The brain child of Expert in Residence, Mic Black. It is an IoT and makers workshop program designed at empowering people to learn to make, code and design solutions.
After the success of running a workshop at a local primary school on the first farm hack, he decided to create a course specifically for farmers. This was delivered to great success at the second farm hack and is now in high demand as part of an outreach program.
To find out more contact mic@micslab.com
Switchnode was a company that was established after the first flash built, after realizing the need for fast internet connectivity in farms.
Rusty Routledge addressed this with a set of long range WiFi systems. After successfully installing it at Cathcart, he was inundated with other farmers requests and decided to create a business out of it.
Agriwebb is one of the larger agtech startups in Australia. With over 1800 farmers already on their platform, it is estimated that at least 25% of Australian farmers are their customers.
The farm hack project gave them the opportunity to intergrate with live IoT sensors direct to their dashboard. Coming to the second farm hack event, they managed to engage with their customers and get feedback on the IoT sensors they had and sign up 2 x new customers too.
The farm hack project has resulted in a longer term relationship with UNSW and the intention to hire more graduates and to embark on a Tech Voucher.
Linke and Linke were TechVoucher recipients who used their Tech Voucher with Dr Johnson Shen to develop LiDAR technology on drones for the surveying industry. More can be read on this and it’s commercial success here.
The Linke and Linke team used this very precise surveying technology during the farm hack to calculate food on offer. They plugged this information directly from the drone into Agriwebb’s platform. This lead to big conversations with farmers about weed identification and eradication and the idea of calculating carbon sequestration within soils.
The Linke and Linke team are committed to servicing the ag community and are now looking to develop the technology further and build it into a service.
For more information contact https://www.llsurveys.com.au/
Shane is a Chemical Engineer with a PhD from UNSW and has research experience in both water treatment and research data management. He spent a number of years as a researcher studying water treatment and research data management. Using this experience he left the research sector in 2012 to start Instrument Works.
Shane’s previous startup experience includes being the lead engineer for the venture backed start-up Viva Blu – developing a novel photocatalytic approach to wastewater remediation and building a membrane autopsy consultancy business, Membrane Futures.
In addition to this, he has completed the Startup Leadership Program (SLP) in 2013 and was a participant as one of the 10 selected companies to join Class #2 of Telstra’s startup accelerator program Muru-D. More recently he has been a Catalyst-in-Residence with the Michael Crouch Innovation Centre providing support and advice to student entrepreneurs
Mic is a Master Maker, Experiential Technologist and prolific inventor working from Mic’s Lab, a boutique “inventors for hire” R&D lab based on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland. Despite juggling a busy commercial work schedule, Mic travels across the Australia and abroad running hackathons, connecting makers and makerspaces, and improving digital literacy in regional areas especially around IoT, lighting and microelectronics.
Mic and his team are known for outrageous PR stunts using self developed new technologies for large scale social and economic impact, or simply to inspire and engage. Mic promotes Maker in Residence programs and the Maker Movement in Australia in his own capacity and as a two times Advance Queensland Digital Champion and Startup Catalyst Community Leader Alumni. Mic is an internationally and locally multi exhibited interactive artist and has created solutions for household name multinationals through to fledgling startups. Mic is also an entertaining regular guest lecturer, public speaker, TEDx alumni and local community personality.
Mic believes in an open source, “give first” creative economy with a strong focus on capacity building and knowledge sharing. His skills include: solutions architecture, UI/UX design, microelectronics, high availability web, app and embedded software development, brain computer interfaces, wearables, team leadership, mentorship, public speaking and is a multi-instrumentalist.
Quirk: Mic once gesture controlled a 33t excavator with Hitachi for a public engagement piece to promote mechatronics education in Mackay, Queensland using a LEAP motion controller. This drew a huge crowd young and old who enjoyed controlling the excavator in front of thousands beside an airport.
Danielle has been starting, leading and advising successful businesses and innovative programs for nearly 20 years. Her entrepreneurial and innovation experience ranges from startup founder to coach, mentor, consultant, advisor, advocate and board member. She has represented Australia at the G20 Summit, been a Finalist for Women in Technology’s Entrepreneur of the Year, championed the iAwards Young Innovator as the Chief Judge and led innovative, state government initiatives. As the Entrepreneur in Residence at UNSW Engineering, Danielle is inspiring, empowering and motivating academics and students, and working collaboratively with industry and government to drive innovation and build the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Alex is the managing partner at Visual Metrics, a company that specialises in data visualisation (infographics, dashboards, videos and websites) and process digitisation. The crux of what he does is take complicated concepts and process’ and make them easy for the intended audience to follow and adopt.
He founded Visual Metrics 4 years ago and has established offices in Sydney, Singapore, Barcelona and London. He specialises in data visualisation, application and software development as well as digitised online training and management operating systems. Visual Metrics has clients all over the world of all shapes and sizes including; government, big banks, pharma and universities.
On the side likes to design leather products (check out Kangaroo Belt Company) and work with startups – especially in the insurance, beauty and work health and safety spaces.
Alex teaches business and innovation at The University of NSW and ecosystems and data visulisation at UTS. He holds a BA in International Business (UNSW) and a Masters of Professional Accounting (UNE).
Adam has been working in interaction and service design for over 10 years with a number of large corporates, local and federal government departments including Service NSW, Optus, ANSTO, CBA, Volkswagen, Sony and leading tertiary institutions. Adam established his Experience Design Agency, based in Tank Stream Labs in Sydney over 6 years ago.
Along with his agency, Adam has been involved with a number of startups as well as being one of the founders of Enterprise UX Sydney which seeks to collaborate and share better ways of designing within the enterprise environment. Adam also works as an instructor at General Assembly in Sydney where he teaches the UXD course, Information Architecture and design principles.
As well as Adam’s experience in startups, he has also completed an MBA from Macquarie Graduate School of Management and has an undergraduate Bachelor of Science degree at Sydney University with a major in Pharmacology