Zoe Eather

Keynote: Smart Communities Stream

Zoe is an experienced consultant, Churchill Fellow and engineer with a passion for Smart Communities, that is using different ways of thinking and technology as enablers to make the places we live more accessible, liveable and sustainable for all. The combination of Zoe’s engineering background and her ability to engage and explain complex topics in a friendly and informative way, allows her to offer future-thinking, useful and realistic strategic advice.Zoe keeps up-to-date with the latest trends and shares her learnings through hosting The Smart Community Podcast. Through her boutique consultancy My Smart Community, she offers strategic advisory on dealing with disruption, leveraging infrastructure spend and major projects, smart technology in regional communities of all sizes and facilitating genuine collaboration.

Sarah Nolet

Keynote: Smart Agriculture Stream

Sarah Nolet is an internationally recognized food systems innovation expert, the CEO and Founder of AgThentic, a global food and agriculture strategy firm, and a General Partner at Tenacious Ventures, Australia’s first dedicated agrifood tech VC firm. Sarah has been instrumental in building the early stage agtech ecosystem - from advising dozens of startups, designing accelerator programs and consulting to established agribusinesses, to helping industry, universities and government develop and implement forward-looking initiatives in food system innovation.
Sarah is also the host of the AgTech...So What? podcast, and co-founder of Farmers2Founders, a national innovation program that supports primary producers to commercialize inventions and new businesses, as well as gain early access to emerging technologies.
Sarah holds a Masters in System Design and Management from MIT, and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Human Factors Engineering from Tufts University.

Catherine Caruana-McManus

Smart Cities and IoT

Catherine is a global expert in Smart Cities and IoT. Co-Founder and Director of Meshed IoT Integrators, Founder of the Global Community - Giant Ideas for Smart Cities, Co-Founder and Board Member the IoT Alliance Australia.
As a global leader in smart sustainable cities and digital transformation, Catherine has been awarded prestigious industry awards including the IoT Ambassador Award by the IoTAA and Smart Cities Industry Leader by Smart Cities Council.
Prior to Meshed, Catherine was the Director of Smart Cities and Industries for IBM and has held other Executive positions for KPMG, MC2 Consulting, Telstra and PMP Communications and earlier in her career was a Strategic Planner for the City of Prahan (aka as Stonnington.)
Catherine is an Advisory Council Member for University of Wollongong SMART Infrastructure and holds university qualifications in urban planning, economics, telecommunications, management and applied finance.

Darren Price

Darren has 35 years of Rural Industry experience. He is extremely passionate about the industry, its people and its future.

Darren started the consultancy business - Price Rural Management in 2013. This business provides Agri business and rural advisory and consultancy services to clients with various size holdings and enterprises, as well as the wider agricultural industry.

In 2019 Darren joined MLA as a Precision Agriculture Manager (Consultant). This role allows Darren to provide expert knowledge and leadership in precision agriculture. Specific tasks include advancing the recent pilot digital farms/digital forums, addressing producer requests and delivering producer awareness, producer adoption and demonstrable impact of precision agriculture.

Darren held the role of General Manager with Carwoola Pastoral Company (CPC) for 22 years. CPC is a group of 4 properties comprising over 16,000 acres. With fodder crops, centre pivot irrigation and carrying capacity of 2,000 cattle and 13,000 sheep, Carwoola Pastoral was an ideal location and property mix for Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) to evaluate digital production opportunities.

Darren possesses high level knowledge of Agri business management. Key areas include livestock production and operations, whole property and business management, financial budgeting, reporting and analysis, staff recruitment and training, business compliance and governance, digital technology implementation and integration.

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