Catherine Eibner

Microsoft IT-Girls 2012

ceibner — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 10:02:11 GMT

Microsoft IT-Girls 2012 (formerly known as DigiGirlz) was held to a packed theatre on Monday 2^nd April 2012 at the Microsoft offices. Over 150 girls from 16 schools participated in a full (and pretty exhausting) day of workshops, presentations and careers panels, to learn more about the career opportunities for women in ICT. The audience featured a balanced mix of private and public school students across Sydney, with some school groups travelling for over an hour to attend!

Workshops included “The Future of Innovation”, “The Future of Entertainment” and “Experience Windows 8”. It was amazing to hear the laughter and “oohs and aahs” during the workshops, and very encouraging to see a group of girls ambush our Windows 8 workshop presenter after his slot to see more of this new operating system! The girls asked lots of questions during our careers panels and it was great to be able to showcase that there a multiple paths that lead to a career in technology.

So many schools had responded to our invitations that we actually had to turn a few away as we couldn’t overcrowd our venue. Having said that – the theatre was pretty packed, with several students sitting on the floor – learning for next time: book a bigger venue! We are looking forward to turning this into a nationwide event and have already started discussions with other Microsoft state offices so that girls outside of Sydney can participate in this amazing experience.

One of my Favorite responses was:

“Today was a very enjoyable day. I learnt a lot about the technology we have today and the upcoming technology that Microsoft is aiming to make public. The experience has shown me that I can have a career in technology and be successful at it. “

Well done to everyone involved!

Does learning about cloud computing while contributing to scientific research sound good to you?

ceibner — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 10:00:18 GMT

Surely with the upcoming Easter Long Weekend you are looking for a nice project to do & what better than one that contributes to the helping scientists unravel some of the underlying causes of today’s greatest diseases. That in itself makes it something I am going to do. What’s even better is that you can do this at no cost to yourself if you use the Windows Azure 90 day free trials as suggested below – or if you are a BizSpark/DreamSpark/MSDN member, just use your existing Azure account allocation that you get as part of MSDN!

So check out the “@home on Windows Azure” project. Via a four-part video series on Channel 9, you can learn how to build applications for the cloud on Windows Azure, and deploy a solution that will contribute to Stanford University’s Folding @home distributed computing project to study protein folding.

By simply running a piece of software, you can help scientists learn more about diseases such as Alzheimer’s, ALS, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease and many cancers by banding together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every participant takes the project closer to understanding how protein folding is linked to certain diseases.

There are even 4 easy to watch videos to get you started:

@home with Windows Azure – Part 1 of 4: Getting your Windows Azure 90-day Free Trial Account Click To Play

@home with Windows Azure – Part 2 of 4: Setting up the @home App Click To Play

@home with Windows Azure – Part 3 of 4: Configuring Windows Azure Storage Click To Play

@home with Windows Azure – Part 4 of 4: Deploying to Windows Azure Click To Play

In addition to contributing directly to this project, Microsoft will also donate $10 per participant (up to $5,000 maximum) to Stanford University to help the cause. You can learn more about the Folding @home project here.

All video’s & Links reposted from Here:

It’s time for the next Microsoft IT Girls event (Formerly DigiGirls)

ceibner — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:45:04 GMT

For the 3rd year running, we are excited to be once again be hosting our annual event for Female Students considering a career in IT.

Microsoft is committed to ensuring that every student has the opportunity to reach their potential. Technology not only enables people, but can also be a fantastic career opportunity; especially for young women. However, while female workforce participation rates are equalising across a number of industries, the IT and Computing industry in particular is one that remains quite male-dominated.

On Monday 2nd April, students will be attending Microsoft IT-Girls, held at the Microsoft office in North Ryde, which is the headquarters of Microsoft Australia. Microsoft IT-Girls is designed to help young women gain a better understanding of a rewarding career in IT and Computing.

The agenda will be packed with workshops where girls will get hands on with the latest technology, learn about technology courses offered at universities, and listen to first hand experiences from a range of Microsoft women, from interns to senior managers, and Microsoft Australia’s Managing Director, Pip Marlow – one of the most influential women in the Australian IT industry today.

If you haven’t taken part in these events before, then you’ll be in a for a big surprise, as it shatters the image of IT as being a geeky, male-only preserve. As it’s thee weeks away, we’ve still got some spare spaces (we have set a maximum number of 15 attendees per school due to high demand). Oh, and it’s free BTW – you just need to sort your transport (North Ryde train station is right around the corner)

Contact Katrina Wong if you’d like to book seats for your school, or you want to find out any more.

Want to quickly build an app?

ceibner — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 03:08:10 GMT

ibCom have a framework that allows developers to quickly create apps, without having a deep understanding of backend stuff, like SQL or Azure. iBcom allows the designer to focus on the human rather than the technology. They are running an event in Melbourne on 1 March so if you are in the area – be sure to check it out!!

Guest Post: The Ups & Downs of Mixing Motherhood With the Start Up Life

ceibner — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 06:02:44 GMT

Today I am honoured to have a guest post that is a little bit different. It’s from a female non technical founder, who shares her experiences as a “Mumpreneur” as she worked towards launching her Business Art Buds. I met Anna when I presented at the Social Media Women event last year, and am particularly honoured to see some of the tips I gave to the attendees beings ones that she has also taken on board & mention in her list below.

Anna mentions some great places to look for support/events/advice in the Startup community here in Australia. In addition to those she mentions I always suggest Startups join some of the great online communities we have here in Australia to Support startups such as http://www.the-entourage.com.au and the online discussion group: http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia - these are a fantastic way to connect with other local startups and hear about upcoming events. The Anthill Online Magazine is also a great resource for keeping up to date & getting great tips for your business: http://anthillonline.com/ and www.TheFetch.org is a great source of all the events happening in your local city.

Thanks Anna for sharing your personal experience and lessons learnt – I hope everyone enjoys reading this as much as I did – and be sure to check out http://shop.artbuds.com/ to pick out some amazing artwork for the special little people in your life!

------

I think running a start up business is like having a baby. There's a lot of build up, preparation, anticipation and excitement until the actual birth/launch. Hopefully a beautiful afterglow and sense of achievement follows. Then there are lots of compromises, troubleshooting, lack of sleep and stress but somehow love and passion keep you going. The rewards do feel worth it if you are consistently nurturing and dedicated.

Yep, it’s definitely a real up and down path, full of challenges and accomplishments. There is a lot of advice and support available, but in reality nothing is set in stone. You take bits and pieces of information from a range of sources and you learn as you go. Common sense also goes a long way…

So as a mother and start-up entrepreneur of ArtBuds – Contemporary Art for Kids, (http://shop.artbuds.com/) I’d like to share my experiences of running an online business with a toddler in tow.

#1: Who am I - now?

Let's start with the 'before' baby and running a business persona. I have always thought of myself as a great multi-tasker and action woman. If I had a goal I would generally achieve it. This included realising my teenage dream of living in Paris, to leaving my comfortable life and long term job to move interstate, to running my own brand insights consultancy whilst undertaking a Masters in Art Therapy. I also moved to Madrid with my Spanish husband and created a job for myself in a market research agency, despite not speaking Spanish or having a professional European network.

But this was all in my own time, in my own office where I had choices to work in silence or with music, have lunch or work through, stop and start at my own pace. Even working within the constraints of professional deadlines doesn’t quite prepare you for skills required to negotiate nap time, the level of patience for toilet training, the anger management needed when dark red lipstick is applied to cream carpet, texta on the walls…Now I have to multi-task around my toddler’s needs and routine which is generally much more noisy and unpredictable than you can ever plan around.

But just as kids are not robots, the online world moves so rapidly that we have to be agile and keep abreast of the trends, or more importantly create the trends.

My lesson: Giving birth is life changing, so my life and attitudes have also had to change. Whilst being goal oriented is necessary, it can be a bit rigid. It feels more liberating and productive to let go of what “used to be”, and focus on the now. I prefer to live in the present and adopt a broader forward thinking approach.

#2: Wanting quick success (AKA maintaining anxiety levels)

Although I would love my business to be further along its life cycle, it’s still really in the early stages. In the short 5 months since launch we’ve been tackling SEO and all its permutations, social media, content creation, video production, product development, PR and marketing angles, networking, market research and partnership opportunities.

There’s still so much to learn, and I think it’s realistic to say the business is at the same developmental stage as my toddler. Toilet training! It's a bit daunting, anxiety provoking, potentially a bit complex but a necessary and natural step we need to master so we can mature and advance. It really is time based and could take a few weeks or months, but we'll move onto the next stage when the time is right.

My lesson: It's all about being adaptable and flexible and dealing with the situation at hand, which sometimes changes tack without warning. Rather than getting anxious it’s also about being patient and remembering to celebrate the small steps that will help to maintain momentum when it gets a bit overwhelming.

