Andy Piper
Social Bridgebuilder and Consulting IT Specialist, IBM
Andy Piper has been with IBM Software since 2001. He is part of the Software Group Development Laboratories, where his “day job” is to define product futures, produce collateral and improve software consumability, particularly around the WebSphere brand. Andy is a key ambassador for IBM’s internal BlueIQ social software community and has been championing the use of social media inside the enterprise for a number of years. He is also one of the founding members of IBM’s Virtual Universe Community.
Andy is probably best known online as a “social Bridgebuilder” who spans a number of different areas of technology and interest. As well as contributing to a number of blogs, groups and podcasts on a wide range of topics, he is a regular conference speaker on various topics, ranging from WebSphere to Virtual Worlds to social software. Furthermore, Andy is a member of the British Computer Society and is a Chartered IT Professional. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Modern History from Brasenose College, Oxford University, in the UK.
Andy on Twitter: @andypiper
Anne McCrossan
Founder & CEO, Visceral Business
Anne McCrossan is the Founder of Visceral Business. She specializes in social business design management, the intangible assets of brands and is an expert in brand marketing within the finance industry. Anne’s been a senior advisor to Legal & General, AIB, Alliance & Leicester, State Street Bank and Royal & Sun Alliance in brand strategy and marketing over the last fifteen years. She’s spoken on compliance and communications issues within the financial sector and her work addresses the organizational development of businesses and brands in a networked age. Anne’s a founder member of Seth Godin’s private network community www.triiibes.com, that’s studying the implications of networks on organizations and brands. She’s also the author of the Changethis.com manifesto ‘Cracking The Genetic Code: A New Way Forward for Organiations’, ‘The Tribes Q&A’, an ebook produced in conjunction with Seth Godin called and ’21 Ingredients for a Great Community’.
Anne on Twitter: @annemcx
Arnould Moyne
Founder & CEO, FinRoad Financial Markets Network
Arnould has spent 15 years in the financial information industry providing trading, compliance and risk solutions (Fininfo, SIX-Telekurs), mainly as Marketing and Clients Relation Director. His passion for web 2.0 and specifically social networking lead him to co-found FinRoad. Today, he is CEO of FinRoad.
FinRoad is a fast growing networking site reserved for Financial Markets. Whether you are willing to sell, buy, find a job, invest or raise funds, smart matching tools that exist nowhere else narrow down thousands into a manageable number of real opportunities in one single click!
Arnould on Twitter: @FinRoad
Benedikt Koehler
Director Digital Strategy & Research, Ethority
Dr. Benedikt Köhler studied sociology, ethnology and psychology at LMU Munich. While pursuing his PhD programme at the chair of Ulrich Beck, he started working as a freelance Social Media Strategy Consultant.
Being a sociologist, Benedikt enjoys a designated reputation in the field of Market Research in User Generated Channels and actively participates in the establishment of common parameters for measuring success in Social Media. He is co-founder and vice chairman of the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft Social Media e.V.”, which was founded in 2008.
On a regular basis, Benedikt publishes articles on blog.metaroll.de, usually dealing with topics around media and sociology. Since January 2009, he has been working as Director Digital Strategy & Research at ethority, German Brand Affinity Specialist in the field of Social Media, and is managing the branch office in Munich.
Benedikt on Twitter: @furukama
Bettina Kahlau
Director Marketing Strategy & Market Management, IBM Germany
Bettina Kahlau is responsible in IBM for Strategy & Marketing for Global Business Services, the consultancy arm of IBM, and for Industries.
Previously she worked as Executive Assistant for 2,5 years for Martin Jetter, the current Country General Manager in Germany and Head of the German Board. Within this role, she managed the design and implementation of “The Greater IBM Connection” in Germany. This IBM worldwide initiative, developing a corporate social network for current and former IBMers, got footprinted through this German pilot. Bettina started her career at PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting (PwCC),where she focused on Supply Chain Management, demonstrated over 5 years deep experience from strategy to execution, gained internal and external recognition and was within these last 2 years responsible for Business Development of “Procurement Optimization” in Central Europe (D, A, CH).
