Justin

Baird

justin@justinbaird.com

+65 8939 5418

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Justin is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts (RSA), an international network of accomplished leaders and active individuals committed to social development, whose goal is to enrich society through ideas and action.   Founded in 1754, the RSA creates innovative and practical solutions to social challenges and believes that the best way to meet these challenges is to unleash the human potential for enterprise, social innovation and creativity.

Justin was advisor to Infrastructure Victoria, assisting the future strategic direction and investments made for the next 30 years within the State of Victoria.

Justin is also a member of the CSCLeaders alumni, a Commonwealth Government leadership group founded, sponsored and hosted by HRH The Duke of Edinburgh, which is tackling the challenges that businesses, governments and society face today to build the global relationships needed by the leaders of tomorrow.

Innovation For Jobs Summit Shapes The Future Of Work

Justin is a member of the I4J working group, founded by his Google colleague Vint Cerf and David Nordfors.  The group is a collection of top thought-leaders, activists, entrepreneurs, policy makers, executives and more, focused on disrupting unemployment.

Read more about it here.

Justin’s work was acknowledged by AdNews, Australia’s top selling advertising, marketing and media magazine, with their 2010 “40 under 40” award, profiling Australia’s leading talents across agencies, clients and the media. He has also actively supported the local creative and digital industries through sponsorship and lecturing at Award School.

Justin has also been a member of the 2009, 2010 and 2011 juries for the Young Guns international awards programme, and more recently was a member of the mobile jury at the 2013 Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.

Justin is also very actively involved in philanthropic efforts to help drive positive change through technology. Justin drove the global launch of Earth Connect in 2008, the first global social platform for Earth Hour.

In 2009, Justin worked closely with the United Nations to create the Show Your Vote platform, an online advocacy tool for the COP15 Copenhagen Climate Summit that was officially sanctioned and supported by the UNFCCC. The open source platform was then also used in online advocacy initiatives, including Earth Hour 2010.

Justin is also on the advisory board of Underwater Earth, which has embarked on the SeaView Survey sponsored by the Catlin Group. The SeaView Survey is a pioneering scientific expedition that is carrying out the first comprehensive study to document and reveal the composition and health of coral reefs on the Great Barrier Reef across an unprecedented depth range (0-100m). Justin's work on underwater panoramic imagery is the subject of one of his patents.

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Beyond work, Justin has a strong passion for music, digital audio, musical computing, live sound and recording. He has worked with artists ranging from Elton John and Barbra Streisand through to Robbie Williams and the Dave Matthews Band in the technology and production of live performance.

As a musician himself, Justin enjoys playing bass and saxophone in local Balmain pubs, and also dabbles in the ukulele, the banjolin, and some ancient Chinese instruments such as the guqin and the erhu.  

He has also created a collaborative music education platform with composer Charlie Chan, cellist Nathan Waks, and media personality Angela Catterns in partnership with the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra with the establishment of the Global Orchestra Foundation.  

In a world’s first, participants around the world were able to play the same piece of music at the same time.  Enabling timing and harmony across locations, the Global Orchestra developed the “Conductor-Cam”. Through this application, musicians from around the world were give the novel opportunity to play with the SSO in time, guided by legendary conductor David Robertson. For some musicians, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play alongside the world’s best.

Special Project:  Singing Sophia

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The creation of Sophia's singing voice occurred in a number of discrete steps.  First, studio time was booked, and the woman that made the original recordings–from which Sophia's original voice was derived–sang a number of passages that were then fed into a neural network. 

This neural-net learned from studying the content and contours of this vocal performance, and with this trained network we were subsequently able to provide a sequence of musical notes and vocal phonemes to produce a signal that is ultimately perceptualized by the listener as human speech.  In this way, it is as though Sophia is now able to read sheet music, and can sing a rendition of nearly any song given the correct words and frequency values.  An extra layer of richness is achieved through frequency and amplitude modulation, which create a natural vocal vibrato that brings her performance to life.

