Speakers
Dominic Gore Anthology |
Dominic is Senior Director of Learn Product Management at Anthology and leads the Learn Ultra product management team. Dominic has been with Anthology (formerly Blackboard) for 10 years, having held roles in Product Management and Pre-Sales leadership. Prior to Blackboard, Dominic held roles in Higher Education in the areas of Learning Technology, Instructional Design and directly within academia as an adjunct post graduate lecturer. |
Mary Jacob Aberystwyth University |
Mary Jacob holds CMALT, SFSEDA, SFHEA, and PGCTHE. She is a lecturer at Aberystwyth University where she coordinates the Generative AI Working Group (see Generative AI for resources and guidance). Her primary responsibility is leading the Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching in Higher Education. She curates the Weekly Resource Roundup of events and resources about learning and teaching and posts on the platform formerly known as Twitter as Mary Jacob L&T and Blue Sky as @maryjacob.bsky.social. |
Phil Proctor Advatek |
Phil is the Principal Technical Architect for Cloud at Advatek (UK) LTD. After 12 years in the Royal Engineers, Phil moved into the private sector of the IT world. Working with major private and public sector bodies Phil has been instrumental in building and implementing cloud strategies for clients. In his 20 odd years of experience, Phil has followed the trend of moving infrastructure to the cloud and has been at the forefront of this technology. |
Chris Rees UWTSD |
As the Executive Head of the Digital Creativity and Learning (DCL) unit at UWTSD, Chris applies his strategic and management skills to lead teams in digital learning, creative, web and a digital experience and engagement. In this role, he leads innovative initiatives to transform digital creativity and learning at the institution. Chris and his team are instrumental in crafting cutting-edge digital content for educational and marketing purposes, showcasing their proficiency in the creation of e-learning packages, the digitisation of teaching rooms, and the redesign of the institution's website. Notably, Chris has played a key role in the use of the immersive rooms and leveraging virtual reality (VR) technologies, developing the learning environment and ensuring the unit's impact across key projects throughout the institution. |
Chris Hardess Microsoft |
I have worked in technology in various ways for forty years starting in the Royal Navy. I have been at Microsoft for 10 years in several roles but currently as a Cloud Endpoint Technology Specialist covering the configuration, deployment, and security of physical and virtual endpoints. I am also a Microsoft Accessibility champion. I live in the Vale of Glamorgan with my wife and two adult children. |
Paul Wood Bangor University |
Paul is deputy director of Digital Services at Bangor. He heads all the customer focused functions of library and IT. These teams include IT Support (helpdesk), the AV team and library customer services. He has worked in Bangor since 1990. He will be a familiar face to many at the event and has presented many times at the Gregynog colloquium, though this will be his first “Working With” event. Like everywhere Bangor struggles to keep our users Cyber savvy and Paul will speak about our experiences in educating staff and students on the dangers of Phishing and everyone’s responsibility to protect information and data. |
Dave Atkins Cardiff University |
Dave has played a central role as Cardiff University’s IT Training Manager since the 1980s having originally completed his PhD in Computer Science at, was then, University of Wales, College of Cardiff. He has a great breadth of experience in communicating and training staff in the steps needed to master new digital applications as well as finding ways to explain with clarity, some of the important complexities and idiosyncrasies of the tools we use every day. |
Mark Hughes Cardiff Met |
Mark has been working in Libraries, both public and academic across a range of different roles and institutions for over 20 years, and is currently in post as Head of Libraries at Cardiff Metropolitan University. Mark’s professional community involvement includes the role as Chair of the Wales Higher Education Libraries Forum (WHELF) group, membership of JISC’s Library Hub Advisory Board, and membership of Sconul’s Technology & Markets Strategy Group within which he Chairs the sub-group focussing on AI for Libraries Mark has significant interest and background experience particularly in the realm of digital services and technology led service development |
Richard Shepard Interceptor Solutions Ltd |
Richard is the Technical Director at Interceptor Solutions Ltd and a software guy since studying Computer Science at Manchester Uni in the late 80’s. He will be talking about the ins and outs of developing and implementing a HTTP software proxy based on the experience of developing the LinguaSkin product |
Jonathan Conroy Softcat |
I’m Jon and currently work as a Microsoft Licensing Consultant for almost 70 Public Sector organisations across Wales and the South West. I work as an arm of customer’s organisations and provide tailored advise and market updates on each contract. In my spare time I enjoy red wine, managing my gaming YouTube Channel and taking care of a new litter of kittens. |
Martin Sheppard Tribal Group |
Martin is Head of Dynamics at Tribal Group and has over 20 years’ experience in delivering Enterprise solutions in the Education, Membership, Financial Services, Utilities, Hospitality and Events sectors ensuring a smooth business transition and successful implementation. He has worked for Microsoft Gold Partners running the Dynamics businesses for the last 10 years in both Product and build partners. His expertise brings together a technical and business background which means that solutions not only meet the business requirements but also have a sound underlying architecture that allows for “future proofing”. A key part of any implementation is the Project Management ensuring that the project is delivered within time, budget and scope. |
Pete Langley Swansea University |
Pete is the Principal Digital Architect at Swansea University. His team has focused on developing future state architectures across the technology, data, security and application domains. Prior to entering Higher Education, he worked at a financial institution and has also spent time teaching in Asia and South America. |
Hywel Bufton Cardiff Met |
Hywel joined Cardiff Met in December 2020 and works as Head of Digital Development Services within Digital & Library Services. Although starting out on a scientific path, Hywel has spent the last 20+ years in the IT Industry, working as a Team Lead for a Bespoke Software House & Deloitte. Primarily a Microsoft development team, Hywel and his team have utilised Azure Dev ops to better manage their day to day work. Hywel has a degree in Pharmacology & Physiology and a PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Bristol. In Hywel’s spare time he likes to spend time with his wife Vanessa, and two young boys Carwyn & Dyfri, travelling, swimming in the sea and reading any material referring to or containing Sharks. |
Lisa Megraw Cardiff University |
As a seasoned project and change management professional with over 10 years experience, Lisa has worked on a number of key university programmes such as the University’s Network Refresh Programme, the original Skype for Business telephony project and information security governance. She is currently working on a project to migrate Skype for Business to Teams Telephony. Prior to joining the University in 2015 she worked on a range of IT infrastructure and software projects. She holds Masters degrees in Chemistry (Bath University) and in Creative Writing (Lancaster University). |
Chris Graves Cardiff University |
Chris is University IT’s Collaboration Enablement Manager, working to enable staff to work and collaborate productively, mostly with a focus on using Microsoft 365. He joined what became Cardiff University, back in the mid-1980s as a researcher in the School of Medicine, working first as a bioengineer for 14 years, before moving across into roles with the University Library Service and then University IT. He has had an IT enablement role for almost 20 years, working first on web technologies, then using IBM’s Lotus suite and Connections, and now with Microsoft 365. |
