Speakers

Craig Allchin

Director of Six Degrees Urban and Adjunct Professor of Architecture at UTS

Smart Cities & Urban Innovation Symposium

Craig Allchin is an architect, urban planner, director of Six Degrees Urban and Adjunct Professor of Architecture at UTS. Craig has worked on cities across a range of scales including metropolitan strategies, city extensions and masterplans in China and the Middle East, large urban renewal projects, and fine grain strategies and projects. This range of experience puts him in a unique position to understand the process of development and change within cities and their component parts.

Nick Austin

Tech Entrepreneur and founder and CEO of Divvy Parking

Smart Cities & Urban Innovation Symposium

Nick Austin is founder and CEO of Divvy Parking, the transport-tech startup that connects commuters with underutilised parking spaces in CBD commercial office towers in Australia. Before founding Divvy Parking, Nick began his career designing integrated finance portfolio management products at CBA. He then moved into portfolio management and investment. Nick is an advocate for Smart Cities and is passionate about using technology to create smarter, more efficient, and more connected cities.

Sarah Barns

Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University

Workshop keynote, Smart Cities & Urban Innovation Symposium

Sarah Barns is a research fellow, digital producer and strategist whose work focuses on the disruptive potentials of digital transformation on cities and place-making.

Awarded an Urban Studies Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in 2013 through Western Sydney University, her current research addresses the governance and technology frameworks needed to support effective urban data programs. She currently supports CSIRO / data61 Future Cities program development on data-riven city indicator development, and has established digital place-making studio Esem Projects.

She brings to her work on digital cities extensive experience as a producer & strategist working across the digital creative industries, and a passion for cities that build resilient communities & support future generations.

Manojit Bose

Senior Director- Domestic IT and eGovernance, Leader- Smart Cities at NASSCOM, India

Smart Cities & Urban Innovation Symposium

In 2015 India announced the launch of an ambitious 100 smart cities movement which aims to develop 100 cities to facilitate India’s formidable urbanisation challenge and economic transformation. Manojit Bose is closely involved with this initiative with previous and current roles within the government and private sectors. He is co-author of the NASSCOM report entitled “Integrated ICT and Geospatial Technologies Framework for the 100 Smart Cities Mission”. Before joining NASSCOM he was heading the eGovernance mission team for one of federal states in India, driving various IT led initiatives of the federal government. Manojit, currently, Senior Director- Domestic IT and eGovernance for NASSCOM in India is an industry veteran with over 15 years of experience in IT, having worked with companies like Tata Consultancy Services and Cognizant Technology Solutions in global client facing roles. He has successfully led client engagements both in Japan and in the US, over and above, leading pre-sales and business development initiatives both within India and outside. In his current role, Manojit is driving the Smart Cities initiative, amongst his other engagements in eGovernance, and works closely with the federal and local government as well as the Industry. Manojit holds a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from National Institute of Technology (NIT), Silchar and has done his MBA from Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.

Brett Casson

Director Infrastructure Development and Strategic Innovation Asia Pacific Autodesk

Smart Cities & Urban Innovation Symposium

Brett Casson is responsible for Infrastructure Development and Strategic Innovation across the Asia Pacific region for Autodesk. Brett works with Autodesk to deliver infrastructure, construction and reality capture solutions on the largest and most complex projects in the region. In addition, he is actively involved with government digital advisory. Brett has spent over 20 years in industry working in the construction and transportation sector.

Martijn de Waal

City Leaders' Summit

Martijn de Waal is a senior researcher at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. He is the author of "The City as Interface. How Digital Media Are Changing the City (NAi010 Publishers, 2014)".

He is a co-founder of The Mobile City Foundation, an international research group that since 2007 explores the relation between digital media and urban culture through workshops, conferences and publications. Currently he’s the project leader of the research project "The Hackable City. Collaborative Citymaking" in Living-Lab Amsterdam Buiksloterham, a cooperation between the University of Amsterdam, the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Utrecht University, One Architecture and the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations. The project is funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research.

Bruce Duyshart

Director, Meld Strategies

Digital Publics Symposium.

Bruce Duyshart is a building technology and innovation strategist who has been delivering award-winning technological solutions to the property industry for more than two decades.

As the founder and director of specialist Sydney-based consultancy Meld Strategies, he has an appetite to make a difference – and to help his clients dream big. He works with early adopters to push the frontiers of possibilities in areas such as Smart Building technologies, Fibre to the Premise technology, Energy Monitoring, Wayfinding, and Software and Building Automation solutions.

