BirdLasser would like to acknowledge the following people and institutions for their support and contributions.
In the beginning, there was William Harris (www.gmaven.com), Jacques de Vos (nreality.com) and Martin Cronje that got BirdLasser off the ground. Their industry knowledge, guidance, financial support, tech skills and savvy, ensured a solid foundation for both the app and backend infrastructure. The team at Workbench (www.workbench1.com) and Karen Nel (Karen Nel Consulting) helped create the Corporate Identity and launch the brand.
The community also helped guide the development of features in the those early days. Special thanks goes out to our advisory board and other noteworthy contributors:
- Prof Les Underhill and Michael Brooks from the University of Cape Town
- Birders and atlassers, many of whom became pilot users, putting in a lot of their own time to test the app, ensuring uncompromised quality: Josef van Wyngaard, Niall Perrins, Jerome Ainsley, Renier Balt, Simone Swiel, Lance Robinson, David Ehlers Smith, Pat Ayling, Melissa Whitecross & Caroline Howes Whitecross, André Marx, John Kinghorn, Pennie de Vries, Mark Tittley, Judy Rider, John Wesson, Don Reid, Mark & Alishia Kirk, Christo Jordaan, David Winter, Nicolette Forbes, Stephan Terblanche, Ron Searle, Menno Stenvert, Michael Cunningham, Hennie Peters, Jason Boyce, Tobie Muller, John Drowley, Lee Howe, Marthinus Heystek, Marc Cronjé, Ian Davidson, Pieter & Janelle Verster, Andy Featherstone, Craig & Lynn Whittington-Jones, Adam Cruickshank, Etienne Marais, Andy Branfield and Albert & Marietjie Froneman
To all of you that made it happen – we at BirdLasser salute you!
Support post the honeymoon phase has been equally passionate. Most of the original crowd is still part of the team: Will’s continued support is unabating, ensuring the app is available to a global market and a solid foundation exists to serve users and the conservation community. Karen continues to create visual assets for the apps, website and Facebook Page. Julie King (khakifeversafaris.com) has joined the team to help out with our social media content, and in the engine room, Stefan Theron and Faan Nel now helps out with the GIS work and curatorship of our species database, respectively.
Renewed and ongoing support now comes from all over: A Special mention goes out to BirdLife South Africa (www.birdlife.org.za) where Mark Anderson, Ernst Retief and Hanneline Robinson-Smit saw the role BirdLasser can play to help protect our birds and their habitats. BirdLasser is proud to call this passionate conservation entity a partner. Other likeminded entities joined the party, notably A Rocha Kenya, represented by Colin Jackson, and the A P Leventis Ornithological Research Institute in Nigeria, represented by Ulf Ottosson. These two partnerships helped promote and foster the bird atlas projects in their respective countries. Also from the conservation and research community, we’d like to acknowledge the support from the West-Rand Honorary Rangers, headed by Simon Ridge, to help promote the use of BirdLasser in the Kruger National Park, Keir Lynch from the Overberg Lowland Conservation Trust, Colleen Downs from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Cassie Carstens from the Wild Bird Trust and Guy Hausler from the Kruger National Park’s Veterinary Wildlife Services.
Last, but not least, a sincere thanks goes out to all our donors and bird clubs all over southern Africa. Your financial contributions and promotion of the app as tool for citizen science are what makes us moving forward – you rock!