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Bettina Arndt
It was sex that made Bettina Arndt famous. As one of Australia’s first sex therapists and editor of Forum magazine, Bettina spent ten years talking about sex on television and radio. A trained clinical psychologist, she taught medical students, doctors and other professionals and talked endlessly about this fascinating subject to audiences all over Australia and overseas. By the 1980s she’d had enough of a good thing. She gave up sex -professionally speaking – and moved onto writing for newspapers and magazines about broader social. But after nearly twenty years, she returned to her first love and wrote a book about sex, The Sex Diaries, which became an international best-seller.
Session: Fringe Ideas: Future sex

Mahrdad Baghai @alchmeygrowth
Mehrdad Baghai is Managing Director of Alchemy Growth Partners, a boutique advisory and venture firm based in Sydney. Mehrdad advises large companies on their growth strategies and business building initiatives. He is co-author of the international bestsellers, The Alchemy of Growth, The Granularity of Growth as well as the new best seller As One.

Prior to Alchemy Growth Partners, Mehrdad completed a three-year term in the public sector as an Executive Director of the CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, with overarching responsibility for growth. Previously, he was a partner in the Sydney and Toronto offices of McKinsey and Company and co-leader of the Firm’s worldwide Growth Practice. He is the founder of the High Resolves Initiative, a community service project around global citizenship, which has reached over 5000 high school students.
Session: As One: How do you get 1000 people to actually work together?

Tom Ballard @TomCBallard
At the age of 21, Tom Ballard has performed stand-up comedy at numerous venues around Australia, is a regular on Network Ten’s The 7PM Project and co-hosts triple j’s national breakfast program with his silly friend, Alex Dyson. By 2006, Tom managed to become a three-time Class Clowns National Finalist and a RAW National finalist and in 2009 he brought his debut solo show, Tom Ballard Is What He Is to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and was the youngest person to ever take out the prestigious Best Newcomer Award.
Session: Fringe Ideas: Future sex

Maggie Beer
After settling with her husband, Colin, in the Barossa Valley in 1973, Maggie Beer began to breed pheasants and grow grapes. The establishment of the Pheasant Farm was the start of a career that now spans farming, food production, exporting, food writing and television presenting.

Throughout her career Maggie has published seven books and been honoured with a host of awards including the Remy Martin Cognac/Australian Gourmet Traveller Restaurant of the Year for the Pheasant Farm Restaurant  in 1991, the Telstra Business Woman of the Year in 1997 and Senior Australian of the Year in 2010.

Currently screening on the ABC, Maggie’s show The Cook and The Chef sees Maggie introducing Executive Chef Simon Bryant to her home region and the people who supply her with the produce she has used to craft her culinary reputation for fresh, seasonal produce.
Session: In conversation with Maggie

Paul Bennett @pbennett101
Paul Bennett is Managing Partner and Chief Creative Officer of IDEO. He is currently based in London, where his focus is working to bring to market commercially viable, socially significant new businesses and consumer products, services, and experiences.

Paul is a sought-after writer and speaker. His thought leadership has been featured in The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Sunday Times (London), BusinessWeek, Fast Company, BBC Radio 4, Marketing Week, Brand Week, Ad Age, and myriad blogs and websites. Paul is an Ambassador of Unlimited: Designing for the Asia Pacific and an ambassador of the C&binet, a nonprofit network founded by the U.K. government that’s charged with linking the international creative and business communities, demonstrating the economic power of creativity, and helping to shape the world’s creative economy. Paul is frequently invited to address high-profile events, such as The World Economic Forum, TED Global, The AOL CEO Conference, American Express Luxury Summit, and Tokyo Midtown opening.
Session: Global problem solving: Can small x many = BIG?

Michael Blucher @ThirdHalf_
Michael Blucher is the Director of The Third Half, a boutique training company assisting athletes with the transition from professional sport to main stream life. He is also a published author, releasing Perfect Union the joint biography of Wallabies Tim Horan and Jason Little in 1995. Michael writes a weekly column for Brisbane News and can also be heard 4TAB on Friday mornings.
Session: Oi Oi Oi: Is professional sport just money for nothing and your chicks for free?

Michael Blumenstein
Michael Blumenstein is Dean (Research) of the Science, Environment, Engineering and Technology Group at Griffith University. His research interests include the areas of pattern recognition and artificial intelligence (specifically machine learning and neural networks). He has published over 70 papers in refereed conferences, journals and books in these areas.
Session: Love and other avatars: Can you find real happiness in virtual worlds?

Priscilla Bracks
Priscilla is a visual artist practising in photography, digital illustration, and installation from collective, Kuuki. Her practice explores the world she inhabits – from the interior landscape of the mind, to human relationships, to the natural environment. She is interested our experience of chaos and change as a force that shapes objects, histories, cultures and personal identities. Her current works meditate upon the notion that we bring the future to life through our imaginations.

Priscilla has led many multi-discipline art projects, providing project managment, contracts management and art-direction services. She is also experienced in the development and implementation of educational public programs for art museums, having developed interactive exhibits for institutions such as the Queensland Art Gallery and the Ipswich Art Gallery. Priscilla holds a first class honours degree in photography from the Queensland College of Art.
Session: Lumia: art/light/motion

Ray Brown
Ray Brown has served as the Mayor of the Western Downs Regional Council for the past 3 years and has previously represented Local Government for 20 years. The Western Downs Regional Council covers an area of 38,000 km² and represents 23 towns and 99 communities.

Ray and his wife live on their family grain and cattle property in the Moonie District. He has great ties with the rural sector, also having connections to the mining sector through the development of the Moonie Oilfields on one of his properties. Due to his keen interest in sport and agriculture he has travelled the world but his passion is his region’s communities and where they are heading in the future.
Session: Flood of youth: Should we fight to keep them on the farm?

