ICCM AU 2017 Speakers

Keynote Speakers

Dr Bernard Wong

Tuesday Afternoon: Bernard Wong has agreed to speak about the cloud for ministry, especially from the perspective of a Board member.

Dr Bernard Wong is an experienced C level executive and director with over thirty years in industry. Apart from having worked in senior management for a number of multinationals, he has successfully started a number of startups, worked as a C level for a well invested round B startup and today, is involved on the board of a number of companies and is the current CEO of Denbigh International. He has worked for and partnered with a number of consulting companies including EDS, HP Enterprise Services and Microsoft Consulting Services where offerings like outsourcing and managed services form a major part of the consulting practice.

Bernard is on the board as a Non-Executive Director of the Global Recordings Network and is an
elder at the Chinese Presbyterian Church, Surry Hills.

Rob McDonell, GRN
Keynote: The business end of the cloud 

Rob McDonell is Business Manager for Global Recordings Network Australia, and coordinator of GRN’s Global Information Systems Team. His background is as an Accountant and Business Analyst for IBM and in his own small business. He has developed a number of Windows desktop applications, and manages several websites.

Wednesday Morning Talk summary: Technical issues are not the major factor in deciding whether and how to use cloud services. The impact on business culture and processes is likely to be much more significant to the organisation. And yet so many of the costs and benefits relating to personnel efficiency and ministry effectiveness are very hard to estimate. In this talk Rob reviews the impact of some small cloud systems adopted by GRN, and discusses how the decision is being made about adopting a much larger system: Office 365.

 

Sessions

Apart from Keynote sessions we will have a mix of technical and management sessions of varying length from 30 mins to an hour.

David Miller and David Nolan, GRN Australia
Technical Impact of moving to Cloud

A technical session about the impacts of moving to the cloud from internal systems, and GRN’s experience. The session will provide an overview of the technical issues that need to be considered in such a move.

David Miller

David Miller, IT Specialist at GRN Australia, has been involved with IS in MIssions since 1997. His speciality is Unix/Linux system administration, however operates GRN Australia’s infrastructure and provides desktop support. He is a member of GRN’s Global IS Team and holds a Masters in Information Systems.

David Nolan

David Nolan has been with GRN Australia for over 3 years as a Software Engineer. His previous positions include large commercial software products such as Foxtel Go. He has experience in several different roles including technical lead, systems analysis and full stack web development.

Samuel Wighton

Sam Wighton is a Machine learning Developer currently living and working in Wollongong. He is recently back from San Francisco where he was talking with developers from Google, Facebook, Tesla, LinkedIn and Twitter about machine learning.

Talk #1 Using Artificial Intelligence as a service:
Don’t make decisions based on assumptions.
No need to create your own solution; use an existing service to look for insights in your data. See how to use the IMB Watson Analytics service. Learn more about your organisation using data you probably already have.

Talk #2 Collecting helpful data.
Data can provide great insights into your organisation; but what data should be collected?
Learn what data your organisation should (or shouldn’t) be collecting and how to store it ready for use.

John Tan, Wycliffe Australia
Credit Card security issues

John serves as a systems analyst with Wycliffe Bible Translators Australiais current scope of responsibility involves analysing processes at the Australian Wycliffe National Office, and getting ICT to help smoothen these processes. He has consequently been dabbling with web yechnologies, finance systems and contact relationship managers (CRM).

John’s past job experience includes working with a number of organisations in Sydney. He also worked overseas with FEBC, a mission organisation. Most of his work then was in the area of administering systems and networks.

Overview and Implications of PCI DSS Compliance
What is Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard? How does this affect our payment systems, websites, banking and usage of cloud services?

Isaac Foulkes
IT Support Officer, MAF

Isaac comes from Auckland, New Zealand and has been with MAF International since June this year.

He has 7 years of IT experience, almost 5 years working as the sole Helpdesk Engineer for an internal IT department. They supported 4 companies which made up 280 users in 20 offices over 2 countries, and this is where he first began using the Spiceworks helpdesk package and customised this heavily for their use. His role also involved monthly reporting on Helpdesk stats to the Board of Directors. More recently he worked as a System Engineer for a Managed Services company, where he was the primary technical engineer for over 20 small-medium businesses and team lead.

Isaac grew up in a Christian home, and his family were missionaries in Malaysia for 3 years. His top hobbies are BMX racing and tinkering with computers.

MAF has been using Spiceworks for the past year, so he will be speaking about MAF’s current implementation of Spiceworks and how it has improved the Helpdesk function.

There are also a number of improvements that he has suggested including automated ticket logging, Knowledge Base and the User Portal, which tjey are in the process of putting in place. He’ll talk about these improvements and how MAF are putting them in place on the live system. There are also Device Inventory, Reporting and the Community functions in Spiceworks than he will cover briefly.

Andrew Smith
SIM

Andrew is [art of the SIM International ICT Team with chief responsibility for the Intranet and also for the computer systems at SIM New Zealand.

Devotion topic: Reading Backwards – Luke 24:27

ICCM 2014: Key Note Speaker

Rev Timothy Meyers

B.Ed (Melbourne), ThM (Dallas

Principal

 Tim Meyers is the Principal of Melbourne School of Theology.

He joined MST at the end of 2011 following 12 years in senior leadership roles with mission agency Pioneers and almost a decade in pastoral ministry with Baptist churches in Queensland. Tim also trained and worked as a professional musician and secondary school teacher and also trained as a commercial pilot with Mission Aviation Fellowship, prior to moving into ministry.

Tim completed his Masters of Theology at Dallas Theological Seminary (Texas, USA) in 1991, with majors in Systematic Theology and Bible Exposition.

