West Tech Fest, the one-day convention for the Oz App Awards, happened last week
Wednesday 18th February, at the Perth Town Hall, pretty much the entire startup community turned out to see an impressive line-up of speakers and innovators, and find out who won the OzApp Awards.
The stats on the competition were:
210 startups, 152 from Australia, of which 47 were from WA, and the best 5 presented at the awards:
APE Mobile – Our very own Matt and Dave emerged from their cocoon in Sync Labs to tell us about their project management software
FreightExchange – inspired by the trucks of Freo, Cate Hull wants to reduce the number of empty trucks driving around the place
JobDoh – Mary from Hong Kong presented on their idea for a marketplace for temporary and casual labour
Joy Sprouts – Another Hong Kong app for pre-school education
Kindy – A Sydney team all about finding a babysitter when you need one.
In the end, Kindy won and took home the prize $100k investment.
The speakers were informative, inspiring, and in one case outright bizarre:
Tom Katis talked about his journey from techie to startup success with Voxer via special forces in Afghanistan.
Michelle Dickinson, aka Nanogirl, got the audience clapping and inspired by her tales of future tech today
Professor Stelarc completely stole the show with his art/science adventures in body modification.
Noel Billing talked about R/GA’s experiences creating digital/physical products and platforms for Nike