Mara Bun @marabun
Mara Bun began her career as a Financial Analyst with Morgan Stanley, spending five years in their New York and San Francisco practices. She specialised in high technology finance, working on Silicon Valley IPOs and mergers during the late 1980s. In 1989 she joined a World Bank Nepali earthquake reconstruction project in Kathmandu, then moved to Australia embracing community leadership roles with Greenpeace Australia and CHOICE in the 1990s. In 2008 Mara became founding CEO of Green Cross Australia. Green Cross Australia is part of a global network of 30 offices founded by Mikhail Gorbachev with a mission to foster a global values shift towards a secure and sustainable future.
Session: From the noughties to 2011: What kind of tweenie is Australia?

Julian Burnside @JulianBurnside
Julian Burnside is a Melbourne based barrister specialising in commercial litigation. Throughout his career Julian has acted for a number of high profile clients, including the Ok Tedi natives against BHP, for Alan Bond in fraud trials, for Rose Porteous in numerous actions against Gina Rinehart, and for the Maritime Union of Australia in the 1998 waterfront dispute against Patrick Stevedores. He was Senior Counsel assisting the Australian Broadcasting Authority in the “Cash for Comment” inquiry and was senior counsel for Liberty Victoria in the Tampa litigation.

Julian is the immediate past President of Liberty Victoria, and has acted pro bono in many human rights cases, in particular concerning the treatment of refugees. In 2004 he was elected as a Living National Treasure and in 2009 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia.
Session: Spin cycle: Should politicians be punished for misleading the people not just the Parliament?

Selwyn Button
Selwyn Button is the CEO of the Queensland Aboriginal and Islander Health Council. Prior to his time with QAIHC, Selwyn was Director, Indigenous Health Policy Branch within Queensland Health. Selwyn also has worked in a variety of government policy development roles within the Department of Education and Training. He is a qualified teacher who has also served as a Police Officer with the Queensland Police Service for approximately 6 years. His main priority is the achievement of an empowered and sustainable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Controlled Health Sector in Queensland.
Session: Radical health: How can we meet the needs of communities following natural disaster?

Dale Chapman
Dale Chapman is an Indigenous woman and fully qualified chef, born in Dirranbandi in South West Queensland, Kooma tribal lands. From French cuisine to contemporary Australian, Dale’s experience is varied. In January 2006, Dale was invited to the Nice College of Hospitality in the French Riviera to teach the French to cook using our own native bush tucker products and to impart some of her Indigenous cooking techniques and recipes. Bush tucker is where Dale’s passions lie and she has promoted its use for a number of years through her own business, The Dilly Bag Bush Tucker Products and Learning Programs.
Session: A night by the fire

Mary Collier @mtc01
Brisbane born and bred, Mary Collier starting talking very early in life and hasn’t stopped since. After her university days studying law at QUT, Mary embarked on an employment journey across the retail, broking and human resources fields.  But she returned to the law and has spent the last decade trying to effect real change for Queenslanders through her work in legal policy and law reform. Mary is also a passionate sports administrator.  She was a Director and Chairman of the Brisbane Turf Club and is currently the President of the Queensland Jockeys’ Association. Mary also hosts the breakfast show on 4BC.
Session: Oi Oi Oi: Is professional sport just money for nothing and your chicks for free?

John Connolly
John “Knuckles” Connolly is a rugby union coach and the former head coach of the Wallabies.  As a rugby player, Connolly played hooker for the Brothers club in Brisbane. In 1989, Connolly took up a coaching position within the Queensland Rugby team and with the inception of the Super 12 competition in 1996, he continued his position at the Queensland Reds. During his time with Queensland, the side won the Super Six in 1992 and the Super 10 Championship in 1994 and 1995.  In 2006 Connolly was appointed as the new head coach of the Australian team. In his first Test in charge, Australia defeated England in the first of two games in Australia. Australia then finished second in the 2006 Tri Nations Series and made the quarter finals of the 2007 Rugby World Cup.
Session: Oi Oi Oi: Is professional sport just money for nothing and your chicks for free?

Denis Cotterell
Denis Cotterell was instrumental in the formation of the Miami Swimming Club in 1976. He has held the position of Head Coach since its formation, and has guided 17 swimmers into berths on the Australian representative teams including Grant Hackett . An internationally recognised Master Coach, Denis has also been part of the Australian coaching team, attending Olympic and Commonwealth Games, PanPacific Games, World Championships, and other international events.
Session: Oi Oi Oi: Is professional sport just money for nothing and your chicks for free?

Danielle Crismani @digellabakes
Danielle Crismani is a Brisbane based blogger and baker. Danielle has a strong following on her food blog, Digella Emporium, and it was this community that rallied behind her in her latest venture, Baked Relief.  Baked Relief started as a response to the severe flooding which devastated parts of Queensland in early 2011. Separated from her boys who were with her mum (whose property was affected by flooding) and needing to do something, she came up with the idea to start baking some relief for the State Emergency Services volunteers who were sandbagging around Brisbane.

She put the word out about what she was doing on her blog and on Twitter and Facebook and offers of help and baking came rushing in. It has just grown beyond imagining since then and Baked Relief is now in the hands of hundreds of home cooks and bakers and is reaching people who are recovering from the floods and cyclone and all of those thousands of volunteers helping them.
Session: Blogs and baking: How can food bring a community together?

James Davidson
James Davidson is the Queensland Director of Emergency Architects Australia (EAA) and recently coordinated an extensive study of flood damaged houses throughout Southeast Queensland following the Queensland floods and in far North Queensland after cyclone Yasi. Involving more than volunteer architects and architecture students this team offered free advice on how to restore homes including cleaning, repairs, the drying of building materials and working with engineers on building integrity.
Session: Extreme architecture: Can architects future-proof us against fire and flood?

