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I help Australia's largest organisations figure out how to adopt AI responsibly, and then…
Articles by Craig
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7K followers
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Craig Lawton shared thisYou wouldn't own a house without insurance. Yet - according to Jennifer Parker - we're under-insuring the continent. Her piece in the AFR lays it out plainly: Our defence plan fails the self-reliance test. And she'd know. Two decades in the RAN. Second-in-command of HMAS Darwin. Director of Operations at Combined Maritime Forces in Bahrain. Here's what keeps getting missed: → Australia is an island nation that depends on seaborne trade → 90%+ of our imports arrive by ship → Our surface fleet is at its weakest in 50 years → The capability gap runs through the late 2020s — exactly when risk is highest Insurance logic is simple: You don't buy it because you expect the fire. You buy it because you can't afford not to if it comes. Effective maritime defence is the same bet. Hopefully never needed. Prudent to have regardless. Because wars don't send calendar invites. What should we pay to insure a continent? https://lnkd.in/gMRKiUAb Personal views, not my employer's.
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Craig Lawton shared thisLook forward to presenting with Vihan Patel in the nation's capital and hearing about how government is using AI.Craig Lawton shared thisNext week, our team will be in Canberra for the Public Spectrum #AusGovDataSummit 2026. We are proud to share that our own Vihan Patel will be taking the stage alongside Craig Lawton from AWS. Moving AI from a compelling conceptual demo to a secure, production-ready digital service requires navigating complex technical, organisational, and governance challenges. With user expectations shifting faster than ever, government and enterprise organisations face a critical mandate to adapt. To explore this, Vihan and Craig will be taking the stage to present: "How AI is raising the bar for digital services - Mantel & AWS’ experience delivering across enterprise." They will share practical lessons on how to build the right capabilities to overcome deployment hurdles and deliver truly transformative AI services. We look forward to connecting with government leaders and industry peers throughout the event. Let us know if you will be in attendance. View the full speaker lineup: https://lnkd.in/gi_KhvUK
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Craig Lawton shared thisMelbourne peeps! Jump on this while there are still free places...Craig Lawton shared this🔥 𝐒𝐲𝐝𝐧𝐞𝐲 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐭. 𝐌𝐞𝐥𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐞 & 𝐀𝐮𝐜𝐤𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐝—𝐲𝐨𝐮'𝐫𝐞 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭! Agentic AI Days brought business and tech leaders together to explore how AI is fundamentally changing how organizations build and deliver. 3 hours of action-packed keynotes, customer stories, an executive panel and ~100 people participating in the hands-on 🏎️ F1 AI experience 🏁 . Our Sydney attendees said "Only Lewis Hamilton could have beaten us at the F1 AI game...so much fun!" 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐮𝐩: 📅 Melbourne: Tuesday, 21 April @ Half Acre (1-5pm) 📅 Auckland: Thursday, 23 April @ The Cloud (9am-1pm) 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐲 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: · In MEL: Jeremy Burton (CTO, hipages Group) & David Hyman (ex-CEO, Lendi + CEO, monō ai) · In AKL: Peter Muggleston (Chief Digital & Strategy Officer, Mitre 10 (New Zealand) Limited) & Francis McGregor-Macdonald (Head of IT & Data, ZURU) · Joining our customers will be Luke Anderson (Director AI & Data APJ, Amazon Web Services (AWS)) We have VERY Limited places available. Register HERE: https://lnkd.in/ggdgqVcm
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Craig Lawton shared thisFor those of you missing Simon Elisha's dulcet tones and tech wisdom on the AWS Podcast.... he's gone indie, which is amazing for you because you'll hear all his market-leading strategic insight unfiltered! It's never been more important to make good leadership decisions in technology so get on it now. Subscribe to his new feed at: https://lnkd.in/gbNegJyE
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Craig Lawton reposted thisThis will definitely be worth your time and attention. Make sure you sign up to Simon Elisha’s new venture.
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Craig Lawton reposted thisCraig Lawton reposted thisI appeared on Bloomberg News' "Wall Street Week" program last week to discuss the long term decline in housing affordability in Australia, and the role played by the policies of successive governments in procuring that outcome. The program provides a contrast with Singapore's experience. https://lnkd.in/esphpNRkSaul Eslake on Bloomberg TV's Wall Street Week about Australia's Housing CrisisSaul Eslake on Bloomberg TV's Wall Street Week about Australia's Housing Crisis
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Craig Lawton shared thisI don't know who put this together, but if you're curious on our fuel crisis and primary-sourced data: https://fuelaustralia.org/ .FuelAustralia.org — Independent Fuel Security IntelligenceFuelAustralia.org — Independent Fuel Security Intelligence
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Craig Lawton reposted thisCraig Lawton reposted thisAustralia used to have some of the cheapest electricity in the world. From the 1960s through to the early 2000s, abundant coal, gas and hydro — backed by stable policy settings — made this country a magnet for energy-intensive industries like aluminium, copper and zinc smelting. That advantage is gone. Since the mid-2000s, Australian electricity prices have risen far faster than comparable economies. We’ve gone from around 30% below the OECD average price to around 30% above it. The consequences are stark. Smelters that once anchored local economies are closing or surviving only through government bailouts. BHP’s chief executive has noted that Australian electricity costs are two to three times higher than those faced by key competitors. Intermittent wind and solar, backed by taxpayer subsidies, have failed to replicate the reliability that coal and gas once provided. The government talks about a ‘Future Made in Australia’. But without a significant expansion of large-scale, dispatchable, low-cost generation, that ambition will remain out of reach. CIS researchers Zoe Hilton and Michael Stutchbury have documented exactly how we lost this advantage — and what it would take to get it back. 👉 Read the full paper: https://lnkd.in/g3DevmS9 👉 Support CIS at cis.org.au/support
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Craig Lawton shared thisA recommendation for the Christian-curious: Nick Cave and Tom Holland in a fantastic discussion: "In Search of the Wild Gods" https://lnkd.in/gx7qe8fJ ($) and this poem that Tom recommends, "The White Tiger", by R. S. Thomas. Happy Easter and enjoy the chocolate! The White Tiger It was beautiful as God must be beautiful: glacial eyes that had looked on violence and come to terms with it; a body too huge and majestic for the cage in which it had been put; up and down in the shadow of its own bulk it went lifting, as it turned, the crumpled flower of its face to look into my own face without seeing me. It was the colour of the moonlight on snow and as quiet as moonlight, but breathing as you can imagine that God breaths within the confines of our definition of him, agonizing over immensities that will not return.
