Michael McDonald

Click here to scroll down for full bio's.

Main Speakers

Tamara McCleary

CEO, Thulium.co

AI, Robotics, AR, IoT, Blockchain (USA)

We are very excited to be hosting the world renown Tamara McCleary, international technology futurist, emerging technology guru, sci-fi writer, marketing+digital strategy consultant and Thulium CEO. Tamara is ranked in the Worlds Top 5 in Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Internet of Things (IoT), the WorldsTop 15 Machine to Machine (M2M), the Worlds Top 50 Blockchain, Digital Transformation and Big Data. Tamara is rank in the Top 1% of Global Social Media Influencers (Klear) and listed as one of the Top 50 Social Influencers of 2015, 2016, 2017 (Onalytica). Tamara was named Number 1 Most Influential Woman in MarTech (B2B Marketing) and ranked the 2nd most mentioned person on Twitter by Chief Marketing Officers (LeadTail). Tamara is an IBM Futurist and creator of the trademarked RelationShift® method.

Keynote Topics: MarTech, Influencer Marketing in B2B & Enterprise, Marketing to Women in the B2C Retail Space, Marketing to Women in FinTech, Generational Marketing, Millennial Marketing, Personal Brand, Social Influence & Thought Leadership, Employee Advocacy & Engagement, The Future of Work, Women's Leadership.

She counts as clients amazing brands such as: Dell, SAP, Verizon, IBM, SYNNEX, Huawei, Exponent, ANA:BMA, PTC, Kawasaki Motors USA, Appboy, Dynamic Signal, The CMO Club, VentureBeat, KPMG, US Department of Defense.

Areas of expertise: Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, IoT, Machine Learning, Blockchain, FinTech, Wearables, Gaming, CDN, SDN, Security, VR, MarTech, Women in Technology, Marketing to Women in FinTech, The Future of Work, Women's Leadership, Energy & Utilities. B2C influencer campaigns in Consumer Electronics, Automotive, Powersports, Healthcare, Financial Services, Sport and IoT apparel.

Tamara was the #1 social influencer (documented by third party analytics) at numerous recent conferences in 2016 & 2017 including: IBM Amplify, DistribuTECH, Enterprise Connect, Channel Partners, RSA, NAB Show, Gartner Security, and IBM Interconnect.

Dr Leila Alem

Australian Immersive / AI Pioneer, Scientist, Entrepreneur, Consultant, Advisor

Co-founder of ArcSense, exCSIRO, world renown speaker

Dr Leila Alem is an Australian Immersive VR and Artifical Intelligence Pioneer / Entrepreneur.

A Principal Consultant and Scientist in Artifical Intelligence and Human Computer Interaction with a passion for helping clients create value and future proof their business. She is the co-founder of ArcSense, an Augmented Reality tech start-up for maintaining and improving people’s quality of life as they age. She is also a freelance consultant and coach in corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation using Emerging Technologies.

Leila is an Adjunct professor in Human Computer Interaction at UTS and holds a PhD in Artifical Intelligence. She was Principal consultant at Thoughtworks for 2 years and Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO for 23 years.

Here is her bio at AWE

Leila has an established international profile in Human Computer Interaction, with a special interest in creating novel ways of working, learning and engaging with digital content using mobile, wearable sensing, and AR/VR/MR technologies. She is a sought after keynote at international conferences on emerging technologies. Leila has 100+ publications, and is the editor of the following books and international journals :

Human Factors in Augmented Reality environments

Recent trends of mobile collaborative augmented reality

Collaboration in Augmented Reality

And these CSIRO studies:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Leila_Alem

Leila has 25+ years of experience in designing award winning digital products and services to create and deliver value to industries including health, aviation, mining and manufacturing. Her clients include Boeing, Rio Tinto, Thomson, 3M as well as Government Departments at both state and federal level. She won the 2013 NSW State innovation Award in R&D for her work with Boeing and was finalist of Women Outstanding Career Achievements Award in 2015.

We are very excited to be hosting Dr Leila, a world respeted speaker and Australian pioneer working in Emerging Technology.

Sue Keay

CEO

Australian Centre for Robotic Vision, Queensland

Sue is a Jaeger scholar, Sue has more than 20 years experience in the research sector, managing and ensuring results. She has a PhD in Earth Sciences and an ARC post-doctoral fellow at The University of Queensland. Sue has worked with industry, economists, engineers and scientists. Sue is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and Chairs the IP and Commercialisation Committee for the Board of the CRC for Optimising Resource Extraction.