#3: Working against the biggest challenge: time

My daughter goes to pre-school 5 days/fortnight. This roughly equals 10-15 hours of quality block time to work, sans any noise and toddlerville antics. Except for public holidays, school holidays or if she is sick, where those 10 hours a week can easily dwindle to no hours of clean lovely quiet time.

My priority has always been to put my daughter's needs first, otherwise why be a parent and why work from home to be with her? This is easier said than done! I am also conscious not to overuse the TV as a babysitter... so it's always a fine line providing a quality parenting environment and getting my work done to a decent level.

My lesson: Aim to work more efficiently and smarter not longer more stressful hours. It's taken a while to really learn this, and remains an ongoing challenge.

#4: Managing Workload

Whilst my husband and I take responsibility for all the important aspects of our daughter’s development and wellbeing she also spends time absorbing knowledge and new experiences from various people. She goes to pre-school, my mother helps out and on occasion we get in a babysitter or friend in, so we can remember why we got married in the first place.

Similarly, as it was advised to me early on, it's best to keep on top of all the important aspects of the business, and get support for the smaller tasks. I now delegate some tasks to a small team of uni students, but the important parts, like the finances and customer contact I retain direct responsibility.

My lesson: Don’t be too precious, delegate and get help wherever possible, so I can focus on the key aspects of the business. It’s also nice to feel like part of a team.

#5: Maintaining Big Picture Focus

It is amazing how innately babies and children are programmed to know what to do. When my daughter was about 5 months old she started to rock on all fours. She would do this movement every night for about 2 months, avoiding sleep at the excitement of preparing her little body for the bigger reward – crawling, then walking.

It's so easy to have high expectations with the immediacy of social media. Through social media, you may have great buzz one day but the next day it’s another story receiving attention. My mentor warned me about this at our very first meeting. There might be spikes of interest along the way, but it’s about finding strategies that build and sustain these levels of interest.

My lesson: Keep focused on creative ways to build online marketing strategies that incorporate social media, but do not only rely on this for PR and marketing traction.

#6: Being Too Emotionally Involved to be Objective

As a qualitative researcher I've spent many years talking to consumers, and advising companies about their brands, products and services. Think I could do this for myself? No way! It's too personal, I'm too close to it and I don't have the skills or expertise at this early stage.

My lesson: Get a mentor! You don't need to do it all, there are lots of experienced people who can help you. PushStart are fantastic and free.

#7: Trying to do it all

I believe the ‘supermum’ ideal is a farce, no matter how many successful mothers appear to “have it all”. I’m still unsure what that means…but it’s just not possible to give quality parenting time, focused business time, not to mention partner time, domestic affairs and general life - without something giving way.

It’s almost a no-brainer that to fit in quality time why not work at night after the kids are in bed, or at obscenely pre-dawn hours, to get it all done. Well I did do this, for about three months. Then I got really sick with a terrible virus but still kept trying to do it all, until I eventually broke my big toe and got mouth ulcers and infected gums. Charming. Then under strict medical orders I had to rest for 2 weeks without doing anything, or risk serious illness…a really excellent situation for parenting and running a business.

My lesson: Make health a priority, without feeling guilty for taking time out to exercise and unwind. It provides crucial headspace and clarity. Some of my best ideas are from walking along the beach in the morning. It’s so obvious but also quite difficult to remember and action this.

#8: Feeling connected offline

As a new mother, when your baby cries a lot it can feel really debilitating. With sleep deprivation and no previous experience it can sometimes be hard to cope. Fortunately in Australia there are so many great organisations, nurses, doctors that can help during this time. Unfortunately, many mothers aren’t aware of them, or don’t want to appear helpless and suffer unnecessarily.

Similarly, as a new start-up with no previous experience, it’s impossible to glide along without any hiccups. There are so many organisations and experts willing and ready to offer support, and generally at no cost. It can also get overwhelming and sometimes isolating if you’re working from home. Reaching out to some of the numerous experts and general start up community by attending industry events and meetings can be so enriching and normalizing. Some great (Sydney based) ones include:

http://socialmediawomen.wordpress.com/

http://pushstart.com.au/

http://www.meetup.com/cities/au/sydney/

http://www.meetup.com/Sydney-fastBREAK-innovation-networking-BREAKfast-talks/

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/BuzSpark_au

My Lesson: Get out to as many networking events as possible. You meet inspiring people, make great contacts, learn a lot and/or feel reassured you’re on the right track, and make potential friends in a similar situation. It feels good to get out and wear some heels too!

#9: Getting the parent vs business balance

This is the trickiest one of all for me. Drawing from my art therapy experience (http://shop.artbuds.com/pages/meet-our-team), transference and counter transference (http://apt.rcpsych.org/content/6/1/57.full) is evident in any relationship we encounter. It's impossible not to get stressed as a parent, or running your own business, but projecting this anxiety, anger and potentially resentment onto a little person can have serious long-term ramifications. Their formative years are so crucial to shaping how they behave and who they become. I am reminded by the expression, "give me a child till he is 7 and I'll give you the man".

Just in case I lose my way, as can easily happen being a first time mum and new to online start-ups, my daughter guides me. Recently I had a lot of tasks to complete. I was feeling under pressure and my patience was being tested. I did many things that I shouldn't have: allowing too much time watching Cinderella and other Disney films, and losing my temper too often. Putting all this together - she said she was Cinderella and I was the stepmother! (NB: no offence to blended family stepparents).

My lesson: I love my business, but my daughter will always remain my best creation. Getting this into perspective has really allowed me to be a better mother and strive towards more efficient time management. As Zappos entrepreneur and motivational guru Tony Hsieh (http://about.zappos.com/meet-our-monkeys/tony-hsieh-ceo) advocates, find the happiness medium and success will follow. I know I’m on the right track when my daughter says, “Mum, you’re not the stepmother anymore, you’re the mummy and I love you”.

Launching a Startup mobile App in Australia? How hard can it really be?? Day (I’ve Lost count!) Report

ceibner — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 11:39:48 GMT

There has been much focus on the application development over the last few days so I guess I have been overly quiet on the blog posts but the good news is that things are going well.

We have once again completely redesigned out back end and now have locked down the design for our back end accessible data points and have updated versions of the iPhone/iPad app & Windows 7 app working! Whoohoo!! We are just finalising the testing loop now. I expect that this will be finished in the next few days.

In the interim we have also been working on an updated PR piece that is way way way too long (who knew we had so much we could reference around our app that made for interesting stories – such as the projected increase in Childhood obesity, the increase in instances of Adult depression, the stats from the Cancer Council proving that (some) active time outside is actually really really good for you! ). We are now looking at consolidating that into an aggressive PR kit to use once the application is available on the iTunes & Zune marketplaces.

I also today attended a seminar held by Marcus Tarrant of http://www.businessplanninghq.com/ where we learnt about the value of a formal business plan and followed a surprisingly simple “wizard” that to be honest allowed me to create a much more professional and comprehensive Business Plan in the sessions than I did in the hours and hours I spent with my initial plan that was overly vague and missing massive chunks. I’d love to share the document with you – but I don’t think Marcus would overly appreciate that – so here is a snapshot of the sample document he provides to show what you get at the end… Well worth setting aside the time to do.

Beside the benefit of meeting other early stage companies and sharing the ideas, questions, businesses with each other (I cannot iterate enough HOW IMPORTANT THIS IS!) I picked up a few great tips for my app around adding a geocaching feature, creating a targeted app for golf courses and an introduction to someone looking to help with PR. Another valuable tip came from one of the attendees who shared during the lunch discussions a tip he was given which was that: “A good photo in your press kit can mean the difference between a page 43 listing & a page 3 listing! “. I am now thinking off all the interesting photos I can add to the press kit!

We have a finite timeline to work towards now with the upcoming Anthill Awards – so am not going to add too much more tonight – as we make our next milestone… you will hear about it!

I also want to say a special thanks to Gary Twomey of IMC for our recent Guest Post on the key Government programs for Startups! Check it out here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bizspark_au/archive/2011/11/16/launching-a-startup-mobile-app-in-australia-guest-blogger-gary-twomey-outlines-the-key-government-funding-programs-for-start-ups.aspx

Launching a Startup mobile App in Australia? Guest Blogger Gary Twomey Outlines the Key Government Funding Programs for Start -ups

ceibner — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 10:25:04 GMT

Gary & the team at IMC have sponsored the last two Startup Weekend Events and are a fantastic support to our many startups in BizSpark. Gary has kindly put together the below advice on the Funding support available to Startups in Australia.

Innovation Management Consultants Pty Ltd (IMC) is a professional services firm with extensive experience in providing high quality management consulting services. They assist their clients to grow by accessing government assistance programs to help them plan, research, develop and commercialise their technology. A summary of the key government assistance programs that they assist clients to access are listed below. Further information is available upon request.