Bruce is a pioneer in his field. He draws on a uniquely powerful blend of skills gleaned from years of experience at leading global property and infrastructure company Lend Lease. These area capabilities include architecture, planning, design, property development, IT and building technologies.

Put simply, Bruce understands the language of design, user experience and aesthetics as well as the complex world of technology and IT. With this big-picture approach, he continually contributes to the creation of groundbreaking property projects that retain long-term market value and offer a point of difference.

Widely regarded for his personable style and engaging insights, Bruce is a strategic thinker who has turned his passion for helping people to “connect the dots between people, places and technology” into an all-encompassing service.

He works effortlessly with a huge range of stakeholders (from project development managers to design professionals) to influence, motivate and inspire breakthrough concepts.

Bruce is also a published author and experienced speaker on a range of technology subjects.

Michelle Fitzgerald

Smart City Office, City of Melbourne

City Leaders' Summit

In November 2015, Michelle joined the City of Melbourne as Chief Digital Officer (the first position of its kind for Victorian Local Government) managing the newly-formed Smart City Office. In this position she will assist the City of Melbourne to attract start-up investment; drive the take up of digital, agile development and open data across customer services; lead the shift in infrastructure management towards smart city modelling; and collaborate with Melbourne’s research and higher education sectors to build the city’s education capabilities and reputation as a knowledge hub.

Michelle was previously a Customer and Digital Partner, Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) Consulting Australia.

She is also a current Non-Executive director for Standards Australia, and was recently awarded as one of the Knowledge Nation 100 leaders in Australia

Ron Gauci

Fed Square Pty Ltd

Digital Publics Symposium

Ron Gauci is a recent appointment to Fed Square Pty Ltd as Interim CEO. Most recently Ron was the Interim CEO at Melbourne Polytechnic (formerly NMIT) and, prior to that, the CEO & Managing Director of Melbourne Storm Rugby League Club and Vice President Australia/New Zealand for Verizon Business.

Ron has also held senior management and executive positions in some of the world’s largest multinational and domestic organisations including Microsoft, Telstra and IBM. He is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management and an ambassador for SportsConnect. He also sits on a number of Boards and provides advisory services.

Ron is the Chairman of the Sanctuary Lakes Golf Club and former Chairman of the Board of the Melbourne Aces Baseball Club. He is a former Director on the Board of the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA), a former member and alumni of the International CEO Forum and has held a position on the Board of Governors for the American Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM).

Jeremy Gill

Associate and Sydney Practice Leader at SGS Economics and Planning

Smart Cities & Urban Innovation Symposium

Jeremy is an urban planner with ten years of experience in strategic planning and policy development. He has worked in Australia and the United Kingdom across the private, public and tertiary education sectors. With a background in landscape architecture, Jeremy has worked on a number of metropolitan planning issues.

He has advised state and local government on urban renewal best practice, approaches to industrial land use planning and has provided economic development strategies for urban transformation precincts. Jeremy has also worked closely with the NSW Department of Planning and Environment to help develop Sydney’s subregional strategies.

Jeremy Gill

Director Ineni Realtime

Smart Cities & Urban Innovation Symposium

Jeremy Harkins is the Director and co-founder of ineni Realtime, an innovative technology company focused on the development of the Realtime Visualisation Industry. ineni Realtime is at the leading edge of real-time virtual technologies and Jeremy has spoken internationally about 3D immersive environments, VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality) for architecture, mining and smart cities. Working with Architects, Engineers and Developers, Jeremy is aimed at commercialising and integrating new technologies into the Architecture, Planning, infrastructure and Construction industries. His company has partnered with world leaders in building automation, integrated systems and business process management and is providing cutting edge solutions for some of the largest and most complex developments in the world. With over a decade of experience in Architectural Technologies including professional work, consultancy and Full-Time Academia, Jeremy has been lecturing and teaching in the field for 12 years, and being an Adjunct Lecturer at the Faculty of the Built Environment, UNSW is now helping to educate industry in what can be possible.

Alison Holloway

Principal and Partner at SGS Economics and Planning

Smart Cities & Urban Innovation Symposium

Alison is an economic geographer with 20 years of experience applying her skills to metropolitan strategic land use, transport and infrastructure planning in Australia’s largest cities and regions.

Alison has worked directly with both the NSW and Victorian State Governments to develop their respective metropolitan planning strategies. Alison has also worked with a number of local governments and was SGS’s project manager for the City of Sydney’s Sustainable Sydney 2030 project.

