Catching up on some reading/listening over the weekend and heard Mark Jones’ podcast from a couple of weeks ago called “The Australian Innovator’s Dilemma”

Joining Mark were Domenic Carosa, former CEO at Destra and now Chairman at the Internet Industry Association; Phil Morle, co-founder at Pollenizer; and Mike Zimmerman, partner at Technology Venture Partners.

Definitely worth a listen, if not for the quality of the guests, then for the content they cover around commercial ready and possible policies/programs that could replace it. There is also some good background info on the US VC scene, the Israeli tech industry and Australian Technology Park in Sydney.

Oh yeah, and some hints about plans Pollenizer are putting in place to get startups a place to work together.

Check it out if you can

Just a quick update on the Tech Nation C&D email thing.

No decision has been made on the matter yet but rest assured that either way, the show will go on.

I really feel like what we’re doing here is documenting the coming up (finally!) of the Aussie Tech Industry.

That will not stop.

Wow - so much drama already…

Just got an email from Dr Moira A Gunn at Tech Nation - www.technation.com - asking us politely, albeit sternly, to stop using TechNation Australia as our name.

Time to check out my IP Law class notes (lucky i kept them). Pretty sure I know what our response will be but better double check.

Actually, anyone, legal practitioners included, want to chuck in their 2 cents?

Updates to come…this should be interesting

For those who missed it, Tangler released their latest version earlier on in the week.

New stuff includes: -

• RSS feeds! Yep, the action now follows you! Choose between getting notified about all topics in a forum, or just all the action in a single topic.
• Our long-awaited API is up and out! Please see the Tangler Wiki for detailed info.
• Some minor cosmetic changes
• Tweaks to the embed - dialogue boxes now fit to size etc
• Some top secret backend stuff (read ‘top secret’ as ‘beyond dek’s understanding’)
• Some annoying bugs resolved - for example, links in the email digest and invitation alert emails take you to the correct pages.

Should be interesting to see how developers start using some of these new features, in particular the API and RSS feeds.

On the back of the last, successful, MySpace DevJam earlier this month - Metarand has announced 3 more events throughout July in Sydney, Melbourne and Games(?).

These events are a must attend for everyone who codes and has an interest in building social media apps.

There will be door prizes and the opportunity to head over to San Francisco and/or Tokyo…

Anyway, head over to the site to check out the details.

I went to Sydney OpenCoffee this morning where I ran into Dean McEvoy from Booking Angel.

Some of you may remember that the other day I said I didn’t get Booking Angel. You can check out the details here - but the important bit is that now I do and I’m going to explain why.

Booking Angel is about enabling tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of restaurants to benefit from the new ways that people search for information about restaurants.

It’s about getting those restaurants to see the value in the Internet and to use Booking Angel as their trusted advisor and provider when, and as, they choose to leverage the Internet more to drive business.

It’s about developing a relationship now, using familiar tools, so that when we’re ready for a semantic web driven by web services that Booking Angel will be the service provider of choice.

And all this with little to no barrier to entry for the restaurants and a small charge only when someone actually books.

Oh yeah, and it adds value for the end-users too (no more double handling - just search and book without having to go grab a phone)

Let me see…

• Adding value to your customers and their customers
• Low barrier to adoption
• Scalable
• Defined sales and growth strategy
• Easy to take to new markets

Hmm - OK, maybe I get it now

I had the pleasure of meeting Michael Brecht at PubCamp Sydney last week. Michael is the founder of ZaaBiz, an Australian-based social networking site for business owners and professionals. “Our aim is empower businesses, employees and self-employed to reach their full potential through a business network which is Australian based”, said Michael, “whether you are looking for a job, an investment opportunity, a business partner or a new employee.”

ZaaBiz is free to sign up, but you can upgrade your membership to a Premium membership for $99 per year which launched in April and provides the ability to:

• Contact members direct
• Use the Power Search
• Manage an Expert Group

ZaaBiz has a clean design and is very usable. A few minor usability issues aside (e.g., the address and date/time entry and display are unabashedly un-Australian), it is a very functional and rich site.

Some of the interesting features I noticed include:

• Skype Integration - can show Skype status in your profile
• Shows connections from many degrees away (LinkedIn limits to 3 degrees by default)
• You list your “Haves” and “Wants” in your profile - could a matching engine be added for connecting businesses in a barter-like ecosystem?
• Business Groups (like Facebook / LinkedIn) - where like-minded members can connect and create and post to forums. Michael noted a lot of offline/online activity happening in the Groups.