Boris Janek
Online Marketing Manager, VR-NetWorld GmbH Internet Service Provider of the German Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken (BVR)
Boris Janek is responsible for strategic online projects at VR NetWorld GmbH in Bonn (Germany). In this role he also advises banks and members of the cooperative financial services network, in particular the BVR.
Early 2007 Boris starts blogging about Finance 2.0, Social Media and Social Banking. His blog www.finance20.de is one of a few Finance and Banking Blogs in Germany. As a trained sociologist he adessed questions like: Whether and how organisations and enterprises (especially Finance Companies) should use the social internet. Today he also gives lectures on the subjects Online Marketing, Social Media, Social Banking and Finance 2.0.
In his main job, Boris helps local cooperative banks to understand and use social media. His thesis: The Internet is based on basic values and principles, which also apply to the idea of cooperatives and especially the Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken. The use of the social internet gives local cooperative banks the opportunity to compete succesfully with direct banks, private banks such as non and near banks.
Boris on Twitter: @electrouncle
Christian Miccio
Product Manager, Google Maps
Christian has been a product manager at Google for 4 years now, working on a range of product from Gmail to Google Maps. Before that, he got his MBA from INSEAD, where he went after an exciting adventure launching the first version of the Shazam music identication from London. He was amongst the first employees, and built one of the largest music databases available. Even before that, he worked a few years in Gemany and studied at the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Christophe Langlois
Founder, Visible Banking
Christophe is an active blogger and business networker. In 2007 he founded Visible-Banking.com which is the only blog 100% focused on social media in finance. Christophe is an experienced presenter, thought leader, and advocate for Web 2.0, and he is a regularly requested speaker at conferences.
In late 2008, he left his Senior Innovation Manager job at Lloyds TSB, now the largest banking group in the UK, to set up his own social media agency, Visible Media Ltd, and focus on his passion for online advocacy. Now Christophe helps financial institutions all over the world to better understand and leverage social media with a key focus on people engagement (client & employee).
Christophe on Twitter: @Visible_Banking
Chris Thorpe
Developer Platform Evangelist, MySpace UK
Chris Thorpe is a consultant at MySpace advising on what developers want from MySpace, what MySpace want from developers and what users want from both of them.
Chris has been involved in the world wide web since the early days of http. He started off as a research scientist playing with really large computers and he’s been looking for more and more excuses ever since to build online experiences for people so he can play with more really big computers. He’s been involved in projects as diverse as bridging Which? to an online audience, social worlds for 7-11 year olds, video archives of Nobel Prize winners telling their life stories, a James Bond premiere webcast and putting contemporary sculpture on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth.
For the past few years Chris has been interested in the underlying interaction patterns and anthropological features of the social web. He founded his consultancy Jaggeree in 2008 and consults with a diverse collection of clients including The Guardian, Techlightenment, NixonMcInnes and BrandoSocial. He blogs and tweets when he has time too.
Chris on Twitter: @jaggeree
Daniel Joerg
Head of Crossmedia & EMEA Digital Practice Leader, Burson-Marsteller
Daniel on Twitter: @danieljoerg
David Terrar
CEO, D2C
David heads up D2C, a consulting firm which provides social media consulting and Software as a Service (or cloud) based solutions for content, collaboration, web publishing, and online accounting as well as being the UK representative for Web 2.0 University™. In addition he is Executive Director of ITBrix LLC, the software company that creates WordFrame, the web publishing and collaboration platform for building better web communities, and PageTypes their CMS. David is on the advisory board of SocialMediaToday LLC. He is Vice Chair of the UK’s newly formed Intellect SaaS Group.
David has been in the software business for over 20 years. While most of his time has been involved with ERP and finance systems, he’s spent the last 5 years applying social media, web 2.0 tools and cloud based solutions to the enterprise. David writes the Business Two Zero blog about applying web 2.0 technology, SAS tactics and guerrilla marketing to business, and is a member of both the Enterprise Irregulars and Social Media Today blogging groups. He is also involved with the running of London Wiki Wednesdays, CreativeCoffee Club and Amplified (the Network of Networks).