Ignatius Jones

Vivid Sydney

Keynote speaker

Ignatius was born in the Philippines and grew up with his father reading him plays as bedtime stories.

After moving to Australia as a five year old, he later began his life in the arts as a musician and was a founding member of the art-rock-punk-cabaret band of the 1980s, Jimmy and the Boys.

Ignatius has worked all over the world as an event director. He's launched the Vancouver Olympics, the Shanghai Expo, several Australian warships and the biggest Barbie doll in the world.

He's now Creative Director of the annual Vivid Festival in Sydney.

Matt Jones

Federation Square

Keynote speaker

Matt oversees Fed Square’s year-round public program of over 2000 events and activities. Spanning multicultural community festivals, original art commissions, commercial activations, live performances, 24/7 screen-based content and a variety of seasonal initiatives, the program is an ever-evolving, dynamic mix of influences originating from throughout the entire community.

Matt has worked at Fed Square since 2008 and before that spent 10 years working in the UK for a variety of arts organisations including Brighton Festival, England’s largest multi-arts festival, where he was Associate Producer of the theatre program for four years. In this time Brighton Festival developed an international reputation as an incubator of cutting-edge, site-specific performance and visual arts projects delivered in unconventional contexts, as a strategy to broaden the appeal, impact and opportunities for public engagement in the arts.

Prior to that, Matt was instrumental in establishing The Basement, South East England’s leading production company and venue for the presentation of inter-disciplinary and live art. Matt holds a Master of Arts in Media & Communications from Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Ethan Kent

Projects for Public Spaces, New York

Keynote speaker

City Leaders' Summit

Ethan Kent works to support Placemaking organizations, projects and leadership around the world. During over 17 years at PPS, Ethan has traveled to more than 750 cities and 55 countries to advance the cause of Placemaking and public spaces. Ethan has been integral to the development of Placemaking as a transformative approach to economic development, environmentalism, transportation planning, governance and design.

Having worked on over 200 PPS projects, Ethan has led a broad spectrum of Placemaking efforts, providing comprehensive public engagement, planning and visioning for many important public spaces. Highlights have included: Times Square in New York; Kennedy Plaza in Providence, RI; Pompey Square, Nassau, Bahamas; Garden Place in Hamilton, New Zealand; Sub Centro Las Condes in Santiago, Chile; and The Porch, Philadelphia, PA. He has also worked with some of the most high profile developments in the world to help maximize public space outcomes in Hong Kong, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Auckland, Parramatta and Sao Paulo.

Sekhar Kondepudi

Director of the Smart Cities, Smart Buildings and IoT Lab, NUS, Singapore

Smart Cities & Urban Innovation Symposium

Dr. Kondepudi has over 25 years of global business and product experience in a variety of technology verticals including Smart Cities, Smart Buildings and Internet of Things (IoT). Currently an Associate Professor of Smart Buildings and Smart Cities at the National University of Singapore, he directs the Smart Cities, Smart Buildings and IoT Lab @ NUS. In the past he has led global teams on smart cities at Cisco Systems, Motorola, Sprint and also the electric utility industry in the United States. He is active in providing strategic advisory and consulting services to both public (BCA, NEA, ICCS in Singapore) and private sectors (Fortune 500 to Start-Ups) related to Smart Cities in Singapore, India and North Africa, Internet of Things (IoT) and Energy Efficiency. He has also been a Vice-Chair for the Focus Group on Smart Sustainable Cities at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a specialised agency of the United Nations who developed 14 technical reports related to Smart Sustainable Cities.

Daniel Latorre

Project for Public Spaces - Digital Placemaking

Digital Publics Symposium

City Leaders' Summit

Daniel set up PPS’ Digital Placemaking program starting in January of 2010. He set up this practice at PPS to authentically marry Placemaking with current online civic engagement best practices and build the right staffing mix to communicate it. Since February of 2013 Daniel moved into a Senior Advisor consulting role to further best practices at PPS and with other like-minded organizations.

Daniel brings to PPS over 16 years of online experience in human-centered digital media design, online marketing and communications, social media product strategy, and online technology planning. He has managed project budgets ranging from thousands of dollars to $2.4 million with leading firms such as CKS Group (the first integrated print-TV-digital firm founded by former Apple marketing mangers), Razorfish (a leading global digital consultancy), Funny Garbage (a pioneering boutique digital design studio), McCann-Erikson (one of the largest advertising firms), Scholastic (the largest U.S. K-12 books, media, and education-technology publisher), and OpenPlans/Streetsblog/Streetsfilms (an innovative open source civic technology nonprofit), and other companies and firms.

