Sydney Conference: 19-20 October 2022

RAG's AsiaPac conference will be held right in the heart of Sydney's most famous district

 

 

Overview

RAG Sydney will take place on Wednesday 19th and Thursday 20th October 2022 at the Royal Exchange in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Attendance is free of charge to employees of communications providers and digital service providers who register in advance.

 

Agenda

The conference will cover revenue assurance, fraud management, cybersecurity, robocall and spam prevention, enterprise risk management, governance, audit, billing accuracy, data integrity and other types of business assurance for electronic communications providers and digital service providers. The formal agenda will begin promptly at 9.00am on both days of the conference, with a full schedule of panels and presentations in addition to a networking lunch and coffee breaks in both the morning and afternoon.

Unlike other conference organisers, RAG does not announce agenda items until the relevant speakers have confirmed their participation. The following schedule shows the current draft agenda, which will be updated as new speakers are added. Click on a speaker’s name to read their biography; biographies of all the speakers confirmed so far can also be found here. Keep reading below for more information about some of the presentations and panels that have been scheduled.

 
Confirmed sessions include the following highlights.

  • The co-chairs of the conference will set the scene with their opening remarks and help the audience to put their questions to the speakers. The two co-chairs of RAG Sydney are:

    • Mike Willett, Partner at EY, expert in data analytics, well-travelled consultant, and former Director of Fraud and Revenue Assurance at Telstra.

    • Rachel Goodin, a seasoned risk, audit and tech professional who currently serves as Head of Technology Audit at Ocado, the international retail digital service provider and partner of the Coles supermarket chain in Australia.

  • Darren Rinaldi of Foxtel will give a presentation about the ways he and his business are applying the concepts of risk management and business assurance to an ever-increasing scope that ranges across financial operations, data analysis and beyond.

  • Geoff Ibbett is the curator of RAG’s fraud and leakage catalogues, the most comprehensive inventories of internal and external causes of operating losses suffered by communications providers. He will brief the audience about the worldwide crowdsourcing of information that feeds into the catalogues whilst explaining how telcos use the catalogues in actual practice.

  • RAG Chief Executive Eric Priezkalns will give a round-up of worldwide developments relating to call authentication, spam reduction and CLI spoofing, the hottest topics in telecoms fraud management globally. He will then be joined by Jeffrey Ross, Chief Commercial Officer of 1Route, specialists in blocking bad calls who are also a STIR/SHAKEN certification authority in the USA. The two of them will discuss the benefits and the problems with using digital signatures to validate the origin of calls and why telcos in Pacific Island countries are at risk of having their international calls blocked unless they can find carriers who will sign their calls on their behalf.

  • Do we need to reinvent revenue assurance for the post-pandemic, cloud-dominated, multi-service world of communications? That is the question to be debated by a panel featuring Jayne Hunter, Head of Margin Assurance at TPG Telecom.

  • An expert panel will discuss the reasons for increased SMS fraud and how telcos can mitigate the risk. The contributors will include Kevin Chuah, Director of Corporate Assurance at Optus, and Lisa Taillandier of Araxxe, specialists in interconnect fraud detection.

  • Chief Data Officer and former telecoms executive Julian Hebden will share insightful and humorous stories drawn from his years of service in both the public and private sectors. The title of Julian’s presentation is “10 Reasons Organizations Say They’ll Use Data to Make Better Decisions But Then Fail to Do So”.

  • A joint presentation from Madan Jangra of Optus and Chandra Sekhar Kondapi of Subex will identify ways to counter revenue erosion using margin assurance.

  • Symmetry Solutions CEO Bill Leahy will speak about the cost to telcos and the impact on customer satisfaction when internal miscommunications lead to one of several common charging errors.

  • Subramoni Darmarajan of Mobileum will give a presentation that asks whether the extent of change in the technology landscape is proving to be overwhelming for revenue assurance functions.

  • RAG conferences always close with a ‘Wise Heads’ panel where industry veterans review their top takeaways from the event before answering any and all questions from the audience. Sydney’s Wise Heads will include George Geronikos of global network security business NETSCOUT.

 

Venue

The Royal Exchange of Sydney has provided a meeting place for business people since 1851. It is located right in the heart of Sydney’s downtown commercial district, just a few blocks away from the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

A map of the area is shown below with a red marker for the Royal Exchange.

 

Advice about Accommodation

Attendees are responsible for arranging and paying for their own accommodation. A large variety of hotels that serve both tourists and the business community can be found within a short walk of the conference venue. Here is a list of Sydney hotels that generally receive good reviews, ordered by the approximate price of a room.

 

Evening Food and Entertainment

As well as providing lunch and refreshments during the day, RAG has also arranged for networking buffets to be held each evening as we visit two memorable locations for some dining and fun.

The first evening of the conference, Wednesday October 19, we will be we will be heading up to the Opera Kitchen at Sydney Opera House where attendees can enjoy fine views of Sydney’s famous harbour. On the second and final evening of the conference, Thursday October 20, we will take a short walk up to the Rocks and eat at lively Mexican bar El Camino Cantina.

 

Brochure

This printable PDF brochure for the conference was created on October 3; you can view it below or open a copy and download it from here. However, we always recommend that attendees check the agenda on this webpage for the most up to date schedule of speakers.


 

Free Registration for Employees of Communications Providers and Regulators

Employees of electronic communications providers, internet service providers, cable companies, streaming content providers, digital service providers and their regulators qualify for free seats by registering with the email address provided by their employer; any registration using a personal email address (for example, @gmail.com) will be rejected. Click here to register if you qualify for a free seat.

 

Attendance Options for Sponsors, Academics and Invited Guests

Sponsoring businesses may send their representatives to RAG Sydney 2022. If your business is interested in participating in RAG events then please make your initial query through our contact form. Sponsors communicate their list of delegates through their designated liaison with RAG; employees of sponsors should not attempt to book seats through the public registration form mentioned above.

RAG allocates a limited number of complimentary seats for freelance consultants, subject matter experts, academics engaged in relevant research, and other industry leaders. To maintain a balanced audience, these seats will only be made available to specific named individuals. Invitations will be emailed in due course. If you wish to be added to the guest list you should contact a member of the RAG Committee, or else ask one of the conference sponsors to forward your request.

One of the most important aspects of our conferences is what we call the ‘RAG Spirit’. We want attendees to feel relaxed and have the freedom to talk openly about the challenges they face. To protect the RAG Spirit, we reserve the right to decide who may attend on a case-by-case basis.

 

About Our Sponsors

RAG is a not-for-profit enterprise, and telcos and regulators may attend our events for free, as do many specially invited experts. That means we rely on the generosity of businesses that pay for everything from our web server to the coffee we serve attendees. We would like to thank the following businesses for making this conference possible.

Gold Sponsors

Mobileum, Neural Technologies, Oculeus, Subex, Symmetry Solutions, TEOCO

Silver Sponsors

AB Handshake Corporation, Araxxe, FraudBuster, GBSD Technologies, LATRO, XINTEC

Bronze Sponsors
Calltic, Cellusys, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Netscout, Six Degrees, TMT Analysis, Trustonic

If you would like to host a future RAG event or if you want to learn about sponsorship opportunities then please get in touch. We will be glad to hear from you!

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