Live from #Tech23: Social Media – Centryc, Friendorse and Roamz

The final session of the day kicked off with a presentation from David Aicken from Centryc Solutions. His company helps the managers of theme parks and festivals to learn more about their customers. Centryc’s Metag enables customers to register their wristbands with social media applications such as Facebook and Twitter, and swiping their wristband automatically updates their status and provides them access to offers based on their activity. It is already being used at Luna Park.

The second presentation was given by Bronwen Clune from Friendorse, a service that lets customers ask local questions and get local deals. The company is built on the idea that 80 percent of spending happens within 5Kms of a person’s home, and the solution focuses on creating demand by asking people what they want. In the US the site as launched Zipurb, where it is working with a media company, and is also working with a media company to boost its presence in Australia.

The final presentation was given by Jonathan Barouch, who capped the day of well with an informative and entertaining presentation on his company Roamz, which pulls data from across the web and delivers it to users at the right time and in the right place. The engine can look at one piece of data and match it up against other pieces of social content. Roamz is even backed by Sydney chef Tony Bilson.

Live from #Tech23: Digital Media – buildAR, Filter Squad and Hyperlocalizer

The first presentation from the digital media panel was given by Rob Manson from builAR. Rob took the audience on a journey through the possibilities of augmented reality and the buildAR platform.  He demonstrated cultural implementations, interactive ad campaigns, education concepts and new forms of entertainment, such as Walls360.

The second presentation was David McKinney from Filter Squad. The company has built a range of apps to help consumers find content, such as Discovr Music and Discovr Apps, and has achieved more than 1 million downloads – 250,000 in four days, without a cent spent on marketing. His own background includes promoting one of his own songs into the UK Top 40 just using social media. They’ve also kicked the butt of Yahoo! along the way. The company is now working on the world’s first personalised music magazine that delivers content to you based on exactly what you like.https://wp10880.wpquasar.dev/wp-admin/post-new.php

The final presentation from the group was from Tony Surtees from Hyperlocalizer, who talked about his company’s ability to create highly relevant media using a handful of people. The model has already been proven at Prime Media with 45 sites run by just two people for three years, which also increased user dwell time and television ad sales (in the US the local advertising market is worth US$50 billion and increasing in a down market). Existing Joomla apps can be easily integrated to improve functionality, and the company is finding new clients internationally.

 

Live from #Tech23: Powering productivity – Agworld, iAsset, Navisens and The Early Warning Network

The first presentation after lunch was from Agworld, a cloud-based platform for the agriculture industry. The Agworld platform uses zero-typing data capture in the form of the pen and replaced this with a digital pen, connected to a data capture system, to store data.

The second presentation was from Scott Frew (someone I have known for about 15 years since he ran the value-added distributor LAN Systems) from iAsset. Frew’s new company provides a platform for managing channel-based sales. The company already has customers around the planet, including Telstra and NetApp, and can be integrated with ERP tools and even Google Earth to visually represent assets. The system can also manage training to ensure that channel partners are skilled up appropriately.

The third presentation was from Dr Ashod Donikian from Navisens, which uses personal sensors to monitor the location of people in environments where methods such as GPS don’t work, such as underground. The technology can provide the location and status of personnel to prevent overcrowding in certain sections of a mine, or to determine the locations of workers in emergency situations. The technology is also suitable for use in battlefield situations. The wearer carries a device with a range of sensors, including inertial sensors, which offloads its data whenever it is connected to a network, and the output can be connected to whatever transmitter is appropriate.

The final presentation was from The Early Warning Network, which provides an early warning service for severe disturbances and disasters in real time. People receive notifications through multiple media to an accuracy of about 10 metres in real time. The company has multiple users already, with hundreds of thousands of alerts issued in Australia every month.

Live from #Tech23: Comnsumer web – Specialist Link, Thereitis.com and ZeroMail

The first presentation of the group was from Alison Hardacre at Specialist Link, which links patients and practitioners to deliver better health outcomes. The service was developed in conjunction with Monash University and enables patients to choose their appropriate practitioners, and then manage their conditions and share this data with practitioners, and between practitioners. Hardacre says most software available today is developed for GPs, not specialists, and rarely goes beyond basic booking and invoicing. By incorporating more functionality, the Specialist Link service can save specialists 12 minutes admin time per patient.

The second presentation was from Guy Sewell at Thereitis.com, which promises a new way to search and experience images online. It takes images from websites  and rearranges them show them in a 3D  grid to make them easier to view and sort. The application is designed to support e-commere companies by reducing abandoned shopping carts and increasing impulse buying.