David on Twitter: @dt
Deborah Hudson
Global Head of Internal Communications, Zurich Financial Services
Deborah Hudson has been Global Head of Internal Communications at Zurich Financial Services (ZFS) since 2007. Prior to this, she held the position of Director, Corporate Communications and Community Relations at Farmers Insurance Group, which Zurich manages. Previously, Ms. Hudson worked in consultancy, for clients as wide ranging as Accenture, The Tom Peters Group, and UCLA, and is the author of Beyond the Bottom Line, a book of case studies of best practice government and non profit organizations in the U.S. She has a Bachelors degree from Yale University.
Deborah on Twitter: @DeborahHudson
Dennis Howlett
Blogger, ZDNet
Dennis Howlett has been providing comment and analysis on enterprise software since 1991 in a variety of European trade and professional journals including CFO Magazine, The Economist and Information Week. Today, apart from being a full time blogger on innovation for professional services organisations, he is a founding member of Enterprise Advocates. Prior to, Dennis was technology and tax partner in a British firm of Chartered Accountants for 10 years. Prior to that held various senior finance roles across a broad range of industries.
Dennis on Twitter: @dahowlett
Eugene Lee
CEO, Socialtext
Eugene Lee is the Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board of Directors at Socialtext. Eugene assumes day-today management and operational control over all aspects of Socialtext’s business, including driving product direction and development, strategic alliances, and scaling the sales, marketing and support organizations globally.
Eugene comes to Socialtext from Adobe Systems, where he led Adobe’s enterprise marketing and vertical market segments. Previously, he held several executive leadership roles at Cisco Systems, ranging from Vice President (VP) Worldwide Small/Medium Business Marketing to VP Worldwide Enterprise Marketing. Eugene also held key management positions at Banyan Systems, including General Manager for the messaging business unit. He was co-founder of Beyond Inc., developers of the award-winning BeyondMail product, and holds four patens in messaging, workflow and privacy technologies. Eugene has a BA in Physics and BS in Engineering and Computer Science from Harvard College and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.
Eugene on Twitter: @eugenelee
Frans van der Reep
Professor, INHolland University; Senior Strategist, KPN
Frans van der Reep is a reflective practitioner – known as researcher, trend watcher, writer, regular speaker, and entrepreneur. He is a Professor at the Dutch Inholland University, Senior Strategist at Royal KPN and holds a number of non-executive board memberships both in the non-profit and profit sector. He has written many papers and a number of books on how the Internet impacts our lives and work thereby connecting the various business realms of Strategy, Marketing & Sales, HRM, Finance, Business Process Management and ICT.
Frans on Twitter: @fvdr
Gerd Leonhard
Media Futurist, Author, CEO, Media Futures Group
The Wall Street Journal calls Gerd ‘one of the leading Media Futurists in the World’. He is the co-author of the influential book ‘The Future of Music’ (2005, Berklee Press), as well as the author of ‘Music2.0’ (2008) and the blog-book ‘The End of Control’ (www.endofcontrol.com, 2007). Gerd’s background is in music; in 1985 he won the Quincy Jones Award and subsequently graduated from Boston’s Berklee College of Music (1987).
Since 2002, following a decade as digital media entrepreneur and start-up CEO, Gerd travels around the globe and speaks at conferences, events and think-tanks on the Future of Media, Content, Technology, Business, Marketing & Advertising, Branding, Telecom, Communications and Culture.
Gerd is considered a leading expert on topics such as social media, mobile content and m-commerce, innovation and entrepreneurship, UGC and peer production, copyright, licensing and IPR issues, next-generation advertising, marketing and branding, digital content strategies and the development of next-generation business models in the content, communications & technology industries.
Gerd on Twitter: @gleonhard
Ian Simpson
Head of Commercial Insights & Digital Marketing, BDO Stoy Hayward
Iain is a creative strategist with a passion for digital media. In a career spanning over 20 years he has worked with some of the biggest names in their respective industries (Shell, KPMG, MTV, Save the Children and BDO) and has engaged people by demonstrating the art of the possible. His board level interactions have enabled him to bring about change despite bureaucracy and cultural risk aversion. Considered to be a maverick as well as a strategic and methodical thinker, he has a track record of innovative thought leadership.
