I spent most of today at Tech23. I arrived with few expectations and left very pleasantly surprised.

The format was simple. A representative (usually the CEO/founder) of a startup presented to a panel of “industry leaders” and provided a four-minute elevator speech about their startup. The industry leaders then engaged with the panelists; often with pertinent and challenging questions. The list of startups and industry leaders that presented today can be found at the Tech23 website.

Interestingly the audience were not allowed to participate directly with responses/questions. Rather, the magic of twitter and continuous tweeting by a substantial portion of the 300-or-so audience, gave all following on twitter a pretty accurate understanding of the zeitgeist in the room at any one time. It also allowed the organisers to relay questions from twitter to those on the panels.

There are a few key points that I came away with, and will treasure the information gleaned from today’s seminar:

  • If you cannot present well, forget it. You have one chance to impress your audience and the first few seconds of a presentation are golden. Notably presenters from companies including Posse, CultureAmp, PersonalAudio, HeardSystems, We are Hunted had it spot on, and we were engaged. Others didn’t fare so well, but managed to get points across, although I certainly wasn’t left feeling inspired. Alas, some never even got as far as their key message and we were left wondering why they were even up there :-(
  • Depth over breadth. Conquer a small slice of the market first and then build outwards from there - even if you think your offering is relevant across a wide spectrum, find a niche, get to know it well, experiment in it, and once you are experienced there, then move further afield. In other words stick to one narrow vertical first, and then use the learnings from that vertical to leapfrog into other verticals.
  • While it may seem obvious, social networking underpinned most of the offerings. Except of course the “weapon of mass pregnancy detection” invented by the good folk at Heard Systems. I guess you could say that’s social networking of a more beefy nature.
  • I made many new contacts and started following quite a few more people on twitter that I would never have known before today.

Similar learnings have come up before for me - in the field of software development, and its valuable to realise the parallels:

  • The point on presentation resonates when it comes to building user interfaces. Again, you have only a few seconds to impress the first time user. And for the regular user, you want them to keep coming back because your software is a joy to use.
  • Depth over breadth is a key to software development. I strongly believe in developing software in “thin slices of full functionality” that deliver a chunk of useful functionality from start-to-finish but where the scope is only as broad as what is required to accomplish that task. In other words develop narrow “verticals” within your software product and then move on and develop additional functionality, once the lessons have been learned many of the unknowns have been worked through.
  • Software development is best achieved when it is social. When your users become part of your team and you interact with them, get feedback, find out where things need to be improved. Not to mention the social aspects of peer-reviews, pair programming (if that’s up your street), user groups, etc.

To sum up, it was an awesome day, well done to Rachel and her team from Slattery IT. It is refreshing to see how much innovation is happening in Australia in this space. Love to see more events like this.

To sum up, it was an awesome day, well done to Rachel and her team from . It is refreshing to see how much innovation is happening in Australia in this space.

Love to see more events like this.