Program

Source

Purpose

Overview

GRANTS FOR PROOF OF CONCEPT & EARLY COMMERCIALISATION ACTIVITIES

Skills and Knowledge &

Experienced Executives

Commercialisation Australia

Grants up to access specialist advice and services. Also can engage an experienced CEO or other executives

Ø Up to $50,000 for the specialist advice and services.

Ø Up to $200,000 for experienced CEO or other executives

Proof of Concept Grants

Commercialisation Australia

Grants are to assist with testing the technical and/or commercial viability of the business model or idea for a product, process or service

Ø The program provides grants of up $250,000 for each project

Early Stage Commercialisation Grants

Commercialisation Australia

Grants to undertake activities focusing on enabling a new product, process or service to be developed to the stage where it can be taken to market

Ø The program provides grants of between $250,000 and $2 million for each project

TAX INCENTIVES FOR R&D ACTIVITIES

R&D Tax Incentive

Commonwealth Government

1. AusIndustry &

2. Australian Taxation Office

R&D activities must meet certain criteria to be eligible and are categorised as either Core R&D activities or Supporting R&D activities.

Ø Core R&D Activities are experimental activities: whose outcome cannot be known or determined in advance on but can only be determined by applying a systematic progression of work

Ø Supporting R&D activities: An activity is eligible as a supporting R&D activity where it is directly related to a core R&D activity or for certain activities, it has been undertaken for the dominant purpose of supporting core R&D activities.

To be eligible the R&D expenditure must be greater than $20K.

After this threshold the R&D Tax Incentive has two core components:

Ø Entities with an aggregate annual turnover of less than $20M- are eligible for a 45% refundable tax offset (equivalent to a 150% deduction), provided they are not controlled by income tax exempt entities.

Example:

o A company which is in profit will receive a reduction in tax of $150,000 for every $1M of eligible R&D;

o A company which is in tax loss will receive a cash payment of $450,000 for every $1M of eligible R&D.

Ø Entities with an aggregate annual turnover of greater than $20M- are eligible for a non-refundable 40% tax offset (equivalent to 133% deduction). Unused non-refundable offset amounts may be able to be carried forward to future income years.

Example:

A company which is in profit will receive a reduction in tax of $100,000 for every $1M of eligible R&D.

MARKETING & COMMERCIALISATION GRANTS

Export Market Development Grant (EMDG)

Commonwealth Government

To assist firms to undertake market development and promotion of products and services in overseas markets excluding NZ.

Ø Grant up to 50% of the expenses incurred up to a maximum of $150K p.a.

Ø reimburses promotion expenses above $10,000 provided that the total expenses are at least $20,000.

Ø Eligible applicants must have commenced export activities during the year with turnover less than $50M p.a.

Ø Can access this for 7 years.

Windows Azure BizSpark Startup Camp – Brisbane

ceibner — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 03:53:04 GMT

Abstract
On December 2nd- 4th we are holding an Azure Bizspark Start-up Camp in our Brisbane office in the lead up to the launch of our Innovation Centre. This unique opportunity will showcase the potential when Government, Incubators, Universities and Microsoft come together to help Startups.

Microsoft's Windows Azure Dev Camps will allow you to learn about the Windows Azure Platform and the foundation concepts through comprehensive presentations, hands-on labs, and supported development time.

The first day will cover training in depth thanks to Azure MVP Steve Nagy and the second two days will be an opportunity for you to work in groups to build your own projects with the support of business & technical experts. The event culminates in a pitch to a panel of judges & investors who will decide on the overall winner. Prizes include xBox Kinect Packs.

Note that hands on Labs will be available if you do not have a business idea you would like to build but still want to test out your new knowledge.

Things to bring
Here are some personal items you might want to bring to the Windows Azure Dev Camp.

· Notebook computer

· Notepad

· Identification

Event Details

Dates 2^nd – 4^th December 2011

Location

Microsoft Brisbane

Level 28,

400 George St BRISBANE

Time
Friday: 9:00am -5:00pm

Sat/Sun: 9:00am – 7:00pm

Event Questions

This is a unique opportunity and places are limited – please register immediately.

If you have any questions, please contact Catherine Eibner at caeibner@microsoft.com.

The event is specifically targeted to BizSpark companies, however developers that are not part of the BizSpark program are more than welcome to attend to gain access to this valuable training event.

Event Agenda

Day 1

Time	Topic
9:00 – 10:15	Getting started with Windows Azure
10:30 – 11:30	Using Windows Azure Storage
11:30 – 12:30	Lunch
12:30 – 1:30	Understanding SQL Azure
2:30 – 3:30	Securing, Connecting, and Scaling
3:30 – 4:30	Application Scenarios
4:30 – 5:00	Launching your app

Day 2

Time	Topic
9:00 – 12:30	Day #2 Kickoff Development - Build your own app using the Windows Azure Platform
12:30 – 1:00	Lunch (Business Session)
4:00 – 7:00	Build your own app using the Windows Azure Platform

Day 3

Time	Topic
9:00 – 12:30	Day #3 Kickoff Development - Build your own app using the Windows Azure Platform
12:30 – 1:00	Lunch (Business Session)
4:00 – 4:15	Pre Judging Business Session
4:15 – 6:00	Pitch to Judges
6:00 – 6:30	Judges Adjudicate while Networking commences
6:30 – 7:30	Winners announced, prizes awarded and Networking continues.

Build a Business Plan in a Day? Heck yes!

ceibner — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 02:40:27 GMT

BUSINESS-PLAN-IN-1-DAY (Sydney): Create your own 40-page, Investor Grade business plan in one day. Need to raise capital, get a grant, get a loan or just work out where you are going?! Get it done in one-day at this incredible, dynamic event! (76 business builders can’t be wrong!) http://www.antmart.com.au/?p=3569

I am registering for this! Although I already created a business Plan for Picknic App – over the last few weeks the goals have changed & adapted – and I want to revise the business plan. For $295 this is incredible value!

Picknic has been named one of Australia’s ‘Coolest’ businesses in Anthill Magazine’s Sixth Annual Cool Company Awards.

ceibner — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:40:30 GMT

While I was away I got this very exciting news in my inbox I am now planning a trip down to Melbourne to attend the awards! I think its a fantastic example of why you should take the time to nominate your company for awards – as the extra visibility will be invaluable!

I now also have the below lovely looking Media release to include in my launch plan – which also provides more value to the story I am putting together and hopefully increases the uptake of the idea.

In other options to get more (free) publicity – I suggest you subscribe to alerts from a great site called Source Bottle. SourceBottle is an online service that connects journalists, writers and bloggers with 'sources'. For example today, the great team at Shoe String Launch magazine listed a request for Startups that have just launched or that are just about to launch to contribute to an upcoming publication. http://www.thesourcebottle.com/query.asp?iid=30&qid=11174 Did I respond to this request?? Of course I did! You should too!

Media Release

November 08, 2011

Picknic has been named one of Australia’s ‘Coolest’ businesses in Anthill Magazine’s Sixth Annual Cool Company Awards.

Picknic has scored a place among Anthill’s Top 50 in its 2011 Annual Cool Company Awards, a national program developed in 2006 to recognise Australian companies that are doing things differently to bring about positive change.

Over 700 aspiring ‘cool companies’ were nominated for the 2011 awards, making ‘The Cools’ one of Australia’s largest business awards programs. The winners will be announced at an award’s function on Thursday 24 November 2011 and published on AnthillOnline.com.

“The Cool Company Awards are extremely egalitarian,” said James Tuckerman, Editor-In-Chief, Anthill Magazine. “Previous winners have included two-person start-ups, not-for-profit social enterprises, large private companies and publicly-listed corporations.”

“Judging takes into account far more than mere business variables, such as revenue and wealth. The criteria is geared to consider other qualities, from the disruptive nature of the product or service to the culture of the organisation.”

“Applicants either nominated themselves or were nominated by peers, work colleagues, family, friends and other ‘admirers’. A field of hundreds was examined (and cross-examined) before our judges were able to isolate three Finalists for each of our seven categories.”

What are Cool Company Awards?

The Cool Company Awards was launched in 2006 as a way for Anthill Magazine to publicly acknowledge and celebrate Australian organisations that are doing things differently to bring about positive change. In its sixth year, the awards attracted nominations from over 700 organisations, making it among the largest business award programs in Australia.

What is Anthill Magazine?

AnthillOnline.com is a digital business magazine that celebrates creativity, inspiration and commercial ingenuity, providing a fresh, exciting and practical perspective on Australian business in a global world. It is among the Top 50 Business & Finance websites in Australia, as ranked by Nielsen Online Ratings, and is home to the Cool Company Awards, the 30under30 and the Smart 100. It’s where ideas and business meet.

