Speakers

For around the last 20 years Miraz Jordan has been helping and encouraging community groups to make the most of what the Internet has to offer.

After decades providing one on one training, help, advice and even websites for community organisations, individuals and small businesses, Miraz now concentrates on writing for and about the Internet. She's the main contributor to Groupings, the Webguide blog, and the Webguide itself.

Her books, WordPress 2 Visual Quickstart Guide and Webguide: Connect your Community have helped thousands of people with their website concerns.

Miraz writes for her own blogs - the main one, KnowIT, is at http://knowit.co.nz - and is very happy to write for pay. She lives in Wellington with her partner, 3 cats and 2 dogs, some of whom may be featured in her presentations. Miraz fervently believes the Internet can help us all make this planet, our only home in the whole universe, a better place to live.

Pamela Minett co-founded the yMedia Group in 2007 along with Adele Barlow. As the yMedia Group's website says, "We set up yMedia because we believe that individuals and organisations can find meaning in each other and use that to grow into their full potential. The yMedia Challenge, held in October 2007, featured a competition giving media students work-experience and industry exposure by helping not-for-profit organisations get into and understand the digital space."

Pamela has presented at a number of community workshops on digital media and social media tools including the Volunteering NZ 'Optimizing Volunteering' conference, the 2020 Communication's Trust 'E-Engage your Community' workshop, the Australasian Non-Profit Executive Update and yMedia's own 'UberSavvy: Experience a digital generation.'

In her spare time Pamela enjoys good conversation, surfing, off-road running, yoga and reading.

Nathan has been involved in New Zealand peace groups for the last five years and is currently convener of the New Zealand Campaign Against Landmines.

Nathan has over 13 years experience in the new media industry, which includes concept development, design, programming, project management and e-marketing. Today he owns and directs Boost New Media in Wellington.

His career began in 1994 at TVNZ and since he's worked in lecturing, project management, design and programming roles. Nathan's lecturing career took in animation, programming, design, web design and electronic marketing. He's taught at The One Academy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, UColl Computer Graphic Design in Wanganui and Massey University Design Department in Wellington.

Nathan is an avid researcher and has a profound knowledge of the web industry, trends and technologies. He provides creative and strategic direction, as well as information architecture and technical solutions. He maintains networks with design educators in New Zealand and overseas and has strong links to OtagoUniversity's Design Department. He also participates in external moderation exercises.

Deirdre Kent from Otaki has been in community groups all her life and has written and taught on campaigning and lobbying, after being a full time campaigner for ASH in the 1980s. Author of Healthy Money Healthy Planet - developing sustainability through new money systems.

For the last five months she has been involved in social networking for Transition Towns, the relocalisation movement spreading rapidly round New Zealand, a network of local groups facing up to peak oil and climate change and working together to power down for the future. She has been coached by Les Squires of Boulder, Colorado in creating a ning site for transition towns enthusiasts, use of skype for conference calls and chats and use of Google Reader.

Emma McCleary is a Public Relations consultant, working at Ideas Shop in Wellington.

Using the power of the internet has been a common theme throughout Emma's career. Most recently she's been using Facebook as a communications tool for raising the profiles of her clients online.

Prior to joining Ideas Shop, Emma spent several years at Te Papa leading the concept development of high-profile exhibitions, including initiating the Museum's first online exhibition about Maori Showbands.

She has managed the development of several intranets, including Learning Media's first company intranet, from writing the entire site to managing it's implementation, and started National Library’s first e-newsletter, which is a key communication tool for the Library.

Emma has a love of plain English and has written on almost every subject for print and online, including the Ideas Shop website and a book on Ancient Greece for Canadian school children.

David Barrow is an experienced communications professional with many years involvement in the central government sector, but latterly in the community & voluntary sector. He is passionate about the web as a key business tool for any organisation and, like many of us, considers himself a 'digital immigrant' with the onset of the latest social networking technologies.

David is Communications Manager for the NZ Federation of Voluntary Welfare Organisations. He acknowledges that the speed of technology developments means that we are experiencing a veritable wave of opportunities, initiatives and issues for using ICT in our sector. The costs in terms of money, time and skill that are required to use it effectively present us with considerable challenges. The good news is that, he says, we can all use these technologies and we don't have to feel submerged by the waves of new technology.

