Celebrating 70 years since Australia's first computer conference

The Pearcey Foundation has announced a summit to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Australia’s first computer conference, which was held in August 1951.

The Riding the Digital Wave Summit will be held at the University of Sydney — a location shared with the inaugural event — on Thursday, 24 February 2022.

The event will be opened by the Hon. Victor Dominello MP, Minister for Customer Service and Minister for Digital, NSW Government. It features keynotes from Professor Genevieve Bell, Director, School of Cybernetics and 3A Institute and Dr Ian Oppermann, Chief Data Scientist, NSW Government.

Event details:

The Riding the Digital Wave Summit

The Refectory, The University of Sydney

Thursday, 24 February 2022

9:00am – 1:00pm AEDT (followed by lunch)

Tickets: $297

Event URL: https://heritage.pearcey.org.au/riding-the-digital-wave-summit

Australia’s first computer conference marked the beginning of computer science in Australia. Organised by staff from the CSIRO and the University of Sydney’s Electrical Engineering Department, the Conference on Automatic Computing Machines was a pivotal moment in the industry and showed Australians the possibilities of the new world of digital computing in their own country. One of the highlights for delegates was a world-first demonstration of a computer playing music. Further information on that demonstration is available using this link.

The Riding the Digital Wave Summit’s panel sessions will feature speakers including:

• Roger Allen, Co-founder, Director and Chairman, Allen & Buckeridge
• Distinguished Professor Fang Chen, Executive Director UTS Data Science and UTS Data Science Institute, University of Technology Sydney
• Alisdair Faulkner, CEO and Co-founder, Darwinium
• Chris Ferrie, Senior Lecturer, UTS Centre for Quantum Software
• Professor Gernot Heiser, Scientia Professor and John Lions Chair, UNSW
• Liz Jakubowski, Director – Digital, National Skills Commission
• Rashmi Karanth, Head of Products & Delivery, Quasar
• Professor Tanya Monro, Chief Defence Scientist, DST
• Daniella Traino, Group Chief Information Officer, Wesfarmers Limited
• Professor Flora Salim, Professor, Data Science, RMIT University; Incoming Professor and CISCO Chair of Digital Transport, Centre for Critical Digital Infrastructure, UNSW Sydney
• Dr Jon Whittle, Director, CSIRO’s Data61
   

The full agenda for the summit and speaker profiles can be found online here.

“We are using this anniversary event as an opportunity and a platform to find out what we have learnt as an industry over these seventy-plus years. As well, we are intent on capturing what we all hope and believe the future holds for society, given the incredible role that digital technology, the internet, telecommunications and other innovations are playing in our nation’s everyday life today,” said Wayne Fitzsimmons, chair, Pearcey Foundation.

Due to the enthusiastic response for the event but the difficulty for many interstate speakers to attend the conference in person, Pearcey Foundation is expecting to receive a lot of additional presentations and other material, which will be published online as a permanent record of the event — together with archival content from the original conference in 1951. Details on this will be available on the Pearcey Heritage site at a later date.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/flashmovie