Thursday 22 May 2008 was the big day of Transaction 2.0 and Techramp. What a hoot….. up at 5.45 having worked on my content until 1am, quick run in the gym to get the blood moving and off to CeBIT by 7.30 to ensure everything was honkey dorey and to meet Ivan Kaye from Business Strategies International at 8am.

It started with me introducing Jackie Taranto, MD of Hannover Fairs Australia to officially open Transaction 2.0. She was telling me prior to the introduction about some of the things that she was involved with to try to grow the industry and the work that Hannover has done in this regard. A down to earth dynamo is a good description.

Then I introduced Paul Slakely of Google to talk about cloud computing, interesting topics that ran for an hour with all the questions from the people that attended. Great speaker who was very candid about where this is going. Make no doubt about it, Google is going after providing a huge range of services for businesses. Nice to be able to tell him that Gilad Greenbaum and I collaborated on a Google Spreadsheet to set up the conference.

Then Transaction 2.0 split into 2 rooms with me chairing Techramp. First up was Jason Calacanis who promised to convince everyone that they should fire everyone that is average and good in the business, and how he had mathematically proven it. Got people thinking (intentionally controversial) and he has spent a lot of time thinking about this topic. Whilst it may sound brutal and a tad unkind, his analogy was sports. We all know that we expect coaches to fire – quickly – average performers and transition your good performers to excellent performers. Watch mahalo – let’s see how he goes. Was fun trying to explain his presentation in 4 minutes at the airport to Richard Giles of scouta

About this point my brother who was in the audience came up to say hello. With a “know this bloke?” I turned to find my father who had surprised me by coming over from Australind in Western Australia to check out the day. Paid full fair to get to Sydney and full freight for the CeBIT ticket. What a huge and wonderful surprise, nice one Dad…

Mick from Polenizer then got up to talk about focus (good book on that, see Focus from the book link above) as it relates to startup companies. Great talk and right on the money for mine.

I felt like I was trying to steer the speedboat from the ski’s with trying to keep the thing to time. The audience strapped themselves in and hung on, and I think enjoyed themselves immensely.

Quick caffeine break and back into it. Txt messages to Gilad back and forth to keep ourselves running during the day (damned if I know where he gets his energy from).

Great panel on user centric design, thanks Ruby, Oliver, Peter and Russ – particularly Russ for seizing the initiative in getting the session off to a good start by flying some questions around to the panel members to get us thinking.

Then we got stuck into Hells Kitchen with Phil from Pollenizer.

Vishal Sharma chaired a panel discussion on Web 2.0 trends, great job and a great panel – Duncan Riley, Gilad Greenbaum, contributions from Mike Cannon-Brookes from Atlassian.

Finally it was time to get onto the final 5 best Aussie startups. 6 minutes plus 3 minutes of questions. Interesting technical startups.

All of the presentations were interesting and showed companies at really different stages of their thinking. I think each one will have gone away with lots of really good feedback and ways of moving forward. All to be commended on having a red hot go and having the courage to put themselves out there. I’m afraid I just couldn’t stretch out the winner announcement ala Australian idol but was pleased to announce Good Barry unanimously

CEO Peter Cooper and Founder and Executive Chairman Marc Lehmann have really zazzed up Saasu, and this is an app IMHO going big time. I first signed up for an account ages ago to check it out after following a link from 88miles.net from MadPilot Myles Eftos - also from Perth - (see my earlier post on that product here).

Saasu is accounting software available as a service. I used to use MYOB when running my own business previously, and frankly that takes quite some time to get to grips with.

The Saasu interface has improved a lot from the last iteration, and if you are in the market for accounting and finance software this is one you must put on your shopping list. Solid .Net infrastructure (our Perth Ross Consulting team also mainly develop in this environment, so we know the environment well) and continually improving the product. 

I was introduced to Peter and Marc by Gilad Greenbaum whilst at Cebit, and got to have a few cleansing ales with them. Marc is formerly from Perth and was here recently for Barcamp. The photos here are at the Awards night at Cebit. For the second year in a row, Saasu picked up an award, so they are obviously doing something right.

I think they are on the money with this offering, so keep your eyes on it.

