Technology behind rovers that go to Mars and virtual reality used as a training tactic in the Australian Defence Force is the kind of innovation Border residents can expect of this year's North East Digital Innovation Festival.
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The third annual festival will kick off from August 23 and involves a Wodonga Innovation Summit and Expo and a youth summit on Wednesday, September 4.
Guy Rowson, director of TheHUB in Wodonga, said WISE and sister events would be an opportunity to learn from local and national industry leaders.
"We'll get the community talking," he said.
"The main purpose is for us to celebrate what people are doing today that is innovative, and I really want NEDIF to be about collaboration and inclusion.
"There's plans to hold events in rural areas and we might find a partner to deliver some workshops with senior citizens to show them how to engage with the online world."
NEDIF links in with a statewide Digital Innovation Festival co-ordinated by the Victorian government over two weeks.
Digital Innovation Festival Victoria program manager Margot Ingoldby said there were 430 events across the state in 2018, 32 of which were in regional areas.
"This is the fourth year of the festival and my job is to engage regionally and activating towns, organisations and individuals to run some events in the tech space," she said.
"It could be aged care facilities to primary school students.
"The three themes of the festival this year are emergency technology - we love anything like incubators and new gadgets - future jobs, and digital inclusion, which is looking at people on the margins of society."
Ms Ingoldby said the offering this year was shaping up to be 450 DIF events and 50 in regional areas.
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"It's been really successful and it's been diverse, like cyber debates, artificial intelligence summits and robotics," she said.
"We have some very deep thinkers in the new energy space, we have population modelling and smart cities; we're trying to keep it as broad a conversation as possible.
"Wodonga this year looks like it will create quite a buzz."
Outside of WISE, there are numerous events happening across the North East, such as marketing campaign workshops in Benalla and Rutherglen and cyber security explainers for small business in Wangaratta.
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