| Description: | Chamber Connects brings you a very different offering this month: Up in the Cloud - Adopt, transform, succeed
We will hear two different points of view from Amazon, a key player in this age of technology and how we do business today. One from Amazon direct and another from a client on how the Cloud has transformed their business.
- Mario Thomas, Senior Consultant within the Global Advisory practice of Amazon Web Services will describe how to create a roadmap for cloud adoption which can act as enabler for broad organisational transformation.
- Greg Cope, Technical Director of Enterprise Services and Security, Financial Times Groupwill speak about the transformation that has been made possible at the Financial Times by adoption of the cloud, focusing on value benefits such as agility, productivity and risk reduction. The hidden true story of London Recruits
An insight by (one of our members) Gordon Main, award winning film maker and producer who runs Barefoot Rascals, a Wales based film company, on the making of the documentary on a little known story about how British citizens used leaflet bombs to destablilise South Africa in the late 60s and early 70s. Gordon will present investment opportunities and previously unseen filmed material relating to London Recruits.
Biographies:
Mario Thomas - Senior Consultant, AWS Professional Services
Mario Thomas is a Senior Consultant working in the Global Advisory practice of AWS Professional Services. Mario works with the largest Enterprise Customers of AWS on their journey to the cloud. Specialising in business and organisational transformation, people and change management and governance, Mario works with the c-suite of customer organisations to drive broad organisational adoption of the cloud.
With nearly 20-years of experience, Mario has worked with businesses in the Consumer Services, Financial Services, Retail, Media, Publishing & Entertainment, Manufacturing, Business Services, Oil & Gas, FMCG and Logistics industries; leading those customers in the reinvention and transformation of their organisations.
Before AWS Mario worked with well-known global brands delivering digital and IT transformation; directing the delivery of over 100 transformation projects of varying sizes, including very small digital-only platforms through to complex business change projects facilitating cross-border, multi-lingual, multi-currency, high-transactional destination websites, newspaper portals and software applications with millions of consumers using mobile, desktop and tablet platforms.
Mario is a Fellow of the Institute of Directors and was elected as a Chartered Director in 2006. He has held executive and non-executive positions on the Boards of a number of UK companies and brings his practical knowledge of organisational transformation and formal qualifications in corporate governance, compliance and risk to customer engagements at AWS.
Mario will describe how to create a roadmap for cloud adoption which can act as enabler for broad organisational transformation. Covering key activities from the Business, People and Governance perspectives of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework, Mario will outline how to organise for a successful transformation while engaging the right stakeholders in the organisation to ensure the best chance for success.
Greg Cope - Technical Director of Enterprise Services and Security, Financial Times Group
Greg has a masters degree in Information Systems and has been working in tech since the last millennia.
Working first in e-commerce, then pharma, ecommerce again and thenmedia, Greg is now Technical Director of Enterprise Services and Security at the FInancialTimes in London. This covers everything from desktops, email, collaboration tools,networking, data centers Cloud Enablement, and tooling teams. Cyber Security is also a keypart of his role, both looking at organisational strategic approaches and tactical day to day.Having come from an web, ops and architecture background Cloud Computing, AmazonWeb Services and Serverless in particular are a key interest.
Greg will speak about the transformation that has been made possible at the FT by adoption of the cloud, focussing on value benefits such as agility, productivity, risk reduction, etc
Gordon Main - Barefoot Rascals
Gordon Main runs a Wales based Film and TV production company, Barefoot Rascals Ltd. Gordon has produced and directed many hours of documentary programming for television which has been seen and sold around the world. He has also won awards for dramas that he has written and directed both for broadcast and non-broadcast.
Barefoot Rascals enjoys development support from Ffilm Cymru Wales and the Bertha Foundation for its current film project London Recruits. Gordon will be presenting investment opportunities and previously unseen filmed material relating to London Recruits Film. London Recruits brings to life a sensational true story kept secret for over 40 years. Between 1967 and 1972 mostly British young women and men were secretly recruited by the ANC in London to volunteer for life-threatening, undercover missions deep inside apartheid South Africa. At a time when ANC membership was banned with leaders executed or imprisoned, exiled leader Oliver Tambo helped devise a plan that saw international volunteers travel to South Africa disguised as honeymooning couples, wealthy tourists and business trippers. Briefed, trained and handled by a charismatic political exile working undercover in London, these amateur secret agents struck at the heart of the regime in a series of increasingly sophisticated and daring missions.The entrenched system of white privilege helped them go unnoticed on the ground in South Africa. Homemade pamphlet "bombs" planted at busy commuter stations propelled thousands of ANC leaflets into the skies. Rousing speeches from exiled leaders of the struggle were broadcast from street corners via innovative sound systems, and key resources were smuggled in to help rebuild the internal resistance. The missions themselves made headline news. Accredited at the time to unknown underground ANC cells they provided a vital morale boost when the internal freedom struggle was at its lowest ebb. Recruits operated at huge personal risk. Three were eventually captured, tortured and imprisoned. Former President Thabo Mbeki describes the recruit's missions as a "critical intervention". Ronnie Kasrils, freedom fighter and then minister in Mandelas first government, notes they "played a key part in the ultimate success of the struggle that liberated South Africa from apartheid tyranny."
A tale of youthful high-risk adventure with timely universal political and philosophical themes, London Recruits is set during a culturally and visually rich period, when anything seemed possible. A potent mix of previously unseen archive, action-packed drama and candid testimony from the recruits, eyewitnesses and secret police - the film promises to be a compelling journey into the heart of apartheid. |