Michael D’Occhio
Dr Michael D’Occhio leads the School of Animal Studies at the University of Queensland. His work on animal production and reproduction provides critical insights to global food security issues linked with climate change and population growth. Michael draws on extensive experience and expertise in both research and consulting in Australia and around the globe. In over 30 years of work in Animal Production he has established international networks with the private sector, governments and other research organisations.
Session: Feeding the world: What will be on Queensland’s plate in 2050?

Christian Duell @whitelightau
Christian Duell is the director of White Light, a collaborative design studio dedicated to the creation of architecture and artwork based on individual identity and the experience of public space. As an architect, Christian has contributed to a number of significant public realm projects including the Clem7 Tunnel urban design, Masdar City public realm architecture (UAE), Mount Isa Rodeo Arena and the award-winning Hatton Vale Cathedral. Currently, Christian holds a position with The Edge digital culture centre as a Catalyst, focusing on environmental sustainability. In this role, he aims to facilitate a dialogue across creative disciplines on the environmental impact of design thinking.
Session: Fringe Ideas: Future body

Alex Dyson
Alex was born in Warrnambool in South-West Victoria and has been living ever since. He attended Warrnambool College, played basketball for the Warrnambool Seahawks, and occasionally visited the Warrnambool Botanic Gardens to feed the ducks. Since leaving his home town Alex completed a Bachelor of Creative Arts at Melbourne University whilst  living at St Hilda’s College in Parkville, where, in his final year, he was elected President of the Student club.

Alex is now the older and wiser of triple j’s breakfast hosts. Given Alex’s existence is a result of sex, he considers himself an expert on the topic.
Session: Fringe Ideas: Future sex

Paul Frijters @paul_frijters
Paul Frijters is a Professor of Economics at the University of Queensland and an adjunct professor at the Australian National University’s Research School of Social Sciences. Paul has a wide range of research interests, specialising in happiness, labour market, health economics and econometrics.

In 2009, Paul was awarded the Economic Society of Australia’s Young Economist Award. Paul is also a contributor to ClubTroppo, a blog commenting on politics, economics, law and life from a ‘radical centrist’ perspective.
Session: Predicting happiness: Does life give second chances?

Dan Galligan
Dan Galligan joined the team at Queensland Farmers’ Federation in January 2009. Dan was previously the Policy Manager for Cotton Australia in Queensland. He had been with Cotton Australia for nearly ten years. During this time, he worked in advocacy roles in Queensland and NSW, as well as holding grower services and management positions. He is well known for being the immediate-past Chairman of the Queensland Primary Industries Week Committee, as well as being central to the cotton industry’s negotiations on accrediting the industry voluntary Best Management Practices program, as delivering against the statutory land and water management planning framework in Queensland.
Session: Feeding the world: What will be on Queensland’s plate in 2050?

Milly Gamlin
Milly studied BA Textile Design at RMIT with a major in printed textiles, fuelling her passion for designing fashion prints and the possibilities for the future of textiles. At The Social Studio where she teaches, digitally printed textiles are her focus and she is heavily involved in the creation of The Social Studio’s digital printing service. Milly enjoys seeing the keen involvement of students in the Social Studio and following the opportunities they are presented to work in creative industries.
Session: Modern trends: Can fashion drive social change?

Jade Gatt
Jade Gatt is an Australian actor, best know for his co-hosting role on children’s morning cartoon show, Cheez TV. He has also had roles in shows such as Heartbreak High and Home and Away.
Session: Cheez TV: Too clever for adults?

Beverley Giles
Beverley Giles is an independent care consultant and educator specialising in the art and skill of caring for people affected by dementia. She has acted as a Senior Consultant on the National Dementia Learning Project for Community Care, facilitated focus groups nationally.
Session: On your toes: Is there a different approach to ageing?

Kári Gíslason
Dr Kári Gíslason was born in Iceland and moved to Australia as a child. Since then, Kari’s work as a writer, teacher and academic has encompassed aspects of both his homeland and his adopted country. After studying English and Law, Kari wrote his doctoral thesis on authorship in medieval Iceland and he has published articles on the Icelandic family sagas. Kári has taught English Literature and Writing in Iceland and in Australia and currently lectures at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT).

Kári has an enduring interest in travel writing and his travel writing has been published in literary journals and the mainstream press. He is also author of the chapter on travel writing for the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Creative Writing, and maintains a travel and writing blog. Kári’s first book, The Promise of Iceland (UQP), which follows his returns to Iceland, is a lyrical and deeply personal reflection on fatherhood, travel and his homeland.
Session: Returning to Iceland: Is there a geography of happiness and does it bring you home?

Barbara Gunnell @eastendlady
Barbara Gunnell is a London based editor and writer. Formerly the assistant editor of The Independent on Sunday, comment editor of The Observer and associate editor of The New Statesman she is now a regular contributor to The Observer and has closely followed the debate around transparency, freedom of information and journalism that has resulted from the recent focus on WikiLeaks and the work of its Australian leader. Barbara is also a past president of the National Union of Journalists.
Session: Whistles and leaks: What do we really need to know?

Stefan Hajkowicz
Currently leading the CSIRO’s Sustainable Regional Development research theme, Dr Stefan Hajkowicz’s work informs natural resource management decisions. He is a policy and economic analyst and he maintains an active research portfolio in the fields of geography, environmental economics and decision analysis.

His first major project was to estimate economic returns to the natural resource base and costs of land/water degradation across the Australian continent under the National Land and Water Resources Audit. He also undertook research into the economics of salinity and environmental decision support systems.

