Just back from winning the Empire State Building run, Melissa Moon will give a talk on her racing adventures in NZ and round the world and is sure to motivate even the most sedentary members of the audience!
Mountain running has provided Melissa with a wealth of knowledge and understanding about the power of the mind and the ability to endure. It has also given her the opportunity to experience diverse countries and cultures. Most importantly Melissa says, it has provided her with structure, direction, focus, the excitement of setting goals and the challenge of working hard to achieve them.
When she's not racing, Melissa is a community worker at the Compassion Centre's Soup Kitchen. After 8 years as a volunteer Melissa now works alongside guests assisting them in all aspects of their lives. Respect, non judgement and compassion being at the heart of her role. http://www.melissamoon.co.nz/
Lance started traveling by motorcycle in Europe 1996 - and did pretty much everything wrong.
Since that European tour he has motorcycled from Europe to Singapore, through North and South America, and has had more journeys in Europe, Southern Africa, Australia and New Zealand. He still gets it wrong - but insists that getting it wrong is the key to good adventures.
One of the best ways to engage any audience is to give them something to play. From multi-million dollar action games for dedicated hardware to bedroom coded Flash games, there is a world of digital play out there. So how can you apply it to your application or service's design?
James Everett - Bio http://www.brainofjames.com/ James has been a game designer for over 8 years, working in the industry hubs of Vancouver and Montreal in Canada before being offered a position at Wellington based Sidhe (http://www.sidhe.co.nz/). Recently James was proud to assist the wonderful Webstock folk with the ONYAs, interviewing the finalists so their own words could describe their achievements during the awards ceremony.
In 1986 Mike cycled across America from the West to East coast. It changed his life.
Mike grew up in Johnsonville and fell in love with Springsteen, Dylan, Flying Nun and punk whilst at university in the early 80s. He's worked as a storeman in an ice-cream freezer, as a painter and decorator, as CEO of a minor sports organisation and as a web developer.
Wellington has done some great things for Haiti over the last two weeks, but you just don't know about it! In 5 minutes learn about how a world-wide community of open source software developers are connecting Haitian SMS messages with responding agencies.
Tim McNamara is part of the Sahana Disaster Management System, which was started in the wake of the Boxing Day Tsunami. He also runs a technology company for children (http://kidsplusplus.com/) & a web development firm (http://digitalthicket.com/).
Many of us have lots of ideas (hopefully) but we somehow seem to struggle when we actually convert all those ideas into reality. In his Ignite Wellington talk, Lenz will describe a hand full of small hacks that help you to realise the ideas you have. These are hacks that are easy to add to your day-to-day lifehacks tool chain and help not only hackers, but also non-technical people too.
Lenz Gschwendtner:
Lenz lives in New Zealand since leaving the hectic and unhealthy environment of european internet startups. He worked for large companies as well as small ventures mainly in a technical management role.
In New Zealand he enjoys the Kiwi way of live, loves kayaking and sailing and the "no worries" attitude.
He runs a small startup called iWantMyName and contributes to various opensource projects. He is also a regular speaker at the perl and erlang usergroups in Wellington.
After completing her Fine Arts Degree in 2002 at the University of Canterbury, Julia worked as Gallery Co-ordinator at the High Street Project, an independent art space for emerging artists in Christchurch.
Julia then spent a year living and working in Kyoto, Japan, before moving to Wellington to work at Bartley Nees Gallery. In 2006 she took up the position of Marketing Co-ordinator for City Gallery Wellington. In her time there, Julia has been an integral part of the Gallery’s rebranding and reopening activity, as well as successfully launching City Gallery Wellington into the online space.
In 2009, Julia was selected to be a Venue Attendant for the New Zealand Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, managing the day-to-day flow of visitors and blogging extensively about the experience on Creative New Zealand’s ‘NZ at Venice’ website.
Julia has worked as an exhibition designer and also is a practicing artist, creating performance works with collaborative Fitts & Holderness.
In her five minutes of fame on the Ignite stage, Juila will bring to life her experiences at the Venice Biennale.
Dave engineers businesses at WebFund, Wellington's specialist incubator for online start-ups. He's also a lexicographer, musician, angel investor, cantor, company director, husband/father, marriage celebrant, mentor, and dyed-in-the-wool geek.
In his five minutes of fame on the Ignite stage, Dave will talk about the music industry.
The music industry is in chaos – everyone but the most famous acts struggle to earn a living, the dominant labels still control mainstream production and distribution, and it's so easy to publish yourself that everyone does – resulting in potentially great music being drowned in a sea of rubbish. And yet we are witnessing a period of creative productivity unparalleled in history. Who will survive, and more importantly, how?
David has over 12 years of professional experience in Internet application development, adopting “there must be a better way” as some sort of professional mantra. Since 2005 he has been Chief Technologist at Wellington’s Run The Red.
His mobile teeth were cut on Telecom’s enormously successful “Push The Button” campaign, which culminated in the sinking of the F69, a discarded naval frigate, off Wellington’s south coast.
Since then David has had key roles in some of the most successful mobile marketing campaigns on both sides of the Tasman, picking up a couple of awards (including a Webby) and being a finalist for TUANZ ICT Innovator of the Year for 2009. He is also New Zealand’s first dotMobi-certified mobile Internet developer, and has created a publishing system to ensure the best-possible web surfing experience for handsets regardless of capabilities. He holds a patent for authorising bill payments using text messages.