The world-leading Australian Centre for Robotic Vision (ACRV), is co-ordinating Australia’s first Robotics and Computer Vision Roadmap. The roadmap will guide and support the development of critical robotic and vision technologies required to support Australian industry in the future.

The ACRV interdisciplinary research team: QUT, The University of Adelaide (UoA), The Australian National University (ANU), Monash University, CSIRO’s Data61, overseas research organisations: INRIA Rennes Bretagne, Georgia Institute of Technology, Imperial College London, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and Oxford University.

Convergence evening presentation topic:

"The Impact of Robotics on Australian Industry & Business"

Karen Lay-Brew

President, Australian Business Software Industry Association - ABSIA

Managing Director, 3Pillars Digital

As a Board Member and Corporate Advisor, Karen advises corporations and boards on the impact of technology on the businesses. As a professed gadgeteer, Karen is enthused by the emerging technologies and their promise of ubiquitous betterment for all, and how the businesses can and must create advantage during this disruption. With over 30 years’ professional experience, Karen specialises in changing the culture of organisations, and Digital Transformation is a global Change effort impacting all businesses and communities.

Karen is the President and Chair on the Australian Business Software Industry Association (ABSIA), working closely with both the Government and the private sector to drive the Digital Transformation Agenda in Australia. Through collaborations with the US Government and Asia Pacific, it has given her insight to building a stronger ecosystem of innovative technology and service providers of small and medium businesses including start-ups.

Karen's previous roles include: Vice President (USA), Microsoft HQ in Seattle, Vice President of Six Sigma and CIO for BHP Billiton Base Metals division where she implemented a world-wide Lean Six Sigma Operational Excellence programme. As the CIO for Honeywell Asia-Pacific, she has worked across different cultures and geographies to successfully integrate the disparate IT organisations serving 14 different countries.

She is an avid diversity champion on challenges faced by those who think differently. She established Women in IT at Microsoft, coaches and mentors senior executives and women in leadership. Karen is very passionate about emerging technology and the role it plays to drive world economies and rasie living standards.

Prof. Mark Billinghurst

Prof. Human Computer Interaction, University of South Australia

Director, Human Interface Technology Lab New Zealand

Prof. Mark Billinghurst is a Co-Founder at ARToolworks, Inc. since 2001, he is the Partner and Chief Scientist at Super Ventures. Prof. Billinghurst serves as a Director of the HIT Lab NZ at the University of Canterbury, which he founded in 2002.

He provides leadership and a connection to world-leading research in Augmented Reality. A leading AR researcher with 15 years of experience and over 200 publications, he is well known for developing the MagicBook AR interface and conducting research in mobile AR and AR interaction design and usability.

Prof. Billinghurst has received many accolades for his work including the 2013 IEEE VR Technical Achievement award for achievements in Augmented Reality research and commercialization, and the 2001 Discover Award for developing the AR MagicBook technology. He also developed BuildAR. He has over 20 years of experience in the research, commercialization and development of Augmented Reality technology. Prof. Billinghurst completed the first PhD on collaborative AR systems at the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington.

Prof. Billinghurst has a PhD from the University of Washington and conducts research in Augmented and Virtual Reality, multimodal interaction and mobile interfaces. He has previously worked at ATR Research Labs, British Telecom, Nokia, Google[x] and the MIT Media Laboratory. In 2001 he co-founded ARToolworks, one of the oldest commercial AR companies. His AR Tennis project won the 2005 IMG award for best independent mobile game. He was awarded the 2012 ISMAR lasting impact award for the paper with the greatest impact in AR over the previous ten years. In 2014 he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in recognition for his significant technological accomplishments in the field of Augmented Reality.

Jamie Cassidy

CEO Forum | VIP Networking evening event keynote

Managing Director, Enlift

The world is changing and changing fast; automation and applied cognitive technologies are very real and well within the reach of most organisations.

Jamie is the founder and Managing Director of Enlift, an Australian consultancy which helps it's clients to create their own digital workforces and realise the full range of benefits that can bring.

Prior to founding Enlift Jamie has held a number of leadership positions in consulting houses and systems integrators both at home in Australia and overseas. Jamie has almost twenty years’ experience leading a wide variety of transformation programmes including operating model review and strategy, analytics, ML, data and data governance programmes, FP&A programmes, core systems implementations and the implementation of RPA in major local Australian institutions.

Prior to founding Enlift Jamie led the Finance transformation practice at Ernst & Young in the Sydney and was the Robotic Process Automation domain lead for Oceania.

