Sophie Gimblet - Salt + Tonic Project Manager - Sophie has recently entered the tech world, after seeing the difference that apps can make to bring people together - and serve as a companion to create better environments in the real world. She is the co-founder of Iso Treats - a social enterprise aimed at providing wellbeing to New Zealanders in Managed Isolation by offering live classes and locally sourced products through a web app.

​

Robin de Geus - Zealandia Honey Chief Strategy Officer - “The creative thinker in the Zealandia team. Robin brings the brand vision and strategy to life. He is also a lead auditor for integrated management systems and consultant for high-risk industries including food manufacturing

​

Sunil Pinnamaneni - Zealandia Honey CEO - Sunil is a visionary and has the ability to think beyond now. With a strong technical background in the honey industry, Sunil started exploring and developing methodologies to blend honeys to gain optimum nutritional benefits not only for the people consuming it but also to aid the beekeepers in selling their raw material to buyers.

Robin and Sunil will be presenting on how Zealandia Honey undertook a Digital Transformation to gain an advantage in a highly competitive market.  

 

Ed Stevenson - Sonderpods - A recent import to Taupo from Silicon Valley, Ed is a true veteran in digital advertising having held a number of global leadership roles for leading advertising and technology firms in Europe and the US over the last 20 years. In 2018, Ed founded California-based modular housing company SonderPods which he operates with teams split between Taupo and California.  Ed will cover 'The Death of Advertising'  The writing has been on the wall for advertising for a while now but like with many things, COVID-19 has acted as a large accelerator for many trends including this one. But how is advertising dying? what is causing it? and what should you do about it to succeed in this new world?

 

Bodhi Vette - Road Ninja and PresentMe CEO - Bodhi is a passionate, values-driven entrepreneur translating his love for connecting people into technology.  Bodhi will be speaking about 'Innovation through Crisis: Driver Guide Hire's journey to Road Ninja'.  Offering an overview of DGH, inspiration for Road Ninja, starting the project, funding, development decisions, current stage and future state. 

 

Johnny MacAvoy - PresentMe - An experienced business leader with over 14 years spent building high-growth, global tech companies. Johnny founded Xero's Global team, adding ~25,000 customers in three years and now specialises in the startup space where he helps new products align to their customers and find their growth model.  Johnny will be speaking about 'Hiring Humans with PresentMe' - discussing current hiring processes, 'reducing people to A4' bias, explaining PresentMe and the process of taking PresentMe to market 

 

Matt Browning - Salt + Tonic Director - Matt leads a team that delivers projects all around the world, with open work currently based in Singapore, Italy, America, Canada and of course Aotearoa. They were also involved in a project that was recently nominated for a global Webby Award, for the Virtual & Remote category (up against Adobe!). The team is based in Rotorua and creates apps and software in all shapes and sizes - whether removing paperwork and stress, or delivering virtual reality or artificial intelligence. Matt has also been involved in several social enterprises over recent years, with the most recent venture delivering live te Reo Māori and fitness classes to people stuck in managed isolation (just not doing both at the same time!)