Following Australian Startups and Tech Trends

Thursday, February 07, 2008 Australia , Media , Startup , Startups , Technology , Telecom , Web2.0

Background :
Australian Startups Carnival - 2008 is an initiative by VS Consulting Group. This online (web based) carnival is all about learning new ventures started/surfaced in IT, Telecoms, Green Tech, Media, Web2.0/Social Networking in last couple of years. Vishal covered the state of web2.0 startups in 2006 for Readwriteweb. But since then lot of water has gone under. We are now expanding our coverage, as some great ideas are being put together and executed. We intend to discover people behind these startups, their motivations, how future looks from their perspective, what technologies are being used, what market segments they are targeting, their mistakes, their advise and more.

Why:
One of the main reasons we are doing this is to make this black art of starting up more open and easy. When we look on the web their is so much high level information about business models and how companies are doing, blah blah , but not much on how we should go about it, what mistakes we should be avoiding, how to tackle issues, where to get help and things like that.

Our belief is that we can learn lot more from our fellow countrymen, because if we have to start something here than first learn from the local guy and than take advise from the guys in Silicon Valley (some really smart chaps their) or other parts of the world.

We know its hard to get things going here for various reasons and this is why this initiative. We firmly believe by starting this and continuing this initiative we can learn from others experiences. We need to learn more about this art and promote it for others to dive into it. This space is evolving quite rapidly and we are trying to learn more about it, there are not many dedicated places in Australia, to find information on these things except some lists. So the best way to learn is to share, more we learn and share in a open environment more it will help others and eventually people behind these ventures.

How it works:
It’s an online (web based) carnival, starting on March 3, 2008.
On receiving the applications/registration from various startups/ventures, profiles/information will be compiled in a web format. These profiles /information will be published on the carnival portal, starting March 3, 2008. Three/four profiles will be covered everyday on the portal.

So please keep watching the space and make sure you have got your feeds subscribed as we have some grand plans on this to take it further.

In terms of what participants get are:

• New ventures learn about other ventures and people behind these across Australia.
• We are finalizing Judging Panel of 3 to be announced by Monday Feb 18, 2008. The panel is going to judge all the ventures on originality, simplicity, technology and marketability. They will select the top three. They will also provide some suggestions to all participants.
• We are also working on with some sponsors on offering some form of prizes to the top three ventures and few freebies to others. Once finalized it will be published on site.
• We are also working on getting some famous global bloggers to write about this initiative and people/ventures who are participating.