Convergence CEO Forum | VIP Networking evening presentation topic:

"Business Transformation Opportunities With Automation and Cognitive Technologies"

Aaron Spence

CEO

Panedia.com

Aaron is one of the original global virtual reality professionals, a true Australian pioneer. Panedia is the number one company on the planet for adding 3rd party VR content to Google Maps. Aaron's work on Google Seaview systems that range from end to end technology for underwater acquisition and subsequent production for scientific study of 360 underwater environments. Pandeia is leading the world with 250 MILLION views on Google Maps, follow closely by their client (still Panedia) with 170 million views! Aaron is one of Australia's unsung tech hero's. This workshop represents a very rare chance to hear form this genius and engage with Panedia.com.

Petra Andrén

CEO, Cicada Innovations

Australia’s only deep technology “super incubator”

Petra Andrén is CEO of Cicada Innovations (www.cicadainnovations.com), Australia’s only deep technology “super incubator” home to Australia’s largest collection of 70+ advanced technology entrepreneurs across the medical, engineering, and IT web sciences.

Prior to leading Cicada Innovations, Petra was Managing Director of Octapharma Australian/New Zealand. She is an ambassador for global non-profit, InBIA, working with sustainable entrepreneur support programs in every industry and demographic around the globe. She lectures on entrepreneurship at the University of Sydney, the University of Technology, and the Australian National University.

Petra holds a MA (University of Uppsala, Sweden/exchange for thesis work University of Salzburg and University of Vienna, Austria) and an MBA from the Australian Graduate School of Management (UNSW, and USYD), and is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD).

Pam Dell

CEO ReMap

“Future Proofing People, Leaders & Organisations Through Digital Transformation”

A Leader with comprehensive experience in re-engineering organisations, strategic thinking and mentoring senior leaders to reach their potential by re-mapping the understanding of how AI will impact the future workforce. Pam inspires individuals and corporate leaders by future-proofing careers, work practices and organisations.

As a a global student of AI through MIT, certified PROSCI change leader, Graduate of AICD and Business; with Hogan personality accreditation, Pam is well suited to transform your thinking.

Convergence CEO Forum evening presentation topic:

“Future Proofing People, Leaders & Organisations Through Digital Transformation”

Tim Lea

CEO, Reffind

Blockchain evangelist, advisor, and investor

Tim is a blockchain evangelist, advisor, and investor. He is CEO of Reffind (ASX: RFN) a Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions provider with a product focus on enterprise to employee solutions including rewards, loyalty and recognition. Reffind is now actively developing opportunities in the blockchain and loyalty space in line with its investment in Loyyal Corporation Inc. Tim is an active cryptocurrency investor, as well as being a regular local and international speaker, trainer and writer on the strategic applications of the Blockchain, including authoring the leading Blockchain Book - Down the Rabbit Hole. His linkedin profile can be seen HERE.

Dr Tim Boyle

Leader, Business Development, ANSTO

(Australian Nuclear Science & Technology Organisation)

Dr Tim Boyle was appointed Leader of Business Development at ANSTO in December 2014 and is a well-regarded authority on innovation, knowledge exchange and commercialisation. Prior to joining ANSTO, Tim was a Business Development Manager and Head of Easy Access IP at UNSW Innovations, where he played a pivotal role in the development of the UNSW knowledge transfer model.

Tim has a strong track record in developing the interface between research and business, with 20 years’ experience across the range of industry engagement, licensing, spin-out, company support and economic development. He also has a detailed understanding of the “impact’ agenda and how to optimise the contribution of academic research to delivering benefits to the economy and society.

Tim is an emerging thought leader in the field of academic technology transfer and has served as the global administrator for the Easy Access IP consortium of universities, a radical model to accelerate the transfer of IP into commercial use.

Prior to joining the knowledge exchange and commercialisation sector, Tim worked for Thomson Reuters in the UK, in the fields of project management, business requirements analysis and product development, covering the global pharmaceutical and chemical markets. He has also had an academic research career as a BBSRC Fellow at University College London (UCL) and held postgraduate and graduate industrial research positions with Johnson & Johnson Research and Avexa respectively. Tim served on the Uniseed Investment Committee from 2012 – 2014. Uniseed is a pre-seed and seed stage venture capital firm currently supported by the Universities of Sydney,

Queensland, Melbourne, CSIRO and UNSW Australia. Tim has acted as an external expert and advisor for several Australian universities, research agencies and medical research institutes, particularly focused on progressive knowledge transfer and innovation strategy.