He later transferred to CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems in Brisbane where his work began to focus on informing Australia’s investments under the Natural Heritage Trust and more recently the Caring for Our Country program. During this time he also worked on environmental-economic issues in the Pacific region with projects in the Cook Islands and Palau funded by the International Waters Program.
Session: Fringe Ideas: Future body, Environmental triage: We can’t save everything, so do you prefer wallabies or wombats?

Phoebe Hart @hartflicker
After completing her undergraduate degree in film and television production at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Phoebe Hart went on to be a finalist in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) race around the world and went on to work on various other projects with the ABC and Network 10. Since going freelance, Phoebe has continued to produce and direct documentaries and short films for inclusion in film festivals under the banner of hartflicker.  Her acclaimed mini-doc Dumpster Divers was a finalist for the Wild Spaces Pro-Cam Award and the ABC picked up her acclaimed long form documentary Orchids, which focuses on people living with intersex conditions.
Session: Fringe Ideas: Future sex

Malcolm Holz
Malcolm Holz has over 25 years experience as a designer working within property development companies to turn creative ideas into commercial innovations.  Malcolm has been instrumental in influencing the design of thousands of small lot homes in south east Queensland, from “Green Street” to “Kawana Island” and beyond.  Malcolm has worked with leading architects such as Gabriel Poole to progress the small home movement in Australia.  He is also a recording artist and guitarist performing regularly in his home town of Maleny where he lives with his family in a hermitage of small huts.
Session: McMansion to micromansion: How can you challenge the great Australian dream?

Tom Hulme @thulme
Tom is a Design Director at IDEO in London, where he uses the innovation and design process to develop new business opportunities. A serial entrepreneur and angel investor, Tom has first-hand experience in building successful enterprises and, as a result, a very thorough understanding of business. He is particularly interested in commercializing new products and services, and his clients include technology, retail, FMCG, financial services, hospitality and fashion brands, Having spent a year teaching secondary school in Tanzania, he also believes in the power of entrepreneurship for sustainable social good. Tom regularly speaks on the topics of entrepreneurship, design thinking, open innovation and industry disruption. In December of 2009 he published an essay in The Future of Innovation, titled “The Future of Innovation is Holistic and Networked,” and regularly posts to his blog.
Session: Crowd sourcing: How do you engage those on the edge?, Future Thinking: The final pitch

Drew Hutton
Drew Hutton has been an environmental campaigner in Queensland for the past three decades and a social movement activist for considerably longer. He founded the Queensland Greens in 1991 and was a co-founder of the Australian Greens in 1992. He was the Greens main spokesperson from 1991 to 2007 but resigned all his positions in the Greens in early 2010 to campaign with farmers and rural landowners on coal and coal seam gas and is currently a member of the Six Degrees campaign and spokesperson for Friends of the Earth (Brisbane). He is also the author, with Libby Connors, of A History of the Australian Environment Movement published by Cambridge Uni Press in 1999.
Session: Food or fuel: Can we have our cake and eat it too?

Sabina Knight
Professor Sabina Knight was recently appointed Director of the Mt Isa Centre for Rural and Remote Health at James Cook University – one of a national network of federally funded University Departments of Rural Health from an extensive background in remote and Indigenous primary health care public health and education. A recognised leader in nursing, rural and remote health and education, she came to MICRRH from the Centre for Remote Health in Alice Springs.
Session: Radical health: How can we meet the needs of communities following natural disaster?

Lee Kofman
Lee Kofman, the bilingual author of three fiction books (in Hebrew), emigrated from Russia to Israel in 1985, and to Australia in 2000. Since 2002 her short fiction, non-fiction and poetry in English appeared in Australia, Scotland, UK and USA in Griffith Review, Australian Best Stories, Island, Heat, Westerly, Antipodes (USA), Cordite, Brand (UK), Chapman (Scotland) and more. She is the recipient of the Australian Council grant 2004, the Varuna Eric Dark Flagship Fellowship 2005, Emerging Writer-in-Residence in Katharine Susanna Pritchard Writers’ Centre 2007 and several other writing residencies, Varuna Pathways Masterclass Award 2007 and ASA mentorship 2007. She holds MA of Creative Writing (University of Melbourne) and teaches creative writing at various community settings.
Session: Big love: Will monogamy continue to prosper?

Nicole Kuol
Nicole is passionate about fashion and design and is currently doing her Certificate III in Clothing Design at The Social Studio in Melbourne and is also studying accounting. Nicole moved to Australia 6 years ago and her vision is to have a tourist resort where her own label of fashion, jewellery and shoes can be sold – she’s not sure whether it will be here in Australia or in Africa.
Session: Modern trends: Can fashion drive social change?

Ryan Lappin
Ryan Lappin is an Australian television personality and musician best known for co-hosting the popular children’s morning show Cheez TV from 1995 until 2004. Ryan and fellow Cheez TV host Jade Gatt performed numerous notable skits during their time on the program, including impersonations of Australian Idol hosts Andrew G and James Mathison and a take-off of Rove Live called Ryan Live. Ryan is currently a member of the Australian band UfOBiA, previously known as The Grymm.
Session: Cheez TV: Too clever for adults?

Carmen Lawrence
After training as a research psychologist at the University of Western Australia and lecturing in a number of Australian universities, Dr Lawrence entered politics in 1986, serving at both State and Federal levels for 21 years. She was at various times W.A Minister for Education and Aboriginal affairs and was the first woman Premier and Treasurer of a State government.  She shifted to Federal politics in 1994 when she was elected as the Member for Fremantle and was appointed Minister for Health and Human Services and Minister assisting the Prime Minister on the Status of Women.  She has held various portfolios in Opposition, including Indigenous Affairs, Environment, Industry and Innovation and was elected national President of the Labor Party in 2004. She retired from politics in 2007. She is now Director of the Centre for the Study of Social Change in the School of Psychology at the University of Western Australia.
Session: Sustainable growth: An oxymoron?

