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Open Computing in Government 2005 has attracted a great range of speakers. These include:

Special Minister of State. Minister responsible for the Australian Government Information Management Office.

Senator the Hon Eric Abetz, Special Minister of State, will launch the much anticipated "Guide to Open Source Software for Australian Government Agencies". This Guide will provide practical information and approaches for agencies to consider when assessing open source solutions, Many Government agencies are considering the possible wider application of open source software within their ICT systems. The Guide will improve the understanding of open source software within Government and assist agencies make informed decisions on the value for money that it can offer.

The Guide will be published by the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) within the Department of Finance and Administration, and is a companion document to AGIMO's 2004 publication "A Guide to ICT Sourcing for Australian Government Agencies".

Senator The Hon Stephen Conroy

Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate. Shadow Minister for Communications and Information Technology.

John Grant

Acting Chief Information Officer, Department of Finance and Administration.

John Grant, Acting Australian Government Chief Information Officer from the Department of Finance and Administration, will open the conference and set the scene for the launch of the Guide to Open Source Software for Australian Government.

Mark Shuttleworth

Founder of Thawte, first African in space, technology and education philanthropist and most recently, founder of the Ubuntu Linux project.

Mark's contribution to the open source community is far reaching, and his sharp insight into open technology, open source software in Africa, emerging market interest in open source computing and regional agendas is sure to make his keynote address a memorable experience.

Mark studied finance and information technology at the University of Cape Town, and went on to found Thawte, a company specialising in digital certificates and internet privacy. He sold Thawte to US company VeriSign in 1999, and founded HBD Venture Capital and The Shuttleworth Foundation. In April 2002 Mark flew in space for the first time, as a cosmonaut member of the crew of Soyuz mission TM34 to the International Space Station. Mark was born and raised in South Africa, and is currently living in London, where he researches new projects and technologies.

Patrick Callioni

Chief General Manager - ICT Infrastructure and Governance Group, AGIMO.

Patrick has degrees in Arts and in Law, he is a Barrister and a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management and of the Institute of Purchasing and Materials Management, as well as a Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. Patrick has presented and published papers on a variety of topics in recent years, including strategic management, value creation, performance indicators, and the information economy and knowledge management.

Patrick is writing two books, one on managing and designing organisations and the other is on creating value by managing knowledge. He is a member of the Australian Society of Authors. Patrick has experience as a senior manager in program management, policy development, service delivery and corporate management - in health care, employment and training, income support and compensation, and information management.

In AGIMO, Patrick's chief interest is to ensure that Australia is well placed to derive the greatest benefit from the emerging trends that will shape our lives in the coming decades.

(courtesy, AGIMO website ... www.agimo.gov.au)

Ian Oi

Ian Oi's practice focuses on information technology, communications, e-commerce and cyberspace matters. Ian acts for a broad range of customers (including governmental organisations) and suppliers in the public and private sectors, particularly in relation to government procurement and major information technology and telecommunications transactions. In particular, he has acted for many years for several State and Commonwealth agencies in relation to these issues.

Ian first joined Blake Dawson Waldron in 1991. In 1994-1998, he was attorney, and then senior attorney and negotiator, with the IBM group in Australia. In 2000-2001, Ian undertook the Master of Laws in Intellectual Property Law degree at the George Washington University, Washington DC, where he was awarded the 2001 Marcus B. Finnegan Memorial Award for intellectual property writing. He was also awarded the 2001 GC O'Donnell Copyright Essay Prize for his analysis of American copyright in Australian cyberspace.

He is a member of the NSW Society for Computers and the Law, the Management Committee of the Copyright Society of Australia, and the Legal Forum of the Australian Information Industries Association (AIIA).

Ian has a particular interest in open source issues in Australia, and hosted and chaired an AIIA seminar in Sydney in October 2002 on these issues. He has also advised both private and public sector clients regarding legal aspects of open source development and licensing. Amongst other things, Ian is an active member of the team currently working to Australianise the US "copyleft" licences developed by the Creative Commons initiative, which aims to provide a firmer legal foundation for the creation of an international public domain for non-software materials such as website content, text and graphic works, and music.

Paul Kangro

Paul is an internationally renowned speaker for Novell, having presented at countless conferences and seminars. His expertise stretches to diverse areas, and he has personally experienced the journey of a large organisation moving to Linux as the corporate desktop.

Kevin Russell

With over 20 years experience in computing and more than half of those in senior management roles. Kevin is a qualified engineer with a wide background involving the many facets of computing including software development, database management, network administration and Information and Technology management. Some of the major initiatives that he has directed and been the architect for include the development of The Western Australian Government Interoperability Framework (eGIF) and more recently the driving force behind the OpenSource.wa.gov initiative.

