Speakers

Natasha Christie-Miller

CEO, EMAP

Natasha Christie-Miller is CEO of EMAP, the content, subscriptions and networking business. Natasha has led the transformation of EMAP into a dynamic, brand-led multi-platform business and oversees market-leading brands such as Drapers, Retail Week and Health Service Journal.

In a career spanning 19 years in the media industry, Natasha led consumer brands such as Elle, Heat, Red and the Emap parenting portfolio before taking on the role of Publishing Director of Drapers, the fashion industry bible at Emap B2B. She was appointed CEO of EMAP in 2010.

Benedict Evans

Analyst, Enders Analysis

Benedict covers mobile platforms, digital media and electronic publishing. He has worked in strategy and business development for NBC Universal, Channel 4 and Orange, and previously worked as a sell-side equity research analyst covering European telecoms companies.

Julie Harris

CEO, WGSN & Planet Retail

Julie joined WGSN the world’s leading online Trend Forecasting Service, as Managing Director, Asia Pacific in 2007 and relocated to Hong Kong. During her time there, she was responsible for the strategic development of WGSN's business activities across the region, overseeing sales, content, marketing and operations teams in 15 countries.

In 2011, Julie was appointed Global Managing Director with a remit to accelerate the growth of the global business, develop new tools and services for WGSN’s 38,000 users and create a suite of market-leading products to support current and future clients across the fashion and design industries. In 2012 she was promoted to CEO of WGSN Group (an operating company of Top Right Group) adding the market leading retail information business Planet Retail to the portfolio. WGSN Group now has offices in 21 countries and customers in 87 countries.

Before joining WGSN, Julie was the General Manager of Hachette Filipacchi (UK). In her five years there, she was responsible for creating a top-10 magazine-publishing company, including managing the leading fashion brand ELLE and hiring some of the best magazine talent in the UK. In 2005 she launched Psychologies UK and in 2006 she launched ELLE Collections, a biannual fashion bible.

Prior to Hachette Filipacchi, Julie spent almost ten years at Emap PLC in a variety of roles including Commercial Director of all Women’s, Teen and Health magazines; Global Commercial Director, Emap Digital; and Deputy Managing Director of Emap Women’s Publishing.

Phil Abrahams

Strategic Business Development Director, CABI/Plantwise

Phil Abrahams has over 30 years’ experience working in business development, primarily in science publishing. During this time he has managed publications such as New Scientist magazine, Elsevier Trends Journals and the business services of the UK’s Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). He has launched numerous journals, web services and magazines, and overseen management of the RSC’s Chemistry Library and related information services, the largest collection of its kind in the world.

Phil joined CABI in 2009 and a year later led the fundraising for, and launch of, the Plantwise programme. Plantwise is a global initiative to develop plant health systems which contribute to improved food security and rural livelihoods by helping farmers lose less and feed more, through the identification, control and prevention of pests and diseases on crops. Supported by such donors as the European Commission, DFID, SDC, ACIAR, IrishAid, IFAD and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, Plantwise has trained hundreds of plant doctors to run regular rural plant clinics in 24 countries, and continues to grow.

In 2013, Phil’s role changed to coordinate CABI’s emerging business development activities in support of building agricultural trade and the roll-out of mobile agri-advisory services.

Jordan Adams

MD , Love Media Sales

James Bailey

Business Director, Maxus Global

As business director at Maxus, James leads on all of the agency’s B2B accounts. This sees him take responsibility for the team of international planners on both the Corporate Banking and Wealth Management divisions of Barclays. He also leads EMEA Healthcare planning for the global UPS client, coordinating year round campaigns across 5+ markets. Since joining GroupM in 2010, James has been involved in 6 major pitch wins.

James is driven by the seemingly opposing forces of creativity and accountability, and is keen to identify opportunities for any and all to contribute to campaigns in line with the broader industry shift towards collaboration.

While keeping up with the ever increasing pace of change is vital, James believes that it is the relationships between people - specifically client, agency and media owner – that spark great ideas and successfully connect brands with audiences.

James started his career in digital sales and marketing within the global team at magazine publisher IDG. Following this he moved into affiliate marketing with the performance network TradeDoubler, where he worked for 4 years running a team responsible for the digital performance campaigns of clients including British Airways, Tesco, The Carphone Warehouse, HP, Expedia and American Express.

