Global tech giants join wwweb festival in Perth

Representatives from some of the world’s most innovative companies will touch down in Perth next week to share their insights into the ‘internet of things’ at Perth’s inaugural eight-day Festival of the Web. 

Staff from Google, Amazon, Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Airbnb and Uber will lead and partake in workshops and mini-conferences on mining and resources technology, social media, digital infrastructure, gaming, big data storage, entrepreneurship, as well as web security and privacy.

Headlining the Festival of the Web, which will run from Sunday April 2 to Sunday April 9, is the International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2017), an annual forum that brings together the top tech experts globally – researchers, developers, startups and commercial ventures – to debate trends in web development, present leading research and discuss new technology.

It is the first time the conference is being held in Perth. Interestingly, among the papers presented during the festival’s previous visit to Australia (Brisbane in 1998) was one that detailed the algorithm for a search engine now known as Google.

WWW2017 co-chair Rick Cummings said 80 universities and 100 companies spanning 36 countries had confirmed their attendance for the event so far.

“We wanted to bring the world’s best web companies to Perth to share cutting-edge research and develop links with them for research, development and business opportunities,” Mr Cummings told Business News.

“It’s a challenge in Perth because we’re quite isolated and people don’t know a whole lot about us.

“So we also wanted to show off our areas of expertise; the world-class square kilometre array, our gaming industry, development in IT in mining and also in health and other areas of science.”

This year’s WWW2017 keynote speakers include Yahoo head of research Yoelle Maarek and astrophysicist Melanie Johnston-Hollitt, who has been involved in the design, construction and operation of the world’s largest radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array, which is spread across WA and South Africa.

Ms Johnston-Hollitt will speak on the impact of big data research methodologies in relation to the SKA and how algorithms can help make sense not only of the night sky, but can solve the challenge facing many industries of seeking to turn huge amounts of data into workable knowledge.

Mr Cummings said although the main part of the conference involved highly technical papers done by academics and company heads of research, digital disruption was a universal theme.

Local technology consultancy Illuminance Solutions chief executive, Nilesh Makwana, is heading up one of the sessions included in the festival.

“The collaboration-innovation conference will bring together a group of leading thinkers and speakers, academia and entrepreneurs both local and international,” Mr Makwana told Business News.

“This conference is about planting a seed of a mindset change that needs to happen in WA. Our decision makers need to understand the power of collaboration and the benefits of the entrepreneurial mindset the rest of the world has been discovering for quite some time.

“This potent one day of thinking and networking takes the huge tech advances of the web under discussion at the WWW2017 conference and translates those ideas into business application.”

He said the collaboration-innovation event was focused on executives and business leaders.

“The value-add is that delegates have the opportunity to be immersed in concepts and challenges that can deliver great rewards to businesses when the shift to innovative collaboration is acted upon,” Mr Makwana said.

“The delegates will be able to learn from global greats and take advantage of international influence and practical learning, apply global thinking while keeping it local.”

Illuminance is one of the local sponsors supporting the event alongside Bankwest, the City of Perth, Genesis Petroleum and Atamo Electronic Product Solutions.

Mr Cummings said the WWW17 was being held thanks to the support of the state’s four public universities – Murdoch University, Curtin University, the University of Western Australia and Edith Cowan University.

Each institution contributed the initial funds used to underwrite the bid to have the event in Perth, and 40 people across the universities have been working to put the conference and festival of the web together for the past two years.

Business News will be part of the Festival of the Web when it hosts its next Success & Leadership breakfast on April 6, at which it invites guests to ‘Meet the tech companies that changed the world'. Ticket sales close next Tuesday 28. 

Registrations for the festival can still be purchased from the WWW2017 website.