For further information:

Catherine Eibner, picknic@live.com.au

Launching a Startup mobile App in Australia? How hard can it really be?? Day 11 Report

ceibner — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 04:26:30 GMT

The first thing I want to point out here about the upcoming posts is that although I am going to mention some of the toolkits & great helpers I have used for the development of the WP7 app I do not consider myself a professional developer anymore so this is NOT a how to build a Windows Phone App Tutorial. I am not going to waste your time by talking about the details of building the actual app as that isn't one of the goals of this series either. There are more than enough already in existence (that I have reused code samples from!). There are some upcoming in person events & webinars that you should tune into if you want to learn more about Windows Phone development: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bizspark_au/archive/2011/11/04/windows-phone-training-workshops-webcasts-and-application-clinics.aspx

I am busily focusing on building the application at the moment so there isn’t too much new to report except that we are looking for a few more iPhone users who would like to test the beta version.

I expect to have the Phone 7 version ready for beta testing late next week (as I am disappearing offline on leave from Sun – Wed).

In the development so far I have used the following very helpful resources & Tips that you may also find useful:

Map your development machine keyboard to the Phone 7 emulator:

Note: The Windows Phone Emulator supports mapping of the keyboard on your development computer to the hardware keyboard on a Windows Phone (by default is not enabled). To enable the keyboard in the Windows Phone Emulator press the PAGE UP or PAUSE/BREAK key. To disable it, press the PAGE DOWN or PAUSE/BREAK key. For more information, see the following article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/ff754352(VS.92).aspx.

Bing Maps Development

Get Started with Bing Maps development:

Step 1:

To get started with Bing Maps, you’ll need a Maps Developer Account.

Get an account | View tutorial

Step 2:

Get started with the SDKs for Windows Phone 7, Android, iOS, and use the REST APIs

Step 3:

To keep up-to-date with the latest Bing Maps news, read the Bing Maps Developer Blog. For help from the Bing Maps community, use the Bing Maps Community Forums.

Pasted from <http://www.microsoft.com/maps/developers/mobile.aspx>

Windows Azure Toolkit

The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone really saved me a lot of time. I have mentioned it before but I want to re-iterate the value once again. The set up wizard put all the connections, and architecture in place so all I needed to do was define the functionality specific to my application. http://watwp.codeplex.com/

OData:

There is a great video here on setting up Phone 7 (and other apps) to utilise oData from SQLAzure: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/showcase/details.aspx?uuid=083d55f4-c0d4-4309-8996-49d63ce14c60

The oData Client for WP7 is here: http://odata.codeplex.com/releases/view/54698#DownloadId=161862

SQL Azure Security Requirements

I also ran into some trouble where my application suddenly stopped working when I was working on it in the office. It turns out that we have a pretty thorough firewall setup in the office so the ports I needed access to to access SQLAzure where locked down. Check out the ports you need open (such as TCP port 1433) to work with Azure / SQL Azure before you spend a day debugging an application that isn’t broken :/ http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff394108.aspx

[Windows Phone Training] Workshops, Webcasts and Application Clinics

ceibner — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 02:17:02 GMT

Windows Phone Developer Deep Dive Workshop

This workshop is presentation style and will dive deep in to creating amazing user experiences with Expression Blend for Windows Phone, tips and tricks for managing application lifecycle, engaging end users with smart Live Tiles, optimising app performance and working with structured data.

We'd also like to hear from you what topics you'd like covered, so please make a note of your topic suggestions in the comment section when you register.

Windows Phone Developer App Clinic

Want to discuss your application projects and issues in more detail then the app clinic is for you, so register and bring along your developer laptop/app and discuss.

Windows Phone Developer Deep Dive Webcasts

For those who can't make the weekday Deep Dive Workshop then this series of webcasts will run over 3 evenings at 8pm EDT on Nov 17, 21 and 23 running for 30 to 45 minutes covering a compressed version of the workshop content.

So tune in to learn how to create amazing user experiences with Expression Blend for Windows Phone, tips and tricks for managing application lifecycle, engaging end users with smart Live Tiles, optimising app performance and working with structured data.

The online events will be run over USTREAM, Live Meeting or similar technology, to be confirmed closer to the date by email.

We'd also like to hear from you what topics you'd like covered, so please make a note of your topic suggestions in the comment section when you register.

· Register for Expression Blend Webcast: Thurs Nov 17, 8pm to 8:45pm EDT

· Register for Application Lifecycle Webcast: Mon Nov 21, 8pm to 8:45pm EDT

· Register for Live Tiles and Performance "tips and tricks" Webcast: Wed Nov 23, 8pm to 8:45pm EDT

Refer a Friend

· Windows Phone Developer Community Registration

· Get started with Windows Phone Development

· Join "The List"

· Feel free to forward this email to others you think maybe interested

Events across the country

Windows Phone Developer Deep Dive Workshops

This presentation style workshop will dive deep into Expression Blend, application lifecycle, Live Tiles, performance tips and tricks and working with structured data.

· Register for Brisbane Deep Dive, Wed Nov 16th 9:30am to 4:30pm, Microsoft Brisbane Lvl 28, 400 George St

· Register for Sydney Deep Dive - Tue Nov 22nd, 9:30am to 4:30pm, Nokia Nokia, Lvl 21, 1 Market Street

· Register for Melbourne Deep Dive - Thurs Nov 24th 10am to 5pm, Microsoft Melbourne Lvl 5, 4 Freshwater Place, Southbank

Windows Phone Developer App Clinics

Want to discuss your application projects and issues in more detail then the app clinic is for you.

· Register for Brisbane App Clinic: Wed Nov 16th 5:30pm till 7:30pm, Microsoft Brisbane Lvl 28, 400 George St

· Register for Sydney App Clinic: Tue Nov 22nd, 5:30pm to 7:30pm, Nokia Nokia, Lvl 21, 1 Market Street

· Register for Melbourne App Clinic: Thurs Nov 24th 6pm to 8pm, Microsoft Melbourne Lvl 5, 4 Freshwater Place, Southbank

Launching a Startup mobile App in Australia? How hard can it really be?? Day 10 Report

ceibner — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:31:46 GMT

As I mentioned I have had a bit of time off work (and this project) while recovering from a little accident I had last Tuesday. I got back into things again today and so have a few things to report on today. My biggest concern at the moment is that my week off has meant that the Phone 7 version is way behind the delivery of the iPhone/iPad version which is currently in testing stages and about ready for Beta launch. I have to make the decision very shortly if I launch with just that version or wait until I finish my “hacking” on the Phone 7 version. Still to be decided!

Made to Stick

I have been reading a great book recommended to me by James Tuckerman founder & editor in Chief of Anthill called “Made to Stick”. Having time off (and the handiness of my Kindle!) gave me the chance to read a great deal of this and reframe and refine some of my thoughts around the goal of the application into a single, simple Commanders Intent: To enable parents of young children to discover, rate and share information on local parks. Having this simple goal has made so many decisions much clearer. It also gives some great tips around framing a marketing message so that its memorable and “sticks”.

Building a PR Strategy

While I had time off I also spent time thinking about and refining our Marketing strategy. Based on the book above combined with some great advice from one of our Network Partners, Founder of Technology venture firm Blue Chilli, Sebastien Eckersley-Mason, I have been able to focus on locking down our PR story lines.

“Firstly, like everyone else, Journalists like it when you do their job for them - so write a press release like it was an article. Good press releases use facts and are relevant to current themes and issues. Best way to get facts is to write your own survey (surveymonkey), get 100 people to fill it out and include a few crazy questions to tease out some remarkable facts. Also look into infographics. “

Taking this advice on board I started to do some research. I had already had a great response to my SurveyMonkey survey – which has allowed me to get not just information about the features of the application, but about the habits of the target market – parents of young children.

The biggest “lead” that seems to tie to current topical issues is the lack of physical activity of children.

I have reached out to some contacts who work with children in health services to get some “qualified” statements to support this idea.

I also went on the hunt for “quantified” research. I didn’t have to look far.

Looking at this graph released by NSW health, even just locally, the NSW government is concerned about this issue. The current projection is that approx 35% of boys and girls will be obese by 2016. Now that’s a scary projection!

They released a plan in 2009 to address the concerns around increasing Childhood obesity.

The current plan of attack to address this problem includes driving awareness of the problem, encouraging healthy and activity lifestyles and resulting in changing behaviours.

Two behaviour changes that stood out to me were the decrease of sedentary small screen behaviour - which I believe has become an even bigger problem since 2009 with the increase in consumerisation of IT, the prolific adoption of smart phones and tablet/iPad style devices. The second factor of interest is the increase in moderate to vigorous activity – so getting out & about!

Both of these factors appeal to my target market and are certainly aligned to the goals of the application. It also aligns to the results of our market research which showed distinctly that parents would take their children to more & a greater range of parks if an application like the one we are building existed.

When we finish the Press Release in the coming days I look forward to getting feedback from you all on it!

Launching a Startup mobile App in Australia? How hard can it really be?? Downtime report!

ceibner — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 00:25:22 GMT

Just a quick post to mention why I have been offline for a few days.

