Speaker profiles
Posted on March 2, 2010 by admin
Nick Place – CEO Media Giants
Formed in 1998, Media Giants is an independent Media Company run and owned by Michael Roberts and Nick Place. With more than five decades of experience between them, Nick and Michael have worked at the highest levels of journalism across all forms of media.
The Giants team includes full-time writers, sub-editors, producers, technical producers, project managers, video operators and editors plus our staff dog and official mascot, Fly. We also have correspondents in every Australian capital city.
Few people in the Australian media could claim such a diverse and accomplished multi-media CV as Nick Place. At various stages of a 20-year career that started as a copyboy on Melbourne afternoon broadsheet The Herald, Nick has worked in senior editorial and writing positions within newspapers, magazines, television, radio and the internet. He has covered international sporting events, edited many publications, been a film reviewer, worked as head writer and producer on live-to-air commercial network television shows and sports coverage, and even been responsible for editorial development of The Age Online (for which he was nominated for a Walkley Award).
Known for his creativity, people skills, energy and ideas, Nick is involved in all areas of Media Giants; particularly new business, start-up projects and editorial and creative consultancies to existing and prospective clients.
Away from the Giants he has developed a reputation as a writer of fiction, for the page and screen. He has written an internationally recognised short film, as well as four published children’s books, The Kazillion Wish, Thanks a Kazillion, The OK Team, and The OK Team 2: Better Than OK. He even once wrote a stage pantomime, Footy Castaways, which was performed to acclaim at the Last Laugh and, if nothing else, was unique in starring Eric Bana, Lisa McCune, Dipper, Peter Daicos and Tim Watson.
Nick is proud of his 1960s Mr Potato Head collection, his extensive knowledge of dodgy super heroes and the fact he was recently suspected of being a secret rock star. He denies that Fly, the labradoodle dog who acts as the Giants’ office mascot, makes the important decisions. She only helps.
Daniel Sankey – Editor The Age Online
As a teenager, Daniel dreamt of becoming a professional sportsman. Unfortunately, he did not have the talent to back up his ambitions, so he did the next best thing – he traded his cricket bat for a pen and became a journalist. In the years following, Daniel has been lucky enough to embark on a journey that has taken him from his first job as a cadet sports reporter at the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin all the way to Commonwealth and Olympic games, and on to senior editorial roles in daily newspapers. Daniel was the founding chief of staff for Fairfax Media’s brisbanetimes.com.au, which launched in March 2007, before taking on the managing editor position in October 2008. Before joining the Fairfax Media team in Brisbane, Daniel spent two-and-a-half years as editor-in-chief of the iconic daily newspaper The Queensland Times (based in Ipswich). In 2004, Daniel was awarded the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers’ Association’s (PANPA) prestigious Hegarty Prize (recognising management potential in young newspaper executives) – earning himself a month-long study trip to major newspapers in the United Kingdom. In August, 2009, Daniel was appointed editor of theage.com.au.
Daniel makes no apologies for being a mad Essendon fan – and if he’s not in the office, there’s every chance you’ll see him cheering on the Bombers at Etihad Stadium.
Andrew Mahar – Director Infoxchange
Infoxchange Australia was born as an idea in 1988: ’Why not use a computer database to list bed vacancies for people in need?’ At the time, Andrew Mahar, founder and now Executive Director of Infoxchange Australia, was working with homeless people on the streets of Melbourne and becoming frustrated with the inefficient and time-consuming process of finding housing for disadvantaged people.Andrew and the Inner Urban Regional Housing Council applied for a social-justice grant and were awarded $2500 to study the idea. By then, the Accommodation Vacancy Register had become so successful that the idea was extended to include a community support services directory with other services such as health, employment, counselling and mediation, education, and drug and alcohol services. By the end of 1995, over 700 people wereregistered on the Accommodation Vacancy Register and the service directory contained information on over 12,000 services. Infoxchange Australia was beginning to fullfill its vision of technology for social justice. Infoxchange Australia has developed beyond providing community-services databases to become an internet service provider, a web designer, a community-development resource and a trainer in ICT.
Damian Anderson – CEO Acceleration media
Damian has more than 15 years experience planning strategic marketing and education solutions that leverage the opportunities presented by communications technology. Starting Crank Media straight after university, Damian led one of the world’s most successful e-learrning business out of a two-room office in Hobart.
Damian has represented the Australian ICT industry at international events including the British educational technology tradeshow, London; The ANZA Tech conference, San Francisco; the world education market (WEM), Lisbon and has held positions as a National industry advisory board member for Software Engineering Australia (SEA) and State industry advisory board member for Screen Tasmania. Recently Damian has provided senior consulting services to the Department of Finance and Deregulation during the redesign and development of Australia.gov.au and the Australian Red Cross Blood Service during development of an online educational resource package for the Year of the Blood Donor program.
Stephen Mayne – Journalist, activist — The Mayne Report
Stephen Mayne is a journalist and self describand self-described shareholder activist.
