Canterbury Software Inc. and UCONZ are proud to present the Canterbury Software Summit and UCONZ ICT & Innovations event.

This popular half day conference and networking event provides technology entrepreneurs, developers and IT professionals the opportunity to learn from, be inspired by, and connect with others who have jumped hurdles, tested waters, and are now succeeding on the world stage.

“Can you compete in the international market?” is the theme for this year’s Summit. Prepare to be inspired as our prominent speakers from Google, Z Energy, VoucherMob, Serato, Sidhe, Connect2Field, Commonwealth Bank, Unlimited Realities, Movac, GreenButton and more, share with you their insights, experiences and lessons learned.

Networking is, of course, one of the major highlights of this event and organisers have ensured plenty of opportunity for attendees to mingle with others in the technology sector.

For the first time we are partnering with the University Commercialisation Offices of New Zealand (UCONZ) who are hosting the evening networking event and display. The aim of UCONZ and the University-Business Partnerships Initiative is to create stronger university and business partnerships by helping to bring business needs together with university research and identify matches to create value in the New Zealand economy.

The Universities will be showcasing and promoting their research capabilities and latest ICT innovations, and providing a platform for feedback from the business sector.

The Canterbury Software Summit and UCONZ ICT & Innovations event opens on 8 September at 11.45am and closes at 8.00pm. Light lunch, refreshments, drinks and nibbles and WiFi will be provided.

Registration is free thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, and NZICT who are including our event as the first in the series of the Rutherford Innovation Showcase.

Summit Schedule

(Click here to download as PDF)

Opening remarks from Craig Richardson, Managing Director of Jade.

“The Canterbury Software Summit is a gathering of some of New Zealand's most innovative companies and successful entrepreneurs based in a region renowned globally for its market leading software.

Each year I am amazed by the openness with which presenters and attendees share their successes, failures and business aspirations in the spirit of disrupting markets, improving development practices, or simply building better stuff that will improve our daily lives.

This is not a typical software conference where big brands present slick marketing pitches. This is a conference of passionate architects, real developers, authentic marketers and business owners out to share their ideas for making better software. If it's not in your calendar, put it there!”

Programme speakers

Dr Craig Nevill-Manning, Google

We are proud to announce that Dr Craig Nevill-Manning who founded Google's first remote engineering centre, located in downtown Manhattan, will be one of our keynote speakers at the Summit.

In his role as Engineering Director, he has overseen the development of products including Google Local (now Maps) and Froogle (now Product Search), as well as features of web search such as Question Answering and Web Definitions. Most recently, he directed Google.org's Flu Trends and Crisis Response projects, providing maps, imagery and a missing persons service after crises in Christchurch and elsewhere.

Prior to joining Google in 2000, Craig was an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Rutgers University, and a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Biochemistry Department at Stanford University. He is the author of 44 peer-reviewed academic publications, and was awarded a Career Grant by the National Science Foundation for work combining information retrieval and computational biology. A native of New Zealand, he earned a BSc in Computer Science from Canterbury University and a PhD in Computer Science from Waikato University.

Andrew Lark, Chief Marketing Officer, Commonwealth Bank of Australia

Andrew Lark, who leads Commonwealth Bank’s global marketing and online, is another of our keynote speakers who we are delighted to have on board. Prior to joining Australia’s leading financial institution, Andrew lead Dell’s global marketing for its $35bn Enterprise and Public group. He held a variety of roles at Dell including chief marketing officer for Dell Enterprise, vice president global communications and branding; and, vice president, Dell.com – the world’s largest eCommerce site. Andrew is recognized as an innovator in social media and pioneered Dell’s award winning social media programs.

Andrew has held a number of directorships of public and privately held companies and today sits on the board of, N0.8 Ventures – New Zealand’s premier technology venture capital firm; and the advisory boards of Xero – a leading Web-based accounting platform, Xsigo and Prof Gary Hamel’s Management Innovation Exchange.

Scott Bradley, CEO & Founder of VoucherMob

We are also pleased to welcome Scott Bradley CEO of VoucherMob, winner of the NZ Hi-Tech Awards for Best Hi-Tech Startup and a finalist in the TUANZ awards for best Mobile app. VoucherMob offers a consumer digital wallet and sophisticated retailer m-commerce platform. Scott has a proven track record of working with successful technology companies. While living in the UK for 10 years Scott co-founded Utilyx. Utilyx is the UK’s largest online retail energy and carbon broker which won Microsoft’s Internet Business of the Year and trades in excess of £5bn in energy. Scott is still one of Utilyx largest shareholders Prior to Utilyx Scott had an extensive career in digital services, advertising and broadcast media. Scott is also a Non Executive Director of NZX listed company Jason’s Travel Media.

Sam Gribben, Serato

Topic: Business transformation with Agile

Serato is an innovative New Zealand owned & operated software company working with top tier hardware manufacturers worldwide to create market leading performance tools for DJs and musicians.

General Manager Sam Gribben started DJing whilst studying Electrical Engineering at the University of Canterbury in the early 90s. He joined the company as employee number 5 in 2004, and now manages a team of over 40 staff.