Sophia's new singing voice made its debut in a duet with Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show:

I'm Executive Producer of Tech and Innovation for the Madmen and Goodthing Productions film 2040

Special Project: 2040 Movie

Award-winning director Damon Gameau (That Sugar Film) embarks on a personal journey to explore what the future could look like by the year 2040 if we embraced the best solutions already available to us to improve our planet and shifted them rapidly into the mainstream. Structured as a visual letter to his 4-year-old daughter, Damon blends documentary with dramatized sequences and high-end visual effects to create a vision board of how these solutions could regenerate the world for future generations (trailer below...).

Special Project: 2040 Movie

Special Project: 2040 Movie

Special Project: Interactive Orchestra

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Feature Story:

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Special Project: Underwater Streetview

99% of people don't dive and probably never will. It is a huge issue for ocean conservation. The ocean is another world that most people don't know or understand.

To help address the issue, I patented the technology to take street view underwater, with the aim to share the amazing underwater ecosystems on barrier reefs around the world to support their conservation.

99% of people don't dive and probably never will. It is a huge issue for ocean conservation. The ocean is another world that most people don't know or understand.

The patent covers a variety of implementations, some of which are more expensive than others...

We found that the best method was a manned operation comprised of the camera array, propulsion system and towed GPS flotation device:

To make this project a reality, I partnered with Underwater Earth 

The day we launched Streetview Underwater, it was the largest single day usage of Streetview in the history of the product.  The launch panorama, showing 3 sea turtles swimming along the shallow reef off of Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef, is the most viewed underwater image in the world, viewed over 1 Billion times.

Beyond this, the platform is now being used by many organisations to track climate change and its affects on coral reefs

Fast forward eight years and the list of achievements includes:

• the most comprehensive survey of coral reefs ever conducted, carried out across 26 different countries;
• specialist expeditions to the many corners of the ocean including Galapagos, Monaco, Brazil, and Loch Ness (OK, so not part of the ocean);
• the capture of over 1 million panoramic images creating the world's largest underwater visual archive;
• the announcement, revealing and following of The Third Global Coral Bleaching Event which in turn, became the subject of an Emmy award-winning major Netflix documentary;
• a major exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London;
• the launch of 50 Reefs, a global plan to save coral reefs;
• and a collection of immersive, award-winning VR films.

Keynote Presentations & Performances

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Commonwealth Bank

I present regularly on a variety of topics, primarily focusing on thought leadership keynotes around the future of technology and how this will impact work, industry and livelihood.  A recent highlight was my presentation and debate for Commonwealth Bank's VIP business clients, entitled "Man & Machine" the future of business.

I shared the stage with Garry Kasparov, the world chess grand master, and media celebrity Adam Spencer, who moderated our debate.  

Please see an excerpt from this event, starting with my presentation and proceeding to the debate (Garry's presentation is removed due to copyright restrictions).

Tech Vision 2017

Recent keynote presentations

Articles, Patents & Papers

Times of India article (largest english newspaper in India)

Exclusive CeBIT event in partnership with CBA

Audio Engineering Society Papers

Special Project: Show Your Vote

Special Project: Show Your Vote

Special Project: Show Your Vote

Special Project: Global Orchestra

Accenture.com

Managing Director of R&D, Technology & Innovation

APAC Head of Emerging Technology & Liquid Studios

August 2016 - 2018

In my role as APAC Lead for Emerging Technology & Liquid Studios, I supported and launched Liquid Studios in Sydney, Singapore, Manila, Tokyo, Bangalore, and more to come.

For the launch of Bangalore's new Innovation Center we delivered all of the major technology demonstrations and performances

For Accenture's Tech Vision 2017 I created an immersive tabletop presentation environment and delivered Tech Vision to over 1,000 clients across APAC

Tech Vision 2017

With the Baxter project my dream goal was to have Baxter trained to play jazz and to improvise along with a live jazz band.  I had the opportunity to achieve this in Chicago at a global conference!