One of the hardest lessons I learnt when I ran my own business was that you needed to be sure to take time to look after yourself and keep yourself healthy. In fact something seemingly small can send your business off the rails – as in small business and particularly in the early stages of setting up – if you are not able to work, then nothing happens! I always recommend people to make sure they get enough exercise, sleep & time with their loved ones to keep their quality of live and passion for their projects alive.

But even if you do all these things…. Sometimes accidents happen.

As for me, while playing with my son a few nights ago, as I was throwing him around and over my shoulder I did some damage to myself. It wasn’t too bad that night but I awoke to acute pain in the early hours of the morning. I visited the Osteopath as soon as I could get an appointment to discover I had pinched a nerve in my neck and inflamed the surrounding vertebra & muscles. I guess that explains why the pain was so bad. Anyway, have been instructed to ice it & rest for a few days so am taking some time off everything while it heals.

In this case it only a few days off and there really wont be a great deal of impact, but it reminds me of when I was in the midst of running my own company with a team of staff and series of projects happening: I broke my wrist. It was almost 3 months till my business was back to resembling anything like where it had been previously. Although it was a hard way to learn a lesson, it was through that experience I found out about & implemented Key Person Insurance (actually it was referred to as Key Man insurance which drove me mad!). Interestingly, StartupSmart ran an article talking about this very same thing 2 days ago: http://www.startupsmart.com.au/managing-people/small-businesses-warned-over-sickie-impact/201110254317.html

The experience of being unable to function in my business for an extended period of time also made me realize how I had created a business that required me to be in it to make it function. i.e. it also taught me some VERY valuable lessons about “Founder’s Syndrome”. Understanding this made me reassess my role in the business which resulted in many positive changes that ended up improving the company and allowing us to grow more successfully.

Anyway – there is much interesting reading available about both Key Person Insurance & Founders Syndrome so hopefully they keep you entertained until I re-emerge from my pain killer induced haze and get working on this project again!

Key Person Insurance:

http://www.iselect.com.au/life/key-person/

Risky Business

Founders Syndrome:

6 Startup Founder’s Syndromes That Can Kill Your Startup

Founderitis – A Ten Step Recovery Program

There will also be a few upcoming guest posts to keep the content flowing so stay tuned!

Launching a Startup mobile App in Australia? How hard can it really be?? Day 9 Report

ceibner — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:56:35 GMT

So here we are a good week and a half into this little project and I think it’s a good time to take a few moments to reflect on the feedback I have been receiving from so many of you and to give some guidance on where we are heading as there has been so much positive feedback & suggestions on ways to generate even more value from this series. I have about 1 week left of this series so it’s also a good time to talk about what to expect in the coming posts.

I have decided to quote something someone sent me in an email today as it seemed like a really great way to explain what one of the goals was: “Fantastically illustrative of the organic, unstructured ‘sometimes it’s only passion that keep you going’ insight into starting a venture” (Thanks Dean!)

I also think it’s a good time to chat about the startup ecosystem we have here in Australia and who this exercise is meant to be helping.

There are many different ways of defining entrepreneurs, and the stages of Entrepreneurship and business in general. A lot of articles also delve into defining the personality types of entrepreneurs. The Next Web founder @Boris defines what he sees as the 7 stereotypes of Entrepreneurs which I quite like: http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/05/24/7-types-of-entrepreneurs-which-one-are-you/. I also agree with StartupGuru who refers to the types in a more of a matrix fashion that ranges between the head & the heart.

If you love the detail & the data the GEM (Global Entrepreneur Monitor) report gives a fantastic outline of the types, stages, ages and impact of the different global entrepreneur types : http://www.gemconsortium.org/download/1319535701510/GEM%20GLOBAL%20REPORT%202010rev.pdf

Then there is the one that I find the most aligned to the stages I see (and especially like because it quotes Notorious BIG song lyrics to make a point): http://www.greenhornconnect.com/node/3655 where Entrepreneurs range from The Awestruck Amateur through to the Wise Sage. I tend to see a close alignment to these types in the startup ecosystem here in Australia, particularly in the members I tend to come across most regularly in BizSpark:

Cowboys/Cowgirls: Students with nothing to lose, no cash & a crazy idea – one of the main goal is to learn from the experience. We have a rapidly developing entrepreneur ecosystem here in Australian Universities and it is driving both innovation & changes to the university curriculum to support this growing trend. Often these ideas come about as a result of a competition such as Startup Weekend, Launch48, Imagine Cup & the like.

Idealist: Developer/hobbiest with a great idea but no experience in bringing an idea to fruition as a profit making business. This type has more skills to bring to the project and maybe even a little cash, but everything is still highly boot strapped. Often the idea is fleshed out during the moonlight hours as the developer still keeps their focus on their “day job”.

Deliverators: Business/Marketing person with a great ability to support an idea & get it to market. They occasionally have the business idea themselves but will tend to outsource development or find a technical co-founder to work with. There is fundamentally more background in building a marketing strategy & business model to support an idea & get it to market as an ongoing business.

Addicts: The serial entrepreneur who works in on and around entrepreneurs and startups as a day to day “job”. They have worked on many startups, and not all have been successful – but that’s just increased their experience and value for the Entrepreneur community. These type are often mentors and in NSW, and starting to spread to VIC & QLD many are easy to find as they are registered as PushStart mentors. Some have even contributed to this series already – sending big thanks to them!

Everyone Else: There are of course the government initiatives, venture capitalists, angel investors, incubators and the whole realm of supporters we are fortunate to have here in Australia that encourage the growth of our startup economy. And I think it is fair to mention as many of the above articles do – that there is often Entrepreneurs that cross all groups in different roles they play or as they take their crazy boot strapped idea into a life in entrepreneurialism.

(NOTE: Disagree with these types? Let me know in the comments!)

I want to be clear that this series is very much targeting the Cowboys/Cowgirls – and perhaps a little of the Idealists group as well. This series is only for the cash strapped entrepreneurs who have an idea and want to test out the viability of it. The Addicts (or Wise Sage's) have a great deal more value to offer in the Business mentoring role that I would never dream or attempt to under value. We have many great Business advisors in the BizSpark Program as Network partners and many offer business mentoring to startups that are looking for that support - I strongly suggest you reach out to them, especially once you have validated your idea & start to look for funding & growing your idea into a business.

What I would really like to see in this series is representatives of all of the ecosystem (whatever "type" system you subscribe to) to share what they think are the best practices and take the opportunity to help others going through the same process/stage. Think you have something you could share on your own blogs or on the BizSpark_au blog then this is your call to action! Share your experience to help others benefit. I have been overwhelmed by the feedback I have received on this series so far and can only see extra value in building this resource to help the Australian Ecosystem continue to grow by others sharing their stories as well.

In order to keep you updated with the upcoming planned posts from the business side with guest contributions for each post, we will be covering topics around:

things to keep in mind when creating a saleable data resource as a by-product of your idea (data marketplace & legal PII concerns),
How to build a marketing plan and utilise (hopefully free – or low cost) PR,
IP & legal protection of your idea
Grants & commercialisation offers for technology startups
Monetisation models
Pitching for funding? Tips on how to best pitch your idea
The next steps – so you have tested the idea, where to from here….

(BTW if any of these are your area of expertise let me know as any additional suggestions/tips add to the helpfulness of these posts)

Meanwhile…. I have spent the last 2 days re-architecting the Azure backend to use Spatial data in SqlAzure rather than table storage in Azure, the Data Researcher finished their work and the iPhone developer is progressing well with their app - but a post on that all later :)

Launching a Startup mobile App in Australia? Guest Blogger Steve Godbold on Growth through learning

ceibner — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 01:05:51 GMT

Throughout the series of posts on this project to date, I have made mention several times about my plans to follow a lean methodology with the Picknic App. I realised that what I hadn't done was fully delve into explaining what this means in terms of business and particularly in relation to a startup. I have asked one of our Australian BizSpark Network Partner’s Steve Godbold to share some additional insight into why keeping things lean, testing assumptions and releasing a minimum viable product are a really good idea for Startups.

Steve Godbold is a process consultant with a passion for challenges. Coming from a technical background, and having worked with businesses of all shapes and sizes, he provides consulting for both application lifecycle management and business process. You can find him via http://stevegodbold.com/ or on steve@stevegodbold.com

Growth through learning

While there are many ways to grow a business, not all methods are equal. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports; of the small businesses operating in 2007, approximately one in four had closed their doors by 2009. How can you maximise you chances of not being that one of the four?

Most start-ups have a few things in common. They are packed with energy, vision and a passion to succeed. In fact they are usually so driven, they fail to notice that what they’re building is based on a set of assumptions. The impact of these assumptions can be fatal, so identifying them early can be a crucial step along the path to success. A lean start-up identifies its assumptions and designs a set of experiments to test them with actual customer behaviour.

This is done using a market testing strategy known as a ‘minimum viable product’. Minimum viable product involves building only what is absolutely necessary, and putting this in the hands of the people we want to understand. From this we can gather vital information about our potential for success. What we are doing is designing a low cost experiment to test a hypothesis (our assumption) about market behaviour.

