With over 17 years working in digital, Phil is a specialist in data and ad tech for advertising. His roles have evolved with the internet itself, spanning jobs in social, search, performance, ad operations, analytics, and data across roles with publishers in the UK, for his own agency in New Zealand, for Publicis in Australia, and Dentsu Aegis Network in Singapore and Australia/New Zealand. In his current role, Phil brings together the agency’s capabilities for the unification, enrichment, visualisation and activation of data.
Ross Farrelly recently joined IBM as Cloud Strategy Leader for the Australia and New Zealand region. He works with companies throughout the region to develop and execute on their strategies to adopt and realise the benefit of cloud computing, focussing on the IBM Cloud Data Services technologies.
Previously Ross was Chief Data Scientist at Teradata APAC where he was responsible for big data and analytics projects utilising the Teradata Aster, Spark and Hadoop platforms.
Ross has extensive consulting experience in large-scale big data implementations in multiple companies across Telco, Banking and Government verticals in Australia, New Zealand and
South East Asia.
He has a Master of Applied Statistics, a Masters of Applied Ethics, a first class honours degree in Pure Mathematics and is aiming to compete his PhD in Information Systems in early 2017.
Paul Smith writes on technology specialising in enterprise IT, web, gadgets. Based in our Sydney newsroom, Paul is Technology Editor, with more than 10 years experience as a journalist, writing about all areas of technology ranging from big business successes and failures to emerging start-ups and the changing nature of gadgets and media.
Mr. Adam Freier serves as General Manager, Communications and Media at Melbourne Rebels Rugby Union Ltd. In this role, Mr. Freier leads the execution of all internal and external communications with particular emphasis on media relations, media profile and communications with Rugby stakeholders. He was a Wallaby, Brumby, Waratah and Rebels Rugby player. Having captained the NSW Waratahs in 2007, he was also President of the Rugby Union Players Association (RUPA) and played a prominent role within the Australian Rugby community through various charities and schools. He is a regular columnist for Fairfax Media, and makes regular TV and Radio appearances on ABC News Breakfast, Grandstand and Offsiders, along with SKY and Triple M.
Greg heads Arup’s Digital Services group that enables clients prepare for, and prosper in, a data-driven future. Greg brings expertise and experience across both the built environment and with global scale technology design and deployment drawn from his 10 years as Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft Australia. This enables Arup to provide existing and new digital offerings that range from digital master planning, data modelling, analysis and machine learning through to next generation identity and access design, and human interaction design.
Greg brings a particular strength to digital workplace design leveraging his previous work with cloud platforms and mobile channels for collaboration, digital way-finding and health monitoring across activity based working environments. He also holds a BArch having spent the early part of his career as a practicing designer before moving into technology.
David Swan is a technology reporter based in Melbourne. He enjoys exploring the intersection between technology and people’s every day lives, and loves telling a good story. He’s worked for The Australian for about a year and before that wrote for Technology Spectator and iTWire. Side interests include coffee, craft beer, stand up comedy and 90’s music.
A digital pioneer for over twenty-five years, Scott leads Accenture’s Media & Entertainment practice across Australia and New Zealand. An accomplished entrepreneur, musician and operating executive Scott has lead digital transformations at Sony, Bertelsmann, The Motion Picture Association of America and Merrill Lynch & Co as well as the iconic start-ups Data Broadcasting Corporation, Firstlook.com and Ruckus. Scott is a lecturer at The Australian Film, Radio & Television School and The University of Southern California, and a Senior Fellow at The Annenberg Center for the Digital Future.
Sarah joined Salmat in April 2015 bringing over 18 years’ experience in the telecoms, mobile, TV, technology and digital sectors.
Sarah’s international and local experience in building brands will play a pivotal role in driving Salmat to establish a clear framework and process for building and maintaining innovative products and services; as well as driving all marketing activity across the company.
At Optus, Sarah held a number of positions across the business. As Vice President Product Marketing she was responsible for the Optus portfolio of products and services across the Consumer & SME business. As the Vice President of Consumer Broadband, Sarah drove transformation of the Optus Broadband & TV business; establishing new thought platforms to challenge Telstra and position Optus as the alternate brand of choice, following several consecutive years of share & profit decline. She was also responsible for annual revenues of AUD $1billion and 1 million+ customers.
Prior to Optus, Sarah, who is originally from the UK, led the SME Products and Marketing business at BT, following a highly successful time at The Carphone Warehouse in London. There, as one of the founding members of start-up telco TalkTalk, Sarah drove the company from creation to over 3 million customers. Sarah has significant experience in multi-channel marketing and the smart use of big data and analytics, having driven campaigns across retail, field marketing, digital, and outbound telesales for both large business and consumer customer bases.