Tim has great skills in leadership and administration, and strong gifts in teaching and preaching, cultural and organisational change, as well as entrepreneurial abilities.

In his time with Pioneers Australia and Pioneers International, Tim became known as a strong leader and innovator as well as a church preacher, teacher and conference speaker in Australia and overseas. While in leadership at Pioneers, he oversaw strong growth in the public profile of Pioneers as well as healthy numerical growth in the number of mission workers sent, support raised and countries served by Australia.

Tim grew up in a missionary family in Papua and New Guinea before moving to Melbourne during high school, where he later met and married Kathryn. They have five children.

ICCM 2014: Other Speakers/Sessions

• A Tour through Nodejs – Tony O’Hagan (remote presentation) – CCCI
• Managing BYODs – Network Access Control – David Miller – GRN
• Low Powered Computing update – Nigel Gorry – MAF
• Cloud SAAS for missions – Paul Zarb –
• The spiritual life of a techy – TBC
• Spritual formation in online community – Damien Knuckey – MST
• So you want to lead a bunch of nerds… – Andrew Yager CEO RWTS
• Managing God: Challenges and opportunities while working in IT – David Furey, CTO RWTS

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Previous Years: 2011-2013 Speakers

2013 Keynote Speaker
	Roy Campbell, from International Teams, Canada. Over the years, Roy has come to the realization that technology, in and of itself, is meaningless. As a result, Roy’s mantra is to only do technical work that will either build a relationship or help marginalized people. Roy is an avid seeker and follower of Christ, husband to Caro, and father to Natalie and Jamie. In his spare time, he likes to play hockey as well as Crokinole, Carcassonne, and other board games. To view the abstracts from his three Key Note Sessions click on on this link: http://iccm-australia.org/2013/08/26/key-note-session-abstracts/
2012 Keynote Speaker Richard Daniel	Richard Daniel is a Director of CVC and helping to market their new product called yesHEis.com. He looks forward to sharing how to make changes in an organisation, how to move forward without leaving others behind, how to technically adjust in a changing world and how to serve better in a Christian organisation.Topics for the talks will be along these lines… When the world is changing and you know your organisation has to move with it, how do you make the changes and keep everyone happy. How do you sell your ideas yet keep peace in the building and stability in the work force. How do you tell some one they don’t fit any more in a Christian organisation and how do you encourage people to change, move forward while you and others around you are making mistakes in a new media.Its a challenge, yet if you have to embrace it some times you have to bite the bullet. These are some of the discussion points covered in several sessions by Richard. It will be fun… but get ready for some home truths that maybe confronting.
other presenters
David Miller	DevOps is a software development method that stresses communication, collaboration and integration between software developers and Information Technology(IT) professionals. DevOps is a response to the interdependence of software development and IT operations. It aims to help an organization rapidly produce software products and services.David Miller, IT Specialist for Global recordings Network Australia, will give an overview of DevOps from the perspective of a System Administrator.
Campbell Smythe	The Mobile Missionary– a survey and discussion of mobile apps for iOS, Android and Symbian useful to the Christian missionary.Campbell is Information Services manager for MAF International.Slideshare of this presentation HERE
Michael Wakefield	Where the only fibre is on trees –real life computing in the wilds of Papua New Guinea.So you or someone you know is leaving the internet fibre optic highway and heading to a third world mission context.  They will expect the culture change, but often the result of disconnection from the “blue cable of joy” is like taking a bone from a hungry pit-bull!  In this desperate situation such technologies as VSAT, BGAN, HF email, and now the ever broadening mobile network are the reality.  I will talk about real life difficulties and current communication options that missionaries and others are using in Papua New Guinea, and how to make the most of your 2400 baud HF bandwidth, or USD$7/meg satellite link.  You will hear about what is available, what works, what is developing, what is popular, what is legal, the best choices and practices, and why your job as a Christian technologist is important. It may not all be cutting edge, but its real life for people living in remote tropical areas.Michael Wakefield is 43 years old and has lived in Papua New Guinea for seven years with his wife and four children.  He is currently the General Manager of “Christian Radio Missionary Fellowship” who’s vision is to “serve the Church and people of PNG through radio communication and technical services”, and as such often travels to remote areas and daily interacts with missionaries, local church workers, and the community in general, listening to their needs and providing the most appropriate technological advice and solutions.
Peter Higham, Brett Nel	MAF’s vision is to see isolated people physically and spiritually transformed in Christ’s name.  MAFLT (Learning Technologies) believes that this is very possible and that technology can play a very important part in this. MAFLT has not only been identifying key gospel digital resources for discipleship and evangelism but has also been researching distribution methods for these resources. MAFLT has been testing and trialing ‘Bluetooth and WIFI’ broadcasting methods. This session will present a brief summary of the research and findings from this distribution project as well as highlight the challenges and provide a perspective of  the use of technology within a Aboriginal context.Peter and Brett both serve with MAF International in Arnhem Land, NT Australia
Nigel Gorry	How much computing can you do when the power comes and goes? Apart from laptops, what options are there for low power computing. An overview of low voltage computing options from embedded systems to industrial PCs, and how to power them.

 

2011 Keynote Speaker
			John Edmiston is an Australian missionary Bible teacher who now lives in Carson, California. John has been in full-time Christian ministry since 1981 and who has served in Australia, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines, mainly in student ministry, urban ministry and Internet ministry.John has been keynote speak at ICCM in the USA, Europe and Asia. John will be speaking on Mobile Technology, Internet Evangelism and what it means to be a Christian Technologist.  Keynote 1  Keynote 2  Keynote 3