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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Tuesday, 30 March 2004) . . Page.. 1290 ..

housing and community services, attended the ANZATech showcase and Mr David Malloch, chair of the Business Canberra Board, joined the delegation for the ANZATech showcase and the activities in Washington.

Undoubtedly, the highlight of the trip was the attendance at the ANZATech conference and showcase in Palo Alto, California. ANZATech is the only US conference that exclusively showcases Australian and New Zealand technology to the US market. Of the 43 companies participating in ANZATech, eight were from the ACT—a very significant representation. The companies represented were: Micro Forte, WetPC Pty Ltd, TASKey, @lacrity, GPSports, HATRIX, Traxsoftware and Random Computing.

The showcase was attended by a range of US executives, venture capitalists and business development consultants. The success of the showcase and the importance of the ACT government’s participation are best reflected in the following testimonial from Tim Oxley of @lacrity.

Attending ANZATech 2003 was a very valuable business exercise. The event proved its worth by opening up the possibilities available in the world’s largest ICT market and having financial support and Ministerial representation from the ACT Government made the Canberra team stand out from a very good pack.

While the results of such events take a while to deliver, all companies have reported good leads as a result of participating in ANZATech. Attendees at ANZATech were so impressed by what they learned about each other and the opportunities providing by networking together that they have set up their own networking group, the Palo Alto Club.

At a recent meeting of the Palo Alto Club I attended, TASKey, @lacrity, Traxsoftware, GPSports and Random Computing reported that they were establishing partnerships in the USA, HATRIX reported that it had developed a number of contacts in California that it was pursuing, and WetPC reported that it is close to finalising a deal with the Chicago Board of Trade. Undoubtedly, many of these leads will develop further and result in export outcomes for these businesses. There can be no understating of the importance of the ACT government’s commitment to work with these companies to get them into the US market.

I also took the opportunity while in the USA to meet with a number of business development organisations. Of particular interest were Larta, UCSD CONNECT and the Greater Washington Initiative, all of which are collaborative partnerships where the private sector takes a leading role in economic development. I will briefly outline the role of each of these bodies.

Larta, formerly known as the Los Angeles Regional Technology Alliance, runs a large range of commercialisation training programs for high technology start-ups and, through its own investment bank, Fidelys, has generated over $US1.5 billion over the last 10 years for start-up technology companies. As a result of this contact, Mr Rohit Shukla, the president and CEO of Larta and a finalist in the Ernst and Young US entrepreneur of the year award in 2002, has agreed to be one of the international keynote speakers at Focus on Business 2004 in Canberra.

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