In recent years his focus shifted toward using effective design methods and today’s powerful social media technology for the civic realm in movements around open commons, open government, and now, open urban planning. Daniel’s current focus is on digital civic engagement for Placemaking— translating PPS’s place audits, survey methods, and place frameworks into digital products and services, and evolving the organization’s media communications practice in our highly networked era.

Since creating the Digital Placemaking program at PPS he has launched eight online mapping civic engagement projects; two of these online mapping projects were for an Institute for Urban Design urban design awareness campaign in NYC, and for a Participatory Budgeting pilot in NYC; six were for projects across a variety of scales from a rural main street to urban downtowns in Baltimore, Denver, San Antonio, Goteborg and Stockholm, Sweden.

Tac Lion

Media Façade Ltd

Awards ceremony

Tac, the Founder and General Director of Media Façade Ltd, studied engineering where he received his Bachelor before joining the company. The company Media Façade focuses on media architecture, dynamic lighting projects and installations. Under his leadership, the company’s development is getting one of the biggest in this particular field. In the trenches, Tac joined most of the Media Façade projects on site to supervise those projects at delivery such as for example – Berlin Radisson, Moscow TV tower or the Vivid Sydney Festival. His interest lies in developing creative technologies for more sustainable projects. Tac pursues research and workshop activities together with MAI and participates in both, submit and biennale since 2011.

Dae-jun Lee

Senior Manager – IoT Solution, Business Office, SK Telecom, Korea

Smart Cities & Urban Innovation Symposium

SK Telecom is one of the giants of Korean telecommunication companies with a major role in establishing Korea as an international smart cities leader. Dae-jun Lee is a key member of the organisation as a senior manager for IoT Solution Business Office and leads the Public IoT (including smart cities) in SK Telecom (SKT), Korea. As a chief architect, he was responsible for enterprise IT architecture and has extensive business experience working in the Smart City Division including the running of the integrated city operation system, smart building, and city energy management. He has also had experience in the public sector, where he was in charge of providing public safety services based on data/video by establishing the next generation network (LTE). Recently, he is responsible for various services and business development tasks applying IoT in the public sector based on smart city. Before joining SKT, at Accenture he enjoyed various ICT consulting experiences in South Korea, the UK and Taiwan.

Dr. Youn Taik Leem

Professor and Head of the Ubiquitous City Research Cluster, Department of Urban Engineering, Hanbat National University, Korea

Smart Cities & Urban Innovation Symposium

Korea is the originator of the ubiquitous city movement and a forerunner in today’s internet of things (IoT) revolution. Dr Youn Taik Leem is the Operating Head of Ubiquitous City Research Cluster (UCRC) and a Professor at the Department of Urban Planning and Engineering, Hanbat National University, Korea. Professor Leem’s research focuses on the analysis and planning of urban regions on the basis of information technologies, such as geographic information systems and ubiquitous city.

Before joining academia, Dr Leem worked for more than 10 years in various global private conglomerates and research institutes. He published a textbook on ‘Geographic information system for urban engineers’ and has edited a book on the use of ‘Geographic information systems for urban planning’. He has also contributed to the book ‘Knowledge- based urban development: Planning and applications in the information era’.

Andrew Low

Commercial and Workplace Thought Leader, Architect and Principal, HASSELL

Smart Cities & Urban Innovation Symposium

Andrew is a Principal of HASSELL with responsibilities across architecture, commercial design and master planning. He is based in Melbourne and is the leader of the Commercial and Workplace sector at HASSELL. Andrew has recent experience on a broad range hospitality, mixed-use, commercial, workplace and master planning projects spanning Perth, Sydney, Melbourne and South East Asia (KL and Singapore).

Andrew combines his expertise in high rise commercial architecture, high performance workplace, hospitality and urban design to lead teams to create people focused spaces. Andrew has worked extensively on interplay between architecture, urban design and workplace to create great activated city places that match the needs of contemporary cities and their occupants. Recent experience includes the redevelopment of some of Australia’s newest mixed-use places, most recently, Brookfield Place in Perth. At a time when changing expectations and economic imperatives see the citizens of all Australian cities demanding a richer variety of experience and opportunity from their central city areas, Andrew brings a clear understanding of how the drivers of successful commercial architecture and workplace can be combined with a dynamic place making approach to create meaningful, authentic city spaces that connect people with place.