David Scott, Head of Business Technology and Transformation Z Energy Limited

David Scott of Z Energy has an extensive background in the ICT industry within New Zealand spanning some 20 years. After spending the first half of this as a systems engineer the latter half has been spent predominantly in the Banking sector firstly as a Project Manager and latterly as a Programme Director managing large transformational/transition activities.

David currently runs the Business Technology and Transformation team at Z Energy Limited (formerly Greenstone Energy Limited) where he has spent the last year managing the technology transition post purchase of Shell NZ by Z Energy Limited.

Tyrone McAuley, Sidhe

Tyrone McAuley is Technical Director, Co-Founder and Co-Owner of Sidhe, New Zealand's largest game development studio, exporting games to the U.S, Europe, Australasia, Japan and Korea, across a range of platforms including Playstation3, Xbox360, Playstation Vita and PC. Sidhe also develops and publishes games for iOS, Android and Browser platforms under its PikPok label. Sidhe employs approximately 100 fulltime technical, creative and managerial staff at its studio base in Wellington.

In his fourteen years with the studio Tyrone has overseen all technical aspects of the company’s growth, as well as contributing directly to development on many of Sidhe's titles, including the highly anticipated All Blacks Rugby Challenge for Playstation3, Xbox360, PC and Playstation Vita. Tyrone is a graduate of Victoria University and has studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management.

Steve Orenstein, Connect2Field

Topic: Going global for Startups

Steve founded his first company, SMO technology, at the age of 19. This was the start of his world in business and since then has started numerous other business adventures. 11 years on his involvement today is in Connect2Field: Cloud Based Field Service Application. The application has revolutionized the way in which service companies work with their field staff, no longer do they need to use their paper job sheets, whiteboard to schedule. It can all be done via the web at anytime, anywhere. The product is sold on a monthly subscription to customers globally.

Dave Fellows, GreenButton

Topic: The GreenButton High Performance Cloud Computing platform

Dave Fellows is the CTO at GreenButton and is extremely passionate about cloud-based technology and applying this to the world of High Performance Computing. Dave was GreenButton’s second fulltime staff member and was bought in as Lead Architect and designed their cloud-agnostic High Performance Computing architecture, suited to running on commodity cloud infrastructure. Prior to GreenButton, Dave spent many years working in the UK designing massively scalable systems for the Investment Banking industry. Before this, Dave worked at both Datacom and Synergy leading technical teams.

David Brebner, Unlimited Realities

In his role as Chief Technology Officer David is responsible for product architecture and technology strategy. Since founding Unlimited Realities in the late 1990’s David has designed and built a wide range of advanced software solutions. David’s expertise includes advanced computer graphics, machine vision, software design and human computer interaction. He holds a Bachelor of Technology (Honours) in Computer Systems Engineering from Massey University.

Phil McCaw, Movac

Phil is one of the pioneers of the New Zealand angel investment sector. He was a founding partner of Movac, and one of the first investors in Trademe. Phil’s passion is working with talented and motivated businesspeople to bring their ideas to market. He is a hands-on investor who specialises in getting into the trenches and helping bulldoze through the tough first three years of business. He has at times been director, chairman and chief executive of different Movac-backed ventures, and is currently Chair of Kaynemaile, MeSynthes and Crema. Phil is a founding council member of the Angel Association New Zealand. Prior to Movac, he served a 10 year apprenticeship with Deloitte Consulting in New Zealand and the United States.

Canterbury Software Summit & UCONZ 8 September 2011 Addington Raceway, Christchurch
Speaker Programme
11.45 – 12.15 Registration. Light lunch provided (Christian Cullen Lounge, Level 1).
12.15 – 12.30 Opening address - David Johnstone, CSI Chairman
12.30 – 12.55 Peter Townsend, CECC
12.55 – 1.35 Keynote: Dr Craig Nevill-Manning, Google
1.35 – 1.45 Sponsor: JOOB - John Ascroft
1.45 – 2.05 Break - refreshments and networking (Silks Room, Level 2)

Business Breakout Christian Cullen Lounge (Level 1)

Technical Breakout Legends Lounge (Level 3)

2.05 – 2.15 Sponsor: NZTE – Nicholas Fogarty Sponsor: Clarus – Edwin Dando
2.15 – 2.45 Speaker: Scott Bradley, VoucherMob Speaker: David Scott, Z Energy
2.45 – 3.15 Speaker: Sam Gribben, Serato Speaker: Tyrone McAuley, Sidhe
3.15 – 3.45 Speaker: David Brebner, Unlimited Realities Speaker: Steve Orenstein, Connect2Field
3.45 – 4.15 Speaker: Phil McCaw, Movac Speaker: Dave Fellows, GreenButton
4.15 – 4.35 Break - refreshments and networking (Silks Room, Level 2)
4.35 – 4.45 Sponsor: IBM (Christian Cullen Lounge, Level 1).
4.45 – 5.30 Keynote: Andy Lark, Commonwealth Bank
5.30 Closing address - CSI Chairman
5.30

UCONZ ICT & Innovations and Networking - Silks Room (Level 2) Drinks & nibbles provided

5.50 Opening address – UCONZ introductions by Prof Ian Town, University of Canterbury
6.05 Speaker: Frank Owen, Tait Radio Communications
6.15 Welcome
8.00 Event closes