After taking time out for an extended (6 month!) holiday in South America, James took up a new career in media and joined the Global Solutions team of MEC as an account manager, rising to account director responsible for the international planning team firstly on Citi (retail FX trading) and later on Barclays Capital. Within this it was James’s responsibility to coordinate an international network of teams (HK, Singapore, EU) on behalf of the US based investment bank.

Amanda Barnes

Chief Executive, Faversham House

Amanda Barnes is Chief Executive of Faversham House Ltd. After reading English at Oxford, Amanda had a career in the City before joining the world of publishing in the late eighties. Her experience spans publishing, digital media, events, conferences and exhibitions. She led a management buy-out of Faversham House in December 2010 and has been responsible for repositioning the company as a multi-media player building on the company’s strong brands in environment, energy, water, utilities, sustainability and visual communications.

Adrian Barrick

Chief Content Officer, UBM

Adrian was appointed as UBM’s first Chief Content Officer in November 2012. He is responsible for working with UBM’s senior leadership team to develop a content strategy for the whole group across all its’ platforms – live events, online and mobile.

Adrian was previously chief executive of UBM’s Built Environment division for four years. In that time, he and the team transformed a print publishing-led operation into a multi-platform marketing services business with events at its’ heart. The division included some of the best-known brands in UK media, including Ecobuild, Interiors, Building and Barbour ABI.

Adrian is an award-winning publisher and editor with 26 years experience in the UK business-to-business market. Starting his career as a journalist in local newspapers, Adrian went on to work on a series of leading business titles, including an eight-year stint as editor of Building. Under his leadership, Building was named magazine of the year three times and website of the year by the PPA, and he won four editor of the year awards. Moving into publishing, he was named PPA business publisher of the year in 2007.

Martin Belson

Managing Director, Dennis Enterprise

Martin Belson has 20 years publishing experience and joined Dennis in 2007, holding various commercial positions within the company. He was responsible for the worldwide growth and development of DPL's MagBook business and helped in the setting up of Dennis Media Factory their in house app development team. He was appointed Managing Director of Dennis's Enterprise Division which is responsible for creating opportunity and investing outside of Dennis's traditional revenue streams in 2012.

Jon Bentley

Head of Digital Commercial Development, Incisive Media

Thomas Bidaux

CEO, ICO Partners

Thomas Bidaux started his professional career in online games more than ten years ago at France Telecom, within the GOA team. His department grew from a one-man team in charge of the first French MMORPG La 4ème Prophétie, to the European organisation in charge of the most successful MMORPG on the market at the time, Dark Age of Camelot.

In 2004, Thomas left France Telecom and Paris to set up the European subsidiary of the online game giant NCsoft in the UK. As Director of Development, he managed the team responsible for bringing several major MMOs to the European market, including Guild Wars and City of Heroes. As a participant in NCsoft's Global Portfolio Steering Committee, he led the company's efforts to expand its game portfolio with European-based development through various third party deals and the creation of a Brighton-based studio. He also headed the European team evaluating the group's global projects. In April 2008, he left NCsoft to found the consulting agency that would later become ICO Partners.

At ICO Partners, he is leading the team and contribute as a consultant on strategy-building missions as well as on the market intelligence reports that are being developed.

Brian Bishop

VP Platform Development, Springer Science & Business Media

Charlie Blackburn

Co-Founder, BrightTALK

Charlie Blackburn is a co-founder of BrightTALK. Since helping launch the business in 2002, he has been instrumental in the global adoption of BrightTALK’s unique approach to webcasting. He is responsible for operations which he manages from BrightTALK’s U.K. headquarters in London, England.

Prior to co-founding BrightTALK, he was vice president of European operations for Scient. Before joining Scient, he developed San Francisco-based Pyramid Imaging’s Investment Banking practice. He began his career with Accenture. Blackburn earned a first class honors degree in Mechanical Engineering at Manchester University (U.K.).

Anthony Bleton-Martin

CEO, Novius

PhD in quantum physics, Anthony Bleton-Martin discovered the web in a university lab back in 1994. It was love at first sight. A year later, he dropped physics for entrepreneurship and co-founded the Novius company. As Novius CEO for the past 17 years, he has led the start-up through the ups and downs of Internet economy and made it the 40-people-strong firm it is today.
Anthony Bleton-Martin is an active member of Lyon's web ecosystem (France's second biggest). He was president of the Lyon Infocité / Lyon Game trade association for many years and is now a member of La Cuisine du Web's board, the organisation behind the Blend Conference.