This experience is now being combined with a focus on the role technology will have in reshaping the way space is both designed and used in the future as the disruption process continues to shift paradigms at an extraordinary rate.

Mark Mendel

CEO IBuyNew.com.au

Smart Cities & Urban Innovation Symposium

Mark is the Founder and CEO of iBuyNew. Mendel launched an iteration of iBuyNew back in 2008 as an online marketplace developed to offer off-the-plan properties direct to buyers with the intent of disrupting the rigid property marketplace. Mendel signed up 100 developments in 3 months with a free trial model but when it came to converting the Developers to a subscription based service the GFC hit and he was unsuccessful. He tested different business models in each state in a difficult and often painful startup process that resulted in the decision to hire internal consultants and generate income for leads generated and sales completed, diverging from the more ideal technology-driven marketplace he originally imagined. The platform has since been rebuilt from the ground up with the learnings from the early years and was relaunched in late 2013. Today the technology platform drives the leads, the relationships and the sales.

Mark has degrees from UNSW (Bachelor of Building Construction Management) and Macquarie University (Masters of Commerce -Finance).

Anthony Millet

Tech Entrepreneur and CEO of BrickX

Smart Cities & Urban Innovation Symposium

Anthony has over 12 years’ professional experience across eCommerce, technology and investment banking industries. With a passion for property and technology, Anthony has extensive experience working in innovative environments. Formerly, Director & Chief Operating Officer of ActivInstinct.com. Anthony was responsible for building one of Europe’s largest eCommerce businesses. Prior to this, Anthony was an Associate Director at UBS Investment Bank, London, focusing on Technology and Business Services transactions.

Clr Nuatali Nelmes

Lord Mayor of Newcastle

City Leaders' Summit

Nuatali Nelmes is the Lord Mayor of Newcastle. She was elected at a by-election on 15 November 2014 after serving six years on Newcastle City Council, including a time as Deputy Lord Mayor.

Throughout her time on Council, Nuatali has championed the revitalisation of Newcastle’s coastline; and worked to improve vital Council services such as Blackbutt Reserve, pools and libraries, to provide all Novocastrians with equitable access to high-quality public facilities.

During the 2014 Lord Mayoral by-election, which Nuatali won with more than 42 per cent of first preference votes, she campaigned on urban renewal in the inner city and suburbs, overturning cuts to Council services, restoring trust in Council, renewing pride in Newcastle and ensuring Council’s long-term financial sustainability.

Nuatali has represented Labor as a Councillor on committees overseeing recreation, urban planning and design, assets, and catchment management; and is currently a member of Council's Asset Advisory Board and Chair of Council's Coastal Revitalisation Working Party; and sits on the Boards of the Hunter Westpac Rescue Helicopter and the Newcastle Airport Partnership.

Chris Pettit

Professor of Urban Science at the University of New South Wales

Smart Cities & Urban Innovation Symposium

Professor Pettit is the inaugural Chair of Urban Science at the University of New South Wales (2015), being previously at the University of Melbourne (2011-2015). The State Government of Victoria, (2004-2011) and RMIT University (2002-2004). He is responsible for the Digital Cities course at UNSW. He previously developed the Urban Informatics course at the University of Melbourne and was the lead author on the ESRI online virtual campus course in GIS and planning which attracted more than 3,000 students between 2000 and 2010. His educational background has been focussed specifically on the fields of spatial planning and GIS at the undergraduate and postgraduate level. His Ph.D. examined the use of GIS and mapping technologies for undertaking scenario planning at the land parcel level across municipalities. Professor Pettit is closely involved with a number of professional organisations. He is a member of the Surveying and Spatial Sciences Institute (SSSI) and the Planning Institute of Australia (PIA).

Susa Pop

Public Art Lab

Digital Publics Symposium

Susa Pop is managing director of Public Art Lab, which she founded together with Hans J. Wiegner in 2003. As curator and cultural operator she is very much interested in creative community building through networking art projects that take advantage of the situatedness in the public space and catalyse artistic processes and public awareness in temporarily possessed urban settings – while utilising the new possibilities of digital media tools and their virtual public sphere.

Susa Pop initiated most of the PAL projects like the Media Facades Festivals, Mobile Studios and Mobile Museums. She holds worldwide conferences and workshops in the field of urban media and is lecturer at the University of Potsdam / European Media Science and at the FH Potsdam / Arts Management and Cultural Work.

