The organisers of the Locate17 and Digital Earth Conference have just announced the addition Martin Hoffman, a pivotal figure of the NSW Government, who will open proceedings at the conference on 5 April 2017.
Hoffman was appointed Secretary of the NSW Department of Finance, Services & Innovation in August 2015 and has been a pivotal figure behind the NSW Government’s recent digital transformation efforts. The state reputedly has Australia’s most advanced ICT strategy, and is leading the way in important areas like data centre consolidation, digital service delivery, and digital identification.
In terms of geospatial innovation, the NSW Government is also behind the NSW Globe, the Spatial information Exchange (SIX) Maps, as well as a new push for open data.
Hoffman was previously Deputy Secretary at the Commonwealth Department of Industry & Science from July 2010. Before joining the public sector, Martin had a lengthy private sector career primarily in digital media and technology. After an early career in consulting and banking in Australia and Hong Kong, he held senior roles at Optus, the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and Fairfax Media. He was CEO of NineMSN from 2003 to 2006, led Moko Social Media to an IPO in July 2007 as CEO, and founded the digital media advisory and investment business Ulysses Ventures.
Hoffman joins a host of local and international dignitaries who will be open proceedings at Locate17 and Digital Earth, which will be held in Sydney, 3-6 April. On Wednesday 5 April, Hoffman will open the formal proceedings of the conference alongside the president of ISDE, the chairman of SIBA and the president of SSSI. Following this, a host of plenaries will deliver their presentations: Greg Scott, Advisor for Global Geospatial Information Management for the UN; Walter Scott, DigitalGlobe’s founder; Peter Woodgate of CRCSI, Glenn Cockerton of Spatial Vision and Guo Huadong, from the Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
On Thursday 6 April, further plenaries will be delivered by Steven Ramage of GEO, Alessandro Annoni of the European Union’s Joint Research Center in Italy.