As a technology and multimedia evangelist he has presented at conferences on “Management of Corporate Reputation in Cyberspace”, “Utilising Technologies to Support Communities”, “Enterprise Knowledge Management and Virtual Worlds”. He is an honorary member of the IVCA (International Visual Communications Association) and has chaired and judged awards panels on Multimedia, Digital Marketing, Public Sector Information and Innovation.
Iain on Twitter: @irsdigital
Jason Falls
Vice President and Director of Interactive and On-Line Communications, Doe Anderson
Jason is Vice President and Director of Interactive and On-Line Communications at Doe Anderson, one of the United States’ oldest and most accomplished brand-building agencies. He oversees social media and Internet marketing strategies for iconic brands sucha s Maker’s Mark and Know Creek bourbons. Falls’ aggressive approach to social media produced innovative programs such as the Jim Beam Baja Twitter Tracker and the first social media campaign and brand blog in the spirits industry.
A public relations professional by trade, Falls is an internationally known speaker and commentator on the social media, marketing and public relations industries. His blog, SocialMediaExplorer.com, is one of the most widely read and rated in the social media, marketing and public relations categories and can be found on the Advertising Age Power 150. With a mix of wit and candour, Falls both informs an entertains as he explores and discusses issues of the day in the on-line marketing world. Falls is also the cofounder of the Social Media Club Louisville.
Jason on Twitter: @JasonFalls
Jason Goldberg
Founder & CEO, betashop
Jason Goldberg, is a serial entreprenuer, fire starter, chief product officer at xing.com, founder of socialmedian, founder of Jobster, advisor and investor in some really cool startups, and all around good dude.
Jason loves working with entrepreneurs and early stage companies and is a passionate believer that it all comes down to the product.
Jason on Twitter: @betashop
Jeff Dachis
Founder & CEO, Dachis Group
Seasoned international public company CEO, Director, and entrepreneur with over 15 years professional experience managing global companies:
Background includes strategic finance, sales and marketing, and operations experience; founding, growing, leading and managing a publicly traded Professional Services consultancy. Co-Developed from instantiation: processes, methodologies, and systems for delivering global professional services across varying practice types and geographies while driving growth through corporate finance, and M&A through detailed knowledge of; technology trends, corporate venturing, SEC regulations, GAAP Public accounting and legal environments resulting in the delivering of award winning technology design services engagements to a Fortune 100 client base leading to 23 consecutive quarters of revenue and profit growth, the companies’ IPO, and exploding market capitalization to over $5B.
Background also includes co-founding an award winning diversified media/entertainment company producing digital, film, television, magazines, books, and recorded audio products. Experienced in every aspect of media production and distribution across platforms in addition to knowledge of electronic commerce, electronic transaction processing, and digital financial services.
Served on public company board as both Chairman and Director championing shareholder value.
Jeff on Twitter: @jeffdachis
Jemima Gibbons
Owner, iKnowHow
Jemima is the author of “Monkeys with Typewriters: Myths & Realities of Social Media at Work” published by Triarchy Press (2009). She is trained as a journalist (City Uni) then worked in TV as researcher/producer/editor for 10 years. Jemima co-founded the consultancy iKnowHow in 2002 to help creative businesses use digital media for innovation and enterprise.
Jemima on Twitter: @JemimaG
Jim Benson
CEO, Modus Cooperandi
Jim Benson is a senior editor at Social Computing Journal, where he provides industry insight and in-depth perspectives on social software and enterprise computing. He also owns and operates Modus Cooperandi, a management consultancy that helps organizations change through the application of lean principles, agile methodologies, and social media. He is currently a Partner with the strategic enterprise consulting firm Hinchcliffe & Company. His blog discusses the use of Social Media for business operations.
Jim on Twitter: @ourfounder
Johannes Haus
Director Subscriptions, XING
XING is the leading European online business network. Over 8 million members use XING to do business, find jobs, and pursue a career. Johannes joined XING four years ago to see it rise from a small internet start-up to a profitable, publicly listed company with over 250 employees. As Director Subscriptions, he is responsible for XING’s core business of over 635’000 paying subscribers, which constitutes the majority of the company’s revenues.
Prior to this role, Johannes led the Corporate Development department where he prepared new market entries, led M & A projects and developed several new revenue streams for the company, notably the entry into the jobs market. Before coming to XING, he worked as a Business Developer in the Swiss telecommunications industry.