His qualifications include a B.MedChem (Hons) and PhD in Chemistry from the University of Wollongong. Tim is a Registered Technology Transfer Professional (RTTP) and currently serves on the Committee of ShireBiz, an economic development group focussed on business & job creation and growth in the Sutherland Shire region and as Director and Vice-Chair on the board of Knowledge

Commercialisation Australasia (KCA), the peak professional body leading best practice in industry engagement, commercialisation and entrepreneurship for publically funded research organisations.

Priscilla Harris

Head of Virtual Reality Australia/New Zealand

HTC Vive (Melbourne)

Priscilla heads up the HTC Vive team in Australia and New Zlealand. This is a rare chance to hear al about the exciting announcements from HTC Vive.

The HTC Vive is one of the best virtual reality headsets out there – or at least it was, until HTC announced the Vive Pro, a new headset that's lighter, more comfortable, and which offers 10 meter by 10 meter tracking and a new 2880 x 1600 resolution.

The new headset will have a Dual OLED display with a 615 dpi resolution – that's a 78% increase over the current HTC Vive's resolution. The headset will use dual microphones with noise cancellation to make communication easier.

It will enable you to use four Lighthouse sensors at the same time – and, if you've just purchased a complete Vive setup, it'll be available without the 2.0 sensors or controllers for a lower price.

Find oiut more about the latest releases and hoe these world leading headsets impact your busienss at Convergence 006.

Lawrence Crumpton

HoloLens & Mixed Reality, Asia

Microsoft (USA / Australia)

Mixed Reality is predicted to be on of the most important new tech trends of 2018.

A hybrid of both AR and VR, Mixed Reality (MR) is far more advanced than VR because it combines the use of several types of technologies including sensors, advanced optics and next gen computing power. All of this technology bundled into a single device provides the user with the capability to overlay augmented holographic digital content into your real-time space, creating scenarios that are unbelievably realistic.

How does it work? MR works by scanning your physical environment and creating a 3D map of your surroundings so the device will know exactly where and how to place digital content into that space – realistically – while allowing you to interact with it using gestures. Much different than VR where the user is immersed in a totally different world, MR experiences invite digital content into your real-time surroundings, allowing you to interact with them.

Microsoft's regional Hololens and MR solution specialist, Lawrence Crumpton, says this technology is promising a powerful hybrid between virtual reality (VR) - a full 360-degree simulation of reality - and augmented reality (AR), which superimposes content on to the existing physical world.

"Mixed reality is emerging as the next giant leap in the [VR/AR] industry" he said.

With great new designs in Windows Mixed Reality Headsets from partners like Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP and Lenovo. These headsets use Microsoft’s platform to enable a single and consistent user interface, standardized inputs, and a universal app platform for developers.

Previously Lawrence led an Australian team of students to a World Wide victory in the 2014 Imagine Cup – a competition where each year over 100,000 students from 121 countries compete to address some of the world’s most difficult challenges using technology. As a result, team “Eyenaemia” took home a $50,000 cash prize and a meeting with Bill Gates and are continuing to bring their non-invasive, machine learning based anemia diagnostic solution “Eyenaemia” to market. Born in the American Deep South, today Lawrence is proud to be an Australian citizen.

We are very excited to host Lawrence at Convergence 005 | SWITCH on 18 September at Marina Bay Sands.

Chris Ebeling

Creative Lead

UTS Animal Logic Academy

Driven by crafting unique visual experiences for Film, TV, Games and emerging technologies, Chris Ebeling is a world-class Animator, Creative Director and Digital Artist with experience on Hollywood blockbuster films such as The Lego Movie, The Great Gatsby , Gods of Egypt and Happy feet 2.

Currently acting as the Creative Lead for the Animal Logic Academy at the University of Technology, Sydney, Chris uses his wealth of industry experience to mentor young artists to become the creators of the future. He guides them through a co-creation and innovation process while testing the boundaries of current and emerging technologies through a first of its kind' Masters of Animation and Visualisation.'

The MAV (Masters of Animation and Visualisation) is an intensive program which is delivered in an immersive, professional setting that emulates the working environment of highly creative and technology driven studios of animation, digital visual effects and computer generated imagery industries. The course encompasses digital dexterity, critical and creative thinking, invention, innovation, visualisation and virtualisation with a range of emerging technologies: fostering the leading edge capabilities that will radically expand their problem solving capacity which is vital in the ever changing world. Artists are challenged and mentored to develop these skills and knowledge, and how to transfer them to the established and emerging CGI industries, both in Australia and internationally.

