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.