Alex Dong
I am a mechanical engineer who found myself gradually moving into robot design, electronic design, remote industry control and automation, network communication and, finally, software. Based in Beijing, China, I'm traveling around the world in 2009. Looking for inspirations and trying to figure out what to do for the next 10 or 20
years. Before this, i've been Microsoft's Solution Architect MVP, led a research lab for a US public company and ran my own internet startup. You could find more about me and the hobby projects I've worked on at http://www.alexdong.com/. In terms of programming, I'd prefer to use Python+Django with a few drops of javascript. (I used to be fluent with C++, Java or C# but not any more. )
Alex Sharp
With respect to computers and programming, I started programming at the age of 9, I've made my own processor design and built it into a working FPGA with the help of a friend, I've designed the Asari search engine, various AI programs, Chatbots and other related IR systems. I've also been lead programmer on a now disjunct game project, which taught me quite a bit about 3d games programming.
In terms of electronics, I received an unrestricted Amateur radio licence when i was 12 (youngest in Australia), I've worked with the BLUEsat microsatilite project when i was 13 as part of the power and telemetry subsystem. I've also created a new type of switchmode power supply and MPPT,
In terms of programmes I've been selected for, I was chosen to go to the National Youth Science Forum, having been nominated by a Rotary club and passed through two phases of screening.
I've also went to the National Computer Science School in year 10, and lead development on the search engine we were making there.
However one of the most important things I've done was achieving a place at the prestigious RSI program run by MIT. I was one of five Australians ever to go to the Research Science Institute at MIT (Boston, MA) amongst the top of the world. Whilst there I had the pleasure of being lectured to by various Nobel laureates including Wolfgang Ketterle, and David Rensin of Reality mobile. I also had the pleasure of interning at Akamai technologies and working on their infrastructure.
I helped organise the construction of the website for Pittman transport, and I'm currently attending the YAA business skills program.
Ben Sand
Current:
* Just passed half way through creating an advertising site in django, that interfaces with the Government's ABN database and manages a detailed location register.
* Finished principal shooting for an anti Internet censorship video.
* Studying Computer Science and Marketing at Sydney University
* participate in SLUG, SyPy and SAGE-AU mailing lists and meetings.
Past:
* I've presented on Django to SyPy (Sydney Python Users Group).
* IT Coordinator for Australian Mensa Inc. for 18 months.
* I have worked as an onsite consultant and technician for myself and as a contractor for small business and home clients, working with
General Skills:
* Administrator of Windows: 10+years, Mac 2 years, Linux 4 years (I have strong skills in all three, but currently favouring Linux)
* Networking technologies - 3G, 802.11 and wired.
* Operated my own business delivering on-site support and IT consulting for 10 years
* Web development in Plone and Drupal
* While contracting to an on-site support company:
+ tripled margins on new PCs
+ double new PC sales
+ highest parts sales for three consecutive months
+ reduced system build time by 2 hours through automation
* Partner in a business reselling ex-government IT for 12 months.
Brad Hircock
Currently enrolled in the Bachelor of Information Technology (BIT) scholarship program at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). I am half way through a three year degree and have achieved distinctions and high distinctions in all subjects to date.
As part of my most recent elective, Web Services Development, I developed a recipe system using Web Services, JAVA, JSP, XML, XSL and XPATH. For this project achieved a high distiction.
As part of the BIT degree have I completed a 6 month industry placement with IMC Pacific, an options market maker, during which time I worked as a Front Office Developer. Throughout this placement I became proficient in developing solutions for traders using Microsoft Excel and Access. I also used and developed skills mySQL, which I used as a backend for many of the solutions developed using Excel.
Over the summer vacation period I completed a 3 month Vacation Program with Macquarie Bank. Throughout this program I developed solutions using Microsoft Visual Studios, predominently in C#.