With his extensive experience in CG film and games development coupled with his passion for Virtual and Mixed Reality, Chris hopes to contribute to a greater understanding of these new interactive digital platforms and help push the capabilities of these emerging technologies.

Shaun Ray

Head of Architecture ASEAN

Amazon Web Services (Singapore)

Shaun Ray has had a long career working at the leading edge of technology, and is fascinated by what happens next. In his role at AWS, Ray is focused on the needs of cloud native customers, and is actively involved in the South East Asia fintech and blockchain communities. He leads the conversation with some of the largest and most complex organisations on innovation, Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence, as they deploy critical workloads onto the cloud. As the Head of Architecture, Shaun presents on how AWS has been used by businesses of all industries and sizes to innovate and disrupt their markets.

James Mack

General Manager

M2M One

James Mack is the general manager for M2M One, Australia’s leading M2M/IoT SIM card and data providers; James specializes in helping companies connect their wireless devices to cellular networks globally. M2M One currently assist some of Australia’s most innovative IoT & wearable companies with their connectivity and networking requirements.A passionate advocate for the social and environmental improvements possible with connected devices, James has spoken at events across Asia-Pacific and had articles published in global communications industry press.

Ian Myles

CEO & Founder

CLWB & Area 51 (Singapore, UK, USA)

Entrepreneur, and education technology leader Ian is one of the Co-founders of CLWB – “Community for Learning With Bits” (it’s a Welsh word meaning ‘club’), a company set-up to simplify and demistify Deep Tech, A.I. and STEM to help businesses grow and people to learn.

Ian's technology back ground is design centered & USER focused. Having run frogs South East Asia office, and lived & worked in Silicon Valley for 20+ years, running studios, dev teams, start ups and a facility for Motorola - ian has a lot of PC, Mobile, FinTech and I.o.T. project experience under his belt. Funded by Citibank Ventures in Palo Alto to stand up an NFC wallet for iPhone - 4 years before Apple did it. Ian also has 2 years of banking experience with CHASE in their Mountain View advanced concept facility.

Relocating to Singapore and after almost a year at SingTel as Head of Payments in the Group Digital Life business - area 51 was established in October 2014. Client base today is UK, HK, US & Canada. The opportunity is in Asia.

With a background in Design / Mobile & Payments, area 51 founder - Ian Myles - is bringing user entered experiences to Payments, Wear-ables & Biometrics.

Each one of these disciplines is complicated and bubbling with development, but it is in the spaces in between - or the Between-ness - where Area 51 believes the opportunities for real innovations lie.

Payments and Wear-ables are each transforming business sectors and Biometrics is becoming mainstream in many aspects of digital life. Where they overlap - requires a lot of hand holding to ensure USER centered solutions prevail.

Today, he is most active in the AI education space with a deep understanding of IoT, blockchain, UX, VR, AR. Ian sits at a true convergence of emerging technology.

Chris Murphy

Unreal Engine Evangelist

Epic Games, Melbourne

Chris Murphy is an Evangelist for Epic Games and director of Pub Games.With over 10 years of experience using Unreal Engine, a Bachelor of Computer Science and a Bachelor of Multimedia, Chris has a broad skillset across a range of game development disciplines. Chris’ game development credits extend across PC, PS4, iOS and Android.

Most recently Chris worked with Pub Games to release Primal Carnage: Extinction, for PC and PS4, which has the distinctive title of being the first Australian project implementing the Steam Economy for inter-player sales and trading.

Chris’ role as Evangelist for Epic Games is to help independent VR developers build successful games with Unreal Engine 4 through support, training and education.

Chris will be sharing some of the latest developments from Unreal Engine tools in the VR space.

Hemendra Parihar

Mechatronics Engineer

Advanced Robotics & Sanbot Australia

Sales Application Engineer at Advanced Robotics Group. A Robotics and Mechatronics Engineer who has spent the major part of his career working with robots and developing automation solutions. Emerging cutting edge technology and advanced gadgets have always been his point of interest. Hemendra will present on new and evolving AI technology and how it can be positively contributed to human life, exampled by the launch of Sanbot Elf & Sanbot Nano – an Alexa enabled Service Robot suited to the smart home of today and tomorrow.

Sheree Ip

Blockchain Lead

BitCar & Ledger Assets

Sheree is the Legal and Blockchain Development at automotive blockchain company, BitCar. She is also the Legal and Compliance lead in Australian blockchain commercialisation company, Ledger Assets. She has worked across numerous blockchain companies and ICOs. At Power Ledger she worked across Australia’s first ICO on the legal research and led the ICO marketing efforts to the company’s success in a $34M raise.

