Past Speakers

Harness the collective intelligence of the world’s foremost thought leaders to learn best practices and be inspired.
Dean
Nelson
Chairman & Founder at Infrastructure Masons

Dean Nelson

Chairman & Founder at Infrastructure Masons

About

Dean Nelson is the Founder and Chairman of Infrastructure Masons, an independent industry group of executive and technology professionals entrusted with building and operating the physical and logical structures of the Digital Age.

Dean has led $10B in infrastructure projects in 9 countries. His extensive architecture, engineering and operations experience includes 29 years in Hardware, 22 years in Network, 17 years in Infrastructure Software and 17 years in Data Centers. He has produced numerous award winning innovations in mission critical facilities and compute environments. He also holds four US patents.

Until 2019, Dean was Head of Uber Compute, at Uber. His team is responsible for Metal as a Service (MaaS) technical infrastructure (data center, compute, storage, network and infrastructure software) and business functions serving Uber’s global leading ridesharing business, as well as UberEatsUberFreightUberHealthUberForBusiness, and Autonomous vehicle and UberAir development.

Prior to Uber, Dean worked at Ebay Inc for 6 ½ years as the Vice President of Global Foundation Services, which served over 300 million active users enabling over $250Bn of enabled commerce volume annually. At end of his tenure at ebay, his team successfully integrated, then split ebay and paypal infrastructures into two independent internet companies. Prior to ebay, Dean worked at Sun Microsystems for 17 years in various technical, management and executive leadership roles in Manufacturing, Engineering, IT and Real Estate. His final project was the consolidation of Sun’s multi-billion dollar global technical infrastructure portfolio of over 1,000 facilities.

Dean is creator of the Digital Service Efficiency methodology, the first miles per gallon measurement for technical infrastructure, used to measure ebay.com as a single system. He served as the Chair of the Technology Business Management Council High Tech Workgroup, and Chairman & Founder of Data Center Pulse in 2009 – an exclusive datacenter owner community with over 9,000 members in 100 countries. In 2016, Dean founded Infrastructure Masons, an industry association where infrastructure professionals connect, grow and give back. Dean was identified by SearchDatacenter.com as one of the top five people who changed the data center. Dean is also the recipient of Sun’s prestigious Innovation AwardModular DC Deployment award and Best DC Design award from Uptime Institute as well as the Operational Excellence and Infrastructure Trailblazer awards from The TBM Council and Outstanding Contributions to the Data Center Industry award from Data Center Dynamics.

In his personal time he gives back by building schools and dorms providing access to education for impoverished children through his Mother and Son Just Let Me Learn Foundation. He also enjoys spending time with his wife and performing with his daughter.

Belinda
Dennett
CEO at Data Centres Australia

Belinda Dennett

CEO at Data Centres Australia

About

Belinda Dennett is a highly respected public policy specialist with more than 20 years experience at the forefront of Australia’s digital economy and technology ecosystem. Most recently Belinda was Head of Government Relations at AirTrunk and previously spent more than a decade leading Microsoft’s Corporate Affairs and Policy team in Australia. Belinda is a former Federal ministerial advisor with a focus on digital economy policy. She has qualifications in law and business.

Simon
Davies
GM of Core Banking at Commonwealth Bank

Simon Davies

GM of Core Banking at Commonwealth Bank

About

I lead the team accountable for Australia’s largest core banking estate — evolving it without compromising stability at national scale.

As GM of Core Banking at Commonwealth Bank, I’m responsible for the systems that move billions of dollars and power millions of customer interactions every day. My focus is simple: evolve mission-critical platforms so they are faster, more resilient, and designed for adaptability.

Over the past few years, that has meant leading the large-scale cloud migration and evolution of a core banking environment that most organisations would consider untouchable. We’ve delivered significant performance uplift across both online and batch workloads, aggressively minimised recovery times, strengthened availability, and opened the core to enable richer customer experiences — all while continuing to operate at national scale.

What I’ve learned:

• There is no silver bullet core
• Cloud doesn’t fix culture
• Architecture is an operating model decision
• Momentum beats perfection

The real work of transformation isn’t just technical. It’s aligning architecture, engineering discipline, governance, and the cultural operating system so that progress becomes repeatable — not heroic.

I write and speak about:

• How to evolve a core without destabilising the bank
• Engineering discipline at enterprise scale
• Turning strategy into shipped outcomes
• Bias for action in large organisations
• Designing a lean core that enables innovation at the edge

If you’re working on hard, high-stakes transformation — especially inside a large institution — that’s the conversation I’m interested in.

Nasa
Walton
First Assistant Secretary, Enterprise Systems at Department of Defence

Nasa Walton

First Assistant Secretary, Enterprise Systems at Department of Defence

About

Proven experience in information technology, modernising and optimising digital delivery to underpin both the customer and employee experience. Nasa always looks for opportunities where her own values feed directly back to the community “Its about making a difference and more services accessible to everyone”. She has considerable experience helping organisations move forward with a strategic plan that gives them the digital tools they need to help leapfrog the roadblocks and pitfalls that can hold them back.

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