don’t let the bastards get you down, as they say.
Sometimes, you’ve got to know when to let go, and we’d prefer to go out on top whilst it’s still been fun. It has been a hell of a lot of fun.
I always had a devilish glint in my eye when mentioning that I ran this event to people in conversation (‘What’s it called? What did you say?!?’ ?)
And I personally felt liberated by being able to say I ran this event, that was called this, that’s correct, and from then on, I did not need to carry any additional pretence in how I communicated with people. The misfit in me was laid perfectly bare.
My event partner Josh also has some thoughts on the impact we had:
‘There was a need for this kind of space when we started, and that need for authentic storytelling and learning still exists – there’s something incredibly cathartic about sharing stories of deep trauma in front of hundreds of strangers.
Witnessing the courage and resilience of our speakers as they shed light on their struggles has been incredibly inspiring.
The power of these stories was always in their ability to foster connection and empathy among attendees, encouraging them to embrace their failures as opportunities for growth.
Through FuckUp Nights, we showed people that failure is not an endpoint, or as catastrophic as the societal expectations might suggest, but a stepping stone towards a long life of learning and self-discovery.
Spaces like FuckUp Nights are still crucial for organisers — curating a space that celebrates authenticity and vulnerability allows us to forge deeper connections and learn from one another’s experiences inspiring others and creating a more compassionate and understanding community.”
Alan Jones (not that one) was a speaker at FuckUp Nights Melbourne and he spends his days as an investor, radio co-host on Disrupt Radio and frequent mentor and advisor throughout the technology ecosystem.
He says, “Speaking at FuckUp Night gave me a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get a lot off my chest about who I really am, by sharing some of the biggest mistakes I’d made in my career. One was still embarrassing, one (with the benefit of time) was funny, and one still causes me pain today, but being in a room full of people who I knew had bought into the concept of FuckUp Night made it possible to be open and honest about it all. It’s something you don’t get to experience outside of a Catholic confessional or a therapist’s office, but it’s free and you don’t have to recite any hail marys afterward.”
Bryony Cole was another speaker at the event and spends her days as a leading global authority on sex tech via her platform Future of Sex and online education program Sextech School.
“When you’re creating something from scratch, mistakes are inevitable. However, that voice in your head can get unbearably loud. Speaking openly about fuck ups in a room full of supportive and relatably imperfect strangers is a sweet relief, one most of us didn’t know we needed. (Gaz and Josh clearly did). I was lucky enough to do this twice over the course of Fuck Up Nights Melbourne, each time bringing new baggage to unload! Fuck Up Nights created so much meaning as a speaker, but also as a listener, empathising with the shared fuck ups, the disappointments, the downright cringe… you walk away feeling a lot more connected (and a lot less fucked up!),” says Cole.
A few thousand social media followers and attendees later, we’re setting it free like the proverbial FuckUp dove it needs to be, for us.
FuckUp Nights Melbourne (c/o us). 2016-2023.
Garry Williams runs FuckUp Nights Melbourne and spends time as the Director of Engagement for Tractor Ventures, backing hundreds of founders in AU & NZ with alt-capital to grow at the pace that suits them, on their terms.
Josh Lipscombe runs FuckUp Nights Melbourne and spends time as the Community Programs Lead at LaunchVic, the Vic Government startup agency, fuelling the growth of Victoria’s startup ecosystem.
Garry Williams is the founder of GROUP GROUP, a communications and advisory service for challenger brands. He was previously director of engagement for Tractor Ventures, and was lead organiser for FuckUp Nights Melbourne & Sydney.