Sheree works across all stages of blockchain development from strategic architectural design, product implementation and compliance, through to the marketing phase. In particular she specializes in refining the legal parameters of the blockchain and token designs working closely with the development team. At Ledger Assets she had worked across large scale bespoke blockchain projects in the Medical, Identity and Verification industries.

She is an Academic at Curtin University's Law School in Western Australia teaching across various areas of law and a Doctoral Candidate researching in Digital Currency Law and Blockchain Regulation. She is a qualified Practitioner and a Board Member of Blockchain Australia leading the regulatory and policy reform matters.

Presentation subject:

Blockchain, AI and the Future of Technology

Blockchain technology has the potential to transform many of traditional sectors and archaic systems we have become accustomed to in society we live in today. It has the potential to redesign our society, together with future technologies on the way. In this session Sheree will discuss Blockchain technology and its applications with smart contracts, AI, IoT, big data and how they will build the future ecosystems of technology together.

Nicci Rossouw

CEO

Exaptec Robotics

Nicci Rossouw is a robotics solution innovator and disrupter, founder and owner of Exaptec, Extreme Application Technology. Specialist in robotics automation solution design and delivery using Robotics as a Service as a business model. Specialist in client engagement and passionate in delivering the highest quality of service that unlocks high value ROI for enterprises.Nicci is a thought leader in the application of Robotics technology and how we as humans interact with robots in a social workplace context. She strongly believe that robotic automation will deliver a profound positive difference to people's lives. She is a driven networker and social connector at industry leadership events: www.exaptec.com.au

Paul Willey

Commercial Director

Agent Reality

Paul is the Commercial Director of Agent Reality, a creative augmented reality company, and social-AR platform. Agent Reality is a division of ASX-listed company Thred Ltd (ASX:THD). Initially training as a lawyer, Paul joined one of the UK's largest Broadcast and Film Post Production Groups in 2000. Since then, Paul has managed creative projects, people and clients in Australia, the UK, India and China. Having worked on feature films, television series, commercials, and corporate projects, Paul's experience and passion for immersive narratives found a natural home in the burgeoning Virtual and Augmented Reality sectors, where he now utilises this knowledge in Agent Reality.

Roger Lawrence

CEO

ACHIEVR

A successful technology executive, with broad experience in all aspects of advising enterprise executives, managing high-calibre technologists and facilitating business results across both infrastructure and development domains.

Chief Technologist and strategic advisor for business and government covering topics that include; innovation, the Internet of Things, wearable computing, applications modernisation, unified communications, Big Data, social media, security, mobile computing and cloud tech.

A startup entrepreneur who empowers other professionals through innovation in the latest technologies, including IoT, wearable computing and 3D printing.

https://achievr.media

Gilles Novel

CEO

Wearify

Gilles Novel is the founder and CEO of WEARIFY, a company developing wearable solutions for payment, transport, health and ID.

He was previously Director of the Digital Payments group at SINGTEL OPTUS, where he designed and launched OPTUS PAY in Australia. Prior to Optus, Gilles held various senior management positions in vendors such as SAGEM and SCHNEIDER International.

Gilles is also an entrepreneur and the founder of various companies in Australia, including BSS and XELIOS Asia Pacific that was sold to SAGEM Australasia in 2004.

Sourmack Darbouy

Senior Consultant

Actility

Sourmack is a telecommunications professional with ten plus years experience in the industry and graduated from Sydney University with Bachelors of Telecommunications Engineering. He worked at Optus from 2009 to 2015 where he gained extensive experience in 2G, 3G and 4G Mobile Data Networks with strong focus on Mobility, Session Management, Diameter Mediation and Service Policy.

In late 2015, Sourmack joined Actility in a Technical sale role for the ANZ region. At the time of joining, Actility was an IoT start-up and has since become the category leader in LoRaWAN technology with more than 50% of the worlds large scale deployments powered by Actility. Sourmack spends most his time discussing and evangelising Low Power IoT Networks and helps customers with building their IoT use cases.

Renald Gallis

VP Ecosystem

Thinxtra

Renald Gallis has 25 years of successes in founding, restructuring and managing sales and marketing activities in technological and disruptive companies. He is a member of the executive committee of IOTAA (Internet of Things Australian Alliance), member of ASCA (Australian Smart Communities Association) and has been focusing for the past 4 years on enabling the IoT revolution in Industrial markets, Smart Cities, Agtech & e-health. He is currently leading the Thinxtra Marketing & Ecosystem team to connect the un-connected to Sigfox IoT nationwide networks in Australia, New Zealand & Hong Kong.

