2005 Events - Innovation Bay

Friday 4 November 2005

The new head of the Macquarie Institute for Innovation, Craig Mudge, spoke about the technology ecosystem of the US West Coast. He is an experienced technology entrepreneur with 10 years of successful hands on experience in Silicon Valley.

Tuesday 18 October 2005

David Baxby, the CEO of Virgin Management, Asia Pacific spoke at this dinner on "Branded venture capital". This was a terrific insight into the investment decisions of one of the world's highest profile entrepreneurs (Richard Branson).

Tuesday 13 September 2005

Jost Stollmann built his business, Compunet, into one of Germany's leading IT service providers. He sold it to GE for $1bn. He has also been a politician and an adventurer, sailing a 40m yacht around the planet for 2 years with his family of 5 children. The dinner with Jost was wonderful for all involved.

Thursday 4 August 2005

Edward Wray, CEO of Betfair. Edward has, in less than 5 years, built Betfair into one of the world's most successful betting exchanges, with turnover over $100m a week and 100,000 customers worldwide. He gave a fascinating insight into how this was done and what the (rosy) future holds. Listen to the session here.

Friday 27 May 2005

"Meet the thought leader" - Linda Graham-McCann gave a brilliant and very thought-provoking talk. Linda was the original founder of Microsoft in Australia.

Tuesday 17 May 2005

"VC Trends" dinner. With Mike Zimmerman (TVP) and David Landers (Allen & Buckeridge). The evening focused on trends in venture capital investing.

Tuesday 12 April 2005

"Getting the right Cluture" dinner with Gordon Cairns, ex-CEO of Lion Nathan. Gordon told his remarkable story about how he turned Lion Nathan into a super-performing great place to work.

Thursday 31 March 2005

Warren Billington from 5th Finger told the inspiring story of this plucky start-up and how they overcame numerous obstacles to get to where they are now.

Friday 25 February 2005

We heard from a panel of experts discuss their experiences in China and what opportunities there are for Australian companies. There were no rose tinted glasses. We learnt that whilst the opportunity in China is massive, you need local partners, patience, and plenty of courage!

25 January 2005

Whisky tasting and Burns Night. With the Scottish influence amongst the organisers shining through, we had a night of tasting beautiful, cask-whisky listening to some Burns poetry and enjoying some haggis. It was good that the next day was a holiday.