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  Speakers and Session Chairs

Graeme Allen

Graeme Allen is a Consulting Engineer with Cisco Systems based in Melbourne Australia. His key technology area focus is the convergence of voice and video and data on IP, leveraging over fourteen years industry experience in voice and data communications.

In the last four years at Cisco Systems, Graeme has had hands-on involvement with numerous early deployments of Voice over IP technology, and now works as a convergence specialist in a strategic research role responsible for the introduction of new technologies in the Australian and New Zealand markets.

David Arnold

David studied computer science at the Queensland University of Technology, and then worked in Architecture group of Metway Bank, contributing to the design and development of a multi-tier, multi-technology infrastructure deployed over multiple data centres and hundreds of branch offices.

After further study at the University of Queensland, he joined the CRC for Distributed Systems Technology (DSTC) in 1993 and works at the CRC for Enterprise Distributed Systems Technology (its successor) as a senior research scientist in the area of distributed systems infrastructure.

Gunela Astbrink

Gunela Astbrink is Policy Advisor with TEDICORE (Telecommunications and Disability Consumer Representation) and an adjunct Senior Research Fellow at Griffith University. She is project leader on disability within the User Environment program of the Smart Internet Technology Cooperative Research Centre. Gunela has worked in Australia and internationally to ensure that people with disabilities have equity in access to the Internet and telecommunications in general.

Gunela worked with the Telematics and Disability Centre at Swedish Telecom in the early '90s, which gave her an international focus on both R&D and service delivery. She was also Chair of the Information Transfer Working Group of COST 219, a European Commission Action Project on telecommunications and disability and is currently the Australian member of COST 219bis. Gunela is also Honorary Secretary of the Board of ISOC-AU.

John Barlow

John Barlow is in charge of IPv6, multicast, QoS and MPLS for the "GrangeNet" network. GrangeNet is a government-funded research and education network providing multiple Gbps of connectivity between Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne. The network is in its initial stages with just a few universities connected and some limited international connectivity.

Prior to working for GrangeNet, John worked for AARNet (the Australian and Academic Research Network), providing network connectivity to the University sector and CSIRO, and supporting the voice over IP service over AARNet; and has contracted to CSIRO looking after their corporate network; contracted to a number of Government departments to administer firewalls; and spent quite a bit of time working at the Australian National University as a system administrator.

Len Bytheway

Australian Communication Exchange's CEO, Len Bytheway, is responsible for overseeing the smooth operation of the functions, services and activities of all divisions of ACE. Len has had a long term commitment to delivering relay services in Australia, from his voluntary involvement with the establishment of the Deaflink relay service in Queensland to becoming the first CEO when ACE was formed in 1995.

Len has a diverse background, however in many ways his career moves and experiences have a logical culmination in his work at ACE. At the age of 15 Len joined the Royal Australian Navy as an apprentice. After 6 months of an electrical apprenticeship he was selected for Officer training, embarking on an Electrical Engineering Degree through the University of NSW and the Royal Australian Naval College. After four years he left the navy to become a secondary science teacher, converting his engineering studies towards a physics and chemistry teaching major.

After three years of science teaching Len undertook a graduate program in special education to become a teacher of the deaf. Having taught deaf students for five years Len took up a position as a state-wide consultant in special education technology for the Queensland Department of Education. Here Len developed an interest in computers, telecommunications and media. He also captioned video news programs for deaf students across Queensland.

Len moved to the Information Technology and Telecommunications industry in late 1989, working in the high-end corporate and government sectors. While Len's interest and involvement in Relay Services and telecommunications for the deaf dates back to 1985, it wasn't until 1995 that he converted his volunteer involvement into full time employment, taking up his current position as CEO of ACE. Len is passionate about his BMW motorcycle, is persistently renovating an old Queenslander home and enjoying grandfatherhood.

Dr Roger Clarke

Roger Clarke is a consultant with particular expertise in electronic business, information infrastructure, and dataveillance and privacy. His work encompasses corporate strategy, government policy and public advocacy.

He has spent over 30 years in the I.T. industry, in Sydney, London, Zürich and Canberra, as professional, manager, academic, consultant and company Director and Chair. He holds degrees in Information Systems (MIS) from U.N.S.W., and a doctorate from the A.N.U.

He has published scores of papers, all since 1995 at http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/, a site that attracts over 2 million hits per annum. His works on Internet privacy are indexed at http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/DV/AnnBibleP.html. The site also provides the world's most authoritative pages on 'Waltzing Matilda'.