Michael McDonald

CTO / COO

FlatWorld Integration

A hands-on thought leader, Michael McDonald a digital expert - particularly around the building of interconnected, secure ecosystems for the sharing of data in secure, regulatory compliant ways. A world-leader in the design, development and delivery of state-of-the-art and next-generation, real-time, hyper-personalised, omni-channel digital experience technology integrated with leading-edge machine learning, embracing new technologies such as bots, drones, real-bots, etc. This, combined with his deep data-security, cyber-security, compliance and auditing experience and awareness, enables him to deliver world-class, enterprise-grade, scalable, secure solutions that comply with the growing demands of governmental compliance, from Anti-Money-Laundering to Data Security (e.g. GPDR).

Convergnce presentation topic:

"Emerging tech for hyper scale with hyper personalisation"

Aimee Vo

Co-Founder & Head of Marketing

Soho Capital Blockchain

Aimee Vo is the Head of Marketing and Co-founder of Soho Capital, a bespoke Blockchain, DLT, ICO and cryptocurrency advisory firm. Her book “Cryptocurrency Trading & Investing: Beginners Guide To Trading & Investing In Bitcoin, Alt Coins & ICOs” is ranked in the top 50 of Amazon ‘Business & Money’ with 5-star reviews.

Aimee and her family were among the two million Vietnamese refugees to flee the communist regime after it came to power in 1975. Arriving on safe ground in the early 80’s, her family eventually settled in Sydney, Australia with the generosity and help of relatives and friends.

Aimee starting out in investment advisory working at financial institutions like CBA & UBS specializing inequities trading and wealth management. During her 7 years in finance, she’s managed over $100million in equities, derivatives, fixed income and managed funds for high net worth clients and private family offices.

In 2009, she transitioned to digital marketing and has accumulated a wealth of experience in digital strategyand advertising campaigns that drive sales and growth for B2C & B2B companies. Launching campaigns for tier1 clients like Goodman Fielder, Westpac, OzHarvest, Unilever Food Solutions, Sanitarium, ABC Bullion, Westpac, McGrath Real Estate, National Beverage Group, Countrywide and Cement Australia.

Aimee and founder Justin Dombrowski’s mission for Soho Capital is to create new asset classes leveragingblockchain technology. Helping established businesses understand the opportunities in growth capital, evaluate potential good blockchain use cases for a cryptocurrency token creation and token sale.

Annie Harper

CEO

Equal Reality

Annie Harper is a Programmer, Artist, High Technology - Human interaction Designer focused on social educational experiences and also the CEO of Equal Reality, which uses Virtual Reality to share the perspective of others. By practicing habits in virtual reality, one can effect the behavior of individuals, and organizations. Their focus in areas which can have the largest social impact, like diversity and inclusion.

Founder Annie Harper, originally from the USA, an artist all her life from Discovery Channel, Intel, Ballena Technologies, aids.gov & Burning Man’s famous “Embrace”, Annie taught herself to program and become a software developer at Intel Perceptual Lab where she made CES demos for Intel’s Real-Sense Depth Cameras.

She has taught game dev with kids at the Sydney Power House Museum as an Educator, building Castle Rush and other Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Games at Silicon Vagabond & teaching 3D software tools at Devika Learning.

Dr Chris Stephenson

Senior Vice President

BearingPoint UK

Dr Chris Stephenson has broad experience working with and on boards as a CXO, chair & director in private, public and government sectors. Executive career involving advanced technologies and services from leading global companies. Specific expertise in digital enablement - strategies to allow traditional business to compete with the digital natives and win.

First hand appreciation of challenges facing international businesses based in Australia - established & managed businesses in most Asian territories including Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, Hong Kong, China, and Malaysia while concurrently managing teams in ANZ, Asia, USA and Middle East.

Holds a Doctor of Business Administration, Master of Business Administration is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and received the Worldwide Branding Award for Excellence in Business.

Jack Condon

Director of Real Time Technology

S1T2

Jack Condon is currently leading the real time rendering team at S1T2. With a background in photomedia and fine arts Condon aims to push the boundaries of technology by experimenting with the application of game design in arts discourse, business and research. In doing so, Condon hopes to expand the definition of gaming whilst bringing its value to other industries. Across this work Condon merges the worlds of technology and art to enhance our understanding of the potential of interactive media.