Previous to working at Run The Red, David was a senior consultant for a major international consultancy. This largely involved sitting at a desk next to the loudest photocopier you’ve ever heard.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is coming up fast. It's being negotiated in secret by a boy's club of developed nations and could have a huge impact on the lives of everyone, online and off. Because we don't know what's in it, it's hard to be specific, but we can talk about the process being used to negotiate it, which is dishonest and seeks to block the general public from having input.
In April, the next ACTA round is being held in New Zealand. We need to be ready for it.
About Mark Harris
Mark Harris is an independent consultant, specialising in information technology and management, particularly around the Internet.
His blog about ACTA (and copyright) is On the Gripping Hand and he's spoken about ACTA on RadioNZ to Kim Hill and Kathryn Ryan. He's also a member of the http://acta.net.nz/ group, protesting NZ's participation in the treaty, and of the Creative freedom Foundation and the NZ Open Source Society.
In a previous life, while a public servant and IT specialist at NZPO, PostBank, IRD, MoRST and the State Services Commission's e-Government Unit, he led the GOVIS forum for 3 years, and was part of a number of cross-agency projects around Y2K, e-government and open standards. While at SSC, Mark developed and managed the Government Web Guidelines (now Standards) through to Cabinet approval, managed the govt.nz second level domain space and managed the New Zealand Government Online website.
During the 1990's, he was a Councillor of the Internet Society of New Zealand (now InternetNZ) as it took on the task of managing the .nz top level domain, served 5 years and came back in the 00's for a further two. Last year, he fronted the team that put together the Open Government BarCamp and hackfest.
In his spare time (!), he's been a theatre actor/director/writer/technician since 1979 (sometimes for money!) and has also worked in television and films (IT pays better).
Ignite Wellington is on Tuesday, 2 March 2010 - register to be inspired, amused, educated and amazed.
Melissa Clark-Reynolds is founder of Minimonos.com, a virtual world for children based on values of sustainability, generosity and fun.
She is a serial entrepreneur with a MCRP (in Environmental Health) and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at CreativeHQ, Wellington's business incubator. Melissa lives in Wellington with her husband Hamish and 9-year-old daughter Grace.
Melissa trained with Al Gore in 2007 to present his slideshow, as seen in An Inconvenient Truth, the movie. She has presented the slideshow more than 30 times - anywhere from meetings with farmers in school halls, to training children to present, to recreation leaders, to the World Antarctic Festival.
Melissa Clark-Reynolds is widely recognised as an inspirational role model and entrepreneur.
Originally from Dannevirke, Wellington comic, Sarah Harpur, began her career in stand up in 2008. Tackling the tough subjects, like cannibalism and cat abortion, she quickly made her mark on the local comedy scene. She is both the National and Wellington 2009 RAW comedy quest winner and the ‘yellow’ half of “The Comediettes”. Sarah is also a budding rock god who will delight meat eaters and vegans alike with her musical numbers.
Ignite Wellington is on Tuesday, 2 March 2010 - register at ignitewellington.co.nz to be inspired, amused, educated and amazed.
From launching a brand new product in a market he helped create in 2007, to appearing on the cover of Inc Magazine in 2009 (audience reach 1.2 million), founding and running Ponoko has been a roller-coaster ride for CEO Dave ten Have over the past three years.
In his five minutes of fame on the Ignite stage, Dave will talk about how there's "Nothing to fear, but fear".
Our first-ever Ignite Wellington event is right in the middle of Global Ignite Week, at 6:30pm on Tuesday 2 March 2010 at Paramount Theatre.
Come along to this free event to be inspired, amused, educated and amazed by an array of Wellington speakers -- and have fun at the Ignite Contest where you can let your creative juices flow. It's a big venue, but we might run out of tickets. First in, best dressed!
Have you ever been to a 60 minute talk and lamented that there was only five minutes of content? Imagine if you could hear only that five minutes... that's Ignite!
Come along to this free event to be inspired, amused, educated and amazed by an array of Wellington speakers.
The evening will start with an Ignite Contest, where you can team up and make something, and after the contest a series of Ignite talks. The "contest" is to help you unleash your inner creativity and have some fun! You could be building bridges out of popsicle sticks, or balancing eggs on top of each other (that'll get messy!) - what you get to make will be revealed on the night but it promises to be fun!
Ignite talks are jam-packed with inspiration and information. Speakers are given just 5 minutes and have to display 20 slides for 15 seconds each. Every 15 seconds the slide will advance, whether they are ready or not.
If you'd like to see some examples of Ignite videos from around the world, check out the O'Reilly Ignite site.
If you would like to be a speaker then please do contact us.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you're a sponsor hoping to help Ignite Wellington be super-successful, contact us at ignite@ignitewellington.co.nz or call Kirk on 021 466025. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We celebrate diversity, and would love to see speakers and topics from all walks of life and all areas of industry. Topics can be serious or fun, quirky or mainstream. All we ask is that your presentation not be a sales pitch for your business activities -- there are other venues for that.
If you'd like to be considered as a speaker, please email us at speakers@ignitewellington.co.nz with your topic idea(s), name and any other information about yourself that will help our panel decide. We'll contact you straight away, and then let you know about 3 weeks before the next event if you're able to speak.
Thanks for your interest!
Ignite Wellington is a non-profit event run by volunteers. For more information on the ignite format, you might want to check out What's so special about Ignite.
Ignite Wellington is a 100% volunteer-organised event & would not be possible without help from our sponsors. Please contact us if you could help with sponsorship.
Just back from winning the Empire State Building run, Melissa Moon will give a talk on her racing adventures in NZ and round the world and is sure to motivate even the most sedentary members of the audience!