Craig Lawton commented on a post
1w
Not enough thought going into what it means to be free in this modern world
Craig Lawton replied to a comment
1mo
Monica Moorfield (nee Vanderkley) Thank you but it was all Pauline Kelly , Ana Monteiro , Cain Hopwood , Emma Arrigo !
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Craig Lawton liked thisCraig Lawton liked thisLooking forward to being part of Money 20/20 Asia in Bangkok next week as a Startup Pitch Judge. The quality and ambition of founders across fintech, payments, and embedded finance continue to accelerate — and this is one of the few forums where you see that momentum concentrated in one place. I’ll be spending time in the Startup & Investor Park, connecting with founders, investors, and partners across the ecosystem. If you're building, investing, or exploring opportunities in the region, it’s a highly efficient way to get a real signal on where things are heading. Startupbootcamp is proud to be powering the Startup & Investor Park — bringing together high-quality startups and facilitating meaningful investor engagement. If you’re attending, come by and say hello. Details here: https://lnkd.in/gwAxfdWA #money2020Asia Richard Celm Ricardo Costa Sean Mulvahill Tim Poskitt Arjun Agarwal 🚀 Startupbootcamp Fintech
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Craig Lawton liked thisCraig Lawton liked thisCursor can now attach demos and screenshots of its work to PRs it opens. Your team can review artifacts created by cloud agents directly in GitHub. Enable this feature in the Cursor dashboard: https://lnkd.in/gH2ec5fm
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Craig Lawton liked thisCraig Lawton liked thisThe companies getting real value from AI right now don't have the biggest AI budgets. They have the cleanest data. Not perfect data. Not a completed three-year data transformation program. Just clean enough, governed enough, trusted enough that when you point a model at it, you get something useful back. This is the part nobody wants to hear. The model is (now) the easy bit. What's underneath it is where the value lives - and the mess lives. I watched the same pattern play out with cloud. The organisations that got transformative value weren't the ones who moved fastest. They were the ones who used the move as an excuse to fix just enough of their foundations to make progress. Not everything, just enough. You don't need a three-year data quality program. You need to pick one business process that matters, trace the data that feeds it, and clean that up. That's a quarter's work, not a decade's. The best AI strategy in 2026 looks suspiciously like good engineering discipline. It's just that now there's a $4 trillion reason to fund it.
Experience & Education
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Amazon Web Services (AWS)
View Craig’s full experience
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Licenses & Certifications
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AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate
AWS
IssuedCredential ID AWS-ASA-1044 -
TOGAF
The Open Group
IssuedCredential ID 58714 -
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Volunteer Experience
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Mentor
Vic ICT for Women
- Present 11 years 2 months
Education
The Victorian ICT for Women mentoring program is to support Retention and Progression for women in the ICT industry in Victoria. This program is designed to:
assist the professional development of women in ICT
provide the opportunity for ICT professionals to be a mentor and contribute to the ICT industry
build confidence and self-esteem
foster networking
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Publications
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Building a Better Geek
Podbean
This eight-episode co-facilitated podcast explored the intersection between technology, psychology and wellbeing.
Other authors -
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This is My Architecture (Video Series)
Facebook
See publicationAlso see: https://www.facebook.com/amazonwebservices/videos/xero-deploying-multi-az-and-multi-region-sql-server/1439579246079436/
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Making Sense of Cloud Computing & Digital Transformation
CoffeeScroll
See publicationOn average, attracted 1K online visitors per month as a blogger/writer focused on IT infrastructure and cloud technologies.
Patents
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Secure Communication with Individual Edge Devices of Remote Networks that Use Local Security Credentials
Issued US Patent No. 11,582,027
Projects
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AWS Sovereign GenAI Narrative
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Authored AWS's strategic positioning on sovereign AI for ANZ enterprise + public sector.
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Claude Cross-Region Inference, Australia
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Drove foundation model availability in-country — 4th region globally after US, EU and Japan.
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Safe AI Adoption — Victorian Public Sector
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Co-designed executive series; 500+ registrants, 200+ attended, >4.5/5 CSAT.
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Smart Cities Partner Competency
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Co-launched this IT strategy with 28 global partners, focused on expanding awareness and interest in this disruptive technology.
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Sydney Summit Expo
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Presented on contemporary, cloud-based solutions architecture, such as AWS smart parking solutions.
Organizations
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Australian Institute of Company Directors
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