Commercializing Innovation (in real life!), Building Opmantek at the Gold Coast

This talk is a joint event between Gold Coast IT Forum and Open Source Industry Australia (http://osia.com.au) and will be given by Danny Maher of Opmantek.http://photos3.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/9/7/1/0/event_161258672.jpeg

Danny will talk about his approach to commercialising innovation and fast lean startups, successes and failures with commentary on other common approaches. This is a Gold Coast story - Opmantek's journey includes the joys and challenges of locating at the Gold Coast and commercialising open source software.

Cost: $15 for ITFGC members, $25 for non-members.
Includes food and drink

About Danny Maher

Danny Maher has a track record of being involved early in significant technology revolutions and is a regular speaker around the world at technology events and technology investment forums. He has recently moved to the Gold Coast and this will be the first time he speaks at a Queensland IT event.

Danny Maher is a professional commercialisor of innovation with over 20 years in the IT industry. He has worked extensively as an executive throughout the Asia Pacific region, the USA and the UK. 8 of the organisations Danny Maher has worked in at a full time capacity in the last 13 years across have been acquired via trade sale (on average one every 20 months).

Currently Danny Maher is the Chairman and CEO of Network Management Software company Opmantek Ltd. Opmantek’s software is used by over 20,000 organisations globally and was the world’s first open source network management platform (released in 1998). Opmantek recently located at the Gold Coast as result of an investment attraction grant from Gold Coast City Council.

Prior to joining Opmantek, Danny. Maher was one of 3 shareholders of the NetStar Group where he was co-founder of the Group’s managed service business from its beginnings in Sydney Australia and led it to be servicing customers in over 40 countries across the globe. During this time Danny Maher worked as “the right hand” to one of Asia’s leading businessmen – Mr. Edward Yang and travelled extensively through Asia forging new business partnerships, establishing new businesses and Joint Ventures.

Danny Maher together with Allen & Buckeridge and Baring Private Equity Partners were the 100% shareholders of the NetStar Group who were recently acquired by Logicalis (UK) for approximately US$25M.

Danny is passionate about innovation and the dissemination of knowledge to aid innovation throughout the world.

Danny graduated from the University of Canberra in 1992 where he was awarded the University Prize on completion of his Bachelor of Computing Studies (Double Major Computing, Minor in Marketing).

About Open Source Industry Australia

http://photos4.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/9/7/d/8/event_161258872.jpegOSIA is Australia's national Open Source Industry Association. It exists to further the cause of both Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in Australia and to support its members to improve their business success in this growing sector of the global Information and Communication Technology (ICT) market. It also provides authoritive and consistent information about Open Source Software.