I hired a local jazz trio for the gig, and I then recorded all of the pianists improvisation during rehearsal.  We then trained Baxter via this data and performed live to an audience of 500+

1-Page.com

Chief Technology Officer

September 2014 - February 2016

Justin Baird was CTO and Head of APAC at 1-Page making the job market a better place.
1-Page helps enterprises around the world to drive innovation through next generation talent acquisition, as well as supporting the global workforce by providing the tools to pitch their unique value to companies beyond the resume.

Justin was responsible for the research, development and implementation of 1-Page scientific and technological platforms, and the development of APAC markets.

Silicon Valley start-up 1-Page surges on ASX debut

Justin has been an advisor to the company since its inception, and became a full-time employee in order to perform the highly successful initial public offering in October 2014.

1-Page is the first Silicon Valley based tech startup to list on the ASX, and it's meteoric rise saw the stock become the fastest growing stock on any stock exchange around the world, growing almost 1,000% in the last quarter of 2014.

1-Page collaborated with HR leaders at some of the largest companies in the United States, as well as university research departments to develop a new system of engagement: job seekers were enabled to pitch their value in the form of a 1-Page Job Proposal for companies to assess their skills and passions beyond resumes.

The 1-Page Proposal system is now used to assess the potential of employment candidates, and for driving enterprise-wide innovation programs.

As a public company, 1-Page acquired a large scale social data platform and an innovative data science company to create Source.hr  

We created a next generation sourcing system that leverages big data and artificial intelligence systems to determine the best candidates for the best companies.

jumptank

Group Innovation Director

Dentsu Aegis Network

February 2012 - September 2014

Jumptank:
IP is the future of communications

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Aegis has its fingers in a few pies but seems to have taken that maxim even further with Jumptank. The innovation wing was launched amid much fanfare last year. But, whisper it, nobody really knew what it did.

Now the firm is loosing its first mobile app products upon the market. One to replace timesheets, the other to replace internal comms. The Aegis unit is apparently becoming an enterprise solutions provider and media firms need to get with the IP program or go the way of the dinosaurs, CCO Kristian Barnes and innovation chief Justin Baird told AdNews from its Bond-esque tech HQ.

Aegis will switch its internal comms to Fuse over the coming weeks then do away with the tedium of timesheets via Pushy, before rolling both solutions out to clients and the broader market, according to Barnes.

After that, it’s a full-on focal shift to IP, software and physical product development for the Dentsu-owned business unit. However, the Jumptank's remit will retain an element of strategic mind-bombing via the 2910 HQ, where ideas are brought to life in 4D. Literally.

That’s because Jumptank innovation boss Justin Baird has spent the last year building multimedia kit from scratch to create a multi-screen tech-hub at Aegis’ Sydney offices. Before building it, some of the technology didn’t even exist. But the former Google 'innovationist' has spent the last year creating a multi-modal marketers dream.

The result is four walls of cutting-edge rolling interactivity. Clients are brought in to bounce around ideas and are shown, or subconsciously steered, from creative concept to strategic execution. Then the room is reconfigured for the next creative brain-storming session.

“You don’t know ... what you don’t know,” Barnes said. “Here we can invite people in to start [defining unknowns] and bringing [those ideas] into their business."

The only limiting factor is client’s collective mind. Put it this way – there is not much in the way of PowerPoint during the sessions. Barnes claims Aegis is already setting caps on the facility, which it also leases out for hackathons and the like, to retain experience quality.

Diversify or die
While Barnes has high hopes for the two enterprise solutions, making physical product – which is in the pipeline – represents more than a subtle shift in emphasis.

“This is part of communications of the future,” he said. “We must be able to build real products for clients. Or find the right partners [to do so].”

Firms have to invest and diversify, or be squeezed out by commoditisation.

