Announcing ... the GIG Engine

Announcing .. the GIG Engine
http://www.asb.unsw.edu.au/research/centreforinnovationandentrepreneurship/resources/Pages/gigengine.aspx (built by CIE and NSi in collaboration with BlueChilli and additional assistance from NICTA and Silicon Beach) 

This interactive visual map of the Australian innovation system builds on a long history of TechMaps. The GIG Engine is also timely for incumbents and newcomers to our community to familiarize themselves with who is out there, doing what, and how interconnected this space is.

Back in Vancouver, I was part of the Centre for Policy Research on Science and Technology (CPROST), which was the driving force behind the BC TechMap, published as a massive poster in 2003:

Apparently, there's a 2012 version coming soon!

In 2011, Env & Planning A published a similar TechMap for Puget Sound (Seattle area) came out, too. 

The BC TechMap was lauded for making people feel like they’re part of a community, and the map remained in the boardrooms of many offices several years after it was created.

However, these Techmaps have a few limitations: (i) they’re static and get dated quickly, (ii) they’re hard to navigate, (iii) they focus on the tech-preneurs, and are missing all the glue that holds these pieces together. The first two are obvious, but let’s have a look at point iii. If you redraw the BC TechMap as a social network diagram, you’ll see that it actually looks like the clusters of multiple generations spin-offs are totally disconnected:

If you’re an entrepreneur, that doesn’t exactly tell you anything other than that some companies and universities spin off more companies, but it doesn’t say who to turn to for R&D tax advice, capital, workshops, legal help, tech support, market research, etc. .. Enter GIG Engine.

Just in the last few years, our community has seen the (re-)emergence of supporting organizations (in no particular order): Sydney Angels, Tech23, SydStart, MEGA (reborn), StartMate, PushStart, IgnitionLabs, Springboard, Founders Institute, General Assembly, MHCarnegie, Accel, StartupBus, Fishburners, 66-Meetups, BlueChilli, Heads OverHeels, UnConvention, TiE, Student entrepreneurship societies (e.g. UNSW, UTS) and other facebook groups, more courses and programs at unis and pre-uni (incl social entrepreneurship), ShoeString Startups, and a number of hack-a-thons (RHoK, Launch48). We have also seen recent attempts to map out the ecosystem via Silicon Beach (mindmeister) and our partners (StartRail, ANZ Cleantech Industry 2010), as well as attempts to sequence the Aussie innovation Genome, these maps still fall a little short on some of the same 3 points mentioned earlier. I’m not saying the GIG Engine is perfect, and we're hoping the community will get involved (email us!) to make it better.

What you could get out of it: Find out who’s who, and who’s related to who, to help you build the network you need for your venture.

What we get out of it: A living database that can be used for research on the networks of ventures.

(But really did it because it we were curious and it was kind of fun.)

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We wish to acknowledge the CIE's sponsors and express our appreciation of their support. All of our sponsors help provide the means to host networking events, award prizes, and reimburse our suppliers and service providers. In exchange, these donors receive good karma and public recognition as supporters of innovation and entrepreneurship. To become a sponsor of CIE and support our community engagement activity, please contact us at cie@unsw.edu.au.

Overview of UNSW and surrounding innovation system

In conversation with a few people around UNSW and Sydney, it's great to see a lot of interest in boosting the level of innovation and entrepreneurship around here. To help people who are a little newer to this eco-system understand who's doing what, we summarized a sample of the players here: http://bit.ly/oVG2JS


For omissions, editorial suggestions, etc, please contact us at cie@unsw.edu.au


Enjoy,
CIE

Mapping Sydney's Innovation System (a pet project)

Hi Everyone,

This is a test to crowdsource mapping out Sydney's Innovation System using Google Docs and NodeXL. To start, I have added CIE and a few affiliated organizations to the initial network map:

To add yourself to the map:

• Open the raw data spreadsheet in google docs and add your (organization's) name to the "Vertices" tab.
• Add a size, roughly equivalent to how many start-ups or teams your organization represents (rule of thumb is 5-6 per team)
• Add a URL to your logo
• Add some info about you in the Tooltip column (or a URL to your homepage)

To add your affiliations to the map:

• Open the "Edges" tab in same spreadsheet
• For each affiliation, add yourself and the affiliate (make sure the spelling is the SAME as in the "Vertices" tab!)

Do NOT change the formatting or columns in the spreadsheet. Unfortunately, I could not upload the xlsx spreadsheet as is, so the map can be drawn automatically. Instead, I have to copy and paste the raw data from the google doc version into the NodeXL version to regenerate the graph. 

If the map on this page looks massively out of date, please nag us at cie@unsw.edu.au to regenerate it. We'll then update this post, and tweet about the update.

StartupCamp Sydney going strong (Oct 8-10)

From time to time I have been popping in to check on StartupCamp Sydney IV. Sometimes in person at ATP Innovations, sometimes just checking Bart's twitter feed or the #sucs hashtag.