Nicolas Bombourg

Co-Founder & Managing Director, Reportlinker

Nicolas Bombourg is Managing Director and Cofounder of Reportlinker.
He leads global growth for ReportLinker through business development initiatives that support Reportlinker as an innovator in the content industry. Nicolas has over 13 years of experience in the field of online content and semantic technology, with specific expertise in competitive business intelligence, web marketing and e-commerce.

He oversees the strategic promotion of Reportlinker across numerous channels and drive revenue by developing partnerships with key global private and public publishers, content aggregators and technology providers.

Nicolas earned a MBA in Marketing from the IAE Aix Graduate School of Management

Marcus Brook

CEO, Red Fox Media

Marcus has worked with data and how it can be used to improve marketing for over 20 years. He founded and ran Data Discoveries for 13 years before selling to GB Group Plc. He founded Red Fox Media to help advertisers and publishers work together to make the most of targeting in mobile and tablet content.

Tim Brooks

CEO, BMJ Group

Tim Brooks is CEO of BMJ, a healthcare knowledge provider with a global customer base. A journalist by training, Tim launched his first magazine, Media Week, with two friends in 1985. Subsequently he served on the boards of Emap Business Communications, IPC Media, Time Inc South Pacific, and Guardian Media Group, before joining BMJ in October 2012. He has managed media properties as diverse as the Guardian, In Style, and NME.com.
Tim was visiting Fellow in Strategy at London Business School, 2011-12; serves on the UK Cabinet Office Digital Advisory Board; is non-executive chairman of The Knowledge Engineers; and a director of the Audit Bureau of Circulations. He lives in Hertfordshire, where he is a governor of his children’s school.

Florin Campeanu

General Manager, Rentrop&Straton

Florin Campeanu is the General Manager of Rentrop&Straton, a Romanian-German company. Having relevant experience in journalism, management and direct marketing, being focused on online marketing, Florin has successfully accomplished the transition from a traditional publishing company to a powerful consulting group, leading Rentrop&Straton in the digital era and strengthening its leading position as a specialized information provider. Available on the Romanian market for more than 18 years, the company currently offers numerous products and solutions perfectly adapted for the key departments of any business: finance, accounting, human resources, legal, management and marketing. Recently, Rentrop&Straton opened two new offices, in Rousse (Bulgaria) and Istanbul (Turkey).
Considering we live in a digital era, two years ago, Rentrop&Straton created a new company, specialized in online and digital outsourcing services: Fokus Digital Services. The most known product of this company is “Tools for publishers”, with customers in South Africa, Turkey, Poland, USA and Germany.
Furthermore, over 20 years of experience and professional achievements have turned Florin into an international speaker and a certified trainer. He was invited to deliver speeches and presentations during various conferences and seminars held by SIPA (Specialized Information Publishers Association) in Washington, Miami, London and Munchen, but also at events such as World Franchise Days and Business Days in Bucharest, Iasi, Cluj, Oradea and Craiova. The topics are related to the business world and always offered references to specialized content and marketing, as well as successful management and leadership.

Adrian Carr

VP, EMEA, MarkLogic

Adrian joined MarkLogic in 2012 as the Vice President for Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Prior to this, Adrian was VP Enterprise for Juniper Networks in Europe. This $500m annual business covered all non-telco accounts ranging from Public Sector and banks through to small enterprises served by channel partners.
Adrian also worked as VP Europe, Middle East, Africa and Australasia at Chicago based analytics software company SPSS where he grew the business to represent nearly half of the global revenues prior to their acquisition by IBM.
This followed 2 years at Mercator software prior to their acquisition by IBM.
Adrian's career began in IT services companies with 11 years at EDS before time at ATOS Origin and Cambridge Technology Partners.