Johannes on Twitter: @hauspost
Jon Mell
Enterprise Social Software Consultant, Headshift
Jon has helped organisations with intranet sites since 1997 and is currently a Senior Consultant in Headshift’s Enterprise practice. At Headshift he helps organisations with the cultural and technical implementations of “next-generation intranets” moving people away from email and toward more social and informal means of communication.
Adoption has always been a core focus of his blog and the problem of getting business sponsorship for social software as well as widespread user participation and engagement.
Jon on Twitter: @jonmell
Joss Hertle
Head of Direct Sales, MySpace Gemany
Joss is the Head of Direct Sales of MySpace.com Germany/ Fox Interactive Media Germany GmbH. His industry knowledge ranges from Online-advertising, Social Networking, Web 2.0 to brand-communities, Social Web Marketing consulting. Before MySpace, Joss worked in the Social Media and Entertainment industry, in Germany for over 11 years.
JP Rangaswami
Cheif Scientist, BT
JP was originally an economist and a journalist, specialising in developmental economics.
He is passionate about information. How it flows, how it gets enriched, how it mutates and grows. Passionate about communities: my family, my church, my friends, my colleagues. Passionate about the technologies that make communities connect with information. Passionate about the ways community life can improve as a result, particularly in education and in health.
JP on Twitter: @jobsworth
Julie Meyer
Founder & CEO, Ariadne Capital
Ariadne Capital is an Investment and Advisory Firm focused on Digital Media and Entertainment; Communications Applications; Software and Services; and Life Services. Julie CEO, Ariadne Capital is: World Economic Forum Global Leader of Tomorrow, Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2000 and an expert speaker on the topics like entrepreneurship, leadership and tech and media innovation.
Lee Bryant
CEO, Headshift part of Dachis Group
Headshift is Europe’s leading enterprise social computing consultancy, with over 5 years’ experience in designing, implementing and growing next generation social software solutions.
Lee co-founded Headshift in 2002 to focus on the emerging area of social software and social networking. Lee has been playing with words and computers since the age of 10, and has a strong belief in the empowering potential of the internet. He is also a board member of a social enterprise, Involve, and a trustee of the Foundation for Science Technology and Culture.
Lee on Twitter: @leebryant
Lloyd Davis
Social Artist and Master Community Builder, Tuttle Club
Lloyd Davis has been described as a Social Artist and Master Community Builder. He is the founder of the Tuttle Club, a thriving community-based physical space for people in social media to come for social, learning and work activities. Tuttle has been described as: “the best way to start a Friday morning when recovering from Thursday night while still doing your job properly.”
Training both as an actor and as a software engineer gave Lloyd a unique perspective on how people use computing socially. After graduating, Lloyd spent eight years in knowledge and information management at the Audit Commission before becoming an independent consultant with constantly evolving portfolio in 2002. When not speaking, writing, thinking or dreaming about creating social capital, Lloyd can be found playing his ukulele and singing his little heart out.
Lloyd on Twitter: @LloydDavis
Luis Suarez
Knowledge Manager, Community Builder and Social Software Evangelist, IBM
Luis has been working in the area of Knowledge Management for the last 10 years and throughout all this time he has specialised in deploying successfully different strategies from the world of Knowledge Management Tools, Communities (Both physical and online communities), (Remote) Collaboration, Community building, eLearning, Social Networking, Personal Knowledge Management, social software, etc. etc. covering not only local groups / teams / communities but also large groups across different geographies and timezones.
Over the last few years Luis has developed a passion within Knowledge Management for everything that relates to social networking or social software tools that help improve the way knowledge workers get to share their knowledge and collaborate with others. So examples like weblogs, wikis, social bookmarking, tagging, podcasting, RSS / Atom feeds, people portals, etc. are some of the technologies he is really interested and has had a large exposure over the last 3 years.
Luis currently maintains three different weblogs, one behind IBM’s firewall and two external: one over at elsua.net and the other one over at ITToolbox. All of them dealing with everything related to KM, Communities, Collaboration, Social Networking and Social Software.
