ITx 2018 Speakers

Keynotes and Speakers for ITx 2018

Check back often - more speakers are being added regularly


Mary Ellen Gordon

Programme Director, Masters of Info Management, Victoria University of Wellington

Mary Ellen returned to academia after a long period working in applied research - and data-related roles, including:

  • Founding and leading the team that implements Apple-branded surveys to support marketing of Apple products world-wide.
  • Heading research at Flurry, where she mined insights from app analytics data collected from more than a billion smartphones and tablets each month.
  • Dissecting data coming from a variety of third-party data sources for Apple’s iAd group.
  • Founding and leading organisations that provided research and analytics consulting (Market Truths), data-driven content marketing (Story in the Data), and data training services (Analytics for Us).

Mary Ellen particularly enjoys connecting theory and practice and bridging the gap between decision makers and people who are deep in the weeds of an organisation’s data. She is a technology enthusiast, being an early adopter of Web surveys (starting in 1995), online education (starting teaching online in 2000), and conducting research in virtual worlds (starting in 2006, see: https://rwconnect.esomar.org/avatar-analytics/).

NZ's IT Professionals Up Close - Results from the World IT Project

Friday 12:10pm - 12:40pm, ITP Conference (ITP 2 Room)

This talk outlines the results of the New Zealand part of the World IT Project, a 40 country survey of IT professionals.

What are the top organisational and individual issues faced by IT workers? How do different industries compare, and what part do factors such as career stage influence workers' satisfaction and perceptions?

We also consider the issue of staff turnover - one of the top issues facing organisations.