Daniel Chien-Meng May (born 1973,
Penang
Penang ( ms, Pulau Pinang, is a Malaysian state located on the northwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia, by the Malacca Strait. It has two parts: Penang Island, where the capital city, George Town, is located, and Seberang Perai on the Ma ...
,
Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...
) is an Australian tech entrepreneur, author, co-founder of
LIFX, and organiser of the inaugural
Launch48 Australia events in
Sydney and
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/ Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a me ...
.
Biography
May was born in Penang, Malaysia, and immigrated with his family to
Australia at age nine. He completed his high schooling at
Melbourne High School
Melbourne High School is a Education in Australia#Government schools, government-funded Single-sex education, single-sex Selective school, academically selective secondary school, secondary day school for boys, located in the Melbourne suburb o ...
, before undertaking studies at
Monash University
Monash University () is a public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Named for prominent World War I general Sir John Monash, it was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. The university h ...
. May's first journal article, "Modeling Activities in C++" was published in 1994 when he was twenty-one years old. He later completed a PhD in Software Development on a scholarship at the
University of Southern Denmark
The University of Southern Denmark ( da, Syddansk Universitet, lit=South Danish University, abbr. SDU) is a university in Denmark that has campuses located in Southern Denmark and on Zealand.
The university offers a number of joint programmes i ...
( da, Syddansk Universitet, literally ''South Danish University'', abbr. SDU).
May is best known as the co-founder and CIO of
LIFX, the original LED
smart lighting bulb. The LIFX
Kickstarter
Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, K ...
campaign is recorded as one of the most successful. ''
Forbes
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...
'' records a total of US$1.3 million raised in three days, while the
Huffington Post notes the timeframe as six days.
In 2014, May joined
Matthew Zwolenski (CTO Aust-NZ, EMC), Colin Fairweather, and Rod Tucker as expert panelists in
big-data,
smart cities
A smart city is a technologically modern urban area that uses different types of electronic methods and sensors to collect specific data. Information gained from that data is used to manage assets, resources and services efficiently; in return ...
, advanced
broadband networks
The ideal telecommunication network has the following characteristics: broadband, ''multi-media'', ''multi-point'', ''multi-rate'' and economical implementation for a diversity of services (multi-services). The Broadband Integrated Services Digita ...
, and
smart devices
A smart device is an electronic device, generally connected to other devices or networks via different wireless protocols (such as Bluetooth, Zigbee, near-field communication, Wi-Fi, LiFi, or 5G) that can operate to some extent interactively an ...
at
''2020: Smart Cities, Zettabyte Data and 200 billion things''. May's contribution to the understanding of
The Internet of Things
The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other comm ...
, sustaining future smart and sustainable industries, is also present in his published writings that cover diverse topics such as
organisational culture and
knowledge management
Knowledge management (KM) is the collection of methods relating to creating, sharing, using and managing the knowledge and information of an organization. It refers to a multidisciplinary approach to achieve organisational objectives by making ...
to "Designing for the Digitally Pervasive World".
In 2015, May was keynote speaker at ''Stora Tillväxtdagen'' after acting as a key advisor to the
Skellefteå
Skellefteå (, locally ) is a city in Västerbotten County, Sweden. It is the seat of Skellefteå Municipality, which had 73,246 inhabitants in 2021.
The city is historically industrial, with mining being a large part of that industry, especiall ...
Municipality, an industrial hub in the regional north of
Sweden wanting to kick-start startup and innovation activity. May was also keynote ''Startups & Innovation'' speaker at StarsConf in
Santiago
Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, who ...
,
Chile
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the eas ...
, in 2017.
Selected publications
* "Knowledge management with patterns" (with P Taylor),
Association for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...
* "Activities: Abstractions for collective behavior" (with B Kristensen)
* "Tangible Objects-Modeling in Style" (with B Kristensen, P Nowack)
* "Tango: Modeling in style" (with B Kristensen, P Nowack)
* "Habitats for the digitally pervasive world" (with BB Kristensen)
* "Component composition and interaction" (with B Kristensen)
* "Looking at Knowledge in Three Dimensions: An Holistic Approach to DSS Through Knowledge Management" (with R Meredith, J Piorun)
* "Building the Cultural Artifacts of the Organization."
* "Tango: Designing for the digitally pervasive world"
* "Reality-Virtuality Continuum Systems Empowered with Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing Technology: Combination and Integration of Real World and Model Systems" (with BB Kristensen, LK Jensen, C Gersbo-Møller, P Nowack)
* "Collaboration and Modeling in Ambient Systems: Vision, Concepts and Experiments" (with BB Kristensen, P Nowack)
* "Software Engineering of Ambient Systems: A Symbiosis of Mixed Reality and Ubiquitous Computing" (with BB Kristensen, P Nowack)
* "Looking at Knowledge in Three Dimensions" (with R Meredith, J Piorun)
* "Modeling with Activities: Abstractions for Collective Behavior" (with BB Kristensen)
* "Beyond Playing with Lego Bricks: Modeling Interaction Between Behavioral Artifacts" (With Bb Kristensen, P Nowack)
* "Conceptual Abstraction in Modeling with Physical and Informational Material" (with BB Kristensen, P Nowack)
* "Virtual Applications:: Applications with Virtual Inhabited 3D Worlds"
* "Supporting complexity through (informational and physical) collaboration and modeling" (with BB Kristensen, P Nowack)
* "Patterns for Building a Beautiful Company" (with L Rising, S Sanchez, C King)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:May, Daniel
1973 births
Living people
Businesspeople from Melbourne
People from Penang
Technology company founders
21st-century Australian businesspeople
People educated at Melbourne High School
University of Southern Denmark alumni
Monash University alumni
Malaysian emigrants to Australia