Peter Darling

Peter Darling is the Principal of Pondarosa Communications Pty Ltd, an Australian industry consulting company. Prior to the establishment of Pondarosa, Peter had a long career with Telecom/Telstra as a network planner, finishing as Telstra's General Manager, Industry Regulation. He was an active participant in the national planning of new radiocommunication developments such as GSM, CDMA and 3G mobile, and in the planning of Australia's new numbering plan. He has been active in international standardisation for over twenty years.

Peter has had a long association with the industry body, the Australian Communications Industry Forum. He lead the industry group that established ACIF, and served as the Chair of its Network Reference Panel from 1997 to September 2002. He is currently working for ACIF in two areas; international standards and leading ACIF's Next Generation Network Project. Peter is also working with the Network Insight Group at RMIT University, where he is an Adjunct Professor.

Tony Hill

Mr Tony Hill became honorary President of the Internet Society of Australia in December 2001 having previously been the Society's first Executive Director during 2000 and 2001. ISOC-AU is the Australian Chapter of the worldwide Internet Society, which is the umbrella organisation for Internet technical standards and architecture. Over these two years, ISOC-AU grew in line with the popularity of the Internet to represent more than 40,000 Australian Internet users through its organisational and individual members. Now ISOC-AU is a respected voice in policy development and public debate providing sound technical understanding of the Internet from its professional membership with a broad users perspective. Tony has been an enthusiastic user since 1994 when he established the first Internet connection into the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Tony has established his own consulting business, Capital Hill Consulting Pty Ltd, that provides high-level advice on large-scale research funding, strategic research management and challenging collaboration issues. He was formerly Manager of the Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) Program in the Department of Industry, Science and Resources. He has been involved in strategic research management since 1991. His 20-year career in the Australian Public Service has spanned seven Commonwealth agencies, including Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and working for Ministers on both sides of politics.

His academic study includes economics and geography at the undergraduate level, and a Masters of Environmental Studies. In 1994, he completed a Graduate Certificate in Public Sector Management.

Ross Kelso

Ross Kelso has had an extensive career in the Australian telecommunications industry spanning research, engineering, business planning, strategy and regulatory aspects. He has also served as a staff officer in the Australian Army. In his last role with Telstra, Ross was responsible for the national technical and regulatory aspects of the pay television product now delivered as Foxtel. He joined the Media & Telecommunications Policy Group at RMIT University in 1996, followed by the Centre for International Research on Communication and Information Technologies (CIRCIT at RMIT University) in 1997.

Until July 2002, Ross was a Senior Research Fellow at RMIT. He is now working with the secretariat of the Broadband Advisory Group in the National Office for the Information Economy. His qualifications include a Master of Engineering Science from the University of Queensland and a Graduate Diploma in Media, Communications and Information Technology Law from the University of Melbourne.

Dr Kate Lance

Kate Lance studied science at London University and astronomy at Mount Stromlo in Canberra. In 1988 she moved into the fledgling Internet world as a Unix system administrator at the CSIRO Division of Radiophysics and at the University of Newcastle. She worked from 1996 to 2000 as System Manager and Director of Internet Services at the ISP Connect.

In 1996 she helped set up ISOC-AU and was on the board for five years, two of them as President, and since the start of 2002, has been Executive Director of the Society. She also works as a Unix system consultant for Cybersource, maintains the ISOC-AU website, and writes about the boats and history of the pearling industry.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr

Cheryl Langdon-Orr left post-grad research in Physiology to operate the business Hovtek Pty Limited, supplying turn-key laboratories and training for laboratory staff. She worked in problem-solving projects for clients that included pathology companies, agri-business and the Australian Military Medical Corps. Hovtek holds several international patents, registered designs and trademarks in a portfolio of parallel interests, all of which now rely in some way on the Internet.

Cheryl is a telecommuter and frequent user of the Internet for work and recreation. She is a Teaching Associate at the Asia Pacific Research Institute of Macquarie University and a Director of a not-for-profit company working for global trade and SME growth under the auspices of UNCTAD. She was on the Name Policy Advisory Panel for auDA and is also a Director on the board of ISOC-AU.

Jon Mason

Jon is currently Acting Director, IMS Australia and an Executive Consultant for education.au limited. He has an advocacy role in developing interoperability standards relevant to Internet-enabled education and training in Australia. Through education.au limited his focus is on supporting collaborative initiatives and building knowledge networks aimed at achieving mutual benefit.