An experiment can be as simple as including a link to a proposed new feature of your application. Without implementing the feature you can track the number of users that access this link. This allows you to gather real data on the viability of the feature before you invest the time and money in delivery.

These experiments create a rapid feedback cycle and enable us to perform pivots based on how our customers react. This helps to make sure what we’re delivering is valuable to our customers, or is going to increase the attraction of our product or service to potential customers.

So how do we start to avoid being that one in four? Simply stated: we focus on accelerating our learning, measuring what matters and not being afraid to change direction if the data calls for it.

If you'd like more information on getting started using a lean start-up approach check out Eric Ries recently released book on the topic

Launching a Startup mobile App in Australia? How hard can it really be?? Day 8 Report

ceibner — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 06:24:50 GMT

Today I swapped my other hats for me developer hat for a few hours. As I have volunteered to do the data setup on Azure & the Phone 7 application development. As I have all my data & use cases now defined it was quite simple to ensure the data structure was set up in Azure. next I decided to check out the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone – its free and you can download it from Codeplex here. It comes with really detailed documentation and some awesome walkthroughs.

My first challenge was to readdress the authentication question. It seemed silly not to include either a membership model or an integrated login when the tool kit made it so simple. I thought about the benefits of both models (there is a good definition here on the pros & cons for both) and I ultimately decided that I didn’t want to maintain a separate user membership database – and as it seemed that the Access Control Service made integration with other logins simple. So…. I followed through these steps and very quickly had the Toolkit installed. The setup ensures you get any extra bits & pieces you may not have on your machine already so that made it quite easy.

I then got my ACS token for Facebook integration setup following these instructions for getting started with ACS integration with Facebook. These articles are also quite handy to review: http://acs.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Getting%20Started&referringTitle=Documentation, http://acs.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Facebook

I had a few issues with setting up ACS because I had half setup windows live as well as Facebook because I was not sure if I was going to use both or not. It caused some confusion with the rules, but once I reduced it to just the Facebook integration it seemed to resolve the namespace error I was receiving.

So once I had a namespace configured, I started a new project, picked the Windows Phone Cloud application template, followed the instructions for setting up the certificates & started to debug. I was pleasantly surprised to be already testing out my new phone app with Facebook integration:

I still have a few more things to do on the Facebook app side of things to get the integration looking how I want it too particularly: format the appearance and options provided to the user when they sign in including the layout of the objects I want to work with and the actions allowed by the users…. But its Sunday & its sunny outside – so both that & starting to look at the rest of the app development is going to have to wait till later

Launching a Startup mobile App in Australia? How hard can it really be?? Day 7 Report

ceibner — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 04:06:47 GMT

Accounting Setup

It is something I should have done from the very start – as I am clearly outlaying some cash & am not accurately tracking it. I know many companies will use simple solutions like an excel sheet to track their incoming & outgoing expenses. I have always been a MYOB user, but also decided to look around at some of the Software as a Service (SaaS) providers of accounting software like Australian based Saasu & New Zealand based Xero. I also took a look at the offers available for BizSpark members and noticed that at the moment – Xero are offering BizSpark members 1 year of free use UP UNTIL THE 31st of OCTOBER – so check it out now!.

https://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/Offers/Xero.aspx

Also of note is that Xero were a BizSpark member who has grown substantially over the last year – to the point where they no longer qualify for BizSpark (a good problem to have!)

So I clicked through on the above offer, followed the bouncing ball and in a few clicks I had an accounting system set up, chart of accounts in place & its ready to input data into! Now – to find someone to help me with that data entry/book keeping process….

The importance of Mentors & Community

Today was also about connecting with Mentors and Community. I am very fortunate to have a great Mentor already and spent a good portion of today’s meeting bouncing ideas around about this application, fine tuning some suggestions and regaining focus – something I really need a mentor to help me out with! The value of finding a good mentor is not a new idea and nor is it limited to just me. Niki Scevak founder of StartMate (who, by the way is currently taking applications for the next round of Seed funding) talks about the value of picking the right mentor in his article published today on www.startupsmart.com.au. In a chat I had with him about the value of mentors he adds “"Mentors can help your business tremendously but knowing who could be a good mentor for you and what they can help with is essential for you to get any value out of your meetings with them. Decide what your problem is first (fundraising, hiring, online marketing) and then seek out your mentors from there."

Kim Heras, one of the founder’s of the startup mentoring program PushStart (proudly Sponsored by Microsoft ) also has the following to add in this article where he talks about looking to launch an Australian version of Tech Stars, but with a twist. “We realised when we were putting this together last year that the real value for start-ups in these programs is the mentoring aspect,” he says. “They get $15,000 or $20,000 from Y Combinator, but it is the mentoring that makes the real difference. We wanted to de-couple the mentoring element from the funding element. We started with advice being the main philosophy.”

There seems to be some additional alignment in the Webinar series run by The Entourage where this week they had guest speaker Stuart Cook is the CEO of Zambrero Fresh Mex Grill (Australia' Fastest Growing Franchise) share his tips on how to engage a multi-million dollar mentor. Be sure to subscribe to their mailing list to find out about their upcoming webinars as they are always valuable.

Friday is also a great day to be in the startup community in Sydney as every Friday night, the Silicon Beach drinks are held at the Grace hotel kicking off at about 6 (in time for happy hour!). It is a melting pot of entrepreneurialism. Occasionally with guest speakers, but normally a collection of serial Entrepreneurs, angel investors, students, developers and community members. Its a great way to perhaps locate your next mentor, or even just bounce your idea off like minded others. This community is so welcoming and supporting I strongly suggest you make the time to pop in and say hello.

As for the Application development aspect of the project…. Well… so far today it hasn’t even got a look in from my side – planning to catch up on this side over the weekend .

I see the benefits of having a co founder or completely teaming up with a development partner as the challenges of working in the business vs on the business are making it tricky to get everything done!

Launching a Startup mobile App in Australia? How hard can it really be?? Day 6 Report

ceibner — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 01:22:25 GMT

Today was mostly focused on back end developments but 2 key milestones were reached:

1. Our Launch page was made finally live (my own fault on that one as I corrupted the DNS completely! So after a 48 hour (self caused) delay we now have a launch page tied to MailChimp to allow us to recruit potential customers as the application is built. It also points users to these blog posts to see how we are progressing. I *may* add a blog link to the Wordpress site to allow the posts to be published there as well – but in line with keeping focused on application development this week, I decided to skip this for now too.

Be sure to check it out & sign up to hear updates as we release version of the application: www.picknic.com.au – Note that the screenshot is showing the site live on Google Chrome. It is really important that you test any web based application you deploy on multiple platforms. With Wordpress a lot of the complexity required to ensure things work and appear consistently on multiple platforms (including different browsers, mobile, tablet & iPad etc) is already covered so you don't have to worry about it. If you haven't chosen to use a cross platform CMS or blog tool – just keep in mind to test it as part of your release plans.

2. My data is finally all imported in Azure Table Storage & blob Storage. Again a call out to the Cerebrata Cloud Storage tool – which made the import process quick & simple. See the sample data excerpt here:

The thing that I am waiting on further to decide is how many copies of the data do I want in tables with different Partition keys. I am considering setting up tables for the key facilities or BBQ, Toilets & PetFriendly. This will ensure a quick return of data that is searched by facility. But at this stage, the main table is sufficient for us to search by location (the default) and display the related images & information for each park – our Version 1 requirements!

Quick Thanks!

I also want to take the opportunity to thank everyone that has contributed to the project so far & provided help & suggestions along the way. I have to admit that I am really enjoying working on this project and am so grateful for the positive responses and interest on the project from so many people already.

Once again I thank all of you who have added comments or sent me messages about this project, and I look forward to keeping you updated as the idea progresses along its little journey. As always, feel free to post your ideas, thoughts suggestions & comments below

Launching a Startup mobile App in Australia? How hard can it really be?? Day 4 Report

ceibner — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:53:00 GMT

I thought I would make mention of the way I chose Go Daddy as my hosting provider. Besides having them recommended to me, people often overlook that we have a relationship with hosting providers through BizSpark that allows you to take advantage of further discounts – search the list in your BizSpark portal by selecting Hoster Relationship – then pick your hoster

Search for the hosting providers here (http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/Startup/HostingOrganization.aspx):

After I signed up it was less than 30 minutes before my site was setup and then all I had to do was deploy the Wordpress blog from in WebMatrix to the new site.

Now, unfortunately, instead of configuring the DNS, I managed to confuddle myself. Fortunately I work with some really smart people who hopefully will give me some help to get that sorted soon!

I guess it's worth pointing out once again that there is no personal financial gain planned for this project. However I do plan to test out monetisation models and as such - the exciting thing that I get to announce today is that we have formed a strategic alliance with the Touched By Olivia foundation.