Laurent Charreyron

Directeur Associé, InWebo Technologies

In a career spanning 20 years in the software industry, Laurent started and managed the European businesses of leading US publishers such as Borland, Symantec, Netscape Communications, Wyse Technology and Micro Focus. As an entrepreneur in the early days of the internet and eCommerce, he took part to several startups on the leading edge of the industry. At InWebo, he runs strategic alliances, as well as international business development.
Laurent is passionate about the social impacts of technology. He strongly believes that digital identity is the cornerstone of a safer and trustable virtual world, both for the business and for the citizens.

Bob Coleman

Editor, Coleman Report

Bob Coleman is the Author of “Money Money Everywhere and Not a Drop for Main Street“. Coleman is the Editor of the Coleman Report, a trade newsletter for small business bankers. He is the nationally recognized expert on small business financing. He has appeared on Fox Business News and CNN and has been quoted by all major financial media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Bloomberg. He has spoken at numerous small business banking events across the United States. He speaks regularly for SIPA, including its U.K. and Germany events. Bob has been a SIPA member since 1996 and is a member of the board of directors. He has a B.A. in Medieval History from the University of California Santa Barbara and a M.B.A. in Real Estate Finance from the University of Southern California.

Robin Crumby

Co-Founder & Executive Director, Melcrum Ltd.

Robin is Melcrum's Executive Director and co-founded the business in 1996. He has stewarded the business from a "kitchen-table" start-up to an organization with offices in the US, UK and Australia and blue-chip customers in 90 countries, including nearly 70% of the Fortune 100 largest organizations.

Today, Melcrum is a research and advisory business working alongside leaders and teams to build skills and best practice in internal and employee communication. Melcrum are committed to elevating the role of Internal Communication as a critical driver of superior business results across companies, industries, and regions.

Robin is based in London and is a regular speaker and writer on marketing topics and international growth. He holds a BA Honors in French from Bristol University, a Diploma in European Business Administration from UWE and is a graduate of Cass Business School's 'Better Business Program'.

Tim Ewington

Co-founder and Strategy / International Director, Shortlist

Tim co-founded Shortlist Media with Mike Soutar in 2007 and is the Strategy / International Director of the company, working on the development, planning and launch of new concepts and taking the business into new territories.
Shortlist Media was the SME of the Year in 2012. The company publishes ShortList and Stylist magazines, their accompanying websites and two daily emails, Emerald Street and Mr Hyde. In the last six months Shortlist Media has launched Stylist magazine in France in a joint-venture with Groupe Marie Claire and also the new, glossy fashion website, Never Underdressed.
Before ShortList Tim co-founded a media consultancy, Human Capital, with Simon Terrington, which carried out strategy and development work for companies ranging from the traditional giants such as the BBC, Sky, News International and Time Warner through to the new generation of digital media companies such as Shazam, Yahoo and Lastminute.com. The company was sold to Ingenious Media.
Tim learnt his trade at Emap when the company was in its pomp, working in marketing, strategy and development across the portfolio of magazines, radio and exhibitions.
Tim still carries out consulting projects for media companies such as Omnicom and Trinity Mirror and also has fun working with start-ups.

Faisal Galaria

Partner, Alvarez & Marsal

Faisal Galaria, is a Senior Director with Alvarez & Marsal’s Corporate Services group in London. He brings over 15 years of experience building consumer internet companies, and serving in media and telecommunications regulation and management consultancy. He has worked extensively in the US, Europe and Asia and is a hands-on team player with a reputation for challenging corporate orthodoxies and building scalable, disruptive international businesses.

Prior to A&M, Mr. Galaria was a senior vice president at Spotify, a leading on-line music streaming service, where he was responsible for M&A, new market entry, international growth and strategic partnerships. Most recently Faisal managed the US launch of Spotify and led the team working on the platform agreement with Facebook that tripled active users in less than 4 months. He also worked extensively with the record labels to secure music content in each new market and was responsible for distribution partnerships with Coca-Cola, Shazam, HTC, Virgin Media, TeliaSonera and 3.

Before that, Mr. Galaria joined Kayak.com, the world’s largest online travel search engine, serving as international managing director. There, he was responsible for building the advertising sales, business development and localization teams and expanding the service to nine countries, propelling it to become the second largest travel search engine in the UK and eventually acquiring Swoodoo in Germany.