Theordora Le Souquet
Theodora began her career in government in the United States then moved to Europe and Australia as an international marketing and commercialisation advisor for a global organisation. She has been responsible for assisting public and private companies, NGOs and governments with business strategies and planning.  Theodora managed the development of the Australian Writer’s Marketplace digital strategy which established an online resource for writers. The project won the national Australia Business Arts Foundation (AbaF) KPMG AdviceBank Award.  She was also Chair of the Queensland Writers Centre and now has put her passion behind black&write! – an Indigenous writing and editing project. 
Session: From the noughties to 2011: What kind of tweenie is Australia?

Miriam Lyons @miriamlyons
Miriam Lyons is the Executive Director of the Centre for Policy Development, an independent public interest think tank set up in 2007. Formerly the Policy Coordinator of New Matilda, Miriam has a history of bringing policy ideas to new audiences, as the former director of the Interface Festival of Ideas in Sydney, and the Ideas Program for the Straight out of Brisbane Festival. Miriam has also worked as a freelance writer and researcher and as a media development consultant in East Timor. She is on the advisory committee of the Centre for Cosmopolitan Civil Societies at UTS.

Miriam was a delegate to the 2020 Summit and was profiled in the Thinkers category of The Australian’s Emerging Leaders series, as a ‘Woman Shaping Australia’ in Madison Magazine and as an AFR Boss 2010 ‘True Leader’. She is an occasional guest on the ABC show QandA. She co-edited the book ‘More than Luck: Ideas Australia needs now‘ with Mark Davis.
Session: Carrots and sticks: Are we managing ourselves to death?, Future Thinking: The final pitch

Peter Marchant @pgmarchant
Peter Marchant’s life is all about good food and wine. At the age of nine he embarked on his waiting career helping his mother who was a caterer. His home was abundant with great food but it was always for someone else.  In 2001 Peter joined the front of house team at Brisbane icon, Restaurant Two. Following a couple of years working for Red + White, Australia’s premier wine wholesaler, he subsequently became a Director and co-owner of both Restaurant Two and Bistro Three which opened in 2007. After leaving these roles in 2009, Peter went on to work at Mezzanine Wine. Peter is a certified sommelier and is the Queensland Chair and a Member of the national executive for Sommeliers Australia.  He wrote the wine list for the hit reality TV show, Conviction Kitchen, filmed on location in Bistro Three.
Session: From the noughties to 2011: What kind of tweenie is Australia?

Wendy McCarthy
Wendy McCarthy is an experienced manager and company director. She currently chairs headspace, Circus Oz, McGrath Estate Agents and Pacific Friends of the Global Fund.

Wendy began her career as a secondary school teacher and is passionate about the power of education. For four decades she has been a teacher, educator and change agent in Australian public life. In 2005 she completed a decade as Chancellor of the University of Canberra. Her national consulting business McCarthy Mentoring specialises in providing mentors to major corporations, the public sector and not for profit organisations. She is the author of seven books.

In 1989 she was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for outstanding contributions to community affairs, women’s affairs and the Bicentennial celebrations. In 2003 she was awarded a Centenary of Federation medal for business leadership and in 2005 she was nominated by the Sydney Morning Herald as one of Australia’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals.
Session: Repeat conversations: Is gender back on the agenda?

Rob McCreath
Rob McCreath is a grain and beef farmer from Felton on the Darling Downs. Married with 3 children, he and his family emigrated to Australia 16 years ago after selling their dairy farm in Scotland. Rob is president of community group Friends of Felton, which is fighting to defend the Darling Downs from coal mining, is an advocate of renewable energy, and is puzzled by the reluctance of politicians to adopt what seems such an obvious solution to the threat posed by climate change.
Session: Food or fuel: Can we have our cake and eat it too?

Robyn McDermott
Professor Robyn McDermott is the Foundation Director of the State-wide Data Linkage Unit, SA/NT Datalink, and a Professor of Public Health in the Sansom Institute for Health Research. Robyn joined UniSA in August 2004 as Pro Vice Chancellor and Vice President in the Division of Health Sciences and held this role for five years before taking up her current appointment in September 2009.

Robyn has worked as a primary care clinician in many rural areas across Australia as well as managing refugee health care and public health programs from 1988 to 1992 in China, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. She has worked with Indigenous communities in central and northern Australia to understand the causes and consequences of rapid changes in living conditions and nutrition on health status, and how to intervene to improve health outcomes.
Session: Radical health: How can we meet the needs of communities following natural disaster?

Alan McKee @ProfAlanMcKee
Alan McKee is a Professor in the Film and Television area at QUT and, along with Christy Collis, leads the development team for the new Creative Industries program in Entertainment Industries. Alan has written, co-written and edited six academic books and has written for television (Big Brother), radio (ABC 720), computer games (Scoot!), newspapers (Brother/Sister), magazines (DNA) and stand-up comedy (The Josh Thomas Variety Hour).
Session: Fringe Ideas: Future sex

Simon McKeon
2011 Australian of the Year, Simon McKeon is a prominent investment banker and record-breaking yachtsman, but it’s his efforts to support multiple Australian and international charities which has earned him great admiration. While enjoying a successful corporate career, Simon decided he didn’t want to put off serious engagement with the community sector until his most productive years were behind him. So in 1994 he transitioned into a part-time role as Executive Chairman of Macquarie Group’s Melbourne office, enabling him to support a range of causes and organisations, including joining the board of World Vision Australia.

