Launceston man’s presentation to NATO

Holly Monery, goondiwindiargus.com.au

Grant image from article

Twenty-year-old Ben Grant has travelled to Brussels in Belgium to present to public diplomacy staff at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization​ Headquarters​ (NATO​ HQ).

The former Launceston man moved to Melbourne to pursue a Bachelor of Advertising at RMIT.

A chance conversation during a study trip to New York led to him preparing a presentation for the intergovernmental military alliance, which has 28 member states.

“I was in New York for the last month working for different advertising agencies and Dr ​Jenny ​Robinson from RMIT heard about my love of data and engineering and communications,” Mr Grant said.

"Dr Robinson and RMIT University industry partner Info Ops HQ were working on a social media analysis project of the NATO Summit in Warsaw and asked if I would join their team."

NATO held a summit in Warsaw, Poland from July 7-9.

Mr Grant worked closely with a team of PhD and Masters students, together with industry partner Info Ops HQ, a civil-military think-do tank based in Australia, during the summit.

His presentation focused on the findings of that research.

“NATO wants to track to see how the conversation progresses through its channels, through channels such as news sites and through personal accounts like Twitter and Instagram, and based on that they want to get an idea of the sentiment towards NATO online,” Mr Grant said.