Kicking SaaS: Attract, Nurture and Retain SaaS Talent

About the presenters:

• Ben Gracewood is Chief Technology Officer at The Spinoff. Ben is skilled at building inclusive, high-performing engineering teams. He built Vend’s team responsible for safely deploying software changes every six minutes, which ultimately helped power Vend to a US$350m exit. Ben also co-founded the Codemania software developers’ conference and is a keen bike rider when out of the office.
• Mike Carden is an HR futurist and the co-founder of Joyous, the inventor of Open Employee Feedback, used by the world’s largest employers. In 2006 Mike founded performance management software-as-a-service company Sonar6, adopting the tagline: “at last, performance reviews that don’t suck”. Sonar6 was acquired by Cornerstone OnDemand in 2012. Since then, Mike has been involved in a range of leading-edge tech projects while keeping a very keen eye on how technology changes the way we all work.
• Ruby Kolesky is Head of Product and Co-CEO at Joyous. Previously in key roles helping other kiwi startups achieve global success, Ruby is obsessed with inventing new and better ways of doing things at work. She has developed an open source Parental Journey benefit – adopted by other organisations. She is also the co-author of Joyfully – a book about shared leadership, modern organisational structures and a new way of working.
• Jehan Casinader, MC is an award-winning journalist and is one of New Zealand’s top storytellers. For more than a decade, he has been a familiar face on our screens, reporting  for primetime shows like TVNZ’s Sunday, Seven Sharp and Close Up. He was named “Broadcast Reporter of the Year” at the Voyager Media Awards in 2020, and “Reporter of the Year” at the New Zealand Television Awards in 2018.