Tony Schirmer is the CEO of CQSola and Co-founder at Neocreative.  CQSola builds cutting edge technology which reduces losses in Solar Farms by up to 25%. Tony explains how he studied Mechatronics at university but ended up dropping out to set up his own business. In this episode, he talks about the various highlights and challenges in his career. Tony talks about both the benefits and problems of solar power. For example, if one solar panel fails then the whole string fails. A simple everyday comparison is when one Christmas light fails then the whole lot fails. Tony explains how the t ..read more

In the first episode of Season 5 of the "Don't Just Survive, Thrive" podcast, Nicola talks to Dinesh Palipana OAM.  Dinesh is a doctor, lawyer, disability advocate and the first quadriplegic medical intern in Queensland. He has many accolades including Queensland Australian of the Year.  Nicola talks to Dinesh about his personal story including his highlights and challenges.  They discuss how tech and his research project, Project BioSpine, is helping people with spinal cord injuries.  They also explore the impact of automation and robotics on medicine and how it can give ..read more

How can data and geospatial analytics help us understand climate change and climate adaption?  Gopal Erinjippurath is CTO and Head of Product at Sust Global, a Climate Intelligence SaaS company based in San Francisco.   Gopal has an impressive background.  He moved from India to the US to study electrical engineering to then work in a research lab, studying a PhD and working as a research scientist. He believes that this background in academia and research has helped build his foundations and passion for enabling widespread use of the application of fundamental research to comme ..read more

What would you say is the secret to your success?  Which of the following resonates most with you:    ⭐ Luck because of your upbringing   ⭐ Being in the right place at the right time  ⭐ Knowing when to quit and when to quit early  ⭐ Being willing to take risks in decision making    Rav Raniga, Partner Lead at tech startup ELARA, believes all of the above are the secrets to his success.   After a brief break from podcast recording, I was thrilled to speak to Rav who has extensive expertise in Mathematics and algorithmic software solutions.  I f ..read more

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In this first episode of Season 4, Nicola Steel talks to Colin Goudie and Charles Connell. Colin is a serial co-founder of various tech startups including Userlot - Customer Success Management, Social Pinpoint and Dogeared. Charles is the other Co-Founder of Userlot - Customer Success Management and was also a Co-Founder at Social Pinpoint.  They begin by talking about their backgrounds and purpose behind Userlot and Social Pinpoint as well as their core values which are be customer driven and get stuff done! Nicola asks what advice they would give to startups when they are being acquir ..read more

Jonathan Girroir is Technical Evangelist at Tech Soft 3D, a company which provides 3D software development toolkits that power world class engineering applications.  Jonathan has 25 years experience in the software development industry and has a passion for building the next generation of 3D software.  ..read more

Colin Goudie and Charles Connell ..read more

That’s a wrap for Season 3 of “The Spotlight Series – Don’t Just Survive, Thrive” podcast for 2021.  Here are podcast mashup highlights from this year talking to startup founders and senior tech leaders.   ⭐Maree Beare, Founder of Wanngi (and more recently Clinials) talking about disrupting health tech and her purpose behind Wanngi (0:33- 2:58) ⭐Tony Ryan, Education Futurist, talking about the future of work and if there is a 50% chance that we live in a computer simulation (3:02-5:12) ⭐Stewart Marshall discussing how SaaS companies can scale and grow (5:15- 7:15) ⭐? Jeff Jarave ..read more

Podcast Highlights 2021 ..read more