Mayne jumped for a number of media outlets and as a media adviser to Jeff Kennett , but fell out with his former boss and started the website jeffed.com devoted to complaints about him. He is best known for founding Crikey.com.au, an online independent news service. The combination of gossip and anti-establishment reporting got Mayne into legal (and consequent financial) trouble several times. Despite considerable financial pressures, Mayne persisted and Crikey gradually attracted subscribers and a fair degree of notoriety. It was announced on February 1, 2005 that Crikey had been sold for $A1 million to another independent media operator.
Mayne continues to write for Crikey and was a regular business commentator on ABC . Mayne also regularly runs for elections to the board of directors of various Australian public companies to draw attention to issues concerning good corporate governance. He is also a trenchant critic of what he perceives as excessive conflicts of interest in corporate and political Australia.
In October 2007, Mayne launched The Mayne Report — a daily videoblog and subscription newsletter focusing on shareholder activism and corporate governance issues
Clem Bastow — Freelance writer, music critic, founder The Dawn Chorus
Clem is a freelance writer and music critic living and working in Melbourne, Australia. She has worked as a writer since 2002. Late in 2006, Clem launched the popular Fairfax Digital music blog, Noise Pollution, which began its life as part of The Age Online but in 2007 grew to include syndication within the Sydney Morning Herald’s online presence. Clem left the Fairfax Digital stable in June of 2007, passing the Noise Pollution baton to legendary broadcaster Stephen “The Ghost” Walker; she felt the “brand” was safe in his hands.
Since the later part of 2007, Clem has held the position of Associate Editor at Defamer Australia, a local version of Gawker Media’s noted LA entertainment gossip blog (published here by Allure Media). Clem is also the founding editor of Australian feminist blog The Dawn Chorus, which received over 5000 hits in its first week with little to no publicity/launch.
In the print media, she has worked for publications as varied as The Age, Inpress, Drum Media, Sydney Morning Herald, The Big Issue Australia, jmag and Arrivals+Departures. Currently, Clem is one of Inpress Magazine’s Senior Contributors, and is also a weekly contributor to The Age’s EG entertainment supplement (and has been since 2004), where she writes a weekly bar review column, Bar Fly. Previously, she was EG’s Agony Aunt in 2006.
In addition to her print and online writing, Clem is a member of the Brains Trust for SBS’ wildly successful rock trivia game-show, RocKwiz; Clem’s contributions to the show’s questions, ‘Who Am I?’s and notable quotes have formed part of the two official books of the series, RocKwiz: The Ultimate Rock Trivia Challenge and RocKwiz Volume 2: The Ultimate Rock Trivia Challenge (both Hardie Grant). Clem also contributed to Rough Guides’ Book Of Playlists (Rough Guides), and in 2009 her work will appear in the anthology Your Mother Would Be Proud (Allen & Unwin). She self-published a compendium of her writing, in zine form, in 2007, Subs+Zuuls: Say What Comes To Mind. Issue #2, We’re Just Making The Music We Love; If Anyone Else Likes It, That’s Just A Bonus, a collection of fiction, images and criticism, was published in June of this year.
Clem presents a weekly show, Transference, on Melbourne’s famed community broadcaster, RRR 102.7FM; she also fronts a weekly tech/net news segment, The Clemformation Superhighway (and no, she didn’t come up with the name) on the same station’s breakfast show, Breakfasters. She has also appeared as a regular guest on Triple J and ABC Melbourne 774 since 2005.
Richard Wolstonecroft – Director Underground Film Festival
| Richard Wolstencroft is an independent filmmaker, who has shot four features, three completed, and many shorts, on 16mm, Super 8 and video. He worked with Mark and Colin Savage in his teens, who served as his mentors and his ‘film school’.He collaborated with Jon Hewitt on the feature Bloodlust in 1990, which Wolstencroft directed at the ripe age of 21. It starred Phil Motherwell, Kelly Chapman and Robert O’Neill.
Wolstencroft then made The Intruder as a ‘director for hire’ for Boulevard Films from a script by Frank Howson, which was never completed due to Boulevard’s financial disintegration. It starred Lachy Hulme, Paul Moder and Tottie Goldsmith. In 1992 Wolstencroft created and ran the “The Hellfire Club” in Melbourne and Sydney, an adventure which launched him into the world of nightlife decadence and debauchery, and which lasted for ten years. From this milieu in 1996 Wolstencroft wrote and directed Pearls Before Swine, starring Boyd Rice, Nick Crawford Smith and Lisa Hutchinson. It took Wolstencroft three years to complete the film, fighting a liver abscess along the way, finally getting the finished film to premiere at the Stockholm International Film Festival in November 1999. The film also played at Puchon, Sitges and Ajijic film fests in 2000/1. In 2000, the film was rejected by MIFF and in response Wolstencroft founded the Melbourne Underground Film Festival (MUFF), which is now in its sixth consecutive year in 2005. |
Troy Innocent – Media Artist
Trained as a designer and practising as an artist, Troy Innocent has moved across media in works involving computer animation, installation art, interactive media, synthetic images and sound. His work has been exhibited widely at national and international galleries, conferences, and symposia, including Ars Electronica 2004.
Typically, these works involve the construction of artificial worlds that explore the ?language of computers?. In his work, Innocent explores the dynamic between the iconic ideal and the personal specific, the real and the simulated, and the way in which our identity is shaped by our language and communication.