Prior to Kayak, Mr. Galaria had experience of commercializing and scaling mobile and internet companies across Europe and the U.S., including Skype. He was an early member of the Skype team and managed business development globally before being promoted to European Director, leading all commercial activities including 12 country managers across EMEA after the acquisition by eBay.
Mr. Galaria has also been a member of the Policy Executive of Britain’s telecom with and media regulator Ofcom. There, he played a senior role, in conjunction with the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) in the negotiation and valuation of distribution rights for Premier League Football following the Statement of Objections issued by the European Commission and co-authored the Telecoms Strategy Review that resulted in the functional separation of BT and the creation of Openreach to encourage infrastructure investment and service based competition.

Mr. Galaria graduated with honours from UMIST (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) with a bachelor’s in management sciences in the UK. He also earned an MBA from IESE in Spain.

Helmut Graf

CEO, Verlag fur die Deutsche Wirtschaft AG

Helmut Graf is chief executive officer of VNR Verlag für die Deutsche Wirtschaft AG (VNR Publishing House for the German Business World), a member of the Rentrop Publishing Group, Germany.

Shortly after joining VNR in 1989 Helmut Graf set up publishing activities in Switzerland and Austria, then went on to form joint ventures with publishing houses in Poland and Romania. He successfully negotiated with the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN to introduce the Mayo Clinic Health Letter into the German market, and he was responsible for a joint project with Agora, Inc., Baltimore, MD, that brought newsletters like Taipan and Oxford Club onto the German market.

In 1998 Helmut Graf became senior executive of the entire VNR Verlag für die Deutsche Wirtschaft, a group that today encompasses ten specialized publishing houses. Together with its sister company FID Publishing House Inc., VNR publishes 293 print newsletters, loose-leaf services and electronic publications. The company is one of the Top Ten German publishing houses for business and the economy.

In 2005 the Deutsche Direktmarketing Verband e.V. (German Direct Marketing Association, DDV) honored Helmut Graf’s outstanding contribution to developing the direct marketing sector by admitting him to the “Direct Marketing Hall of Fame“.

Helmut Graf is a member of the Board of Directors of the Specialized Information Publishers Association SIPA, Washington. At the annual meeting in June 2009, he was honored by being taken into the SIPA Association’s Hall of Fame, where he is listed among the 27 “giants of the industry”. He is the first European member to receive this accolade.

Rob Grainger

CEO, Stonewash

Rob is CEO of Stonewash and has over 15 years of experience in the media industry as a magazine and online publisher. He has been involved as a contributor and speaker at many industry events on the subject of digital publishing. Stonewash is recognised as one of the leading tech companies in the field of smartphone and tablet publishing over the last 3 years and were responsible for building the first Windows 8 app framework alongside Microsoft in 2012, amongst a number of other industry firsts. Rob is currently working on the first large-scale industry report on how readers engage with magazines on mobile devices, based on detailed data captured by Stonewash, and will be discussing the early findings of this report for the first time at the Digital Content & Media Summit.

Toby Green

Head, OECD Publishing, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development

Toby Green joined OECD in 1998 with a brief to modernize the sales and marketing of its publications. In 1999, OECD launched its first e-book and a ‘read-only’ service to allow free online browsing of its books via OECD’s online bookshop. In 2000, he launched SourceOECD, an online platform/bundle comprising full-text books, journals and statistical databases using an annual subscription business model. At the same time, all fulfillment and warehousing operations were outsourced and a new worldwide network of sales partners was put in place. In 2004, he created OECD’s award-winning StatLink service, linking full text publications to underlying data. He was appointed Head of Publishing at OECD at the beginning of 2007 and proceeded to modernize the production processes, closing the in-house print plant in favour of a just-in-time, digital supply chain for print. In 2009, OECD iLibrary replaced SourceOECD, finally bringing to fruition the original vision of presenting book, journal, grey and data content in a truly seamless and granular manner. In 2011, OECD Publishing won the ALPSP award for innovation in publishing for the Better Life Index, a novel way to present complex data.

He began his publishing career in 1982 promoting and selling books for Academic Press before learning about journals with Elsevier Applied Science and encyclopedias and abstracting services with Pergamon Press. After Pergamon’s acquisition by Elsevier he was appointed Associate Director Marketing for Elsevier UK. He is Chair of ALPSP and serves on the editorial board for Learned Publishing. He is a regular speaker at industry events in UK, France and USA.