Project highlights that I developed / co-created

Google

Innovationist

August 2007 - January 2012

Prior to Jumptank, Justin was the Innovationist at Google. Justin launched local YouTube portals across Asia Pacific, supported the launch of numerous consumer product releases including Google Maps and Google Wave, launched the first Android mobile devices in the region, brought the Google Creative Sandbox event to Australia’s shores for the first time, was a member of Google's Global Creative Council, and co-created DNA, a digital thought leadership series hosted in both Australia and New Zealand. He also developed Digital Bytes, a technology event presentation format that has become the cornerstone of Google's executive client engagement strategy across the region.

Opening the Google Pyrmont office, demonstrating the first Android phone to Governor General Quentin Bryce

Digital Bytes is an event that I created and developed. This event is focused at the C-level of our agencies and their clients, consisting of an intimate dinner and a presentation with a lot of wow factor, the table becomes the presentation.  We have seen significant results from a number of the early events executed in Australia, and now the verticals are leveraging this event so that there are now more than a dozen events across the year to stimulate and converse with the top decision makers in the business.  These events have now been rolled out across the region, with multiple events happening in China and across Asia Pacific.

I brought the Creative Sandbox event to Sydney, the first one outside of the USA. Over 285 key decision makers in attendance (ECDs, CEOs, Senior creative and media representatives)
Attendance from 60+ agencies across all top agency networks as well as leading boutique agencies (like Droga5, Holler, Oddfellows & Soap)
25 demo stations showcasing: YouTube, Creative Lab + Chrome Zone, Insights for Search & YouTube Insights, Social, Geo, Mobile and Display
Local carousel built, housing 100s of exceptional new content examples like MyMutation at the Sydney Opera House, the YouTube Warp player and the beautiful whale implementation using the YouTube API. 
Stage presentations included Robert Wong (ECD Creative Lab), Jay Akkad (YouTube PMM), Aaron Koblin (Creative Lab, Technology lead), David Arvan (YouTube Engineer) and Lars Rasmussen & Stephanie Hannon (Wave).  

Shanghai Creative Sandbox

I also delivered the Sandbox event to Shanghai, working with our local teams to deliver another technology showcase including some of my own creations...

This is the annual conference that the China Government puts on and it has a significant impact on their decisions regarding policies, regulation and who gets to keep their ICP (internet content provider) license.  I spoke at the conference on Mobile, where I used a custom presentation tool which I call the Matrix - to show a matrix of video content whilst I spoke across our mobile strategy and the future of mobile computing.  

This was very well received in the government, by the industry, press, and also the live microblog streams, translated as follows:
 

"The Google speaker was no doubt the highlight of the day. His speech has some real substance;"

"Listening to Justin's speech, I feel they really think differently compared with Chinese internet companies. Wish in the next 10 years, we can see more innovative and open new products!"

"The presentation style is so creative, so different from those other presenters. Indeed, this is Google! It's a definite blown away"

"After the Google guy left, I didn't want to stay any more"
 

I was told by our government relations team that this presentation has had a significant impact on our relationship with the Chinese Government and has helped contribute positively to the Government’s upcoming review of our Internet Content Provider license, which is a requirement for us to do business in China.  I am especially proud of this as I have helped our China business at the most fundamental level.

I was the PR spokesperson and product launch cyclist:

"Google wants every nook and cranny of Australia covered on its Google Maps Street View service and to make that happen it will unleash an army of cyclists to capture images off the beaten track and in pedestrian-only locations.
The company is seeking suggestions from Australians for cultural areas, natural wonders and “hidden gems” it should explore.
At Sydney's Taronga Zoo today, the search giant revealed that its cars with specially mounted cameras haven't been enough to fully capture the country's delights, such as the zoo, national parks and Sydney Harbour."

Held at INSEAD in Singapore, bringing together 43 marketing leaders from India, Japan, Korea, Australia, China and SEA for a three-day offsite.  I was asked to create something special that would last with all the attendees.

