21 May, 2022 | Pearcey Conversations

Predictions for 2022 and Beyond

Pearcey Conversations online seminar 24 November 2021, held just after the Pearcey National Awards presentation, discussed predictions for the ICT industry for 2022. It also covered more general observations about how ICT brings challenges and opportunities into so many aspects of our society, politics, business, economics and our future.

This panel session took a broad look at the way technology is involved our evolving world. Change is occurring on many fronts as the digital and physical worlds continue to merge, which has been accelerated by the pandemic. On the positive side there are inspiring advancements in green agriculture, green energy, health, smart cities, machine learning and the way technology can facilitate distributed work. On the negative side, there is they way technology can magnify social divides and amplify extremism. More generally, there are difficult policy decisions about regulation, universal access to technology and education, and ongoing challenges with growing entrepreneurs, research, investment, education, and the base of skills and experience for Australia to be at forefront in key areas. Many other topics were covered in this wide-ranging and thought-provoking discussion.

Speakers:

• Kerri Lee Sinclair - Investor and Non–Executive Board Member
• Prof Toby Walsh - Laureate Fellow and Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence, UNSW
• Maria MacNamara - CEO of Advance.org and Advisory Board Member
• Wayne Fitzsimmons OAM - Chair, The Pearcey Foundation

Moderated by Simon Foster – Pearcey Foundation National Committee and Treasurer

Opening and closing comments by Kelly Hutchinson - Deputy Chair, Pearcey Foundation

Speakers:

Wayne Fitzsimmons OAM is an experienced executive who has worked extensively in the US, UK, as well as Australia. He is a director of several small privately owned start-up and hi-tech companies in Australia including iPro, Acendre, and Mooroolbark Group. He is Chairman of the Pearcey Foundation (www.pearcey.org.au) which promotes the ICT sector in Australia to Australia. Wayne holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Communications Engineering from the University of Queensland.

Maria MacNamara has specialist expertise in policy, politics, professional services and digital transformation and has spent over 25 years working in the professional services sector.

In her role as CEO of Advance.org, Australia’s diaspora organisation, Maria undertook a successful whole of organisation transformation.

She has been an adviser to the Hon. Arthur Sinodinos AO, Australia’s current Ambassador to the United States while he was Senator for NSW, head of Strategy and Engagement at the Digital Transformation Agency within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and Head of Strategy and Policy at WIRO in the NSW Government’s Department of Customer Services.

Maria sits on the board of the Spark Festival, the Advisory Council for the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police and the strategy board for the ARC Training Centre for Information Resilience (CIRES). She has been a co-founder of three startups and exited two. She is also a member of the Advisory Board of startups Idea Spies and Internet 2.0.

As the inaugural Convenor of the Australian Innovation Council, Maria connects leaders of the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem with each other, with government, business and the not-for-profit sector domestically and globally.

Maria was recognised in the 2018 International Women’s Day Showcase, was a nominee in the 2018 Women of Influence Awards and was the winner of the Startcon Australasian Community Most Valuable Person Award in 2018.

Kerri Lee Sinclair has spent over 20 years working across the high-growth ecosystem, from co-founding her own start-up (sold to Microsoft in 2007), through to working in some of Australia’s leading tech businesses, including Looksmart, Intelematics and Aconex. For the last 5 years she has deployed over $100m of venture capital for several family offices and sits on the Boards of several high-growth companies, including Versent, Agridigital and Spee3d.

An alumnae of the SBE Australia by Springboard Enterprises Program in 2000, she has been the Chair of the women-focused entrepreneurs network since 2018 and has been involved since the early days of the program in Australia. She is engaged with over 250 female entrepreneurs across the country helping them with the investment and acquisition opportunities they are reviewing.

She is also on the Investment Committee of the Alice Anderson Angel Sidecar Fund, and the Advisory Board of Invest Vic.

Toby Walsh is Laureate Fellow and Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales, research group leader at Data61, adjunct professor at QUT, external Professor of the Department of Information Science at Uppsala University, an honorary fellow of the School of Informatics at Edinburgh University and an Associate Member of the Australian Human Rights Institute at UNSW.

He was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, and of AI Communications. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of the ACM, Journal of Automated Reasoning and the Constraints journal. He has been elected a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, and the European Coordinating Committee for AI in recognition of his research in artificial intelligence and service to the community. He has won the NSW Premier’s Prize for Excellence in Engineering and ICT, the Humboldt Award, the Research Excellence Award of the Association for Constraint Programming and the .IJCAI Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award. He has been Secretary of the Association for Constraint Programming (ACP) and is Editor of CP News, the newsletter of the ACP. He is one of the Editors of the Handbook for Constraint Programming, and the Handbook for Satisfiability.

He has been Program and Conference Chair of the main conferences in Constraint Programming, Automated Reasoning and Artificial Intelligence.