Launch48 Sydney is organised by a team of volunteers together with a number of important sponsors, mentors, and other generous people who offered their assistance. The key people are:

Grant Downie – Launch48 Asia-Pacific Coordinator

Background

Grant is an adviser with a practical emphasis, to companies of all sizes, not for profits and start ups. A broad career with experience across all the key functions of an enterprise is an invaluable foundation. With sensitivity to the creativity and customer passion required in start ups, he brings realistic business methods to support the growth of an effective company.

Motivation for organising Launch48

Having collaborated for a number of years with Ian Broom, Launch48 co-founder, he was sufficiently intrigued by the energy around Launch48 in Europe and the UK, to give it a run in the antipodes. Grant is inspired by teams that come together with a common purpose and achieve uncommon results, the very essence of entrepreneurialism and a Launch48 weekend.

Daniel May

Background

Daniel is an entrepreneur with a drive to bring business and positive change to the world. Born at a young age in Malaysia and growing up in Sydney/Melbourne, Daniel’s cross-cultural experience was the foundation for his first business at 16 (women’s fashion and sporting goods). Having been a child of the Internet for over 20 years, he is excited by the possibilities that online technology can bring to our lives.

Daniel has published extensively, and is an organiser and speaker at international conferences. He has a PhD from Scandinavia in pervasive computing.

Motivation for organising Launch48

Launch48 combines Daniel’s passions for bringing people together and implementing change. Most exciting to him is the journey on which Launch48 teams choose to travel: to get started, get doing something. Now. Helping these teams is not only an inspiration, but a personally satisfying experience for Daniel. Plus he meets some interesting people along the way.

Iz El-Bahnasy

Background

Iz is a Ruby on Rails developer, currently working at Community Engine in Sydney. Originally working in construction and engineering, Iz switched to web development after building an engineering project management tool in Rails.

Motivation for organising Launch48

Having attended a couple of Launch48 events in London, Iz has found the event a fantastic kick-starter in connecting to the startup-sphere in London. Iz has kept in touch and worked with many of the co-founders he met at Launch48; he finds the prospect of replicating this experience in Sydney exciting.

Tim Clark

Background

Tim is an IP and commerical lawyer with extensive experience in advising IT and internet based businesses for many years. Tim advises a wide range of clients including public sector organisations, enterpreneurs, start ups and public and private companies. Tim’s passion is to assist build great businesses based on great technologies.

Motivation for organising Launch48

Tim sees Launch48 as another opportunity to assist entrepreneurs with what may be the first steps towards building great businesses. Whilst Tim is often involved with clients building technologies over years, Launch48 offers the excitement of seeing what can happen when teams of people come together for 48 hours and where things can go from there.

Brian McKenna – Atlassian Event Evangelist

Background

Brian McKenna is a graduate developer working on Atlassian’s JIRA Studio. His true passion is programming languages, especially the functional variety. Brian has committed to working on an open-source project every week since May. He tweets from @puffnfresh and blogs at http://brianmckenna.org/

 

 

Launch48 Founders

Adil Mohammed

Background

Adil is an enthusiastic entrepreneur who has travelled widely. He currently lives in London, is consulting, and working on the online travel utility EnTrip which he co-founded in 2008. His background includes a Master in Computers and Information Systems certification and working in the telecom industry.

Motivation for organising Launch48

Having been involved with EnTrip, Adil is keen to be active in the web technology and startup community, and he attends numerous events around Europe. In 2007 he attended Startup Weekend and had a tremendous experience.

He truly believes that Launch48 can help and assist existing and upcoming entrepreneurs in learning new skills and meeting like-minded people. He loves the concept of rapid application development (RAD) and of starting something material and interesting over a weekend.

Ian Broom

Background

Ian Broom has been creating web sites since he was 15 years old. Since then he has studied software development, business management, HR, and project management. He has worked in project management, consulting, software development, and IT management roles for IT, finance, digital agency, and charity companies.

In 2004 Ian started Weboo in Australia to help clients with online advice, development, and management. In 2007 Ian moved to the UK and started Weboo in the UK in 2009. Weboo has rapidly expanded and today works with some of the biggest companies in the UK as well as helping smaller clients in the UK and Australia to effectively use the internet.

Ian is a serial networker who never says no to a coffee, he works hard to help others and enhance the startup community globally. He is passionate in the business opportunities the internet offers entrepreneurs and works hard to stay on top of the latest technologies to ensure he can always give current advice to startups and customers.

Motivation for organising Launch48

Having wondered what makes a successful web app, Ian helped organise Startup Weekend in 2007. The result was a very enjoyable, energy-fuelled weekend which saw a group of people create a fantastic web app and some great relationships were formed.

To experience the same fun and excitement, Ian wanted to create an event that offered the same opportunities to a new group of people, and experience the intensity and camaraderie that entrepreneurs and human spirit produces when focusing on a joint goal.