Ali Davenport is the brand new CEO of Queensland Manufacturing Institute, a not-for-profit organisation that for 30 years has supported manufacturers across Queensland. QMI is the Queensland licensee for ICN the Industry Capability Network that connects businesses to major projects. Ali was the former CEO of economic development organisation TSBE in Toowoomba and loves anything to do with supporting local businesses especially across regional Queensland.

With nearly twenty years delivering simulation solutions across multiple industries including defence, healthcare, emergency services and even cultural heritage, John Welsh has a reasonable idea of how simulation technologies are used and what they can achieve. Serving with the British Army for 10 years provided early context for his later support to the Australian Defence Force. Several years working in the video games industry taught him technology. And teaching leadership and teambuilding were instrumental to his knowledge of training. Bringing this expertise together John has worked for and with startups, small to medium enterprises, and big primes nationally and internationally. He established the Australasian Simulation Congress Serious Games Showcase and Challenge to ensure the region’s talents were recognised on an international stage and has been an advocate for making simulation systems mainstream. Recently brought in to operationalise the North Queensland Simulation Park, NQ SPARK, he tirelessly maintains that context is everything and it’s not what simulation is, but what you do with it that counts. Despite his many years of using gaming technologies, he remains a rubbish gamer.

Amy Savage is the Manager of the Economic Development team in Townsville, with the Department of State Development. Amy has been working with industry in North Queensland for over 10 years and is passionate about growing the region through supporting project development and sector diversification, and supporting local businesses to participate in major project supply chains. Amy played a role in developing the local content strategy for the NQ Stadium, helping our regional businesses to prepare for the opportunities and working closely with the Managing Contractor to support them to achieve over 90% local participation. Amy has experience delivering Defence projects through her time leading the Defence Industry Hub however is now focused on supporting renewable energy project development, attraction and delivery in NQ including catalytic projects such as CopperString 2032.