Luis on Twitter: @elsua
Marilyn Pratt
Community Evangelist & Business Process Expert Community Advocate, SAP
Marilyn began writing code in the early 80’s and has worked for SAP in the Americas since 1999, where she served as a senior instructor for SAP Education, delivering courses in the Advanced Business Application Programming Language (ABAP) to thousands of developers and consultants. Marilyn was one SAP Education’s earliest adopters and promoters of online learning and rich media learning content, facilitating and moderating online training events. Community is part of Marilyn’s DNA having lived for over a 15 year period of time in a socialistic communal environment, where she served as IT director and also was a grassroots environmental advocate. In 2004 Marilyn became a community manager and content strategist for the SAP Developer Network and in 2006 helped launch the Business Process Expert Community, where she is presently the community evangelist and participant facilitator. In this context she walks the tightrope between the old paradigm of enterprises wanting to control messages and the new reality of engaging with a participatory and open ecosystem model. Marilyn holds a master’s degree in Adult Education and Distance Learning as well as a fine arts degree in professional theater directing. Social responsibility and sustainability topics are among her passions and she can be found talking about them at her blog and her SAP Community Network blog.
Marilyn on Twitter: @marilynpratt
Matthias Kroener
Founder & CEO, Fidor/Ficoba Community Banking
Matthias Kröner is CEO of FIDOR AG since 2006, after it has been renamed from Kölsch, Kröner & Co. AG to FIDOR AG. Launch of Kölsch, Kröner & Co. AG: Business Development for businesses in the financial service segment was in 2003.
2001 until end 2002 Matthias was member of the board of DAB Bank AG. 1993 until 2002 development of DAB Bank AG (formerly Direkt Anlage Bank) as first European Discount-Broker and Direct-Bank: youngest bank director of Germany (1997). 1992 joining of the Bankhaus Maffei.
Before that, career in hospitality in Munich and London as well as studies at among others, Cornell University New York.
Matthias on Twitter: @ficoba
Merran Wrigley
Head of External Communications & PR, Sony Erisccon Mobile
Merran leads the global external communications team at Sony Ericsson’s corporate head quarters in London, overseeing product & technology PR, lifestyle PR campaigns, and corporate PR including analyst and investor relations. In the last year she has established a cross functional team of customer service, digital marketing, content & services and risk management to develop a unified social media strategy within the global organisational structure of Sony Ericsson. The main thrust of this has been to create a “coalition of the willing” to align the existing resources in the company and focus communication strategies on building communities around specific areas of interest such as creative design, sustainability and third party application developers.
Merran joined Sony Ericsson from Sony Corporation, where she worked in the corporate PR Division in Tokyo with a number of different business groups including consumer electronics, new business development such as Sony’s internet portal – SoNet – and internet bank. She also led PR for blue-sky technologies such as Sony’s robot program. She has a degree in Philosophy, a masters in Japanese Studies & Language plus an MBA from London Business School.
Merran on Twitter: @merranwrigley
Nick Burcher
Head of VivaKi Nerve Center UK and Product & Partnerships EMEA, VivaKi
Nick Burcher oversees the EMEA operation of the VivaKi Nerve Center (VNC) – a central hub that builds best-in-class tools, platforms and partnerships for Publicis Groupe agencies Denuo, Digitas, Starcom MediaVest Groupe and ZenithOptimedia.
He is chiefly responsible for driving digital development of the VivaKi agency brands across Europe, serving in a hybrid role that provides social media, performance marketing, research and display media expertise. Prior to this, Nick spent 12 years working for both Zed Media and ZenithOptimedia. He started in traditional media, before moving into digital, where his most recent role was running the ZenithOptimedia Group Search and Performance marketing teams across some of the UK’s largest brands, such as O2, Toyota, Lexus, Lloyds TSB, BT, Capital One and BMW. During this time, he was also the ZO Group representative on the IPA Search council and won industry awards for work on Zurich, Open University and MG Rover. Nick is a frequent conference speaker and vocal advocate, discussing media and advertising trends on his Advertising Age Power 150 blog at www.nickburcher.com.
Nick on Twitter: @nickburcher
Peter Hogenkamp
Founder & CEO, Blogwerk AG
Peter graduated in Information Management from the University of St. Gallen in 1996, co-founded the Zurich-based Zeix AG, a leading Swiss Usability Agency, in 2000
and founded the commercial blog network Blogwerk AG in 2006.
