Innovative Ideas Forum 2010: Speakers

Dr Genevieve Bell - Intel Fellow, Digital Home Group Director, User Experience Group, Intel Corporation

Dr Genevieve BellGenevieve Bell is an Intel Fellow and director of the User Experience Group within the Intel Digital Home Group at Intel Corporation.

Bell joined Intel in 1998 as a researcher in Corporate Technology Group's People and Practices Research Team - Intel's first social science oriented research team. She helped drive the company's first non-U.S. field studies to inform business group strategy and products and conducted groundbreaking work in urban Asia in the early 2000s. Bell currently leads an R&D team of social scientists, interaction designers and human factors engineers to drive consumer-centric product innovation in Intel's consumer electronics business. In this role she is responsible for setting research directions, conducting comparative qualitative and quantitative research globally, leading new product strategy and definition, and championing consumer-centric innovation and thinking across the company.

Prior to joining Intel, Bell was a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University. She has written more than 25 journal articles and book chapters on a range of subjects focused on the intersection of technology and society. Her book, Telling Techno-Cultural Tales, co-authored with Prof. Paul Dourish, is being published by MIT Press.

Raised in Australia, Bell received her bachelor's degree in anthropology from Bryn Mawr College in 1990. She received her master's and doctorate degrees in anthropology from Stanford University in 1993 and 1998, respectively.

Kent Fitch - programmer, Information Technology Division, National Library of Australia

Kent FitchKent Fitch has worked as a programmer for over 30 years. In the past ten years, his work has focused on library-related systems including AustLit, NLA Newspapers Digitisation and Trove.

Dr Nicholas Gruen - CEO, Lateral Economics

Dr Nicholas GruenNicholas Gruen is trained in History, Statistics, Law and Economics and has written on a range of policy issues including reducing red tape, information policy with applications in consumer policy and innovation in government.

He was advisor to Industry Minister John Button and Treasurer John Dawkins.  In the 1990s he served on the Productivity Commission and worked for the Business Council of Australia.  In 2000, he founded and remains CEO of Lateral Economics and Peaches, a discount finance broker. 

Dr Gruen was a member of the Panel reviewing Australia’s Innovation System, chaired by Terry Cutler. In 2009 he chaired the Federal Government’s Government 2.0 Taskforce and participated in the Federal Government’s Management Advisory Committee’s inquiry into public sector innovation.

Brianna Laugher - President, Wikimedia Australia

Brianna LaugherBrianna Laugher is the president of Wikimedia Australia, a non-profit association that aims to promote equality of opportunity to access and participate in the collaborative creation of Free Cultural Works. She has been a Wikipedia editor since 2005 and has spoken at the international Wikimania conference, the Australasian Linux conference, the Australian Computers in Education conference, and Wikimedia Australia's 2009 event, "GLAM-WIKI: Finding the Common Ground with Galleries, Libraries, Archives & Museums".

Rob Manson - Managing Director , MOB

Rob MansonRob Manson has been working with cutting-edge technologies since the early 1990s and is focused on creating tangible experiences that change the way people see technology, business and the world around them.

MOB is an innovation lab based in Sydney. It aims to make complex things easy.  The lab creates innovative iPhone, iPad, mobile and Internet based applications and has created augmented reality (AR) applications and ARt installations for business and consumer markets as well as public display.

MOB’s customers include Sculpture by the Sea, Sydney Opera House, the Royal Easter Show, IAG, Warner Music, St George and TEDxSydney.com.  Recently  MOB has created a mobile augmented reality experience using historic images of Sydney that the Powerhouse Museum released to the Flickr Commons.  MOB regularly contributes to the Open Government/Open Data movement in Australia.

Mark Pesce - Founder, FutureSt

Mark PesceKnown internationally as the man who fused virtual reality with the World Wide Web to invent VRML (virtual reality modelling language), Mark Pesce has been exploring the frontiers of media and technology for 25 years.

His work has kept him on the forefront of emerging developments in science, technology and media. The author of five books and numerous articles, Pesce is widely respected as a futurist, philosopher, and communicator who can translate abstract concepts into concrete explanations. For the past five seasons he has been a panellist on the hit ABC television program, The New Inventors.

From 2003-2006, Pesce cahired the Emerging Media and Interactive Design Program at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School.

Pesce currently holds an appointment as Honorary Associatate in the Digital Cultures Program at the University of Sydney, and in 2006 founded FutureSt, a Sydney media and technology consultancy.

Back to the top