Brendan Scott

Brendan is a lawyer at the forefront of open source in Government and has had extensive practical experience in this area, both in relation to licensing issues relating to open source software and governance issues for the establishment of organisations devoted to open source. Brendan's open source news digest Oswald is widely distributed to policy makers and their advisors within Australia.

Brendan is currently engaged by the NSW Department of Commerce to provide wide ranging advice on open source issues relating to government. He acted for the Department in drafting the terms and conditions which accompanied its recent request for tenders for its whole of government open source panel. He acted for another NSW Government Department in respect of the first release of Government developed software under an open source licence by a Government within Australia. Brendan also acted for the Health Openware Foundation for the open source release of its Argus Connect health messaging system (the Argus Connect system was funded by State and Federal Government). In 2004 Brendan was engaged to provide broad advice on open source issues to the NSW Roads and Traffic Authority, the first Government body in Australia to implement a widespread open source on the desktop solution. In May 2004 Brendan appeared before the Senate Select Committee on the Free Trade Agreement to give evidence of the impact of that agreement on open source within Australia. In addition, Brendan has also acted for a number of private sector organisations on various open source issues.

Brendan runs a niche legal practice called Open Source Law based in Sydney specialising in information technology and intellectual property law, with a special focus on open source and related technologies. Brendan has over 10 years of experience in IP and ICT law and contracting and has acted for a range of clients, both vendors and customers. He is the immediate past president of the NSW Society for Computers and the Law, and is a member of the editorial panel of the Internet Law Bulletin.

Brendan is a director and founding member of Open Source Industry Australia Limited (OSIA), a company limited by guarantee representing the open source industry within Australia. He is recognised as a leading expert on the legal implications of open source. He is a member of the Open Source Experts Group, which assisted the ACS on policy formulation in respect of open source and has had input into government policy for a number of governments around the world.

Avi Miller

Avi has been working in the Information Systems industry since 1993. He has extensive experience in networking, including server and workstation hardware; network, server and workstation operating systems; and LAN & WAN connectivity. Recently, Avi has specialised in web-based applications.

His roles and responsibilities in several projects have included technical project management, network architecture design, network and software integration design, workstation environment development, software deployment and troubleshooting.

Avi recently completed a contract at the Australian Government Information Management Office (formerly the National Office for the Information Economy) in their Information Management branch. In this position he was responsible for managing and supporting several web sites, as well as implementing and migrating these websites to a new Open-Source content management system.

Avi's current role is again as Manager of the ACT branch of Squiz.net; a successful Australianowned Open Source development company. In this position, Avi is responsible for the daily management of all non-Sydney based implementations of the company-developed software, including project management, implementation and support, with particular emphasis on Federal and State Government implementations.

Stephen McInerney

Steve received a BSc (Computing) from the University of Queensland in 1990. Since then he has filled a variety of technical and advisory roles with and for the Federal Government. Primarily in IT Security and Systems Administration (VMS, Windows and UNIX/BSD/Linux systems); He has also done a fair amount of architecture and advice work.

Greg Stone

Greg Stone is the National Technology Officer for Microsoft Australia, a role he was appointed to in August 2004. Prior to this role Greg was Director of Enterprise Technologies for Microsoft Australia, where he developed and managed specialist technical capability in support of Microsoft’s enterprise business, as well as leading Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing initiative for Australia.

Greg joined Microsoft Australia in 2001 to establish and oversee the application and enterprise architecture practice. This work was globally recognised within Microsoft for its contribution to service oriented and enterprise architecture. Before joining Microsoft, Greg was employed with a multinational office supplies company where he was General Manger responsible for e-Business Architecture and middleware implementation. During this time he developed a deep understanding of the issues that impact federated business processes mediated by Web-based technology.

Greg has 19 years broad business experience across a range of industries including construction, manufacturing, food processing and reseller-distribution. During this time he has held a variety of senior management positions in operations, sales, marketing and technology with a special interest in the application of technology to business issues. Greg has a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Auckland

Pia Smith

Pia has been involved in the Linux and Open Source community for about 6 years, both locally and internationally. Pia was President of Linux Australia for two years and is currently Vice President. She has spoken at conferences in Brazil, Switzerland, China and of course locally on topics ranging from the business benefits of Open Source, and the importance of the broader Open Source community, through to women in ICT, the changing ICT market locally and globally, and the differing policies towards Open Source around the world.

In her work hours, Pia designs the Open Source strategy for one of Australia's largest solutions providers. She successfully brings the proven working models of the Open Source community to the corporate world, and is able to leverage her knowledge of the market to offer a comprehensive set of Open Source solutions, from a vendor-independent stance, offering real choice and comparison points.