As part of the industry placement with IMC (see above) I learnt about options marketmaking. This involved learning everything from what is an option, through to the option greeks, option spreads and position management. This enabled me to conduct business analysis work and determine the requirements for solutions that were required by the option traders at IMC.
I am a member of a Young Achievers Australia (YAA) team as part of their business skills program. The program, for high school and university students, involves running a business for 6 month and includes everything from developing a product idea and manufacturing the product, through to marketing and sales. I am working on the marketing for my team and as a part of this am currently focussed on investigating joint venture opportunities for our team. It is my goal to, through agreements of mutual benefit, make arrangements for every other team to sell our product along side their own (our product is a carbon offset card that enables the offseting of laptops, ipods, other teams products, etc).
In addition to YAA I am currently working on a website startup that will connect entrepreneurial-minded students from around the Australia, and potentially the world. As a member of the UTS entrepreneurial society I noticed that there was no means by which entrepreneurial students could connect and share their ideas and experiences with other students online. The website, which is going to be launched within the next week, already has the support of the UTS and the University of Sydney entrepreneurial societies who have agreed to promote it to all of their members.
Casper Wu
I have used softwares like Windows Movie Maker to make a ten-minute clip for my friend. I also use Audacity regularly to record and edit sounds. Another one of my hobby is creating 3d figures e.g. camera, TV, a cup etc using Blender.
To date, I have also constructed websites using templates and generally play around with Office Publisher (published a magazine for student society), Excel (to which I am good at) and Power Point.
I have learnt C++ in Uni and while studying high school physics, I have made a radio, a light sensor and an electric motor.
I also have the idea for a new way of typing English and a recyclable calendar.
I have coached a high school team, helping them to put business ideas into action during the Innovative Youth Challenge while in uni.
In another venture, I participated Young Achievement Australi program in which around 20 of us from the same uni get together and brainstormed the count-down motivational calendar concept. I was the manufacturing manager looking after the design and manufacturing process. We produced 500 of those and made even. The experience also sharpens my awareness of corporate responsibility to the environment.
I also own the tuition company Edudial which offers online and home-tutoring for mainly high school students. Please refer to www.edudial.net. I registered the business, set up everything from phone number to website, and make all the promotional materials. So far I am recruiting students for the next semester.
Jeromy Evans
AN ENGINEER LEARNING FOCUS (AND GETTING STUFF OUT)
At the age of 13 and a half, Jeromy, his brother and the other "cool" kids dodged the school security guard to stay in the computer rooms until dark, hacking Digger levels, writing demos and learning to code.
He graduated university as a computer systems engineer and first developed prototype sonar and submarine combat systems for the military. Jeromy’s enthusiasm for “big complex systems” led him to a role managing the design and architecture of a new combat system for the Collins Class submarines.
Eventually fed-up with the bureaucracy of the defence industry, Jeromy consulted to an enterprise-software company as it made the transition from building one-off applications to projects using a reusable architecture. This challenge led to the opportunity to work with PeopleInsite and Jeromy’s concepts for good business software platforms.
In 2005 Jeromy combined these interests, involved smart people and founded Blue Sky Minds. He joined Boot Up Camp to force a paradigm shift away from the technology solutions to the "important stuff".
Karen Yun Qiao Feng
I have advanced skills in PhotoshopCS4 and Imovie editing, Capture One Pro, Bridge,Word, Powerpoint, Email and Excel.
The first example is when I employed my Photoshop skills to edit my photos and to create my current home page: www.karenfeng.com . Just in October 2008, my photo series: nude was exhibited in Australian Centre for Photography for one week.
The second example demonstrates my high level Photoshop skill and editing skill was that, in my Marketing research class 2009s1, I successfully re-designed a new packaging for Florida’s Natural nuggets food product based on our marketing research results. (see example before for transformation, next page). A 43 seconds video of the participants’ responses to the packaging design was produced (see my blog for small version of the video). Our team was the only team that produced a video clip and a new packaging design during the presentation. The advantage for these extra works was to enhance the viewers understanding of the findings and increase the likelihood to convince the cleints that they should change the product packaging design for future if they wanted to increase sales. Our team received High Distinction in presentation. We also had an opportunity to present it to the client, Candy’s Broker.