Peter on Twitter: @phogenkamp
Rene Rechtman
Managing Director, Go Viral
GoViral is a fast growing digital branded content distributor. Rene has worked in media, communications, management and the Internet in EMEA for more than 13 years and has worked with big brands like Dell, Apple, Coca-Cola, Colgate, BA, Ebay, Amex and Yahoo. He us an expert in Business Building, Internationalisation/expansion, Internet and Digital media, strategy, commercial deal making/structures, sales, International staff and client management.
Riccardo Signorell
Creative Director & Partner, signorellfilms
Riccardo Signorell was an Ice-hockey Pro in the National League for 18 years. He was educated as “Hochbauzeichner” under Peter Zumthor and graduated from the Kunstgewerbeschule Basel. Riccardo works as author, director and producer of blockbuster movies and commercials. Currently, he is Creative Director for online concepts, social media/web tv solutions, as well as iPhone/iPad applications. Since January 2009 he manages signorellfilms GmbH in Zurich with his wife Dayana Signorell.
Riccardo on Twitter: @signorellfilms
Robin Hamman
Senior Consultant, Headshift
Robin Hamman, currently leading the Social Media team at Headshift, is widely regarded as one of the leading figures working at the intersection of social media and broadcasting.
He has ten years experience of dreaming up, implementing and managing social media projects. Robin recently left the BBC after six years as Senior Community Producer, having taught his former colleagues how to use social media to engage with, and reach out to new audiences. Robin’s role as the BBC’s defacto social media guru sent him to all corners of the organisation and, most recently, he was the editorial and technical lead for the BBC’s network of 50+ programme and presenter blogs.
Robin has also gained experience working as an Executive Producer at Granada Television, where he spearheaded strategic social media consulting and new service launches for third party clients including the British Council, several premier league football clubs, the DfES and others. Prior to that, Robin was Community Evangelist for a wireless start-up with a penchant for creating trendy sounding roles.
A regular speaker at industry and academic conferences, Robin has also written about social media for The Guardian and The Independent and has been interviewed on radio, television and in print in over a dozen countries.
Robin is a strong believer in the concept of life-long learning. He holds a teaching degree, an MA in Sociology, an MPhil in Communication Studies and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Law. He’s also a Non-Residential Fellow at Stanford University’s Cyberlaw Department and a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Journalism at City University London where he’ll be teaching part-time starting in Autumn 2008.
Robin on Twitter: @cybersoc
Roman Geiser
CEO Burson-Marsteller Switzerland; Head of Affiliates & Acquisitions, EMEA
Roman joined Burson-Marsteller in 1999 as Practice Leader Corporate Communications and Public Affairs and is now CEO and Market Leader of Burson-Marsteller Switzerland and its three offices in Zurich, Berne and Geneva. He consults various industrial and services clients and industry associations on public affairs issues and corporate communications. Prior to this position, he worked for Union Bank of Switzerland, Alusuisse and as Political Project Manager at the Society for the Promotion of Swiss Economy and its successor economiesuisse.
Schoscho Rufener
Chief Creative Officer, MCH-Group Zürich
Hans-Jörg Rufener (1964) is the owner of Switzerland’s largest event agency, Rufener Events, with offices in Zurich, Buenos Aires, Hamburg, Barcelona and London. Rufener Events organizes more than 100 worldwide events per year (for FIFA, the Dalai Lama, UBS, IWC, etc.). He is founder and owner of various restaurants, bars, clubs and music labels. Hans-Jürg holds a post-graduate qualification in Scenography.
Stan Stalnaker
Founder and Creative Director, Hub Culture & Hub Culture Pavillions
A noted commentator on the social impact of globalization, Stan Stalnaker is the Founder and Creative Director of Hub Culture Ltd, a social network that is the first to merge online and physical world environments. Hub Culture was created for and by the growing bands of people described in Stalnaker’s groundbreaking work in global consumer psychology.
Previously at Time Warner, Stalnaker worked from 1996 through 2006 at Time Inc., focused on a variety of titles led by FORTUNE, including Money, Business 2.0, FSB, cnnmoney.com and multimedia platforms, handling international marketing operations first in Asia Pacific, then EMEA and Latin America.
