Tag: New South Wales

This year, more than 70,000 students in New South Wales will sit their Higher School Certificate exams, which can be daunting to those students who have university ambition, but don't know what to expect from the exams themselves. Thanks to the Art of Smart Education, the tutoring business founded by Rowan Kunz, they have greater resources at their disposal to succeed.

The awards are open to all NSW companies that are doing business in the international marketplace. Award categories recognise the range of exports from the State and include small business, manufacturing, information and communications technology, services, and agribusiness.

Are you a really, really small business operating out of New South Wales? Specifically: small enough to fit everyone on your payroll inside of your Subaru Liberty, and still leave the front seats unoccupied? If you answered 'yes', then you are one of some 570,000 micro-businesses in NSW, and MicroBiz Week 2011 is your week.

The government's Future Fellowships program hands out money to researchers at the midpoint of their careers. In other words, Canberra is trying its darnedest to put a plug in Australia's brain drain.

This question was presented with an offer to voice my views and suggestions at the next SBDC board meeting on Thursday 21 September. Now, as many Anthill readers probably know, I'm not based in NSW. So, I don't feel qualified to answer. But I do know that close to 40% of Anthill readers do live in NSW. As such, I'm turning the question to you. If you have a suggestion for the SBDC, this is your chance to tell the PTBs (powers-that-be) what you think.

I removed the number plates from my car only to realise the rattling I had been constantly hearing on the car was from these same number plates scratching my paintwork. I thought there must be a better solution to stop this from happening but when I searched, I could not find anything that protected the car from the number plates or could stop the rattling that occurred from the plate. I then set to work designing a product that would not only cushion the plate, stopping rattling and damage, but also offer the consumer many unique designs to choose from.

In 2008: the recognition of the reality of climate change by society, governments and forward-thinking businesses. For business, staff engagement and behavioural change are fundamental to the success of a large-scale change. Organisations have a need for sustainability education that can be delivered in a practical format, actively engaging the learner and encouraging behavioural and cultural change. Change2 is an off-the-shelf, scalable online solution, delivering interactive sustainability modules which can be accessed by all staff. It encourages further discussion and communication of sustainability practices within organisations and is supplied with online tools to facilitate ongoing behaviour change.

Looking at the emerging market for cloud-based personal health records, as the sharpest end of smart phone applications where the tensions between authenticity and privacy are so acute, I had an epiphany that Lockstep’s intellectual property for encrypting virtual identifiers could be embedded in each mobile device app. The idea is to bake into each app a unique local handle for the user, indelibly marking all data originated from that app, authenticating the user without necessarily identifying them, and stopping data streams to be linked across apps without the user’s consent.

One founder employed the other to complete an application development project for a large financial institution that was already over time, over budget and in serious risk. When the entire app was completed in 3 months instead of the expected 9 months, it was obvious there was something special invloved. The secret was a platform that transforms app development in a similar way to how assembly lines transformed manufacturing. The founders joined together to productize this unique approach and extend it further to leverage the emerging "cloud computing" technologies.

FCB Technology was briefed to develop an SaaS SME HR tool for a national retail association and its 5000 members. The first of its kind in Australia, the system contains: • Industry award and wages calculators • Electronic employee and candidate profiles to store and archive information • Doc creation wizard with 70 templates, mapped to hiring, employee management and termination workflows Over 1,200 registered users in the first three months. Testimonial: ‘Let me congratulate you. Well done. The site is easy to read and easy to use. Love it.’ Nominated for Best Legal Innovation in the 2010 Australian Law Awards.

I realised I had to dig up my patio and garden just to install some simple lighting and an irrigation system. Instead, I attached the conduit for each service to my wooden fence and although it did the job, it didn't look good. I then thought what if the system was built into the fence in the first place? I set about designing how this could be achieved and in the process incorporated the use of recyclable materials as well as designing a unique "no bolts or screws" installation system, while making the system aesthetically attractive.

A sales manager asked his employers for fast information on other sales regions performance. In discussions with other people in other jobs, he noticed that every person wanted fast information without being bombarded with email, and the concept of SBI was born.

Having worked on insurance claims as a carpenter, Brian Siemsen identified the need for a better way for insurers to conduct repairs. He was surprised at the attitude of tradespeople who would charge anything because it was an insurance job. He had heard of minor jobs taking as long as 180 days to complete. He believed these attitudes had developed due to the limited ability of insurers to monitor and quality control the repair work. So he set out to develop IntelBuild –- an online system that gives insurers the power to monitor each job, regardless of where it is.

Causium...The new freemium Australian software maker, Atlassian, has pioneered a new customer acquisition strategy called Causium that merges cause marketing with the popular freemium business model. Instead of giving away a teaser product, Atlassian charges a nominal fee of $10 for its starter 10 user licenses and then donates all the proceeds to charity. The results have been an astounding win-win-win for all parties. Over 14,000 customers now have software that they couldn't previously afford, Atlassian has earned over $2M in upsell revenue and Atlassian's selected charity, Room to Read has received over $500,000 for literacy programs in developing nations.

The initial system was developed for a third party in order to replace reversing sirens on large mining trucks. It was soon realised that there was a huge requirement for a system such as this across many industrial sectors (mining, logistics and warehousing, freight terminals, gantry cranes and more) as a system to help reduce risk of collision between any moving machinery and personnel. The current system has been developed over several years of research, development and testing to the point that it is now ready for full commercial release with the aim of saving lives in the workplace.

I moved to Sydney and noticed there are a lot of great time-based deals being offered by businesses all around the place, e.g. ‘Two-for-One cocktails between 6 - 8pm’. At the same time I had just bought an iPhone and quickly realised that the iPhone provided a great way to effectively create a really efficient and effective marketplace for this type of deal information due to its web connection and GPS technology. Having also worked for Wotif.com and seeing the power of their marketplace I was made even more aware of the opportunity.

Following the 1998 major hail storm in Sydney (during which our car was extensively damaged), my wife and I were in Narooma one weekend. We heard that a severe storm was approaching the South Coast, and that it may contain hail. Having found that there was no undercover parking available in Narooma on a Saturday afternoon, I tried to find cardboard boxes to protect our car. Luckily it only rained, but it then became obvious to me that a portable shelter would have been ideal. Thus in 2003, Steve Anderson and I started on our project.

We received feedback from a number of our clients who are currently using Expect A Star's Child Care component of the Corporate Family Program. The clients relayed that the current offering is great for their staff caring for young children, but what about the older demographic who may be caring for an elderly loved one? In response to this feedback we developed a comprehensive Aged Care offering leveraging off the existing infrastructure of the Child care offering, but extending the reach of the innovation to an entirely new audience. So far the response to the program has been overwhelming.

From my own experience of having a brain-injured daughter as a result of seatbelt injury. I spent hours researching pregnancy and driving and seatbelt effect, and I was convinced that something must be done. Hence, the Tummy Shield was invented.

This innovation initially came to life when two of the founders, Mike and Michael, were looking for a new, innovative online retail product to launch in Australia. The third founder, Jodie, had been designing her own shoes and having them made in Asia for a while. The three co-founders figured this could be done online and the idea for Shoes of Prey was born.