Venessa Paech (Moderator)

Venessa Paech is an internationally renowned online communities expert. Currently leading online community engagement for Australia Post, previous roles include Senior Manager for Content and Community Strategy at realestate.com.au, Head of Community at Lonely Planet and Managing Editor at Arts Hub. She has worked extensively with diverse organisations ranging from global brands, to public sector bodies and start-ups on community building and engagement, story-telling and participatory practices.

In 2009 Venessa founded the Australian Community Manager Roundtables and in 2011 she co-founded Swarm, Australia’s national community management conference. With her Swarm co-founder Alison Michalk, Venessa launched the Australian Community Managers group on Facebook (over 2.5K community and social media managers). In 2015, she released the Australian Community Management career survey, and in 2016 Alison and Venessa launched the inaugural practitioner-created Code of Ethics for Australian social media professionals.

Venessa holds a BFA from Tisch School of the Arts, New York University (USA) and an MA in Creative Media from the University of Brighton (UK). She is a published scholar on online communities, and an in-demand speaker, educator and consultant on our digital lives and identities.

Venessa's first online community was the X-Files fan forum where she met her husband in the early 1990s.