Speakers
Dr. Stuart W. Shulman
Dr. Stuart W. Shulman is founder & CEO of Texifter. He was a Research Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the founding Director of the Qualitative Data Analysis Program (QDAP) at the University of Pittsburgh and at UMass Amherst. Dr. Shulman is Editor Emeritus of the Journal of Information Technology & Politics, the official journal of Information Technology & Politics section of the American Political Science Association.
Dr. Marc Smith
Dr. Marc Smith is Chief Social Scientist for the Connected Action Consulting Group, a purveyor of fine quality social media analysis platforms and services based in the USA.
Smith is a sociologist researching the structure of internet social media. He was formerly senior research sociologist at Microsoft Research specializing in the social organization of online communities and computer mediated interaction. He founded the Community Technologies Group at MSR. He also contributed to the release of the Telligent Analytics 3.0 social media reporting product, adding social network analysis features.
He is the co-editor of Communities in Cyberspace (Routledge), a collection of essays exploring the ways identity; interaction and social order develop in online groups. Smith's research focuses on computer-mediated collective action: the ways group dynamics change when they take place in and through social cyberspaces. Many “groups” in cyberspace produce public goods and organize themselves in the form of a commons (for related papers see: http://www.connectedaction.net).
Smith is applying this work to develop open tools for generalized community and social network analysis that will provide a free or web based system for groups of all sizes to collect and analyze their discussions and social media collections. The NodeXL project is an example: a free and open social network analysis extension to Excel 2007 at http://nodexl.codeplex.com
Nathan Heazlewood is passionate about geospatial technology and the difference it can make in efficiency and better decisions for commerce, government and the environment. Nathan’s position is Practice Lead of the GIS Project Management Office at Eagle Technology Group. He has 25 years experience in all aspects of geospatial technology including location analytics. His highly successful career in technology has taken him to many countries around the world, working in a wide variety of different industries, including a decade in the defence industry in the U.K. Nathan was a finalist for the Professional of the Year at the NZ Spatial Excellence Awards in 2016 and has led many award winning geospatial projects see: http://ourauckland.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/articles/news/2016/01/rewarding-year-for-council-s-geospatial-team Nathan has written many articles for international GIS publications and is a frequent contributor to GIS Professional Magazine https://www.gis-professional.com/content/article/the-battle-of-masterdata Recently Nathan has been involved with initiatives to assist young professionals as they transition from education into their early years in the workforce. Nathan was a co-founder of the New Zealand Emerging Spatial Professionals Group: a group that seeks to aid geospatial professionals in the early years of their careers. For more information about Nathan see this interview for Directions Magazine: https://www.directionsmag.com/article/6693
Dr. Gohar F. Khan
Dr. Gohar Khan is a computational social scientist with expertise in social media analytics, social network analysis, network data visualization, social media strategy, and network science. Currently, he is a senior lecturer of digital business at the University of Waikato where he researches the link between social media use and firm's competitive advantage and how businesses create value with social media data.
Khan specializes in both quantitative and qualitative research methods and has published over 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings, and book chapters. His research, for example, has appeared in several A* journals including Journal of Association for Information Systems, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, and Scientometrics, among others. Khan has also authored and co-author 4 books on social media analytics and social media use. He is author of the Amazon’s top-selling book titled, "Seven Layers of Social Media Analytics" which provides one of the first comprehensive framework to understand and mine business insights from social media data. His other recent books include Digital Analytics for Marketing and Creating Value with Social Media Analytics.
In addition to his research and teaching, Khan actively engaged with academic and professional bodies. For instance, he has served as track co-chair for The Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS 2016) Track: Social Media Analytics; and PACIS 2018 Track: Social Media Analytics & Business Impact. He was also a PC member for PCIS 2017, the Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS, 2017), and International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2016). On several occasions, Khan has also served as a social media consultant for United Nations APC-ICT. He also frequently speaks at international conferences and has given in invited talks in different locations including in South Korea, China, Indonesia, and Bhutan.
Prof. Leo Paas
Professor Leo Paas is Head of Analytics at the department of Communication, Journalism and Marketing at Massey University. He studied social science methodology (MSc) and social science informatics (MSc) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He graduated in 1994. After graduating Leo worked at a large Dutch bank, the Postbank, which was part of the ING group and has been merged with the ING label. During this period he worked as a database marketer on topics such as customer segmentation, data mining, assessing customer lifetime value, predictive modelling, churn prediction and credit scoring. In 1999 Leo started working as a consultant for a small firm in Amsterdam, applying the knowledge gained at Postbank to assist various financial services providers in their marketing activities, credit scoring and the evaluation of the value and risks of their loan and mortgage portfolios. In 2002 Leo joined the Marketing Department of Tilburg University as an Assistant Professor. In 2005 he became Associate Professor at the marketing department of VU University Amsterdam and moved to New Zealand in 2014.
Leo main research interest has been on the development and application of segmentation models in the financial services market. His more recent addresses two additional topics: (1) Consumer reactions to advertising models; (2) The quality of survey data. He has published in journals such as International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Economic Psychology, Marketing Letters, and Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (A-Series).
Leo has taught various courses at BSc, MSc and postgraduate level on marketing communications, marketing research, services marketing, cross cultural marketing and customer intelligence.
Ms. Kim Fitter
Kim Fitter studied Actuarial Science, Finance and Statistics at the University of Cape Town. She has 13 years prior experience working with complex and structured banking products and project delivery in Investment Banks including JP Morgan and Credit Suisse in London.
She is a self-taught Data Scientist using R and sometimes other languages such as Python. She is a passionate about solving business problems and data visualisations and currently works as a consultant Data Scientist through Validly (validly.co).
Kim is active in the open source R communities. She founded R-Ladies Auckland meetup chapter of the R-Ladies global organisation to promote gender diversity in the R community. Recent workshops include introductory R workshops at the userR conference, Brisbane in July, 2018 and R-ladies Auckland in August, 2018.
Dr. Prashant Khanna
Prashant Khanna is an acknowledged leader in policy formulation and implementation of IT/Cyber Hygiene best practices for businesses. An ex-Colonel who commanded a battalion that conducted IT security operations for the Indian Army, he has over two decades of IT/Telecom/Cyber experience in hostile conditions to back his advice. Besides his tutoring at Wintec, Hamilton, where he teaches subjects in Cyber Security and Big Data, he is also a Virtual CIO for three companies in Australia and New Zealand. He provides consultancy services to organizations in the SME segment and actively conducts training on security best practices through interactive seminars and onsite sessions which are practical and have a business context.
LinkedIn Profile - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pkhannna/
Dr. Gazi Hassan
Dr. Gazi is an applied economist. He teach macroeconomics and research methods in management studies. Currently, he is a senior lecturer in economics at Waikato Management School at the University of Waikato, New Zealand and a research associate at the Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis (CAMA) in the Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University. In 2017, he held a visiting academic position at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), at the University of Oxford, UK. His primary field is development macroeconomics with research interests in international migration & remittances, cross-country economic growth and South Asian economies.
His current projects are: a) behavioural responses of remittances recipient households facing natural disasters; b) debt-migration and the responses of remittances to changes in 'lending rate' in the origin country and c) Basel - 2 capital rule based changes to international bank flows and its impact on recipient countries' income distribution. His secondary field is the study of social violence and related to this area my current project is the causal impact analysis of remittances on homicide rate. His work have been published in The Journal of Development Studies, The World Economy, International Migration, Empirical Economics, Economic Modelling, Applied Economics, Journal of Asian Economics, Applied Economics Letters and Applied Financial economics.