Peter Grant will be presenting at Connecting Up 2008

Before joining Microsoft Peter was the Chief Information Officer for the Queensland Government providing high-level policy advice to the Minister and the Government on a wide range of government, industry, tertiary and strategic business issues. He was also responsible for providing strategic leadership and management to ensure that whole-of-Government Information and Communication Technology initiatives were maximised.

Previously Peter was a founding Director of Consulting for Gartner Asia Pacific. He was responsible for establishing Gartner’s consulting practice in Queensland and the ACT – building a client base and recruiting in a consulting capacity.
 
Peter's 30 year IT career highlights also include co-founding OZONE Systems – a technology start up company; and managing the IT operations of one of Australia’s largest networks as the Director, Information Technology and Corporate Systems at Queensland Transport and Queensland Health.
 
In the last year before joining Microsoft, Peter was the Chief Information Officer for Queensland Health.

Peter has recently taken on the role of State Director Queensland, Northern Territory and Pacific Islands for Microsoft and is responsible for driving Microsoft’s business within the nominated states and locations.

Peter holds a Bachelor of Business, Master of Information Systems (GPA 6.0) and is an Adjunct Professor, School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, University of Queensland. Peter is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, Australian Computer Society (Senior Member), Queensland Branch Executive Committee Member, CIO Executive Council (National Board Member) and the Art Deco Society.

Peter lives in Brisbane with his wife and two teenage boys; and is an avid golfer.
 

Australia’s most controversial futurist, Richard Neville, will be a featured speaker at the Connecting Up conference in Brisbane on 19 and 20 May. Richard Neville has been a practising futurist since 1963, when he launched Oz magazine in London, which widened the boundaries of free speech on two continents. In the 70’s and 80’s, both as an author and social commentator, his discussions of trends, innovation, the new consumer, info-tech and globalisation reached a mass TV audience. In the 90’s, Richard became a full time futurist, both in print and on conference stages. His aim is to empower audiences to contemplate a range of possible futures. Is there a pattern behind the blur? What are the driving forces of change? How will our lives be affected? Richard looks at work, learning, lifestyle, cities, shopping, tomorrow’s technology, the new economics, weather and the seven deadly threats facing the world. As well as dealing with the perils and promise of what lies ahead, Richard offers his audience a range of take-away tools for decoding the future. Whether you agree with everything (or nothing) he says, you certainly won’t sleep through his address and you’ll certainly be thinking about it afterwards. Check out this YouTube clip as a taster http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyplzPXTCts

Planning, consulting, researching and thinking about where IT fits your future is the fundamental first step to getting IT right at your place. Too many organisations adopt the ‘Fire, Ready, Aim’ approach and you can see the results in their scattergun pattern of IT growth. Nothing quite connects to anything else, nothing gets fixed until it’s completely useless, and you’re not quite sure why that geeky tech comes in once a month, you just pay the bill. Sound familiar?

Who’s not interested in that topic?!  You may not be a charity that needs to fundraise but your sure as heck need strong networks if you’re going to survive in the mad rough and tumble that is the nonprofit sector. There’s no such thing as an organisation with no competitors and many will be trying to get to the same eyes, ears and bank accounts that you are targeting. Whether it’s for fundraising, lobbying, membership support or straight our campaigning, you can always learn from the hard-won experience of others.