Mike Riversdale, a man for all seasons but certainly not a man of mystery living his electronic life on-line since 2002 generating a large on-line presence.

Mike (aka Miramar Mike) has been working in, with and against IT Departments from all types of organisations in all parts of the world for nearly 20 years as he follows his passion of connecting people to people with usable information, clear communication and on-line collaboration.

His company, MiramarMike.co.nz, concentrates on helping large organisations collaborate, smaller companies manage their information and SMEs/charitable agencies use the Google Apps product set.

He has completely removed the need to pay money for software and instead spends it on web features that help him write for notable NZ sites such as Groupings and Diversity. Catch his latest news at his company blog, the scatalogical personal blog or any of his social networking sites where he'll be your "friend", just ask.

Ben is a Project Manager at the software company Signify. His 10 year IT career has seen him being a trainer, a web developer, an analyst and a project manager. Having previously administered email and calendaring systems at two large organisations he still maintains a keen interest in the field and is happy that the features of highly expensive enterprise systems are steadily becoming accessible to everyone regardless of their budget.

In his spare time he dotes on his dog, fights a losing battle in the garden with his overgrown hillside section, sits on the Webstock organising committee, and admires his lovely girlfriend.

Rod Drury is CEO of online accounting software provider Xero, a World Class New Zealander in the ICT area and an Honorary Fellow of the New Zealand Computer Society.

Stephen Blyth is a Wellington-based self-employed advisor and writer helping people use the Internet powerfully. He supports community organisations and government agencies to run capacity building and knowledge sharing projects.

Currently Stephen is project manager of CommunityCentral, a national project building an online communications platform for the tangata whenua, community and voluntary sector, and coordinates the Wellington e-rider IT service, being run by Wellington ICT.

When not online, you might catch Stephen cycling around Wellington, spending time with family and friends, or tilling the soil. Blog: www.commonknowledge.net.nz

Hayden was born and raised in the mighty Waikato where be studied Communications at the Waikato Management School before moving to Wellington in 2006 to work in Public Health as a Communications Advisor.

Hayden currently works for The Health Sponsorship Council doing - Information Technology Marketing and Communications Development, which, simply put, means he runs 15 public health websites across Tobacco Control, Sun Safety, Healthy eating, and Problem Gambling.

Stephen Gibbs is Marketing Coordinator for SOUNZ, the Centre for New Zealand Music. He is a musician himself, most often a cellist but also a singer and musical director. He was a secondary school teacher for 17 years in the Waikato and Hawkes Bay before becoming, amongst other things, an accidental journalist. He has been in his current position with SOUNZ in Wellington for three years, responsible for marketing and communications for SOUNZ, including press releases, website news and events and marketing campaigns. "It is inspiring to be working in this context helping people, nationally and internationally, to discover and explore the rich, diverse world of New Zealand composers and their music."

Stephen is a partner in Storyboards a company that specialises in helping people tell their story. An inaugural Flexible Learning Leader, he trained as a facilitator of the digital storytelling process with digital storytelling co-creator Joe Lambert in San Francisco. A founding trustee of the Waikato 2020 Communications trust, Stephen is passionate about public participation in our increasingly networked world. When he's not networked, Stephen's a keen bass player, home brewer and urban farmer.

ayne Wallis has been a member of Unlimited Potential (a non-profit ICT networking community) since December 2007. Unlimited Potential has been using xero since the start of this financial year and Jayne is going to talk about the advantages of using an online accounting tool, as a community group. Jayne works from home on her own web project, and as a government consultant to help pay for her coffee addition. She also uses online accounting, webmail and storage applications and tools to run her two businesses, The Lifebox Company Limited and Fivepeas Limited.

David Slack is a speechwriter, author and radio and TV commentator who has been blogging on Public Address since 2004.

A former speechwriter for Prime Ministers Geoffrey Palmer and Jim Bolger, he has been an Internet adventurer since 1994, and runs the website speeches.com, which generates speeches automatically for its subscribers.

His speech to this conference will be written the old-fashioned way.