Michelle Williams
Since high school I enjoyed and understood IT (top 10% of the state in HSC). Since than I have always found myself working for IT company's in a somewhat sales & marketing position. I have just completed a HTML course so I can have a basic understanding of how websites are written. I also understand the features and benefits of PC's, Software Servers and Networks and how they all fit together.
Most recently I managed the Marketing for an IT company providing SAP Business One to small business [it excites me that the Internet can now provide this as SaaS].
While there I developed Marketing strategy and implemented an action plan to develop leads and promote brand awareness. Major eMarketing achievements included the creation and development of a new website (including copy), ongoing PPC and SEO strategy and campaign, developement of links, public relations stories as well as eNewsletters and the use of Web Landing pages to achieve marketing goals.
Ryan Cross
Primarily skilled at PHP/MySQL-based webdevelopment. However, I have broad set of skills in programming in most languages (Ruby, Python, C/C++, C#/iPhone, Java, etc - even a bit of assembly language experience). I have built numerous websites, probably the most relevant being my part in http://activityhorizon.com as part of the last StartupCamp. I also have good experience as a project manager, including leading an open source project to build a tool for online project management and collaboration called ProjectPier (http://projectpier.org). I did my undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science and recently completed my post graduate thesis in Robotics & Artificial Intelligence.
I have some good experience in general business through running my own consulting company and being involved in other small businesses at different levels.I have taken some entrepreneurship and marketing classes. I also have experience experience running community projects and organizations, which are potentially less business focused but often require the same skills and thinking. This includes my work managing ProjectPier and other experiences like coaching a soccer team, and leading part of an engineering team to build an amphibious vehicle (my team was responsible for design/build of the power train)
Sherman Lo
I've been a web developer for over 5 years, and have had experience with the whole web application "stack", from the database to the front end.
The only handiwork of mine publicly available right now is a MVC framework and website I developed, while still a student, for a university society approximately 5 years ago (http://www.cserevue.org.au/). While I haven't been involved in the website for a few years, my code still forms the basis for the website.
Prior to this I was a developer at amazon.com. One of my roles there involved developing a fleet of proxy servers responsible for routing requests to the http://www.amazon.com/ website to the appropriate internal web servers. As part of this, I developed a couple of apache modules which interact with all the requests to the amazon.com website. Another role I was in there involved working on yet to be released J2EE web application.
I'm still in the process of starting up a company so I'm a bit lacking on the experience side.
Theodore Mahendradatta
I haven't been involved with any advanced technology course; however, I have been involved with group presentations which involved a powerpoint presentation through university assignments. I am willing to learn quickly and on the job. I do have leadership and teamwork skills from being the current treasurer for the biotechnology and biomolecular science society (BABSOC) at UNSW;and also being a prefect at my old high school - Waverley College, Sydney.
The only business experience I have is being apart of BABSOC. We run bbqs, career nights and an annual ball; and they all require some sort of organisation; marketing and funding. Other business experience I have is in the swimming teaching industry. I have been a swimming teacher for 3 years now; and that job requires you to be really energetic to help teach/coach 3-16 years to swim better.
Tim Bull
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TimBull
Facebook: http://facebook.com/TimBull
Blog: http://binaryplex.com
Websites: http://twendly.appspot.com
Preferred coding platforms: Whatever gets the job done, most recently used Python / Django and C#
Background: I've been in IT for about 20 years, as a developer, then development manager and now in Enterprise Architecture. I've always felt an itch to scratch in the start-up and innovation space, running several successful initiatives as an "Intrapeneur" and some experiements externally, none of which none of which have really eventuated to anything, but all of which have been educational. I understand the fundamentals of programming, but it isn't my strength, I bring a lot of business experience, project management, architecture and planning as well as a series of ideas I believe are worth some further exploration. StartUp camp is exactly the sort of initiative I'm looking for to scratch an itch and work on something that might just make a difference. I'm really keen to network with some new people and perhaps build something longer term together if we can find the right complementary set of skills.