I came across this group when visiting the Livvi's place playground in Timbrell Park for a picknic with my son. As he has been diagnosed with Asperger's it is a fantastic park for him and many others as its designed for inclusiveness for kids for children of all abilities.

What does this mean for Picknic? It means that through this project, if any revenue generated, the funds will be donated to the Touched by Olivia foundation. In return, they will be doing some promotion of the application. Probably not a standard strategic alliance – but as I mentioned I am not looking to generate any personal financial gain from this project. I still do think that forming strategic alliances & thinking about monetisation methods is an important part of building your application.

The benefits of forming strategic alliances is often overlooked by startups and so I have asked Jack Delosa of The Entourage to share some of the reasons you may want to consider this as a crucial part of your plan.

"Developing Strategic Partnerships with complimentary businesses in your space is one of the fastest ways any small business can grow. If you're looking to accelerate growth while minimising costs, strategic partnerships is the most effective solution."

I suggest you check out this valuable session he delivered to the attendees at Melbourne Startup camp: http://vimeo.com/19889493

Launching a Startup mobile App in Australia? How hard can it really be?? Day 5 Report

ceibner — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 06:10:18 GMT

Things really got interesting today! I received the first delivery of the data from my researcher. This means I can now setup my Azure tables and data access layer. I plan on making the data accessible via oData feeds as well as via web services.

I use a nifty little tool called Cerebrata Cloud Storage to access & manipulate my azure table storage. Its a really handy tool for working with both local development storage and the Azure based storage.

I was able to create my tables easily, and then use the tool to upload the data I have in CSV to my table storage. You can also use the Cerebrata free tool on Codeplex to upload my excel file (saved as CSV) directly into the cloud: http://azurefileupload.codeplex.com/ They have the extra benefit of allowing you to define the columns & keys through the simple GUI tool.

Be sure to remove any non alphanumeric (i.e. spaces etc – although an underscore is permitted) from the column names. It is also recommended to use as short column names as possible to save on space used – but for this example I am keeping long names for ease of demonstration.

Another thing that is interesting to note is the use of Suburb as the Partition Key & Unique GUID as my choice for the partition & row key. I spent a lot of time thinking about this as the correct choice for these two columns will be what determines the optimal search query return time. The partition key is used to split the data over different partitions. The Row key must be unique for each row. I had initially thought of using the Lat/Lon or a combination of the two as my row key as it is unlikely that there will be 2 parks in the same location. My concern with this was when I open the API to allow manual addition of parks, this may become an issue in future. I chose Suburb name as the partition key because I think it will be the most even way to distribute the data over the tables and also the most common way that we will query the data. There is a great description of Table Storage on Azure here on Steve Nagy’s Blog that I recommend you read.

The first challenge with my data import came up as soon as the data was imported I and realised the comma’s in the file I received were corrupting the columns in csv format and needed some massaging. I was able to quickly empty the data in the azure tables via the cerebrata tool & then look at the best way to convert the data. I ended up using tab separated Text Files by saving as text from within excel & then re uploading the data.

The next challenge was the pure number & size of images. I thought about building a simple image uploaded (and thumbnail creation tool) much like the simple getting started tutorials for Azure – but instead decided to setup a dropbox folder that the data researcher can upload to & then I can once again use the handy Cerebrata tool to upload too. Mind you I could have used Skydrive just as easily for this as well – except that it is full of my own photos already!

Now the coding really begins for both the iPhone app developer and for me working on the Windows Phone 7 version!

Launching a Startup mobile App in Australia? How hard can it really be?? Day 3 report

ceibner — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:26:00 GMT

Today has been a very good reminder of me running away with an idea. I was at work in back to back meetings again today – almost feel like the universe is against me getting this done! And tonight by the time I had a few moments to sit down & get things done… I was already tired and decided to recommence my initial idea to do something complex when the simple solution was actually right in front of me. I send my thanks to Nick Hodge for once again reminding me that the simplest solution in these kinds of situation is the simplest solution. Go with it & focus on what you really need to do. So I upgraded my internet hosting package to include enough to cover the requirements for my simple Wordpress blog & uploaded it through Web Matrix. It was quick, simple & meant I could focus my efforts on locating some good strategic partners & spend a bit more time on my wireframes. Unfortunately tiredness got the better of me so I didn’t end up getting nearly as much done as I had hoped! Balancing work & this thing is getting tougher! That said, am still glad that other processes are taking place while I am busy doing other things…

Launching a Startup mobile App in Australia? How hard can it really be?? Day 2 Report (Update to include Pics)

ceibner — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 04:02:20 GMT

Well, turns out if you have any form of life – it’s really hard!! Today’s lesson was that balancing trying to build a startup & keep your existing life going at the same time provides some challenges! My “real life” got in the way of my ambitions to gets lots done on Picknic today! My 5 year old was up half the night, then I was in back to back meetings all day at work so didn’t even get to take a second crack at my wireframes before 4pm this afternoon! So all in all I am exhausted and not able to happily report as much progress as I would like – but don’t be too distressed – lots still happened!

The first thing was that late last night (actually it was the early hours of this morning) my computer crashed as I was attempting to build my wireframes and so I decided the computer was going to win that battle & called it a night. But over night my data researcher was busily collating data for the parks, and the app designer was doing a good job of getting his head around the requirements. I also had the creative genius of Alex & Xamling thinking about a cool logo that we could use for the business and his thinking was very productive – but more on that later!

And before leaving the house for work this morning I also used the Freelancer system to set up payments for Outsourced work with the agreed milestone payments for data research set up & I paid initial deposit to iOS app Developer to get him kicked off.

Get Visibility any way you can!

I have been telling everyone I know that I am doing this. I have used my existing twitter & Facebook contacts, my real networks (including reaching out to friends who are journalists & PR types).

I have also learnt over the last few years that you should try to get recognition wherever you can find it! I know so many founders that know they should apply for things like the AIMIA awards, the AIIA awards, Innovation awards etc but the application process is time consuming, so often ends up being put in the “Things To Do (That Never End Up Getting Done)” bucket. I decided to take my chances with my 1 day old company & see if we could get ourselves any awards for what we are doing. Fortunately, the Anthill online Cool Company award nomination process was extended so still open (check it out here: http://anthillonline.com/cool-company-awards-2/).

So… during one of my many meetings today (Shhhh – it was one that I didn’t have to contribute a great deal too) I nominated Picknic for the Cool Business Awards – Social Capitalist Award. We were limited to which categories we could apply for because we are less than 1 year old (by about 354 days!), and although the other categories had a small cost to enter – I am already at budget for our expenses till we start to make revenue. Fortunately – the Socialist Capitalist Awards were free to enter – but it also made me rethink of how I would pitch the coolness of what we were doing – with a slant to how we are impacting the current economies social challenges. BAM! The idea hit me that we have yet another un-addressed benefit of what we are doing. I should have realised it when the market research unanimously told me that people would be more likely to take their children to more parks with the information we are going to provide at their fingertips. New marketing campaign is now being conjured up around how Picknic is going to be helping to address the growing national challenge of Childhood obesity! With that new idea ignited I completed our application! Wish us luck!

One other interesting thing was that my initial post got some interest & a stack more people ended up completing my Market research survey. There was so many benefits to this, as now I was able to determine the minimal features required for launch. I was also pleasantly surprised to discover how many people would pay a small token amount for the app itself. These two factors alone have been invaluable.

A friend (thanks Matt!) who saw post 1 has noticed an alignment between what I am doing and a business a friend of his has, so will be giving some introductions. That could be very handy indeed and an unseen benefit of sharing what I am doing!

Agree on the Minimum Feature Set BEFORE you start to build!

I put a hold on any development before I could nail the minimum viable feature set that we were going to launch with. Yesterday raised more questions than answered ones around which functions we should include and how to monetise them. The extra Market research has allowed us to solidify our feature set and the priority of each feature so we know the ones we can and can’t leave if time/budget becomes an issue.

My minimum Launch Feature Set now includes:

First Priority:

Search for local parks
See a map of where the park is located

(Which btw were unanimous for all respondents as being required!)

Second Priority (which I ended up being surprised by) was:

Add your own park (if its not listed)

Followed closely by our 3rd level priority items of:

Rate your experience (1-5)
Search for parks by facility (i.e. Public toilets)
Get directions to the park from where you are now

It’s time to Wireframe!

It’s all well and good to have your feature set nailed down… but as I quickly discovered, taking those “basic” levels of functionality and turning them into a functioning app isn’t as easy as I had foolishly thought.

