The Minister for Communication and Information Technology, the Hon. David Cunliffe, was the keynote speaker at the American Chamber of Commerce  business forum, Digital Future Now held in Auckland this week, with 120 business leaders in attendance. AmCham’s official partners were the Digital Strategy Unit of the Ministry of Economic Development, along with EDS New Zealand.

Other speakers at the high-powered event included Bullet PR Managing Director, Nicholas O’Flaherty, along with Richard MacManus, Read/Write Web; Mauricio Freitas, Geekzone; Ian Taylor, Animation Research; Tom Cotter, TVNZ; Russell Brown, Public Address; Simon Young, iJump; Paul Reynolds, McGovern Online; Ernie Newman, TUANZ;, Bernard Hickey, Interest.co.nz; and Rob O’Neill, Computerworld.

The event focused on a range of digital fields including telecommunications, identity protection, blogging, direct and interactive marketing, social networking, mobile marketing, and data storage. There was a distinct shift in emphasis from previous forums, with discussion focusing far more on what can be done with broadband as opposed to getting it in the first place; and education in particular arose as a key area  for future improvement.