The close of day 1 was the Innovate Session at Home, Cockle Bay Wharf. Speaking with some of the people from CSIRO there are some really interesting innovations coming through in the IT area, which has been an underpromoted area. Worth keeping a watching  brief…. check it out at http://www.csiro.au/events/CeBIT2008.html

Over 750 exhibitors and 40 000 attendees. For 3 days the red flags of Cebit own Cockle Bay Wharf and the Sydney Convention Centre. Must say I was very impressed with the sheer scale of Cebit in Sydney – over 40000 visitors over 3 days.

Gilad Greenbaum Director IT, Hannover Fairs, has done a wonderful job in setting up the programme at cebit. A highly professional and well connected guy, with boundless energy. A real asset to CEBIT. 

Day 1 of Cebit included lots of great presentations.

Jason Calacanis was most controversial discussed the practical challenges of thinking big enough and having entrepreneurial spirit engrained into people at a young age.

With some Government people on the panel, he was asked what can Government do to assist businesses. His clear perspective was for them to (politely) get out of the way and just don’t add any barriers. His  big idea – which I really like – is to treat entrepreneurs as rock stars and heroes. Award $100000 per year for big ideas,  one per state and get this into schools. Start young. 

Jason highlighted the divide between entrepreneurs that need to take risks and may have to fail once or twice versus Government is not an environment where the shareholders (taxpayers and citizens) want to encourage risk. The cultures are so substantively different.

You can check his presentation as well as many others on the Cebit site 

Home to Chatham House Now that I have completed the weekly sessions of the Australian Company Directors Course, I run the risk of sounding like a paid advertisement… BUT if you have contemplated doing this course, don’t hesitate, just do it. The quality of presenters and the work that has gone into preparing the course material is utterly first rate. I must say I have also learnt a great deal from the participants who are all business leaders in a wide range of fields.  As in any learning, you only get out what you put in. There is a lot of reading material and preparation for every week. The case study material is really strong and gives you a very good grounding for all facets of directorship. The participants have agreed to continue to meet monthly, so we have called the group Chatham House, based on the application Chatham House rule. If you are after the original Chatham House group here which is home of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, is a world-leading institute for the debate and analysis of international issues.

Techramp is an exciting one day session as part of the Transaction 2.0 day at Cebit. There is a great cast of first class presenters.  The speakers are people have been there and have got both the scars and rewards to prove it. I’ve been lucky enough to be invited to chair the Techramp sessions.So if you are a startup Web 2.0 business, whatever stage your idea is at now - whether just a concept – or building user base and customers – to making good profits and cashflow - the sessions are designed to address the most important issues you will be facing.  

Entrepreneurial people often like to learn by doing and by asking questions of people that have been there. Techramp is absolutely focussed on the practical rather than theoretical and heavily case study driven. Plus there are panel sessions with loads of time to ask questions and draw on the knowledge and experience of these people that have been along the journey. 

The first session is all about setting the scene – have you got what it takes to be an entrepreneur and how to go about build a winning web business. Is this a road I want to take, and what does that road look like anyway?

The next session discusses the challenges in creating and dealing with rocket growth cycle and marketing a business. It also elaborates on issues such as funding, product development phases and human resource management, as well as technical issues like development environments and project management. Attention will be given to marketing of a new, exciting service or product, and how to get through the “Nuts and Bolts” of every startup (office space, overheads, online billing, hosting and more) - a session every start-up needs as I found it was something that can consume lots of time and distract you from getting on with the main game. 

After lunch TechRamp will get into the some of the technical stuff, with a panel discussion on designing the user experience. This session is so important – if you get usability and design wrong, forget it. Sign up and product ease of use are just critical for to keep sales moving forward and driving satisfied customers. Commercial software where once a deal is done, customers are stuck with it no matter how bad it is. Web 2.0 is much more opt in and opt off like mobile phone plans. Then we will get into the more nitty gritty technical issues, again get this wrong and you are done for.

Transaction 2.0 will be capped with the TechRamp 2008 competition. In addition to recognition, the winning startup will be awarded with an excellent and relevant stack of prizes, on behalf of the TechRamp supporters and sponsors. 

This is going to be an exciting day, and I am looking forward to meeting the people involved. Thanks to Vishal Sharma who will be on the judging panel for the introduction to Gilad Greenbaum, Director (IT) Hanover Fairs… See you in Sydney.