I found myself a whiteboard & jotted down some initial ideas in between 2 meetings:

Not only was it once again a reminded that I should never ever do any graphic design or useability style role – it allowed me to think in terms of screens, functionality & flow. What became immediately apparent was that I would have 2 distinct user types. The “known” users who would be able to add their own parks, add ratings and reviews. The second group is the “unknown” users who can open the app, see local parks & read others ratings & reviews. This raised some other issues – I hadn’t planned to include user accounts in the first version. I have also not worked out yet if we will enforce the Facebook integration. I raised both these issues with a smart app developer & the developer working on the iPhone app – both came back with great suggestions and I am happy that the app developer has come up with a great solution on how to manage it

Apart from that confusion, I was pretty happy with the flow of screens & useability – now it was time to start to play with creating wireframes on something a bit easier to understand.. I once again opened Balsamiq. I played around for a little while & in my first hour managed to come up with a few screens (Again – ignore the design – its to convey the functionality)

One of the nice things about Balsamiq is that I could add post it’s & steps to my mock ups to explain what I had really meant, and things I couldn’t work out how to articulate in the tool. The other benefit is that it is ultimately readable, unlike my whiteboard scribbles!

The developer is now working through the basic functionality for the first screen and the login and giving me tips on how to better use Balsamiq as well

Supporting Infrastructure Tasks

I did manage to set up a few more services today that will come in very handy:

I signed up for the Microsoft Cloud Partner benefits I get as part of the BizSpark program: https://www.microsoftcloudpartner.com/Enroll.aspx

I then signed up for Office 365 7 set up the business – I could now set up other users accounts, email, etc but as its only me I don’t really need to do that just yet.

I signed up for Win Azure https://www.microsoftcloudpartner.com/GetBenefits.aspx So now I have a server provisioned in the cloud with little less than a click of a button & no cash outlay!! Woot! :)

I applied for the token to get developer account on AppHub for WP7 (free tokens with BizSpark can be applied for here: link)

I signed up to get a developer account for Apple http://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/ – this one costs $99.

I set up my Mailchimp account & list for pre registrations of people wanting to be notified when the app is ready to launch:

The overtired circle of doom

I always tell the startups I work with that the number 1 rule of being in a startup or small business is to look after yourself! If you aren’t getting enough sleep, exercise, eating well and having time away from the business with family/friends – your body will suffer. Unfortunately as a Startup entrepreneur or small business owner – this ultimately means that your business (and health & relationships) will also suffer.

I have learnt this lesson the hard way in previous ventures and it seems I plan to ignore my own advice yet again! After very little sleep last night and a long day at work I tried to work on a new challenge that arose today – the realisation that (i believed) in order to maintain users accounts I would need a website that they could log into to set up accounts, maintain their preferences, link to Facebook etc – and this little panic was also fuelled the reminder that I still didn’t have a launch page! Unfortunately I spiralled into the overtired circle of doom. Instead of focusing on getting a simple launch page up and running, I started looking at (the very cool but totally unneeded for something so simple) LightSwitch. I downloaded it while I read through some of the examples, opened it up & started to kick off building a website from scratch! Thankfully I ran out of time and had to go get my son from daycare.

While sitting & having dinner with him I realised I had completely dived into solving a problem that I didn’t have yet and was probably unlikely to have anytime soon. I already had WebMatrix Installed on my computer. I went in, clicked create new Site – from Web Gallery, clicked next a few times & I had a WordPress blog downloaded installed & ready to configure! I followed this simple video (roughly), downloaded & hacked this (free) Launch theme and had created a launch page, with Facebook & Mailchimp integration in less than 20 minutes. I thank goodness I had to get up & go to get my son otherwise who knows what I may have tried to build and probably would still be building now!

But, alas – the overtired Spiral of Doom was to kick in yet again. As I now had my new shiny Azure instances ready to play with I decided I wanted to deploy the Wordpress Site to Azure… which is certainly possible but as I started to read the steps included I got about half way through before I decided I was just too tired and it was going to have to wait till tomorrow… so as a result of the lack of focus (and my ease of being distracted with yet another new shiny!) we still don’t have a launch page up collecting potential customer details.

We Have a logo!

The last thing that we did get our hands on tonight is the concepts for our new logo thanks to Alex Knight of Xamling who has agreed to do the logo’s to help us out. He has helped me do logos for the Women in IT awards I run and I have always loved his design work so had high expectations from him. But I was absolutely blown away by the awesomeness of the logo’s he came up with based on my few ideas & discussion of the app functionality. Seeing these has left me feeling so excited about this app & seeing it all come together!

I have a feeling my initial plans of taking the weekend off may not be fully realised!

Launching a Startup mobile App in Australia? How hard can it really be?? Day 2 Report

ceibner — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 13:10:00 GMT

Get Visibility any way you can!

I have been telling everyone I know that I am doing this. I have used my existing twitter & Facebook contacts, my real networks (including reaching out to friends who are journalists & PR types).

Agree on the Minimum Feature Set BEFORE you start to build!

My minimum Launch Feature Set now includes:

First Priority:

Search for local parks
See a map of where the park is located

(Which btw were unanimous for all respondents as being required!)

Second Priority (which I ended up being surprised by) was:

Add your own park (if its not listed)

Followed closely by our 3rd level priority items of:

Rate your experience (1-5)
Search for parks by facility (i.e. Public toilets)
Get directions to the park from where you are now

It’s time to Wireframe!

I found myself a whiteboard & jotted down some initial ideas in between 2 meetings:

The developer is now working through the basic functionality for the first screen and the login and giving me tips on how to better use Balsamiq as well

Supporting Infrastructure Tasks

I did manage to set up a few more services today that will come in very handy:

I signed up for the Microsoft Cloud Partner benefits I get as part of the BizSpark program: https://www.microsoftcloudpartner.com/Enroll.aspx

I then signed up for Office 365 7 set up the business – I could now set up other users accounts, email, etc but as its only me I don’t really need to do that just yet.

I signed up for Win Azure https://www.microsoftcloudpartner.com/GetBenefits.aspx So now I have a server provisioned in the cloud with little less than a click of a button & no cash outlay!! Woot! :)

I applied for the token to get developer account on AppHub for WP7 (free tokens with BizSpark can be applied for here: link)

I signed up to get a developer account for Apple http://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/ – this one costs $99.

I set up my Mailchimp account & list for pre registrations of people wanting to be notified when the app is ready to launch:

The overtired circle of doom

We Have a logo!

I have a feeling my initial plans of taking the weekend off may not be fully realised!

Launching a Startup mobile App in Australia? How hard can it really be?? Day 2.33333 Report

ceibner — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 13:00:44 GMT

It’s Saturday and am officially taking my own advice and taking the day off to spend the day with my son doing all kinds of fun things like going to the movies (we saw the Smurf movie in 3D and it was actually quite funny!), going to a park, having a picnic & chasing bubbles around the backyard! Perfect really!

OK, so that said, while the fun was taking place, my developer has come back with some interesting suggestions around how iPhone apps can’t ship without an offline mode, and whether we should include the entire initial park list as a file downloaded with the app or just parts of it. He also suggested some clever ideas around letting people rate the location without having to create accounts & logging in! Working with smart people is once again proving a smart move!! Taking time to step away from the project is also meaning I have some time to think about these ideas….

So, turns out, day off or not…. as was expected – as I spent time with my son, I still thought a lot about the app idea/design/marketing/functionality – and as my son & I visited a park on the sparkly Sydney harbour this wonderful sunny afternoon in Sydney I wished I had a way to take a picture, share it & rate the amazing park we were in!

Maybe next weekend I can!

Catherine Eibner

Microsoft IT-Girls 2012

Does learning about cloud computing while contributing to scientific research sound good to you?

It’s time for the next Microsoft IT Girls event (Formerly DigiGirls)

Want to quickly build an app?

Guest Post: The Ups & Downs of Mixing Motherhood With the Start Up Life

#1: Who am I - now?

#2: Wanting quick success (AKA maintaining anxiety levels)

#3: Working against the biggest challenge: time

#4: Managing Workload

#5: Maintaining Big Picture Focus

#6: Being Too Emotionally Involved to be Objective

#7: Trying to do it all

#8: Feeling connected offline

#9: Getting the parent vs business balance

Launching a Startup mobile App in Australia? How hard can it *really* be?? Day (I’ve Lost count!) Report

Launching a Startup mobile App in Australia? Guest Blogger Gary Twomey Outlines the Key Government Funding Programs for Start -ups

Windows Azure BizSpark Startup Camp – Brisbane

Event Details

Event Questions

Event Agenda

Build a Business Plan in a Day? Heck yes!

Picknic has been named one of Australia’s ‘Coolest’ businesses in Anthill Magazine’s Sixth Annual Cool Company Awards.

Picknic has been named one of Australia’s ‘Coolest’ businesses in Anthill Magazine’s Sixth Annual Cool Company Awards.

What are Cool Company Awards?

What is Anthill Magazine?

Launching a Startup mobile App in Australia? How hard can it *really* be?? Day 11 Report

Map your development machine keyboard to the Phone 7 emulator:

Bing Maps Development

Windows Azure Toolkit

OData:

SQL Azure Security Requirements

[Windows Phone Training] Workshops, Webcasts and Application Clinics

Windows Phone Developer Deep Dive Workshop

Windows Phone Developer App Clinic

Windows Phone Developer Deep Dive Webcasts

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