My personal hot takes, quotables and takeaways from the day.At the end of last month, I attended my second ARIA Innovator Conference. Last year I wrote about stairs. No elevators, no shortcuts, just the climb. I came back to the State Library of New South Wales this year half expecting a sequel. What I got was something different though.Through every AI conversation, every platform strategy, data point and case study, one theme kept surfacing. Summed up by this quote.“Art is made by humans, for humans, about being human.” Meng Ru Kuok, BandLab That was the day. So here’s my personal hot takes, quotables and takeaways from the day.1. “A fool with a tool is still a fool. You’ve just made them faster.” (Dom Price)Dom opened with this and I nearly put my notebook down. Every conversation about AI, every new platform, none of it matters if you’re not doing the thinking first. Makes sense. Technology is an amplifier. If what you’re amplifying isn’t good, you’ve just got louder noise. 2. The gap between knowing and doing is where careers go to die.Dom Price again. He called it “knowledge obesity”: this era where we consume information, attend conferences (so meta of me), listen to podcasts and feel productive without actually changing anything. He said it plainly: the winners right now are the ones who apply what they know, not the ones who know the most. Circle the things in your notebook you’re actually going to do. Do them! Everything else is just collecting. 3. “Build meaningful relationships with people now, not when you need them.” (Dom Price)This one by far spoke to me the most during his talk. As someone that invests heavily and lives and dies on community I can’t agree with this more. People only turning up when you need something is a favour. Turning up before you need anything is how you build something real. Community without an actual investment in people is just performative. 4. “It’s not what you do in this business, it’s how long you hold on.” (Jonathan Dworkin, UMG)Truth bomb for me. The industry sometimes does truly feel like a race for the last man standing. Dworkin said a label president gave him this advice at 22 and he thought it was useless. At 50 it’s the truest thing anyone’s ever said to him. In my 40s I feel that. I’ve watched so many of my peers, fellow singers, musicians, music business people let go. And I know lots of people who have hung on through it all. And here I am, still hanging on. 5. Margaret Zhang: the masterclass I didn’t see coming.Margaret Zhang was where I personally got the most from. Her conversation felt like a masterclass. Every point was precise. Everything that came out of her mouth was a banger.“Scale is not community. And platforms do not afford you community.”“50 people in a room where you know who those people are and you can communicate with them is so much more valuable than 50 million people who are invisible and they’re just data points on a screen.” This!!!! Community requires stakes. It requires people to feel like something belongs to them, like they’re part of a psychological tribe, not just an audience. If you’re so general that you’re trying to speak to everyone, you’re speaking to no one.“The greatest creativity comes from the space to fail and the space to make mistakes.” Wow. Just wow.Give yourself permission to make the wrong thing. That’s not a detour. That’s the process. “Say no to the things that don’t serve that art. Which is so much easier said than done. But still my best advice.”“Work with your friends. The people who really care about you and have your best interests at heart, that’s how you keep each other in check.”When Margaret said this I swear, myself, Mentor Academy co-founder Helen and Milly Petriella all looked at each other and nodded. The silent acknowledgement of the journey that we are on together.In summary, build with your people. It’s the people around you who will be real with you when you’re not making decisions aligned with your values. Build that circle. Protect it.If you want more of this, then check out: <a target="_blank" href="https://ronharyanto.substack.com/p/art-is-made-by-humans-what-i-took">https://ronharyanto.substack.com/p/art-is-made-by-humans-what-i-took</a>

Last year I wrote about stairs. No elevators, no shortcuts, just the climb. I came back this year half expecting a sequel. What I got was something different though.

Art is Made by Humans: What I Took Home from ARIA's Innovator Conference 2026

Across multiple different short form content streams, our Founders and Industry Leaders explore their key takeaways from industry events, challenges that creatives face, and everything in-between.

Art is Made by Humans: What I Took Home from ARIA's Innovator Conference 2026

Art is Made by Humans: What I Took Home from ARIA's Innovator Conference 2026

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