Bruce Ramus

Ramus Illumination

Digital Publics Symposium

I was born in Canada and have lived and worked around the world for the past 35 years. I began my career in the live music industry when I was nineteen and have been working as a light artist ever since. I have designed and directed countless international live shows and events including rock bands; U2, R.E.M., David Bowie, Bryan Adams, David Byrne, Guy Sebastian, James Brown and television shows including; the Academy Awards, Grammy Awards, MTV Awards, ARIA awards and Super Bowl Halftime Shows.

In 2006, I moved to Melbourne and formed Ramus Illumination, a design studio with a focus on interactive lighting installations, architectural facades, precinct activation and lighting and video design.

Ramus Illumination’s work is about connection - creating works that are innovative, interactive and sustainable. They are designed to engage communities in shaping their own environment. Our collaborative process results in a unique approach to urban space that aligns public art, community engagement and commercial vitality.

Carlo Ratti

MIT Senseable City Lab,
Carlo Ratti Associati

Keynote speaker

An architect and engineer by training, Carlo Ratti practices in Italy and teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he directs the Senseable City Lab. He graduated from the Politecnico di Torino and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris, and later earned his MPhil and PhD at the University of Cambridge, UK.

Carlo holds several patents and has co-authored over 250 publications. As well as being a regular contributor to Project Syndicate, he has written for the Le Monde, El Pais, La Stampa, Corriere della Sera, Scientific American and The New York Times. His work has been exhibited worldwide at venues such as the Venice Biennale, the Design Museum Barcelona, the Science Museum in London, MAXXI in Rome, and MoMA The Museum of Modern Art in in New York City.

Carlo has been featured in Esquire Magazine’s ‘Best & Brightest’ list and in Thames & Hudson’s selection of ‘60 innovators’ shaping our creative future. Blueprint Magazine included him as one of the ‘25 People Who Will Change the World of Design’, Forbes listed him as one of the ‘Names You Need To Know’ and Fast Company named him as one of the ’50 Most Influential Designers in America’. He was also featured in Wired Magazine’s ‘Smart List: 50 people who will change the world’. Carlo was awarded the Renzo Piano Foundation prize for ‘New Talents in Architecture’. Two of his projects – the Digital Water Pavilion and the Copenhagen Wheel – have been included by TIME Magazine in the list of the ‘Best Inventions of the Year’.

Carlo has been a presenter at TED (in 2011 and 2015), program director at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow, curator of the ‘BMW Guggenheim Pavilion’ in Berlin, and was named ‘Inaugural Innovator in Residence’ by the Queensland Government. He was the curator of the ‘Future Food District’ pavilion for the 2015 World Expo in Milan. He is currently serving as Chair of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Future Cities, and he has been selected as Special Adviser to the President and Commissioners of the European Commission, to advise on urban innovation.

For further information on Carlo’s projects, please visit www.carloratti.com and senseable.mit.edu.

Sarah Reilly

Social and Urban Planning Strategist, Director of Cred Consulting

Smart Cities & Urban Innovation Symposium

Sarah Reilly is the Director of Cred Consulting, a social planning and community engagement consultancy she established in 2003. Sarah has more than 20 years’ experience in community and strategic planning and community engagement, and is highly skilled working within culturally, socially and economically diverse communities for clients such as City of Sydney, Bridge Housing, and NSW Government. She is an advocate for building strong communities through collaboration, capacity building and innovation.

Stephen Rubie

Digital Place Solutions

Digital Publics Symposium

Stephen commenced his career in television in the early 1980s with network TEN, initially working in the fast paced TV news production environment of live links, breaking stories and news deadlines. Resourcefulness, innovation and urgency was the name of the game and this is where Stephen developed a passion for doing things better and faster. The demands of news enabled Stephen to work on news gathering projects all over the world.

Moving into technical production and operations management, Stephen was able to deliver business change with a pragmatic & commercial view of TV operations this was epitomised with the start-up of Sky News Australia, at the time a world leading news production facility.

Stephen returned to TEN in the late 90s, taking a leading role in the television transmission digitisation project then underway. He worked on projects as diverse as network planning, the transition to widescreen production and the introduction of interactive television.

In 2003 Stephen moved to TEN’s newly acquired OOH business EYE Corp, where he was responsible for product development and innovating the traditional OOH inventory. The subsequent development and deployment of a digital signage network in Australia and New Zealand fundamentally changed the nature of the sector and the system architecture that was developed in-house became the subject of an EYE innovation patent.