As we were providing Galaxy Tab 10.1 Honeycomb tablets to all attendees, we had a unique opportunity to provide them with information on the tablet.  So I developed a custom Android application specifically for this event - a good example of “doing more with less” I developed this application from scratch using the Android development environment to give each CMO a handy tool to know more about each aspect of our core business, along with a contacts directory for all of our sales contacts across the region.

I also created all the graphics and animations, and I converted my previous work in flash into html compliant animations to reduce the computational load on the tablets.

An online platform developed by an Australian Googler in his "20 per cent time" has been adopted by the United Nations to show world leaders the extent of global support for climate change action at this month's summit in Copenhagen.
Google Australia's "innovationist", Justin Baird, developed the Show Your Vote platform after meeting US environmental campaigner Al Gore earlier this year and helping develop the web presence of the highly successful Earth Hour campaign.
His platform includes a virtual ballot box that can be embedded into any website allowing people to register their support for sealing a fair and effective climate deal at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen, which runs for two weeks from Monday.
 

Mitsubishi iMiEV Australian Launch

I led a small team of Googlers who developed and rolled out a new electric car initiative with the Mitsubishi iMiEV electric vehicle in our Sydney office.  We installed some of Australia's first charge points and delivered 2 vehicles in Sydney.  I also invented a system we called "green credits" that incentivised Googlers to commute by green methods, in order to collect green points to be able to participate in a weekly auction to win the cars for the weekends.  During the week each car was resourced on the calendar for Googlers to take out as green taxi replacements.  Each car was a remote hotspot, enabled by the first Samsung tablet computers in Australia.

More:

http://google-au.blogspot.com/2009/12/show-your-vote-for-cop-15.html

http://google-au.blogspot.com/2009/03/introducing-earth-connect-for-earth.html

http://google-au.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-climate-change-tools-for-cop15.html

http://google-au.blogspot.com/2008/09/google-insights-for-search-in-australia.html

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/show-your-vote-for-cop15.html

http://google-newzealand.blogspot.com/2010/02/justin-baird-talks-innovation-with.html

EVEN More:

I have been an Adjudicator for the Award Awards and Young Guns shows.  I've also been a guest lecturer at the Award School a couple times.

I helped plan, provided content for, and attended the first Google Creative Council event in New York City, bringing together the top Executive Creative Directors in North America.  I also continued to develop and support this Council by continuing the discussion and collaboration via our second Council installment in Cannes 2011

Battle of Big Thinking - I was on the Australian national television channel ABC TV with my thought leadership presentation on Radically Inclusive Democracy http://fora.tv/2011/02/24/Justin_Baird_Battle_of_Big_Thinking

Dolby Laboratories

Director of Product Management & Software Engineering

July 2004 - July 2007

Launched the Dolby Lake Processor (hardware and software product) through the development of product launch documentation that extracted and highlighted the unique selling propositions of the new product series, provided key marketing messages for the three primary market segments, developed a co-branded approach to optimize market entry based on buyer behaviour models, market research and direct customer feedback, provided detailed technical outlines for product manuals, and detailed all customer touch components of the product (shipping kits, website architectures, brochures, spec sheets, and more).  Since its introduction, the Dolby Lake Processor has won multiple industry awards for product and technology innovation, and used as the main processor for global events, such as the Olympics, Commonwealth Games, and more.

Responsible for the technical relationship management and negotiation of the legal agreement with a new technology partner delivering IP-Standards based networking transport, securing an early adopter status resulting in a unique competitive market position.

Managed relations with a prospective OEM client resulting in the successful execution of an agreement securing a well-defined revenue stream for the next two financial years.

Responsible for the public release of the Live Sound Group’s software products, working with geographically separated parties to ensure the smooth execution of incremental product releases and new feature introductions.

Developed an Application Programmer’s Interface for the Dolby Lake Processor and worked with R&D internally to create new algorithms to support the interface requirements.  
Worked closely with the Live Sound Group’s engineering group, Dolby Australia’s R&D group, and JPS, the largest event sound company in Australia, to develop a completely new loudspeaker protection system, satisfying the stringent requirements of JPS and satisfying our customers’ requests for improved speaker protection.

