Tech23: showcasing the best of Australian start-ups

Rachel Slattery’s second Tech23 event is coming up on 19 August in Sydney, providing a showcase for the best start-ups in Australia.

I was able to spend some of the day at last year’s event, and blogged about the showcase and the SaaS/ In the Cloud session.

I had been thinking that Australia needed a good tech showcase, and after our Top 100 Web 2.0 Apps in Australia list and event I was considering running one. However with Tech23 doing a great job there was no need.

In looking at the list of 23 companies and the exceptional panels who will discuss the entries and judge the awards, what strikes me most is the calibre of people who are presenting from the start-ups, such Gour Lentell, Matthew Macfarlane, Ramin Marzbani, Khimji Vaghjiani, and Mike Zimmerman, all the fantastic track records.

Two companies from the list are particularly worth noting. VastPark is a very sophisticated virtual world for enterprise use. It appeared in our Top 100 Web 2.0 Applications list, and while it has been slow developing has enormous potential.

Marathon Robotics recently received major media attention when it closed a $57 million contract to supply autonomous robot targets (dubbed ‘Terminator-style’ by the media) to the US Marines. Here is a news clip on these neat robots – everyone should have one!