2022 Festival Showcase

Balancing mental health and resilience in light of Covid

We are honoured to have a community speaker from Beyond Blue, John Maguire, coming to present his journey of hope, recovery and resilience with depression and/or anxiety conditions.

As a disclaimer, this session will involve a discussion of a personal story and experiences with a mental condition and may touch on the theme of suicidality. For some of you, it may be difficult to hear this story, especially if you have experienced a mental health condition yourself, or supported a friend or family member. The talk is completely optional and if you’re worried that the content may be triggering or upsetting you don’t have to stay and you may also leave at any time during the presentation.

If you would like to stay for John’s talk, we encourage you to check in with yourself and your workmates afterwards. If you are feeling impacted, please reach out to our EAP, the Beyond Blue support service, or Lifeline on 13 11 14 for support. We will also have a more detailed list of contacts at the end of the session.

John Maguire
John Maguire has worked in the broadcast television industry in Adelaide for 30 years, editing and shooting news, current affairs, lifestyle programs and more.

John is a volunteer speaker for Beyond Blue, a national organisation that works to raise awareness about anxiety and depression and reduce the associated stigma and encourage people to get help.

He became a Beyond Blue speaker because he has been through depression and come out the other side. John is committed to giving hope and encouraging others through sharing his story and experience.

John’s interests include spending time with his wife and two children, volunteering on various community projects where he has given thousands of hours of his time, camping and tinkering with his old landcruiser.

A lesser known fact about John is he played lacrosse for South Australia!

We thank the Adelaide Festival Platinum sponsor

Ethical IT and it’s value in society

There has been a rapid movement worldwide to gain the benefits of AI development, both for economic and for humanitarian purposes. But with this movement comes the very real risk that society does not have the wisdom to develop these powerful technologies. The advent of emerging AI and IT ethical IT standards and methodologies provides hope that with thoughtful development techniques and governance, we can harness the good and mitigate the risks.
This presentation will provide an introduction to ethical IT, and will summarise the initiatives in IT and AI ethics and human values, in particular new and emerging standards (such as the IEEE 7000 standard Model Process for Addressing Ethical Concerns During System Design). These techniques can be adapted into current system development methodologies (including the IIBA BABOK v3), in order to incorporate stakeholder’s ethical values into IT services and products.

Ruth Lewis
Ruth is an experienced strategic IT consultant, having worked across many industries, sectors and technologies with a particular focus on the innovative and ethical use of digital technology in business and in society. Ruth’s career has spanned 30 years developing and designing IT solutions for her clients, as a network engineer, senior technical consultant, solutions architect, business analyst and qualified Futurist. Ruth’s passion is to work towards the ethical development and use of technology for the good of society, enabling her clients to make wise and informed decisions and investments today to enable their preferred futures.

Helping you create Deaf-friendly Experiences

In this presentation, Nikhil will discuss the experience and knowledge, of how important it is to understand the accessibility for Deaf people and Sign language users. We have a responsibility to follow some basic recommended guidelines which will give everyone the right access to information for Deaf and Sign language users. We want to enhance the deaf user-friendly experience for your services and products.

Outcomes/learnings:

• Understand the profile of the Deaf Community
• Services and Products accessibility barriers for Deaf and Hard of Hearing users
• Expertise comes from a data-driven, heart-to-heart understanding of what Deaf and hard-of-hearing consumers want.
• Business Analysis and Digital Accessibility to Deaf and Sign languages users checklist

Nikhil Bora
Nikhil Bora is a visual design powerhouse with strong UI, Accessibility and motion design skills. With over 10 years of experience, he has designed and worked across agencies and large organisations on a variety of print, motion, installation, and interactive projects for Nike, Telstra, ANZ, Pandora, SBS, and Australia Post.

He became the 10th person to receive a cochlear implant in the world. Nikhil uses Auslan as his primary language and is the co-founder of SignHow, an innovative startup that produced the first inclusive and accessible sign language for all communities around the world. He is passionate about inclusive design and accessibility – a better digital life for everyone.

Currently working as an Experience Designer at ANZ.

How to use Neuroscience to effectively solve business analysis problems

Do you feel like ‘Problems Never Seem to Go Way’!!!! Problems arise, every day in our work and personal settings. Finding creative solutions to the issues or challenges faced by you and your team is very important (including the recent impact of COVID). As a creative leader, I am constantly looking for innovative solutions, new approaches in every problem-solving situation, hence cognitive science as a problem-solving technique has intrigued me and it works!!!!

In this keynote, Maria will share how an individual and organisation can use neuroscience to creatively undertake business analysis problem solving, through a very passionate and interesting presentation. The presentation is filled with real-life experience, knowledge sharing, aiming to inspire the audience in the business analysis world with takeaways for future implementation.

Learning Outcomes:
• Understand the cognitive science, neuroscience techniques and how our brain works
• Understand how to use neuroscience to improve your problem-solving skills
• Understanding what BAs can do TODAY to become more efficient in problem-solving, decision making and rewiring their brain

Maria Montgomery
Maria is an enthusiastic leader at UniSuper, managing a large team of business analysts, environment and testing. With well over a decade of experience in IT industry, leading challenging business transformations and owning her own business. In her spare time, she helps individuals grow and upskill with the RIGHT set of skills. Adding to her profile Maria is also certified in the Agile Analysis Certification – IIBA.

Migrated with her family from Serbia at the age of 15 was a big step for her, not knowing a word of English Maria managed to learn a new way of living very quickly. Trying to manage new complex problems which living in a totally new country brings and seeing things from a completely different perspective. This was helped with the support of some amazing individuals she met along the way.

Driven by her purpose of helping people and organisations, working through complex problems and discovering better ways of working. She has been very privileged to be able to work in many large and medium-size organisations growing at a fast pace.

Her passion lies in the coaching space, leading individuals in complex problem solving which saw her recently completing an NLP, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) Practitioner accreditation (also very helpful dealing with teenagers).

Outside of work, she is juggling the never-ending challenge of motherhood and dealing with her daughter 17 and son 20.

We thank the Melbourne Festival Platinum sponsor

Featured Speaker

The Global State of Play

Keith Ellis
Keith Ellis has been an executive in the technology industry for over 25 years, starting with the industry trend-watcher International Data Corporation (IDC). He has held roles as CEO, COO, board member, investor or mentor to various technology companies, co-founded and sold a business analysis company as well as being a former Chair of IIBA. As Chief Growth and Engagement Officer for IIBA, he is responsible for leading IIBA’s global growth strategy, including strategic partnerships, corporate and academic programs, chapters, and membership value. Keith is a recognized voice in the business analysis community, has published and spoken extensively in our field, and, at one point had over 60,000 attendees to his webinars annually. His 2008 study, The Business Analysis Benchmark, quantified for the first time the economic impact of mature business analysis practices and their positive impact on overall project success rates. Keith holds an undergraduate business degree from Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada and MSc in Computer Science from Lancaster University in the UK for his research in business analysis.

Delvin Fletcher

Delvin Fletcher is currently the President and CEO of the International Institute of Business Analysis™ (IIBA®). Prior to joining IIBA he served as Chief Information Officer with the Chartered Professional Accountants of Ontario (CPA Ontario) since 2017. He has a background in membership associations, information systems, public accounting, government, and not-for-profits. Delvin also brings experience from Ethoca Technologies, Xchange Technology Group, Sap Canada, Shred-it International and other prominent organizations where he acted in senior leadership roles.

Delvin embodies what it is to be a business analyst: skilled at listening and possessing the breadth of skills needed to deliver business outcomes. 

We thank the Canberra Festival Platinum sponsor