Lawrence Crumpton - Developer Platform Evangelist, Microsoft

Lawrence Robert Crumpton, Technology Evangelist - Developer eXperience (DX), Microsoft Australia

As Microsoft Australia’s Academic Developer Evangelist, Lawrence works with universities, students, and educational departments to leverage the transformational opportunities presented by emerging technologies and ubiquitous computing with a particular emphasis on how it is changing the way people work, play & interact.

This year 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.

Gillian Ferrabee - Director, Creative Lab at Cirque du Soleil Media (Canada)

Gillian Ferrabee wrote and directed her first play at the age of 10 –an updated version of Snow White. She chose to play Dopey, and in her version Snow White went into the audience at the end of the play to choose her prince, or princess (both options were equally encouraged). 

She has been fascinated with storytelling, and with the connection between creativity and our bodies for as long as she can remember. Her first professional career was as a contemporary dancer. Later she became an actor for TV and film. And in 2004 she joined Cirque du Soleil’s casting team. As an artistic casting advisor, she travelled the world finding extraordinary talent, and scouting new trends in performance and design. She was on the team that cast the Beatles LOVE show, as well as others in the company’s repertoire. In 2012 she was named Director of the Creative Lab at the new company, Cirque Du Soleil Media. She now leads a team in developing projects destined for the International TV, film and new media markets, including projects with partners such as Google Chrome, Fox studios and most recently the VR Occulus project ‘Inside The Box: Kurios’ for Samsung.  

Tim Ruse - Managing Director, Zero Latency

As a founder of Zero Latency Tim has been bending minds with Virtual Reality since 2013. With over 5000 people experiencing Zero Latency's Free Roam VR since it's inception, Tim has seen first hand the power and potential of VR to invoke emotion and transport people beyond rational thought.

Caroline Morgan - Head of Insight and Innovation, Samsung

Roger Lawrence - Chief Technologist for Innovation, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (Asia-Pacific and Japan)

Roger Lawrence is Chief Technologist for Innovation in HP Enterprise Services, Asia-Pacific & Japan, responsible for facilitating innovation for enterprise clients across the region. He also works with senior client executives to understand industry trends and develop strategic solutions.

Roger has spent some 28 years in Information Technology and benefits from experience such as Mainframe Programming in the late 80’s; Infrastructure Support and Consulting in the 90’s; Architecture and Strategy Consulting in the earlier part of his decade; Consulting Practice Management & Group Management of Technologists, Technology Evangelism, Start-up experience and Marketing Strategy.

Roger was educated in South Africa, England, and Australia, and holds a Master Degree in Systems & Networking. He has worked with multi-national organizations across 5 continents, and currently resides in Sydney, Australia.

Roger is currently the chair of the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) Innovation Special Interest Group (SIG), member of the Executive Council on the National IoT Think Tank, chair of the University of Sydney IT Advisory Council, member of Swinburne University IT Advisory Council and he regularly presents at industry forums.