Simon is currently Chairman of the CSIRO and Business for Millennium Development, which encourages business to engage with the developing world. He recently retired as founding chairman of MS Research Australia. His association with World Vision International continues and he is involved with the Global Poverty Project and Red Dust Role Models, which works with remote Indigenous communities. Together with crewman Tim Daddo, Simon has held the World Speed Sailing Record for most of the last two decades. A leading social entrepreneur, Simon demonstrates how business and philanthropy go hand in hand, giving tremendously of his time and energy to many organisations.
Session: Inclusive Australia: Is there a place for profit in social enterprise?

Chris Miller
Chris Miller is Professor of Social Work and Social Planning, School of Social and Policy Studies Flinders University where he has been since September 2008. Previously he was Professor in Applied Social Studies at the University of West of England, Bristol, UK. He is the former Editor of the international Community Development Journal and has been a Board member since 1982.

Since joining Flinders he has worked closely with the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists on water reform in the Murray-Darling Basin and was a co-author to the influential June 2010 Wentworth Group report, Sustainable Diversions in the Murray-Darling Basin: An analysis of the options for achieving a sustainable diversion limit in the MDB. He has made contributions to both the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, in response to its Guide to the Draft Basin Plan, and to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Inquiry into the social and economic impacts of water reform in the Basin, chaired by Federal MP Tony Windsor.
Session: Through the storm: Are we ready to face the uncertainties of the future?

Lindsay Morgan
ACT prop, Lindsay “Mad Dog” Morgan, has represented her country in Women’s Rugby Union fourteen times since 2006. Her latest sporting achievement was scoring three tries last October at the 2010 Women’s World Cup. This helped the Wallaroos to improve their world ranking from seventh to third best in the world.  Lindsay holds a Bachelor of Science with Honours from the Australian National University and is a mad keen Brumbies fan.
Session: Oi Oi Oi: Is professional sport just money for nothing and your chicks for free?

Bryan Moses
Bryan Moses is a Sydney based producer, actor, director and writer. He has won multiple awards for his short films and television shows, including the AFI award winning comedy series Double the Fist. Bryan grew up on the South Coast of New South Wales. His involvement in many local amateur dramatic societies helped to develop his over-the-top acting style. While studying at the University of Western Sydney, Bryan became interested in making weird short films and, after graduating, made Life in a Datsun which took out best comedy at Tropfest and the St Kilda film festivals in 1999.
Session: Virtually sustainable: Could a serious gamer be the next Al Gore?

Glen Murray
Glen Murray has a long and impressive resume in the world of ballet. He has performed with Sydney Dance Company and West Australian Ballet Company where he was privately coached by former Prima Ballerina Lucette Aldous.  Glen performed soloist roles in both the classical and contemporary repertoire of the Australian Ballet from 1982-84, and began his professional dance career in Jonathan Taylor’s Australian Dance Theatre 1979-81.

In 2005 Glen founded MADE (Mature Artists Dance Experience Inc), Tasmania’s unique  contemporary dance theatre performance ensemble of mature adults. MADE presented Princess for the Theatre Royal in November 2010 and a string of other performances for events such as Senior’s Week, Under the Radar at the Brisbane festival and Junction Arts Festival.
Session: On your toes: Is there a different approach to ageing?

Walbira Murray
Walbira is a Gumillaroi woman, from Dirranbandi. Walbira’s earliest memories are of living in the fringe dwellers camp on the banks of the Ballone Riverine a shack her father had built. Walbira is a trainer, traditional dancer, artistic director, arts facilitator art maker and events coordinator.

Join Walbira as she speaks about her commitment to building capacity in the Indigenous community through innovative and creative educational opportunities.
Session: Caring for country: Are you doing your part through green living?

Charlotte Nash-Stewart
Charlotte Nash-Stewart was born in England and grew up in the Redlands of Brisbane. She has degrees in mechanical and space engineering; medicine and surgery; and writing, editing and publishing. She has worked for the University of Queensland, CSIRO and the private sector, with career adventures that include microgravity research, rocket building, composite pressure vessel design, limb injury treatment research, and working as an incident investigator. These days, she works as a gun-for-hire corporate and technical writer, enjoys nerd culture, and has a thing for heavy machinery. Fiction, however, is her passion. Her sci-fi short story, The Ship’s Doctor, was published in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine in 2010, and her sci-fi/cyberpunk novel The Q Line was selected for the 2010 Hachette/Queensland Writers Centre Manuscript Development Program. Personal fascinations that frequently appear in her fiction include man−machine interfaces, endurance limits, alternative history, social collapses and technological societies.
Session: Fringe Ideas: Future body

Amanda Newbery
Amanda Newbery manages one of Queensland’s largest communications consultancies, BBS PR, overseeing a staff of 25 who consult on projects throughout Australia and New Zealand. A strategic communication specialist, Amanda is a trusted advisor to corporate and government executives. Her experience across community and stakeholder engagement, media relations, corporate communication and investor relations, enables her to provide both business and communications advice to clients. Prior to her role at BBS, Amanda worked as a journalist for the Courier-Mail,  covering education, parliament, courts, arts, features and general news.
Session: From the noughties to 2011: What kind of tweenie is Australia?

Deb Newell
Deb Newell started her career as a physiotherapist, but quickly found her passion in the food industry as a caterer, TV food presenter, restaurant chef, food technician, cookery teacher and event designer. From 1997 – 2001 a passion for the rights of all food animals resulted in the development of a beef flavour assessment programme called The Paddocks to Palates. It was Deb’s experience in this program that highlighted to her to the landscape and biodiversity devastation caused by the massive crop agriculture of Australia that underwrites vegetarian diets, leading her to form The Hunter Gatherer Dinner Club in 2009. This Club is a targeted appeal for a return to our original human diet, that of the Hunter/Gatherer, as it is the most nourishing for us at the least cost to other life and to our planet.
Session: Down and dirty: Is peak soil more pressing than peak oil?