The final presentation before lunch was from Bart Jellema at ZeroMail. Jellema promises to integrate the many different buckets of information that consumers have – email, newsletters, social media feeds and so on.

Live from #Tech23: Communications/Mobile group – goCatch, InterfereX and Vtalk Holdings

The first presentation after the morning tea break was from goCatch, a company that has developed an app that lets taxi drivers connect directly with users, who can see exactly where taxi drivers are at any time. In a highly entertaining and informative presentation Andrew Campbell and Ned Moorfield took listeners through the problems that plague both taxi drivers and users.

The second presentation was from Dr Mark Reed from InterfereX, who took the audience through a presentation on his company’s solution to mobile coverage and data bottlenecks. InterfereX’s technology can improve data rates and coverage through better network planning using advanced mathematics to manage interference between cells in a network.

The third presentation was from Dan Nolan of Vtalk Holdings, who talked about his company’s development of a voice-over-IP telephone system designed to work with a business’s existing telephony system. The company’s proposition is that many businesses are failing to adopt VoIP because it is too complex – Vtalk aims to take that complexity away.

It might have been the extra coffee ingested at the morning tea break, but the presenters brought a lot more energy to the room. Interestingly this helped to spark a much greater level of chat on Twitter, with posts reflecting the energy of the presenters.

Live from #Tech23: Enterprise group – Bugherd, cinergix, Effective Measure and Kaggle

The second group presenting at #Tech23 was from the group ‘Meeting the needs of the enterprise’ and was kicked off by Matt Milosavljevic (@mmilo) from Bugherd. His company has created what it claims is the world’s simplest software big tracker. The company’s fo0unders are all engineers, so very familiar with the problems, and have already attracting $245,000 in funding.

The second presentation was given by Chandika Jayasundara (@chandika) from cinergix, whose software creatly enables users to create simple wire-frames that enable better visualisation of company information, and has already been adopted by 130,000 users. The company’s new tool enables the automatic creation of diagrams that include data from other systems such as Sakesforce.com.

The third company to present was Effective Measure. CEO Scott Julian (@scottjulian) outlined the company’s service for accurately measuring online audiences. The company is chasing after emerging markets, where it is seeking to become the official currency in those market when it comes to web ratings. The company has already raised $8 million, and is chasing an addressable market of $2.3 billion.

The final presentation was from Nicholas Gruen (@NicholasGruen) from Kaggle, a predictive data analytics platform that uses crowdsourcing to solve complex analytical probkems. The company is developing a community and creating a platform for a market that it estimates is worth $107 billion – of which $38 billion is outsourced today.

Live from #Tech23: Cloud group – ESR Momentum, OrionVM and StageBitz

I’m currently sitting in the audience for Tech23, Australia’s premier showcase for early-stage technology companies.  In an opening address from the deputy premier the  Hon. Andrew Stoner, who gave plugs to the Australian Technology Showcase and MEGA, announced that the NSW Government would be supporting the Fishburners early-stage company workspace.

The first presentation was from Pem Dechen from ESR Momentum, an information management service for schools to help them track and manage the learning needs of students. Pem’s presentation included a passionate plea to the judges, invoking the words of Jerry Maguire ,’to help you, help us, help the children.”

Pem was followed by Sheng Yeo from OrionVM, which has built one of the fastest cloud computing platforms in the world, with a storage architecture designed to meed the future needs of cloud computing users. Sheng showed an impressive list of advisers as well as a strong growth pipeline.

The third presentation for the morning was from Catherine Prosser from StageBitz, who did a great job of articulating the issues faced by creative companies in both inventorying and even making money from the thousands of props that are created each year. A beta version has already been tested around the world, including Opera Australia, Bell Shakespeare Company and NIDA.

Live from the DBCDE Telework Forum #teleworkforum

Am currently in the audience for the Department of Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy’s Telework Forum at the Westin Hotel in Sydney. The purpose of today is to explore the opportunities for the promotion of remote working and teleworking, and how to encourage its uptake within the business community.

The event was kicked off with an address from the Hon. Stephen Conroy, who reiterated the government’s goal to double the number of Australians who telework by 2020, so that one in eight might work from home rather than an organised workplace. Australia lags many other developed economies when it comes to the adoption of telework. He also talked about an Access Economics report that showed that gains in reduced travel costs, staff retention and productivity gains through the use of telework by just a small number of workers would be between $1.4 and $1.9 billion each year. According to Access economics, if 10 percent of Australian employees teleworked for half the time we could save 120 million litres of fuel each year and reduce peak traffic by 5 percent.

And while the National Broadband Network might alleviate the technical problems, there are still cultural barriers to be overcome.