Neil Ackland - Managing Director, Junkee Media

Neil Ackland is the CEO and Founder of Junkee Media, Australia’s leading independent publisher for Millennials, and is a recognised leader in youth marketing and digital media.

Junkee Media is one of Australia's fastest growing and most innovative new media companies. Junkee Media creates highly shareable content across popular online media brands including Junkee (Mumbrella Media Brand of the Year 2014), inthemix, FasterLouder, Mess+Noise, AWOL (Mumbrella Content Marketing Strategy Of The Year 2015) and The Cusp. Together, these titles reach over 5.5 million people each week.

Sebastien Eckersley-Maslin - CEO, BlueChilli

3 time 30-under-30 winner, top UNSW post graduate researcher, Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year state finalist and former Navy weapons engineer Sebastien Eckersley-Maslin is the founder and CEO of Venture Technology BlueChilli.  BlueChilli builds and invests in online companies, with a goal of building 100 startups by 2016, a model pioneered by Sebastien called Venture Technology. BlueChilli gives startups all the services of a digital agency, training and support through their Sydney and Melbourne incubators and funding support through their venture fund, all of which contributed to being named BRW’s 3rd most innovative company of 2012.

With a mandate to empower entrepreneurs, the profitable BlueChilli company has already invested in 33 start-up businesses, providing technology solutions and support to entrepreneurs who have identified a commercial need but don’t know how to realise it technically.

Charlie Leahy - Creative Director, Boom Natives

Creative Director of Boom Natives, Charlie Leahy, has deep expertise in content creation having spent the past two decades working in the TV and Digital Media industries. 

Leahy has been a pioneer of social and branded content in Australia and the UK markets and has held executive positions at Zodiak Media, Endemol, British Sky Broadcasting and Ensemble Branded Entertainment - part of the Media brands Group. 

Some of his notable past credits include Unlimited - the first ever entertainment channel on Facebook; The Gap Year - the first ever global online reality series - for Bebo; Kirill – the Webby award winning digital drama for MSN; the Broadcast award winning digital support for BBC's Being Human and various brand-backed TV properties including Renault.tv – Renault's IPTV channel.

Boom Natives is the content creation arm of Boom Corp – APAC’s first and largest influencer network. Boom represents over 1000 social influencers across all major social platforms. Boom’s mantra is to work closely with the influencers in its network in order to grow their audiences through the creation of effective and engaging social content strategies – turning their hobby into a day job. Since launching Boom

Natives last September, Leahy and his team have worked on social content projects with a number of brands such as Microsoft Surface, Xbox, Daikin, KFC, REA and Optus.

Matt Barrie - Chief Executive, Freelancer.com

Lisa Messenger - Editor-in-Chief of Renegade Collective magazine

Lisa Messenger is the vibrant, game-changing Creative Director of The Messenger Group and Editor in Chief of The Collective magazine – an entrepreneurial business magazine distributed into 22 countries with a mandate to disrupt, challenge and inspire. In addition, she has worked globally in events, sponsorship, marketing, PR and publishing.

Lisa has authored and co-authored almost 20 books and The Messenger Group has custom published more than 400 books for companies and individuals. Lisa has been a regular commentator on business, entrepreneurialism and property and has sat on a number of boards including the Australian Businesswomen’s Network and Publishers Australia.