Stephen used his skills and commercial acumen across various areas of the EYE OOH business in airports, retail and university environments, undertaking major long-term contract renewals and extending the portfolio internationally into new audience groups and formats.

Since leaving EYE after the business was divested in late 2012 Stephen has been working on business development projects in digital media. Now in partnership with Gerry through Digital Place Solutions we plan to continue driving digitally based innovation for audience engagement.

Ava Fatah gen. Schieck

The Bartlett, UCL

Digital Publics Symposium

Ava Fatah is an Architect, Educator and Researcher. She is an Associate Professor (Reader) in Media Architecture and Urban Digital Interaction on the MSc Adaptive Architecture and Computation programme at the Bartlett, UCL. Her research work has developed over the last 10 years through her post-graduate studies and the teaching and research positions she held at UCL. Ava joined the Bartlett School of Graduate studies in Oct 2001, as a member of the Space Research Group, which has held a number of EPSRC funded awards, and was noted as the highest performer of the UCL Faculty of the Built Environment in the last RAE.

Ava was the UCL recognised researcher on the research project 'Urban Design and Pervasive Systems funded through the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council's WINES programme and the lead academic of the ‘SCREAM’ project funded by 'UrbanBuzz: Building sustainable Communities' programme. She is the Principle Investigator of the Research in the Wild funded project 'Screens in the Wild’, which aims to explore the potential of networked urban screens for communities and culture. One of her main contributions to the field was published in the Urban Screens Reader; the first book to offer an anthology of extracts from key texts that provides a rich resource and focuses entirely on the topic of urban screens and media facades and has served on the programme committees of more than five conferences or symposia in his field.

Leni Schwendinger

Arup

Keynote speaker

Leni Schwendinger leads the Nighttime Design/Global Lighting Urbanist initiative within Arup’s lighting discipline and is a recognized authority on the many issues and applications of city lighting with more than 20 years of experience creating illuminated environments for public spaces all over the world.

This work is shared through Leni’s public speaking engagements, including worldwide “NightSeeing™, Navigate Your Luminous City” events, most recently in Bogota and Sydney. Unveiling spring 2016, Leni’s light and color concepts will transform 60-foot shade structures in Las Vegas.Large-scale design projects such as Times Square’s renovation, AS Roma Stadium and North Embarcadero Visioning Project illustrate her commitment to nighttime districts.

Professional recognition includes multiple Lumens from the Illuminating Engineering Society, American Society of Landscape Architects, NEA Japan Residency Fellowship and a media/music production at Carnegie Hall. She is currently the Design Trust for Public Space Lighting Design Fellow. Schwendinger has enjoyed extensive coverage in design press and media, including videos produced by Architectural Digest and Dwell magazines.

Susanne Seitinger

Philips

Keynote speaker

Susanne Seitinger, Global Sub-segment Manager for Open Spaces in Professional Systems at Philips Lighting is responsible for leading the strategy around the impact of programmable LED lighting elements to create safe, inviting and responsive urban environments.

Her combined background in architecture, urban planning and human-computer interaction is comprised of research and design projects like the Digital Mile in Zaragoza, Spain and Urban Pixels, wireless LED pixels for ad-hoc media façades. LightBridge, a project in honor of MIT’s 150th anniversary in Cambridge, Massachusetts, used new configurations of low-resolution displays and sensor-activated urban screens to showcase the potential of responsive infrastructures in future urban lighting plans.

She recently published Light for Public Space which provides an extensive overview of recent city lighting design trends: www.philips.com/lightforpublicspace.

Seitinger received a BA from Princeton University as well as a PhD, MS and MCP from MIT. Her PhD dissertation—Liberated Pixels: Alternative Narratives for Lighting Future Cities—explored the aesthetic and interactive potentials for future lighting and display infrastructures.

(Photo credit: Chris Pfaff)

Kean Huat Soon

3D Cities Expert and Principal Surveyor of Singapore 3D National Mapping Project

Smart Cities & Urban Innovation Symposium

Kean Huat Soon is a land surveyor by training from University of Technology Malaysia. He had been geo-informaticist and geographer in Germany and the United States before joining the Land Survey Division of the Singapore Land Authority (SLA). He is now Principal Surveyor at the Division and the technical lead in the Whole-of-Government 3D National Mapping project and the development of the new cadastral system at the Division to support 3D Cadastres and automated cadastral processing. For the past 5 years, he has been extensively involved in the development of 3D Cadastres and 3D Mapping locally and internationally. He won the Best Paper Award for his paper on formalising domain ontology for land administration at the 5th International Workshop on Land Administration Domain Model (LADM). The paper attempts to develop a formal ontology that enables computer systems to integrate land administration information automatically. The 3D National Mapping project, which is led by SLA, received the 2015 Be Inspired Award for Innovation in Government by Bentley Systems. Kean Huat holds a MSc in Geography from the Pennsylvania State University, a MSc in Geoinformatics and Bachelor of Surveying (Land) from University of Technology Malaysia.