Lake DSP

Director of Product 

2002 - July 2004

Introduced the Lake Mesa Quad EQ processor to the professional audio market, bringing a new revenue stream into the company and further establishing the presence of Lake Technology within the live sound industry.

Responsible for all live sound products, managing the development of new software and hardware features, supporting Lake’s personal selling approach and resulting in high customer satisfaction.

Worked with industry partners to develop a range of loudspeaker presets for the popular manufacturers including L-Acoustics, EAW, EV, and JBL, resulting in increased and sustained product sales supporting the company’s new live sound business.

With a skeleton staff, opened the San Francisco-based start-up subsidiary, responsible for all technical operations, reporting directly to the CEO.

Maintained and created new sales opportunities with existing clients, and developed new business relationships with both existing and new customers.

Working with a geographically dispersed team, introduced the Lake Contour digital loudspeaker processor to the professional audio market – responsible for the management of the product including specification of features, market positioning and messaging.

Oversaw the production of both the hardware and software components of the new product line.

Meyer Sound

R&D Engineer

1997 - 2002

Within a small core of engineers, worked on self powered speaker analog circuit design, measurement and optimization for the following products – UPA-1P, UPA-2P, USW-1P, HM-1 and HM-1S, MSL-4, 750-P, X-10, UPM-1P, UPM-2P, UM-1P, UM-100P, MSL-6, PSW-6, DF-4, M3D, MM-4.

Developed and maintained the Remote Monitoring Software (RMS) product and managed the product both internally and externally.

Co-managed the transducer development and test group, working with both internal and external parties to specify, manufacture, test and maintain quality of all low and high frequency transducers used in production.

Researched, implemented, and field tested an advanced large scale RMS deployment for the Tokyo Disney project, collaborating with Disney Engineering and Disney Imagineering.

Worked with Solotech, Celin Dion’s sound company, to investigate and resolve the real world problems resulting in the destruction of MSL-4 high drivers through the creation and implementation of a fast acting peak limiter circuit.

Represented Meyer in AES standards committees, acting as Vice-Chair of the AESSC-SC-04-03 Subcommittee on Acoustics, Working Group on Loudspeaker Modeling and Measurement.

Represented Meyer as a technical liaison for both public and hosted events – speaking and presenting at audio conferences and seminars in North America, Europe, Australia, Asia and South America.

Developed a three-dimensional sound intensity probe utilizing a pressure sensor and three Microflown sound intensity probes – developed software acquisition and post processing system.

Performed acoustical analysis, post-processing and predictions for Carnegie Hall, system trialled and installed in 2000.

Performed acoustical analysis, post-processing and predictions for Royal Albert Hall (London, England) and Benaroya Concert Hall (Seattle, Washington, USA).

Authored and managed the creation of Meyer’s first release of acoustic data sets for the EASE electroacoustic prediction program.

Wrote numerous white papers and provided consultative review of application notes, datasheets, user manuals and other marketing materials.

Co-authored the first in-house versions of the Multipurpose Acoustic Prediction Program (MAPP) and verified its accuracy through numerous electroacoustic anechoic chamber measurements.

Developed the Meyer Matrix Processor, a high quality multi-channel rapid prototyping environment for the creation and real-time manipulation of digital audio signal processing systems.

Wrote the embedded digital signal processing code for the third generation of the Meyer Sound Source Independent Measurement acoustical measurement and analysis system. 

REFERENCES

Karim Temsamani - President, Asia Pacific @ Google

Pete Williams - Chief Edge Officer, Centre for the Edge @ Deloitte

Tiziana Bianco - Global Head of Innovation Labs @ Commonwealth Bank

Kristian Barnes - CEO, Vizeum Asia Pacific @ Aegis Dentsu

Guy Gibbs - Director, Media Technology Solutions @ Google

Patrick Riley - Co-Founder and Author @ 1-Page