Enhancing human intelligence with big data, and strengthening human capability through technology, will be on the agenda for more than 2,000 people at Microsoft TechEd New Zealand 2013.

Microsoft New Zealand has announced that Kiwi-born TED Fellow, Sean Gourley, and the driving force behind Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud computing platform, Scott Guthrie, will be keynote speakers at this year’s Microsoft TechEd New Zealand technology conference.

Sean Gourley brings a wealth of academic and corporate experience. Gourley is a physicist, decathlete, political advisor, Rhodes Scholar, and entrepreneur. He is originally from New Zealand and helped start New Zealand’s first nanotech company. Gourley turned his scientific mind to analysing complex data to understand what makes us go to war, when, and why.

In 2010 Gourley launched Quid, a big data company that builds software to augment human intelligence. He counts some of the biggest companies and governments in the world as customers, who use Quid to understand everything from political protests to high frequency trading.

Sean will be joined by Scott Guthrie – one of Microsoft’s understated yet legendary developers. In 2008 at age 32, Guthrie became one of the youngest Corporate Vice Presidents at Microsoft when he took up the role within Microsoft's Server and Tools Business division. He is responsible for the teams that build the .NET Framework, Silverlight, the XAML runtimes for Windows Phone and Windows 8, and many of the tooling features within Visual Studio. In 2011, Guthrie took the lead of the Windows Azure Application Platform Team.

Running from September 10th to 13th, Microsoft TechEd New Zealand will feature 144 breakout sessions spanning 10 technical tracks, in addition to this world-class keynote address.