Mr Brown has been Amazon Web Services (AWS) Australia and New Zealand’s head of data and AI for the past 15 years.
AWS, who were major sponsors of the Great New Zealand AI Roadshow, supported the roadshow with a representative attending each event, but the Invercargill spot was his, Mr Brown said.
"I love Southland and I wanted to be with Southlanders for the day."
He said he was proud of his Southland schooling and home. He grew up on an Otautau farm which ran 1500 sheep and 20 head of cattle during the 1980s. These were lean farming years when his mother needed to work to top up the household income.
A degree from Otago University polished his Central Southland College education while term breaks were spent working at the Tiwai smelter in its tertiary student summer internship for three years.
"Going off to Dunedin is one of the best things that happened to me," he said.
"I am definitely proud of the way Southland schooling and my time at Tiwai, taught me — to work hard, be humble, and always be a good human first."
He is also proud he had retained his ability to roll his Rrrs in Melbourne.
Mr Brown has lived in Melbourne for the past 20 years with his wife and two children since being offered his role with Amazon, but he said Southland would always be home.
He admits life has changed a lot since his boisterous couch-burning University of Otago days, where he initially studied math and computer science, and later switched to chemical engineering.
After graduation, he worked for Carter Holt and Fletcher Challenge in the North Island where they noticed his gift of the gab.
"‘You’re a bit talkie, can you do the account manager stuff?’, and I wasn’t that good at the engineering and they’re like — ‘maybe less of the engineering and can you be a salesperson?’."
The offer of a new company VT Commodore was enough to secure a firm "yes" from him.
"I was a kid. So imagine, in 1999, three years out of university and they give me a brand new VT Commodore — Blue. Metallic."
The dream job was too good to refuse.
"I took a guy skydiving on my expenses and it was all above board — it was a million-dollar contract."
For the next 10 years, the sales bonuses and expenses account were double-pluses of the job. Then came the move to Australia.
His transition from chemical engineering to information technology (IT) came after a friend opened an IBM partner interview opportunity selling large IT servers.
"I was lucky enough that I’d just done IT the second year (of university)."
After three years, another door opened when he discovered Amazon was planning to launch into IT.
"That weekend a recruiter rang the IBM guy, who I had been helping, and went, ‘Hey we were looking for someone to start Amazon’.
"So I got really, really lucky.
"There were only 10,000 global Amazon employees and in AWS, there was 120 of us. There’s now 1.5 million employees.
"Because I have been there 13 years, I get left alone to go out and talk about AI."
Although he credits the real AI knowledge to his team.
"My team are experts in data. I’m not the expert, I’m reasonable. I’m actually a people manager ... and they do a lot of the presentations. So I look after a team of AI experts — they know what they’re doing."
— Toni McDonald
