Ross Harley - Emeritus Professor, UNSW, Chair, Sydney Culture Network & Chair, Create NSW, Multi-arts & Festivals Board

Ross Rudesch Harley is an artist, writer, and educator in the field of new media and popular culture. His work crosses the bounds of cinema, music, art, design, architecture and media art practice.His experimental work and found-footage videos and installations have been exhibited in many festivals, galleries and exhibitions including Australian Perspecta, Montbeliard Video Festival, Roslyn9 Oxley Gallery, Ars Electronica and New York MoMA’s Video Viewpoints series.In 1986 he curated the seminal Know Your Product exhibition on local post-punk culture for the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane. From 1986-91 he was managing editor then editor of the controversial art theory journal Art + Text, which was at the forefront of the postmodern debate, and had considerable impact upon the contemporary art scene in Australia.He was the director of the Third International Symposium on Electronic Art, TISEA in 1992. A couple of years later, together with Peter Callas and Alessio Cavallaro, he produced and toured An Eccentric Orbit: Electronic Media Art in Australia for audiences in the US and Europe.He has written regular columns for magazines and newspapers (like Rolling Stone, Cinema Papers, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian), and edited a number of anthologies on electronic media art practice and theory.Since 1996 he has been responsible for the Cardoso Flea Circus audio/video with Colombian-born artist Maria Fernanda Cardoso. Their video-tent installation was recently acquired by the Tate in London as part of its permanent collection.Between 2000 and 2005 he collaborated (with Gillian Fuller) on the Aviopolis multimedia project (book, website, CD-ROM, DVD) about airports. The book was published by Black Dog Publications, London, 2004.Specialties: Digital video production; new media art; research into media and network cultures; research in popular music, design, art, old + new media.

Allegra Burnette - Principal Analyst, Forrester Research

Allegra Burnette is a Principal Analyst on the Customer Experience team, focusing on design and technology. Prior to joining Forrester in May 2014, Allegra was the Creative Director of Digital Media at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, where she oversaw design and production for MoMA’s interpretive digital projects, including the main website, MoMA.org, related education, exhibition, and mobile sites, as well as kiosks, mobile apps, and other digital displays. Prior to working at MoMA, Allegra created and ran a media department at the renowned museum exhibition design firm Ralph Appelbaum Associates.

Allegra has spoken internationally at conferences, museums, and universities, and has written widely on museums, design and technology, including articles for the books The Digital Museum: A Think Guide and Mobile Apps for Museums. In addition, Allegra has taught in the online graduate program at Johns Hopkins University and served as president of the board of the Museum Computer Network (MCN).  Awards received include the Webbys, Communication Arts Interactive, How Interactive Design, FWA (Favorite Website Awards), and the One Club. She has been named one of 25 Mobile Women to Watch in 2014 by Mobile Marketer and listed in “50 Influential Art Figures to Follow on Twitter” by Complex Magazine.

Allegra has a bachelor’s degree in art history from Dartmouth College and an MFA in museum exhibition planning and design from the University of the Arts.

Antony Funnell - Presenter, The Future Tense, ABC

Antony is a Walkley award-winning journalist and broadcaster. He is also the author of the newly-released book The Future and Related Nonsense (published by Harper Collins). Antony has been the presenter of Future Tense since 2009; prior to that he fronted Media Report. He also presents the monthly education podcast EdPod for RN.

Over the past two decades he has worked for many of the country's leading news and current affairs programs, including AM, PM, the7.30 Report, Background Briefing and Radio National Breakfast. In the late 1990s he was the senior producer for Australia Television News - ABC TV's nightly satellite news service into the Asia Pacific region.

A wanderer at heart, Antony has travelled and reported for the ABC from a diverse range of places—from the Russian border in Outer Mongolia to the isolated community of Ali Curung in the Northern Territory.

He won his Walkley in 2006 for a documentary entitled The Financial Abuse of the Elderly. The Walkleys are Australia’s premier journalism awards. He was also a finalist in 2003. In that same year he won the United Nations’ Media Peace Prize (Best Radio) for a half-hour program he produced on Aboriginal customary law. He won the same UN award in 2007 for his coverage of issues relating to the then political crisis in Zimbabwe. Other awards include the New York Festival's Silver World Medal, a NSW Bar Association Media Award for coverage of legal issues and a Worldfest Flagstaff International Film Festival Award (USA) for Television production.

For three years in the 1990s he worked for the international humanitarian aid agency CARE. His last role with that organisation was as the director of external relations for the organisation’s Australian branch.

Amber Naismith - Producer, Animal Logic, Associate Producer, The LEGO Movie

Amber Naismith has 14 years production experience in the visual effects and animation industry.  Currently a producer at Animal Logic, one of the world's most highly respected digital production companies, her film credits include the recently released box office success The LEGO® Movie (2014), Academy Award winning films Happy Feet and Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring as well as Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole.

Animal Logic develops and produces award-winning design, animation and visual effects for the film and television industries and has recently completed production on Baz Luhrmann’s, The Great Gatsby (2013), BBC’s, Walking With Dinosaurs: The Movie (2013) and Warner Bros., The LEGO® Movie (2014).  It’s film credits include 300, Happy Feet, Moulin Rouge!, Legend of the Guardians: The Owl’s of Ga’Hoole, Matrix, House of Flying Daggers, Iron Man 3 and Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

Amber holds a Bachelor of Arts and Fine Arts (Melbourne University) and a Master of Arts Administration from UNSW (COFA), and has contributed to respected art journals such as Art Monthly, as well as being Editor in Chief of the COFA annual publication, Artwrite. Amber is a committed advocate of the power for quality arts experiences to facilitate the crucial exchange of ideas, the creation of concepts and the engagement of dialogue and socio-political change.

Lauren Nemroff - Program Manager, Google Cultural Institute