Claudia O’Doherty
Winner of the Best Newcomer 2010 at the Melbourne Comedy Festival and Best Comedy 2009 at the Melbourne Fringe Festival, Claudia O’Doherty is well qualified to make you laugh. Daughter of musician, Reg Mombassa, Claudia has inherited a strong grasp of the absurd, a trait that is on show in her performances. Her latest show, What is soil erosion? brings to the table Claudia’s clever brand of cabaret-style silliness, acting and comedy.
Session: What is soil erosion?

Howard Parry-Husbands
Howard studied climate geography well before it became fashionable and after a torrid merchant banking experience, Howard switched to  a career in market research. After working in the UK, New Zealand and Australia and finding research was too often ‘average’ and not actionable Howard founded Pollinate as an expert communications research company.  Eight years on Pollinate employs some of Australia’s best thinkers, developing world class models which change the paradigm of communications. Pollinate’s expertise in how to drive consumer behavior change has been a focus for pollinate with successful projects completed in the energy, water, transport, NGO and government sector. Howard is a passionate communicator and dedicated to developing successful sustainable solutions for society.

Session: Feeding the world: What will be on Queensland’s plate in 2050?

Noel Pearson
Noel Pearson is a prominent Indigenous Australian lawyer, academic and land rights activist. Noel has been strongly involved in campaigning for the rights of Cape York Aboriginal people and played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Cape York Land Council in 1990. He also worked on both native title cases including the historic WIK decision. The resulting High Court decision is recognised as one of the most important native title cases in Australian history. Throughout the past ten years Noel has been involved in many key Indigenous issues including, as a member of the Indigenous Negotiating Team during the drafting of the Native Title Act in 1993.
Session: The 2011 Griffith Lecture

Sonya Pemberton
Sonya Pemberton is one of Australia’s leading documentary writers, directors and executive producers. She has written and directed over 45 hours of television, specialising in science documentary for the international market. Her films have won over 30 awards and she has been three times honoured with the prestigious Eureka Prize for Science Journalism (2003, 2004, 2008). Sonya’s recent documentaries include Immortal, Catching Cancer, Angels and Demons with Andrew Denton and Crude. Details of Sonya’s work are on her website. From 2004 to 2006 Sonya was Head of Specialist Factual at ABC Television. Sonya also consults to industry and government on science communication and science televison.
Session: Fringe Ideas: Future body

Sue-Ann Post @SueAnnPost
Sue-Ann Post is famous for her one woman comedy shows across Australia, the UK, USA and New Zealand and has won the Melbourne Comedy Festival’s Barry Award for Best Show.  Sue-Ann’s most recent book, The Confession of an Unrepentant Lesbian Ex-Mormon (ABC Books) was based on her documentary film A Lost Tribe (ABC TV/Pony Films).  It is an exploration of the renegade gay and lesbian ex-Mormon community of Salt Lake City.

Sue-Ann was a regular columnist for The Age and was nominated for a Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Print Media Award. She has also appeared in numerous television programs, including Compass, Kath and Kim and Good News Week.  She worked as a guest sumo wrestler with The Jim Rose Circus and once spent an evening handcuffed to American comedian Rich Hall.
Session: Big love: Will monogamy continue to prosper?

Ann-Marie Priest
Ann-Marie Priest is an essayist and the author of Great Writers, Great Loves: The Reinvention of Love in the Twentieth Century. In 2004, she won the Josephine Ulrick Literature Prize for a short essay, and in 2009 was short-listed for the Calibre Prize for an Outstanding Essay. Both essays were published in Best Australian Essays. Her essays have also appeared in The Australian, The Monthly, Australian Book Review and Meanjin as well as in scholarly journals in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia. She is currently writing a book on vocation among Australian writers with the support of a grant from the Literature Board of the Australia Council.
Session: Reader’s guide to happiness

Rod Quantock
Rod Quantock is one of the reasons that Melbourne is the live comedy capital of Australia. As a pioneer of stand up comedy, Rod has more than thirty years experience working in cabaret, theatre, television, radio, advertising and the corporate sector. For an old boy, Rod is still doing extremely well, thank you very much. His live shows are predictably box office hits at the Melbourne Comedy Festival and the Adelaide Fringe Festival and he is an evergreen favourite at corporate events.

For thirty hears Rod has remained a contemporary stand up comedian, evolving and staying at the forefront of the craft. His contribution to Australian cultural life was rewarded when he received the Individual Award at the 2004 Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards.  That he continues to build new, younger audiences all the time is testament to possibly the most impressive career in Australian comedy.
Session: Sunday Roast

Kelly Rochow
Kelly Rochow is a registered clinical psychologist with more than 15 years’ experience in clinical practice. Kelly has specialist training in the use of laughter and colour in her work, drawing on the evidence base of positive psychology. Kelly has a wide and varied background including working with the corporate sector, the public service, education (both at secondary and tertiary levels) and the community. Kelly was the first psychologist within the New South Wales Department of Juvenile Justice to promote the use of positive psychology techniques in custodial settings, including running laughter clubs and positive psychology based groups on a weekly basis. Kelly was the recipient of the Director General’s Excellence Award 2005 for Outstanding Contribution to the Advancement of Social Justice for Young People.
Session: Reader’s guide to happiness,
Increase your personal happiness!

Anthony Ryan
Anthony Ryan has contributed significantly to the Brisbane community by establishing the Eddies Street Van (alongside Brother Damien Price). He has also established the Paddies Van to assist Brisbane’s homeless, street kids and the elderly. Commencing with two days a week, the programs have grown to provide daily assistance to the community. In recent years, Anthony has developed the Mimiki Foundation in South Africa to assist underprivileged children. Anthony has networked and devoted his talent and time to empowering others to reach out to those in need.
Session: Homelessness in Brisbane: Is poverty a necessity?