Prof. Anuraj Gambhir

Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Disruptive tech - IoT, AR/VR-XR, AI, Wearables & Mobile Devices

Director Entrepreneurship & Innovation, SP Jain School of Global Management

Anuraj Gambhir is an internationally recognised Strategic Business Advisor and Innovation Evangelist. As an Innovation catalyst Anuraj assists organisations (from mentoring startups to consulting with mature entities) to spearhead their innovation agenda. He has over 25 yrs experience working across the mobile ecosystem spanning 5 continents. A few prominent companies he has worked for include: NASA/JPL, Optus, Logica/Aethos, T-Mobile, Orange, GSM Association, Sharp, Siemens, Spice, Ericsson, MTS, Globacom.

Anuraj has worked from hands-on technical roles to senior executive management positions and is regarded by many as an industry visionary. He is a valued advisory board member of several organizations globally and also involved with teaching as adjunct faculty. He has spearheaded several innovations in the advanced as well as grass-root level mobile domain in mature and emerging markets. He focuses his efforts on value creation via strategic business development and nurturing breakthrough concepts leading to game changing and disruptive/radical innovation.

A term he coined over a decade ago - ‘Simplexity’ is the essence of his work in curating relevant ecosystems, embracing digital disruption, designing compelling solutions and delightful end user experiences.

Some major areas of his focus have been in mobile content/media/entertainment (multimedia convergence), mEducation, mHealth, emerging smart devices (wearables in particular), Internet of Everything, HNI (Human-Nature Interface) and seamless access as a part of the connected world.

J'aimee Skippon-Volke

Festival Director

Byron Bay International Film Festival

J’aimee Skippon-Volke, Director of the Byron Bay International Film Festival has a growing reputation for cutting-edge curation & developing of rich and diverse programmes of entertaining, inspiring & thought provoking films and film events which enhance our worldview & collective social dialogue through the power and storytelling of film.

J’aimee, has a truly international perspective, born in Australia, she spent much of her childhood in NZ, the US & the UK. It was in the UK where the curtains opened on J’aimee’s love of underground & independent cinema. Growing up in Covent Garden in Central London, she discovered the cinematic offerings at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts) a hub for the exploration of radical art & culture.

She worked in the UK’s TV industry & after a stint in the USA, decided to ‘give Australia a go’. J’aimee and her partner Osvaldo Alfaro, BBFF’s Technical Director, have grown BBFF’s unique culture and flourishing international reputation. Seeing both esteemed international filmmakers and emerging values-aligned artists vying for a place in its programme. With trademark ethics and selectivity, BBFF offers audience members & filmmakers the opportunity to be part of more meaningful screen culture experience.

Experienced in film and visual effects production J'aimee has turned her focus to both producing and curating immersive content as well as traditional film.

Kelly-Ann Denton

Chief Visual Officer

imagineer.me

Kelly-Ann Denton is the Director of Creative Learning at imagineer.me, an agency which works with The Visual Mind and Neuroscience in order to guide individuals toward more innovative and pre-determined realities.

Commencing a visual language and visual culture practice in 1993 she holds a post graduate degree in Visual Art and is partnered with Professor David Alais, School of Psychology - University of Sydney to instruct learning and comprehension based on 93% of all we understand: vision, sight and perception.

Kelly-Ann has designed visual education and imagination programs for two decades and written curricula for universities, government (state and federal), not for profit, and international corporations as well as individuals. The material has been consistently updated with new research related to the visual mind and neuroplasticity and she leads in the field of visual learning for adults. Her expertise is founded on a comprehensive understanding of how we see, how we imagine and how we remember in order to make sense of our environments and create new realities.

Kelly-Ann has informed and lectured internationally at such institutions as Scuola superiore Sant’Anna Pisa where she was associated with the Virtual Reality (VR) team informing how our perception of reality is fluid based on how we process what we see.

Suzy Jacobs

Convergence MC

Co-Founder/Director, Finesque

Suzy Jacobs is the Chief Inspiration Officer for your team or community, known as an inspiring, motivating and thought provoking keynote speaker who captivates audiences as soon as she walks in the room.

Suzy started out in the sales & training world of big tech companies such as IBM and Compaq before she switched to small business. Having spent time in such diverse sectors as manufacturing, health & wellbeing and business development, Suzy brings years of experience and background knowledge to her role of a lifetime as CEO of She Business Australia.

She’s a successful business leader and entrepreneur who isn’t afraid to push the boundaries.

: Sydney; Sydney Speakers April 2018