Microsoft’s Ignite NZ 2015

World renowned experts in tech design, engineering and animation set to keynote at Microsoft’s Ignite NZ 2015

• Impressive line-up includes distinguished leaders from Microsoft Corp and Pixar

AUCKLAND, 15 June 2015 – Microsoft New Zealand today announced an impressive line-up of speakers for its Ignite NZ 2015 Kick-Off event in September, including one of the world’s top technology designers from Microsoft, and a Business Director from Pixar Animation Studios.

Kicking off the four-day conference, the keynote event – followed by the opening party – will take place at 4.00pm on September 1 at Vector Arena, in Auckland. The full keynote line-up includes:

Joe Belfiore – Corporate Vice President - PC, Tablet and Phone, Microsoft Corp.

- As Corporate Vice President of PC, Tablet and Phone, Joe Belfiore's team leads Microsoft's customer experience on personal computers, including phone, tablet and desktop. Prior to his current role, Belfiore was CVP and Director of Program Management leading the team responsible for the design and software product definition of forthcoming generations of Windows. He also served as Product Unit Manager for the Windows User Experience team throughout the planning and development of Windows XP. In that role, he was responsible for the overall user experience of Windows — both as a manager of the engineering and design team that created most of the Windows XP user interface and also as a key driver of positive user experiences across all versions of the Windows operating system. After graduating from Stanford University, Belfiore began his career as an operating System Program Manager on OS/2. He drove the design of the first Windows NT & Windows 95. He was also Group Program Manager for Internet Explorer 4 and the Windows 2000 user interface before beginning his work on Windows XP.

Chris Ford – RenderMan Business Director at Pixar Animation Studios (Walt Disney Co)

- Chris Ford is the real deal when it comes to CGI. Making authentic, photo-realistic computer graphics has been a career long project. For more than 25 years Chris has been one of masterminds behind the film industry’s most stunning visually enhanced images. Software applications managed by Chris have been awarded two Academy Awards for technological achievement and he is credited in ten feature films. Chris has been the Product Manager for many of the best known modelling, animation, and rendering software tools used to design special effects and animation for films. He is currently Business Director for the film industry’s leading photorealistic rendering software, RenderMan, at Pixar/Disney. When Chris isn’t helping to create beautiful computer graphics he shifts his gaze to the wonder of outer space. Using advanced visualisation techniques he animates images of the cosmos for educational purposes.

Laura Butler – Distinguished Engineer, Microsoft Corp.

- Persuading Steve Ballmer to wear an apron while serving cupcakes at your monthly meeting means you’re probably pretty awesome. Laura Butler’s more than that: she’s the most ‘all in’ person you will ever meet. Since rocking up to Microsoft as an intern on Word for Windows 1.0, she’s been rocking up famous mountain peaks and rocking out a one-woman rendition of ‘Flashdance’ to increase team morale. Since interning she has worked on the user interface in Windows 95 and as the Director of Development for Windows Phone CXE. She also stashed a dangerous amount of cloud knowledge under her belt whilst on board the OneDrive and SharePoint teams before returning to Windows. Laura’s not just clever, with no less than 10 patents to her name, but is an inspiring leader too. As she says, “If it’s not fun, you’re doing it wrong”.

James Staten – General Manager, Cloud + Enterprise Division – Strategy, Microsoft Corp

- Keeping up with James is tricky, not only because he is an avid marathoner and triathlete. Having spent more than 25 years in enterprise technology, delivered numerous keynotes and taught as a lecturer at leading business schools, he’s keeping a good pace. Before taking the helm at Microsoft’s intelligent cloud, James made a number of smart moves himself as an industry analyst, CMO, product market lead, journalist and reseller. He has held key executive positions at firms including Gartner, Sun Microsystems, Azul Systems and Forrester Research. During his time with Forrester James conducted pioneering work in cloud computing that allowed Fortune 500 and global enterprises to develop successful cloud strategies. From his pioneering starting point he’s now placed successfully as the forerunner of strategic planning and portfolio analysis for the Cloud + Enterprise division at Microsoft.

Ignite NZ 2015 marks the 20th year of Microsoft NZ hosting the nation’s biggest annual technology event, formerly known as TechEd.

Some of the keynote speakers will be presenting additional sessions at the Ignite NZ conference, being held at SKYCITY convention centre from 2-4 September, where the best and brightest minds will present over 140 sessions to an anticipated audience of over 2,500 attendees on a wide range of topics including cloud infrastructure and management, productivity, big data and the Internet of Things, unified communications, mobility and more.

For further information and to buy tickets, visit msignite.nz today.

Details:

Microsoft Ignite New Zealand

1-4th September 2015

Vector Arena and SKYCITY Convention Centre, Auckland

Sponsors and Exhibitors

Ignite NZ offers businesses opportunities to showcase their products and services to an audience of 2,500+ IT professionals, software developers and business decision makers. Contact hello@msignite.nz for sponsorship and exhibition opportunities.

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