Jon is a member of the IEEE LTSC; Head of the Australian delegation on ISO/IEC JTC1 SC36, IT in Learning, Education and Training; Chair, Standards Australia IT-19-1; Member, Standards Australia Knowledge Management Reference Group; Member, AICTEC Standards sub-Committee; co-lead, IMS Global Learning Consortium, Digital Repositories Interoperability Working Group; and, member of the MOBIlearn Advisory Group. He also served as co-Chair, the Dublin Core Metadata Education Working Group from 1999-2002.

Leni Mayo

Leni Mayo has been working in the IT industry since the mid-1980s, mainly as a freelance software engineer. Between 1991 and 1996 he worked in the San Francisco Bay Area, eventually specialising in distributed software systems based on CORBA and C++. After returning to Melbourne he co-founded two businesses. The most recent, ZEO, was acquired in 1999 by what is now SMS Management and Technology.

He holds a BSc (Hons) from the University of Melbourne majoring in Computer Science (1985) and has worked as a member of staff in the Computer Science department. Leni has been a director of ISOC-AU, has a strong interest in Iyengar yoga and writes open source software to help computers boot faster, see serel - fast boot software.

Dr Andrew Myles

Andrew Myles is currently Manager of Protocols in Cisco Systems' Wireless Network Business Unit (WNBU), with particular expertise in wireless MAC protocols, and is the editor of IEEE 802.11h. Previously, he has undertaken research in networking at HP Labs in the UK and at Macquarie University, worked as a management consultant for Arthur D Little and PA Consulting and worked as a development engineering manager at Radiata (before it was puchased by Cisco Systems in early 2001). Dr Myles has a BSc and BE (Elec) from the University of Sydney and a PhD from Macquarie University.

Craig Ng

Craig Ng is a partner at Maddocks, Lawyers. Maddocks is a leading Australian law firm with over 100 lawyers, located in both Melbourne and Sydney. Craig leads the firm's Intellectual Property and Technology team of lawyers. Craig works primarily with dot.com companies, and businesses engaging in e-commerce. He assists such companies in all facets of their operations including effective tax structuring, sourcing of venture capital and negotiation with venture capitalists. Craig also works with these companies protecting their most valuable asset - intellectual property - including documenting their licensing and other exploitation arrangements.

Craig has a keen interest in Internet policies and issues, and played a key part in the organisation of the March 2001 ICANN meetings in Melbourne. Craig acts for .au Domain Administration (auDA), and over the past 12 months, he has worked with auDA in the successful implementation of competition, and the introduction of new naming and dispute resolution policies, in the Australian domain name industry.

Dr Nigel Ward

Nigel Ward is the Interoperability Analyst at The Le@rning Federation - an initiative of State and Federal governments of Australia and New Zealand producing online interactive curriculum content for Australian and New Zealand schools. In this role he profiles formal education interoperability standards for use by the Initiative. He also liases with standards bodies regarding Australian and New Zealand education interoperability requirements.

Brad Wynter

Brad is the Organisation Support Executive at the City of Whittlesea. A progressive growth municipality 20 km north of the Melbourne CBD. His responsibilities include:
  • WIRED Development Project (a broadband initiative)
  • Multimedia Strategy and Multimedia Action Plan
  • Business Process Mapping and Review program
  • Corporate research and development
Over the past 4 years Brad has developed the City Of Whittlesea Multimedia Strategy, managed the Business Process Mapping and Review project, is progressing the introduction of Electronic Service Delivery and broadband services at Whittlesea.

With qualifications in Electronics and Psychology, Brad has 12 years experience working for Local Government including the City of Melbourne, and has also worked at two universities and Telstra.

Peter Ziebell

Peter Ziebell is currently the Coordinator of the Regional Connectivity Project. He has held this position since its inception and has developed the Project from concept to reality. Extensive community work is an essential part of the position as has been the development of strong networks. The position has required Peter to have a high level of interpersonal skills to achieve ownership and success in each of the communities.

Peter has obtained funding for the communities through all levels of Government and other organisations for support, financial and otherwise. Peter's role is challenging and diverse, and carries a great deal of reward through seeing the success of the Project. The Project has been seen as a lighthouse Project and both Federal and State governments see it a model for the future. The Project has grown from 6 sites to 18 and by mid-2002 25 sites were in operation. Additionally a number of stand-alone organisations are asking to join the network. This means that some 35 communities are or will be benefiting from the Project. Peter has also had extensive experience in ICT and teaching.

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