When asked how he used the site himself, Michael said “I use ZaaBiz to network with my business partners, colleagues and friends from all over Australia and in fact from all over the world. ZaaBiz helps me stay in touch with my business relationships - I manage my contacts actively through the platform.” A few months ago, Michael was featured on a Sky News interview which generated a significant increase in new memberships.

Originally from Germany, Michael’s background is in founding and growing businesses, both in Europe and in Australia. ZaaBiz is based on a standard LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) and took six months to get up and running. “One of the challenges I faced was finding the right talent in Australia,” Michael said, “so I had to outsource the development of the site to developers in Europe, though my connections there.” ZaaBiz employs a team of four developers in Europe and a team of five “community managers” based in Australia, who actively work with organisations and groups to bring them into ZaaBiz.

Today, ZaaBiz are Australia’s largest Australian-owned social networking platform for business people and have strong growth in New Zealand and South Africa. Michael explained, “we have also had a very large uptake in other countries such as China, Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and especially India. India will be big for us.” India has over 1 million small businesses (less than 100 employees) with access to computers, out of a total of 4 million small businesses (Source: AMI Partners, 2007). One only has to use a bit of Chinese Maths to see the potential: if I could get 10% of 1 million…oh never mind.

The focus on business owners and developing presence where LinkedIn and Xing haven’t yet developed strong footprints is great. Could they become one of the “big three” professional social networks? LinkedIn - North America, Xing - Europe, ZaaBiz - Asia? With Xing and LinkedIn battling each other head-to-head, they may just have a shot. Only time and execution will tell.

So, anyway, I’ve now joined my 23rd social website. My profile is available at http://www.zaabiz.com.au/pr/seth_yates. Feel free to connect with me (Zaabiz me???). There’s even talk of ZaaBiz starting up Groups and Forums to help foster the Australian Startup community.

With open source such an integral part of what we all do, I was pleased to hear from industry stalwart Rich Buggy about the 2008 Open Source Developers Conference (OSDC) to be held in Sydney from from December 2-5.

Even though the conference is 5-odd months away, the Call For Papers closes on June 30th. So, if you’re interested, you need to get in soon.

Below is Rich’s overview. Sounds like a good opportunity if it’s your thing.

The Open Source Developers’ Conference is an Australian conference designed for developers, by developers

Papers on Open Source languages, technologies, projects, tools as well as topics of interest to Open Source developers are being solicited for submission to OSDC 2008. So if you are an Open Source maintainer, developer or user, the organising committee would encourage you to submit a talk proposal on the open source tools, solutions, languages or technologies you are working with.

The conference will be held at SMC Conference venue in the Sydney CBD, New South Wales, from the 2nd to the 5th of December, 2008. We have had some great proposals submitted already, but this is your chance to give the open source thing you are passionate about more exposure.

Being a speaker at OSDC 2008, has it’s privileges. As well as having your paper published in the conference proceedings, you will get a free admission to the 3 days of the main conference and the conference dinner.

If you have any questions, or have never submitted a paper proposal before, please read our FAQ page at http://www.osdc.com.au/2008/papers/cfp.html

If you don’t find an answer there, please contact program<at>osdc.com.au

To submit a proposal, follow the instructions here.

Seems that big tech companies are really liking Australia at the moment.

• Yahoo have just released a beta version of their new homepage design on the .au site (no sign of their new logo yet, though)

• The NSW Department of Education and Training has just helped Google take 1.3 Million Exchange licenses away from Microsoft by agreeing to migrate all their student email accounts to GMail.

Add to that the recent Ebay/PayPal vs Google stoush and there certainly seems to be a lot of leading edge, big tech, activity in Oz at the moment.

Who wants to predict the next big thing to go down here?

So yesterday, while the Silicon Harbour/Silicon Beach crowd from Sydney were finally off doing, it was time for the Melbourne crew to sit around talking at PubCamp

From all accounts the event was as good as the Sydney gig the other night. Best summary is probably up on Ben Barren’s blog or you can check out the details as they happened and the aftermath yourself.

Interesting to note that they partied hard into the early hours - don’t remember that happening in Sydney - but then again I don’t remember Melbourne having a Top 100 Aussie Web 2.0 list or Apple store launch the following day either - haha - just a little friendly rivalry - please no hate mail.

So the end result from PubCamp ‘08 seems to be another excellent event on the calendar and more mainsteam media coverage - especially from the tech industry’s new mainstream media hero - Renai LeMay

Should be good to see what the PubCamp crew come up with for next year. In the meantime, make sure you keep checking out the various tech calendars floating around to see what’s happening in your neck of Oz.

• http://www.startup-australia.org/events (or check it out at Pollenizer)
• http://www.techevents.com.au/