There are dozens of 30-second idea pitches online, and teams have gelled around 10 ideas listed on the StartupCamp website:

• http://www.startup-australia.org/startupcamp4. 

My favorite one has probably got to be the mash-up between ChatRoulette and Foursquare:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8hVUMJ-ZXc

The whole collection of videos is available at:

• http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=StartupAustralia#g/u

What's next??

The whole schedule of events is available at: http://sydneystartupcamp.eventbrite.com/

The next sections that are open to the public are:

Saturday 9 Oct at 9pm: Launches and Demos to Press, Party!

Each team has maximum 5min (and you will be cut off and this includes fumbling with laptops, etc) to pitch and give a live demo of their product. After this there will be 2-3mins in which the press can ask questions. This pitch is NOT for investors. This is where you get the world excited about your invention

Sunday 10 Oct:
2:00PM - Investor and business leaders arrive for Grand Final Pitches
4:00PM - Networking, Clean-up, Final Touches!
5:00PM - Close off StartupCamp IV

Hope to see you there!

Random Hacks of Kindness 1.0 from Sydney is going strong!

[reposted from an email moments ago]
Hello from Sydney, Australia!  

We've been busy hacking away for RHOK 1.0 Sydney and we're still going.  RHOK Sydney has people from Christchurch, New Zealand, Canberra, Brisbane, Sydney, Australia, Chicago, USA, Toronto and Vancouver, Canada. One of our special guests is Gavin Treadgold of Sahana Foundation (http://sahanafoundation.org/). Gavin is one of three Emergency Response experts (including Tom Worthington, a professor at the Australian National University and Mauritz van der Vlugt of NGIS) helping developers create with the real world of NGOs and Emergency Response.

It is looking like an all nighter for some of the projects.

We have 6 core groups:
 1. Help Stays - a bed finder for volunteers in disaster regions
2. Task Turks - aggregating tasks for disasters
3. Money Tracker - building a donation
4. People Finder - helping match people with their families during emergencies
5. Bushfire connect - Helping people crowdsource  information in fire struck regions (using Ushahidi)
6. UAV - finding real-time Geo-referenced imagery

Our wiki link with all the docs, github, links to projects and content:
http://wiki.rhok.org/RHoK_1.0_-_Sydney

Also check out:
Our Ustream channel : http://www.ustream.tv/channel/rhok-sydney

We've posted some great shots on the flickr account for RHOk.
Pics from #rhok1.0 Sydney are up on Flickr http://bit.ly/a7sr2S


youtube videos on some of our projects:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmrptULmPLA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCpVnUSNjf0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEPmK9lkbtI

Stay Tuned!  We will have more videos and be streaming all night. Also follow our ustream chat, twitter @heatherleson or @rhoksydney for real-time updates. For our partner cities, we will see you  on ooVoo video conference.  We had a nice chat and collaboration with folks from Nairobi about Ushahidi and Bushfire Connect.  Looking forward to more synergies.

Here's to taking it Globally.

RHOK Sydney, hosted by the CIE at the ASB / UNSW

Random Hack of Kindness - June 5-6

Come join Random Hacks of Kindness 5-6 June. Everyone welcome.

This will be a group effort, so bring your skills in website usability, knowledge of what happens in crises (fires, floods, hurricanes, ..), coding skills (if you got 'em), and your ideas and enthusiasm.

Venue: ASB Lounge, Level 6, Australian School of Business, UNSW, Kensington.

Registration via: http://www.rhok.org/events/rhok-1-0/sydney-australia/

Seeking: Entrepreneurs and Undergrads in Sydney

We are about to kick off another term at UNSW in Sydney, including my course "STRE2010: Principles & Practice of Innovation & Entrepreneurship" The course textbook is Guy Kawasaki's Art of the Start which is available in most bookstores. Last term, the top reasons that students were interested in the course were because of the guest speaker entrepreneurs and interdisciplinary group work. Guest speakers mean you get the real deal on how companies got off the ground, not just a list of theoretical things to look out for. And, group work resembles the real world, in which a company's performance depends on people with different backgrounds working together.

Undergrads: Take STRE2010. Enrollment is already half-full. It's a Gen Ed course, too! Deliverables are:

• 4-page business outline
• 3 and 5 minute business pitch
• 2 mid-terms

Entrepreneurs:

• Be a guest speaker! Meet the next generation of entrepreneurs, coach them, invest in them, hire them as interns, become inspired.
• Get a business pitch for your company. This term, I am exploring pairing teams up with entrepreneurs who have a business idea that needs a little more meat on the bones. This will be an option for teams who are struggling to come up with their own idea.

See you in a few weeks.

mbliemel@unsw.edu.au

PS: Already taken STRE2010? Looking for more at UNSW? Check out STRE3001, Managing Business Strategy.