Vogel Ross has four senior consultants. Founding partners,
Duncan Ross and Peter Vogel manage technical and industry projects.
Robert Bishop manages our corporate advisory work. John Blair
offers both business and technology consulting and provides a
direct link to Silicon Valley.
Duncan Ross - CEO
Duncan Ross has been described as a serial entrepreneur, having
founded and grown a number of companies over twenty years. With a current focus on new media, he was listed by Ad News as one of TV's fifty "movers and shakers" for 2006, a period in which he was also CEO of the fledgling IceTV Pty Limited during its battle with the Nine Network.
Qualifying in electronics and radio after graduating college,
Duncan switched careers to study marketing and management while
establishing a number of businesses that grew into multi-million
dollar companies.
Duncan's twenty years of commercial and technical experience ranges
from consumer electronics and electronic information security
to financial media including co-founding one of the world leaders
in wireless financial information systems. This experience includes
negotiating technology licence agreements with multinational companies
and establishing joint ventures in regions ranging from the Middle
East to Asia and Europe.
Career highlights:
- Negotiated and executed multi-million dollar technology
license agreement with Reuters PLC (London) for wireless financial
information delivery system
- Managed sales and deployment of cutting edge information
delivery system in over 20 countries globally
- Negotiated and executed unique technology sharing venture
with NEC
- Managed award-winning businesses gaining two Australian
Design Marks, one Australian Design Award and an induction
into the Australian Technology Showcase
- Negotiated a multi-million dollar emergency services products
supply contract for the Dutch government
Peter Vogel - Creative Technologist
Peter Vogel is a creative technologist with a unique career, combining
extensive domestic & international business experience, expertise
in intellectual property and pure technical talent.
Peter moves easily from vision and strategy to design and implementation.
A track record including successful commercialisation of revolutionary
inventions has earned world-wide recognition and respect. Peter's
proven ability to find elegant solutions to the most complex challenges
and to identify emerging business opportunities and trends has
earned him a number of awards, including the Advance Australia
Award and an Export Development Award.
Career highlights:
- Co-founded Fairlight Instruments Pty Ltd, developing the
world's first sound sampling electronic musical instrument.
Managed a team of up to fifty hardware and software engineers
during 14 years at Fairlight.
- Founded Right Hemisphere Pty Limited which conceived,
patented and developed a number of novel technologies in the
fields of information technology and electronic entertainment.
Successfully executed the design cycle, from idea to finished
product, for Telstra, Aussat, OKI, Motorola, Vitalcall and
many others. It was also during these years that much of the
development towards IceTV took place.
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Over a 15 year period, developed IP and patents in New Media, some of which were subsequently bought by the IceTV group. As IceTV's CTO Peter managed the team which developed Australia's first subscription based electronic program guide (EPG) for television, including the ability to remotely instruct digital video recorders to record content using mobile phones and internet browsers.
Robert Bishop - Finance and corporate Consultant
LLB (Hons) Solicitor (New South Wales, England and Wales)
Robert has over twenty years experience in corporate finance and
stock market flotations, firstly in the law at Linklaters & Paines,
London (1982 - 1986) and then with Allen Allen and Hemsley, Sydney
(1986 - 1987). Robert also worked as a stockbroker and investment
banker at Ord Minnett, Sydney (1987 - 1995) and with Robert Fleming,
London (1995 - 1996). Since 1998 he has operated his own Sydney
based corporate finance business.
Robert is on the Compliance Committees of several registered managed
investment schemes,the boards of several private corporations
and is Chairman of the listed company Mahogany Capital Limited.
Career Highlights:
- Providing legal advice to Barclays de Zoete Wedd on the
deregulation of the stockbroking industry in the UK in the
1980's
- Managing the flotation of Kerry Packer's Australian Consolidated
Press in 1992 and the $600m Citibank Centre in Sydney in 1998
- Chairing due diligence committees for a number of Initial
Public Offerings, including Mahogany Capital Limited's listed
CDO issues
John Blair - U.S. Associate & Technology business strategist
BSc Elec. Eng. (Hons), MBA
Based in California, John Blair combines his experience as an
entrepreneur and software engineer to work with clients on business
challenges and opportunities that require a deep understanding
of the underlying technology.
John has successfully taken a number of his own projects from
concept through funding and startup to commercialisation. Drawing
on this experience, he works with early startups developing business,
technical and venture funding strategies.
As Partner of the McKenna group and Senior Associate at Booz,
Allen and Hamilton, John was a senior advisor to leading technology
companies.
John has advised on technology, business, marketing and engineering
strategy with a focus on data communications, networking and Internet
software. He also advises some of the world's largest technology
companies in matters of antitrust and intellectual property litigation.
John has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, Magna
Cum Laude, from the University of New South Wales, and an MBA
from Stanford University. He has authored numerous papers on technical
and commercial aspects of the Internet, broadcasting and consumer
electronics.
Career highlights:
- Conceived and managed Kenamea, an infrastructure software
company that pioneered the use of event-driven Web communications
to transform user experience and productivity, now standardised
as Web 2.0.
- Delivered Kenamea over 20 enterprise customers, including
a major distribution relationship in Japan
- Created and led technology strategy for a major mixed
retail / accommodation / entertainment development planned
for New York State
- Sole outside member of a CEO-appointed business strategy
reassessment taskforce for a Fortune 50 computer systems vendor
- Developed business plan leading to major venture capital
financing round for several leading Java server companies
- Developed enterprise new market entry plan for a major
Japanese established software company
- Founder and VP Engineering of Hypertec Pty. Ltd., one
of Australia's most successful computer product design and
manufacturing firms, and a major player in the Australian
IT marketplace.
Grahame Stevens - Technology Creative & Operations
Grahame Stevens is a senior industry manager and a creative and operations specialist with over 35 years experience in the field broadcasting in TV and Radio and across Terrestrial, Cable and Satellite platforms. He has been closely involved in the cutting edge of broadcast evolution over the last 20 years.
Although grounded in the physical sciences Grahame's career was centred initially on creative programme production in the UK as a graduate entrant to the BBC. In the 1980's his skills in adopting, adapting and promulgating new digital production methods led him to a deeper involvement in technology and to becoming a bridge between the worlds of engineering and production. When digital technology evolved from being used exclusively in post production towards real-time broadcast stream delivery he represented the UK commercial TV networks' creative and operations exponents in the pan-industry working groups charged with the transition of Television from Analogue to Digital.
Career Highlights:
- Head of Presentation at launch of the first UK Commercial publisher-broadcaster to utilise MPEG-2 for channel distribution.
- A key member of the UK TV Digital Implementation Group representing all the Commercial Broadcasters' Operations and Production interests. Grahame worked with hearing and visually impaired groups to develop 'live' subtitling techniques now used across the industry and also helped develop the Tiresias font for use in Digital TV subtitling.
- Built and launched NTL's national Digital Cable Headend and Digital Media Centre. As General Manager he headed a 40 strong team of Engineers and Operations staff rolling out interactive Digital TV services across the UK.
- As General Manager, Datacasting he led the team which launched the first trials of Datacasting in Australia and the first and so-far only 'at-a-glance' broadcast Programme Guide to be seen in Australia. Grahame chaired the cross-industry committee that made that possible. He was responsible for marketing and research projects associated with the trials. At the Melbourne Commonwealth Games Grahame led the team which produced the first public trial of H.264 DVB-H mobile TV which was a showcase of the games.
- Grahame was involved with the objective testing of audio compression methods which led to the adoption by Australia of AAC+ as the compression technology for future use in the Digital Radio roll-out.