From 1999 to 2001, Stalnaker curated a web column in Asia Pacific for cnn.com and time.com called Culture on Demand, and he remains a regular contributor to magazines in North America, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. His views on P2P were named the lead Breakthrough Idea of 2008 by the Harvard Business Review, and other writings have appeared in the New York Times online, GQ, Internationalist, Capella, CNN Bespoke, Enigma and other publications.
Stan on Twitter: @hubculture
Stowe Boyd
Social Media Blogger and Front Man, The /Messengers
Stowe Boyd is a well-known media subversive, and an internationally recognized authority on real-time, collaborative and social technologies. Best known for his writing at /Message and the brain behind it, Stowe is obsessed with social tools and their impact on business, media, and society. Stowe coined the term “social tools” in 1999, the same year he started blogging, and he hasn’t looked back since. Stowe spoke at innumerable conferences on web culture, social tools, and web 2.0 technologies in recent years, such as Lift, Reboot, Web 2.0 events, Enterprise 2.0, Supernova, Defrag and dozens of others. July 2008 Technobabble.com rated Stowe in the top five analysts who blog (#2 for microblogging). Stowe has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a master’s degree in computer science from Boston University.
Stowe on Twitter: @stoweboyd
Susan Kish
Social Networks Specialist
Susan Kish is an independent consultant with more than two decades of executive experience in social networks, financial services and building businesses. She has more than two decades of executive experience in social networks, financial services and building businesses and is an experienced public speaker and facilitator at corporate events and universities, on topics including networks, innovation, and risk.
Thomas Power
Chairman, Business Social Network Ecademy
Thomas is an experienced business leader, who has successfully founded, built and sold a number of businesses in the e-Commerce, Social Networking and Call Centre arena. He is involved at the heart of the changing way we do business in the 21st Century. He believes in Corporate Social Media development and networking will be the key skill for business people in the future and He feels as more of the working populations of the Western economies become self employed, it will be a case of Network or Starve
Thomas on Twitter: @thomaspower
Umair Haque
Director, Havas Media Lab; Founder, Bubblegeneration; Blogger, Harvard Business Publishing
Umair Haque is Director of the Havas Media Lab, a new kind of strategic advisor that helps investors, entrepreneurs, and firms experiment with, craft, and drive radical management, business model, and strategic innovation. Umair also blogs for Harvard Business Publishing.
Prior to Havas, Umair founded Bubblegeneration, an agenda-setting advisory boutique that helped shape the strategies of investors, entrepreneurs, and blue chip companies across media and consumer industries. Bubblegeneration’s work has been recognized by publications such as Wired, The Red Herring, Business 2.0, and BusinessWeek, and in Chris Anderson’s Long Tail, to which Umair was a contributor.
Umair on Twitter: @umairh
Wesley Chan
Group Product Manager, Google Voice
Wesley Chan is an early employee and fun-loving entrepreneur at Google, where he is tasked with scouting new opportunities and turning them into disruptive billion dollar businesses. Two of his favorite products he’s founded and launched include Google Analytics and Google Voice.
Wesley is a reciepient of Google’s founder award–the company’s most prestigious recognition–for leading the development of Google Toolbar and building out Google’s early client efforts. Prior to Google, Wesley has worked as a research lead at HP Labs, a Program Manager at Microsoft, and is a graduate of the MIT Media Laboratory.
In his spare time, Wesley also serves as Google’s Chief Photographer Emeritus. His favorite camera is the Canon EOS-5D Mark II.
Wesley on Twitter: @weschan
Wolfgang Jastrowski
Head Unite Communication and Collaboration, Swiss Re
Wolfgang and his team are responsible for the implementation of global standard solutions for Collaboration & Communication at Swiss Re. Point of origin was the Next Generation Collaboration Initiative, where he represented IT, that established a roadmap to pursue Swiss Re’s collaboration platform strategy. The first step in 2009 was the implementation of a Global Social Business Collaboration Platform based on Jive SBS. Plans for 2010 and beyond focus now on external collaboration channels (website, external communities) and unified content and communications. Before his role as head of Unite Collaboration & Communication he was leading Swiss Re’s Portal Solutions team.