 

Gavin Sade
Gavin is a designer in the field of interactive computational media, with a background in music and sonology. Gavin is currently a director of Kuuki a creative media, art and design company, teaches part time at the Queensland University of Technology and is working towards a PhD in the field of interactive media design. He has worked on a number of high profile new media installations including work as member of the Transmute Collective from 1999 – 2003.

Since 1997 Gavin has written, coordinated and run both undergraduate and postgraduate classes on media technology, interaction design, physical computing, virtual reality, contemporary issues in design and technology, game design, and web development within the faculty of Creative Industries at the Queensland University of Technology.
Session: Lumia: art/light/motion

Curt Stager @curtstager
Curt Stager is an ecologist, paleoclimatologist, and science journalist who has written extensively for general audiences in periodicals such as National Geographic and Adirondack Life.  In this age of specialisation, Stager’s  background in the natural sciences stands out for its depth and breadth.  He has taught marine ecology in the Caribbean, North Carolina, and Maine, and taught geology, biology, and evolution in upstate New York and paleolimnology in Tanzania.  A world authority on the ecological history of Africa and its lakes, he has also investigated El Niño in Peru, human impacts on lakes in Sweden, exploding lakes in Cameroon, bat pollination of flowers on the South Pacific islands of Melanesia, and modern climate change in the northeastern U.S.

Curt is currently a teacher at Paul Smith’s College in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, and holds a research associate post at the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute, where he continues to investigate the long-term history of climate in Africa, South America, the polar regions, and the northeastern United States.
Session: Climate whiplash: What comes after global warming?

Waverley Stanley
Waverley Stanley grew up in Queensland’s Murgon and Cherbourg district. He is descended from the Wakka Wakka people, and identifies with the Barunggam people of Chinchilla. In 1979, Waverley’s primary school teacher Rosemary Bishop at Murgon State School took a big step on his behalf. She negotiated a secondary school scholarship for him at Toowoomba Grammar School, a private boarding school for boys. Waverley’s own boarding school experience started him on the Yalari journey. Through his unwavering vision and passion, Yalari’s work is now supported nationally by individuals, companies, philanthropic foundations, government departments and many fantastic volunteers.

Waverley previously worked extensively throughout Queensland as an Indigenous Support Officer for Education Queensland and he has presented and facilitated workshops and conferences for Indigenous people throughout Australia, in leadership and education. He has a passion for education and the empowerment of Indigenous children and was rewarded for this passion as a Queensland finalist in the Australian of the Year in 2010.
Session: Raising the bar: Does it take a whole community to educate a child?

David Stavanger @holyghostboy
Ghostboy – David Stavanger’s bent alter ego – first emerged in 2004 from a small wooden box following a diagnosis by the W.H.O of acute performance poetry influenza to infect a live audience. Ghostboy is part spoken weird / part poet / part cabaret theatre / part surrealist psychotherapy / part carnie / part ringmaster. Self described small poet with a big pen, David is a Slam MC with a mouth your mother wouldn’t wish on a mule.
Session: Fringe Ideas: Future sex

Norman Swan @normanswan
Host of the Health Report, on ABC Radio National, Dr Norman Swan has won numerous awards for his journalism and broadcasting, including three Walkley Awards, one of which was Australia’s most prestigious award for journalism, the Gold Walkley. He has also won Australia’s leading award for science journalism, the Michael Daly Award twice.  Norman originally trained in medicine and paediatrics in Scotland, London and Sydney and in addition to the Health Report, he presents “Health Minutes” on ABC NewsRadio each week and edits his own newsletter, The Choice Health Reader.
Sessions: Radical health: How can we meet the needs of communities following natural disaster?, Human longevity: Is the face of survival changing?

John van Tiggelen
John van Tiggelen was born in Holland, grew up in country Victoria, graduated in science and worked as a tour guide in the Daintree rainforest before turning to journalism. Since 1998 he has been writing for Good Weekend, the weekend magazine of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He is the author of Mango Country (Pan MacMillan), a collection of essays documenting North Queensland and short-listed for the Colin Roderick Award for Australian literature.
Sessions: True blue: What does it mean to be un-Australian?, Future Thinking: The final pitch

Charlie Veron
Dr Charlie Veron is best known as the author of the three volume Corals of the World. Charlie is the former Chief Scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science and has discovered and described 20% of all coral species of the world. He has been the recipient of the Darwin Medal, the Silver Jubilee Pin of the Australian Marine Sciences Association, the Australasian Science Prize, the Whitley Medal and received special mention in the Eureka Awards.
Session: A reef in time: Are we heading for the sixth mass extinction?

Zenith Virago
As a respected professional pioneer and acknowledged expert in the fields of holistic death and dying, Zenith Virago provides information and guidance that greatly assist a natural and sacred journeying into the end of life experience. Coming from a background in legal and community work, she has been assisting people to reclaim and conduct the whole process themselves, without the use of a funeral director.

Zenith has spent several decades living and celebrating life and death; she sees her work as a privilege and an important part of her life’s journey, and it gives her a deep love and gratitude for the wonderful mystery of life and death of which we are all a part. Zenith offers workshops in conscious living and dying, is also the founding member of the non-profit Natural Death Centre Australia, and the co-author of the Intimacy of Death and Dying.
Session: Optimism: What can you learn about life from an undertaker?

Ian Weir
Dr Ian Weir is one of Australia’s few ‘bushfire architects’. Exploring a holistic ‘ground up’ approach to bushfire where landscape, building design and habitation patterns are orchestrated to respond to site-specific fire characteristics. Ian’s research is developed through design studio teaching at QUT and through built works in Western Australia’s fire prone forests and heathlands.
Session: Extreme architecture: Can architects future-proof us against fire and flood?