Greg Stone

Digital Strategist, Head of Digital Services Australasia, ARUP PTY, Australia

Smart Cities & Urban Innovation Symposium, City Leaders' Summit

Greg Stone is a Principal of Arup, and leads the Digital business of Arup Australasia. At Arup he is engaged with smart city initiatives locally and throughout the region. Greg’s background is in architecture before moving into the technology sector. He has previously held roles as chief technology officer of Microsoft as well as being founder of the ODI “open data institute” in Australia, In his present role, Greg Stone provides design, strategy, insight and operational efficiency for Arups’ clients across the built environments in Australasia. Greg’s digital practice enables clients prepare for, and prosper in, a data-driven future where people meet the built environment. Greg brings expertise and experience across the built environment, human centred practice and global scale technology design and deployment. This enables Arup to provide existing and new digital offerings ranging from digital master planning, data modelling, analysis and machine learning through next generation Identity & Access design and human interaction design.

Tanya Toft

Institute of Arts and Cultural Studies

Connecting Cities panel

Tanya Toft (b. 1984) is a curator, researcher and lecturer on urban media art as a domain of criticality in the media city, and a Ph.D. Candidate at the Institute of Arts and Cultural Studies, Copenhagen University. She is on the International Curatorial Advisory Board of the Open Sky Gallery in Hong Kong, Associate Curator at the Streaming Museum in New York, and Curatorial Advisor for Verve Cultural in São Paulo, where she has co-curated the São Paulo Urban Digital Art Festival in 2013 and 2014 among other exhibitions for the SESI SP Digital Art Gallery. Her curatorial work includes Here All Alone (2015) in Copenhagen, Voyage to the Virtual (2015) at Scandinavia House in New York City, and Nordic Outbreak (2013-2014) presented by Streaming Museum in NYC and the Nordic region. She is co-editor of What Urban Media Art Can Do - Why, When, Where, and How? (spring 2016) and also the editor of Digital Dynamics in Nordic Contemporary Art (forthcoming 2017).

Gernot Tscherteu

Media Architecture Institute Europe

Digital Publics Symposium

Born 1965. Master in political science at University of Vienna. Doctor thesis, supervised by Helga Nowotny and Ulrike Felt, about the impact of digital media on the production and communication of knowledge.

Since 1991 media and interaction designer. Projects for Austrian Academy of Sciences, University of Applied Arts, EDVG, Sysis, Museumsquarter Vienna, ZKM Karlsruhe.

Since 1997 researcher and research-manager for ICT projects: web4groups, parq.at, mediafacade.net, mememapper.com.

Main research focus on: collaborative Media, Web 2.0, interaction design, network visualisations, responsive media, media facades, media architectures, media in urban space.

Current activities:

• mememapper.com – a web service for tracking information diffusion in electronic media. (under development).
• Mediaarchitecture.org – web magazine.
• Co – organizer of Media Architecture Conference 2007 in London.
• Co – organizer of Media Facades Festival 2008 in Berlin.
• Lead partner of mediafacade.net, a research consortium of Austrian companies and research institutions that aims at the development of standardized building integrated media facades.
• Co- founder of planhaus.at, office for architecture and design.
• Co- founder of parq.at, platform for user participation in co-housing projects.
• Developer and project partner of wohnportal-berlin.de, an archive of co-housing projects in Berlin.

Chang Zigang

Architecture school, China Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing

Digital Publics Symposium

Chang Zhigang is a professor and vice dean at the Architecture school, China Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing. Among other things he will reflect on how media architecture may subvert the traditional categories such as architecture and visual art and thus open a new era of visual art based on architectures and cities.

Chang Zhigang teaches and researches lighting design and architecture design. Moreover, he is a member of a vast number of committees and associations, including China Green Building and Energy Saving Committee; editorial committee of China Architecture Education; editorial committee of China Illuminating Engineering Journal; editorial committee of Professional Lighting Design/ Chinese Version; Chinese Artists Association; the council of China Illuminating Engineering Society.