My most recent experiment is Twendly, (http://twendly.appspot.com) a Twitter Trend tracking bot (http://twitter.com/twendly) I built to teach me the basics of the Twitter API, Google App Engine, Python and Django.
Ryan Pereira
Technically, I am into technical project management / leadership, i.e. I work with technical teams on business requirements, business architecture, conceptual designs, modelling, testing, release management coordinating and bringing it all together, anything except cutting code.
However in the last 6 months I have been learning Python, CSS, Java Script, HTML XML. I used to program in C++ & some Java over 12+years ago.
In the last 10+ years mainly in PM/BA roles I have done application and web application projects in the following areas (recruitment web sites, retail web sites, air logistic systems, travel systems, juvenile support systems and digital media services.)
I have not run my own business yet, but have experience as a consultant in terms of preparing tender documents, responding to tenders, dealing with clients, suppliers, preparing and managing budgets, costs and cash flow also developed business/commercial models for services.
Stephen McGillen
Dec 2008 attended an intinsive 3 week Digital Cadet Graduate Course - http://www.digitalcadet.com.au/thecourse/index.cfm
Attended a week long course on HTML 12 years ago - apart from that just what one picks up re Microsoft Word and Excel, and from spending endless hours online
Mark Bradley
Computer Science Degree, I've made a couple games, nothing really huge and awesome yet. Currently work at tjoos.com and I'm big on functional programming
Jonathan Choi
Previously completed a Bachelor of Computer Science (Honours), where my thesis involved programming a laser-guided robot around a disaster zone - to locate and to track victims.
Operating Systems: Linux (RedHat, Debian), Windows (all), MacOS, DOS.
Applications: Excel, MS Office, various Linux applications/scripting.
Programming Languages: VBA, Java (J2EE, Applet), C, C++, SQL, Perl, JavaScript, PHP, Haskell, HTML.
Fundamental skills involve a Bachelor of Commerce, as well as 2 years of graduate experience in a top-tier accountancy firm. Currently also studying a Bachelor of Laws (yes, I am a bit of a study nut).
Humphrey Laubscher
- I am a Microsoft Infrastructure Consultant who focuses on designing and implementing Desktop/Server Automated Deployment systems in order to reduce the cost of owning and managing systems. Common tasks include OS Deployment, App Deployment, App Virtualization, Data Recovery Strategies, Useability Policies, Antivirus/Firewall Configuration, System Patching and Support Frameworks.
- I have been working in IT for about 10 years and gained the following Microsoft Certifications Windows NT4/2000/2003 Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE). I also have some application specific certifications based on System Deployment Technologies.
- I also have some basic VBScript skills.
- One of my larger achievements includes designing and implementing a fully automated desktop deployment system which services 12 offices across Australia and New Zealand and about 3000 users in 8 weeks. It also had the ability to start deploying a new office in less than 24 hrs.
- I am relatively new to starting businesses but have been involved in sales and consultancy most of my life.
- One of my strongest skills I believe is that I understand business people don't always want to know about the features and the cool tricks but rather need to be shown how this product or service translate into saving them money or making them money.
- Currently I am starting a new venture in creating an online service focused on assisting allied health professionals in managing their client’s health.
Fleur Fletcher
I don't have much technological experience, apart from general Office programs. I'm currently teaching myself Photoshop and Final Cut Pro.
I used to work as deputy editor for a magazine publishing company. About a year ago, I started an online magazine called Women's Nook. It caters for the australian female 40+ market. Women's Nook launched four months ago, and we're quickly learning what's working and what isn't. Now looking at redesigning and changing the direction of the website.