Ben Heald

CEO, Sift Digital

Before co-founding Sift in 1996, Ben studied psychology at University of Bristol, then after three years teaching English and travelling in Africa & Asia, qualified as a chartered accountant with KPMG; followed by 3 years running his own accounting and consulting practice in London.

His seventeen years at Sift has given him a wide range of experience launching products, raising money, recruiting teams, managing staff and digital marketing. He’s also had to make the difficult transition from founder to CEO. In the latter role, he’s guided Sift through two protracted industry down-turns, whilst maintaining the company’s growth. He is a regular speaker at industry events.

As a manager, Ben believes in building long term relationships with staff based on engagement, encouraging people to learn & develop, openness, and working efficiently and effectively (not necessarily late).

When not working, Ben plays football, golf and is a keen pianist (currently learning Chopin’s 1st Ballade in G minor). He is also active in the Bristol business community; and has recently been appointed as a trustee of Bristol’s music venue St George’s.

He is married with two children and lives in Long Ashton just outside Bristol.

Luis Hernandez

Vice President, Specialized Information Publishers Association, SIIA

Luis A. Hernandez is the Vice President of the Specialized Information Publishers Association (SIPA). In this role, he represents the concerns of niche publishers in the US and Europe who developed this association to help each other improve their financial performance and boost profits. Luis understands these issues first hand, as previously he was the Director of Publishing for Thompson Publishing Group (TPG) and held that position since January 2009. Luis was responsible for all editorial and production activities, and for developing new products. Previous to this position, he was a Managing Editor responsible for overseeing the editors in the Environmental and FDA libraries at TPG. Luis began his career at TPG as a reporter and editor for regulatory compliance guides and newsletters covering investment advisers and hedge funds, as well as several environmental subject areas. Luis has a Bachelor’s Degree in Communications from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas and a Master’s Degree in English from Georgetown University in Washington, DC.

Paul Hood

Digital Director, Archant London

Paul Hood is Director of Digital for Archant, responsible for developing digital products, audiences and revenues for their London Division.

Archant is the UK’s biggest independently-owned regional media businesses. It is a community media company that publishes 4 regional daily newspapers, around 50 weekly titles and 80 magazines. It also publishes more than 200 websites.

Before joining Archant, Paul was Head of Digital at Mirror Group Newspapers, where he led the launch of Mirror.co.uk, Mirrorfootball.co.uk and 3am.com.

Prior to Trinity Mirror, Paul worked at Emap (now Bauer), where he was involved in building the first digital presence for MotorcycleNews, and led the reinvigoration of Parkers.co.uk; a redesign that won numerous industry awards, and went on to become Emap's most profitable online business.

When not working, Paul is a keen motorcyclist and is currently learning the art of paragliding. He is married with two children.

Peter Houston

Founder, Flipping Pages Media

Peter Houston has worked in magazine publishing for over 25 years, most recently with Advanstar Communications as Group Content Director. At the beginning of 2013, he formed Flipping Pages Media to deliver training and strategic consultancy to content producers that want to leverage their print success on to emerging digital platforms. He runs the Flipping Pages Blog, writes regularly for InPublishing and MediaTel’s Newsline and is a judge for the PPA, PPA Scotland, Media Pioneers and Digital Magazine Awards.

Pete Jakob

Managing Director, Purple Salix Limited

Pete Jakob is a highly successful, respected and business-focused marketing leader with a passion for driving change and linking marketing to the broader business. He currently runs an independent marketing consultancy - Purple Salix - which he established last year to help clients and agencies transform their marketing.
Pete had a 28 year career at IBM, which saw him lead major transformational initiatives around marketing automation, contact database strategy, lead nurturing, telemarketing, digital marketing and sales/marketing alignment. Pete was responsible for IBM's advertising across all media in UK, including a major TV sponsorship with ITV of the 2011 Rugby World Cup, and led the rebuild of IBM's premier customer centre in the UK (IBM Forum London).
Pete joined the IDM B2B Marketing Council in 2010, demonstrating his status and experience within the B2B marketing profession.

Michael Kowalski

Founder & CEO, Contentment

Michael is the founder and CEO of Contentment, a London-based startup building better tools for mobile content production. He previously co-founded web agency Kitsite and indie publisher Pulp. He has many years’ experience in user experience design, with a particular focus on digital production systems, and has designed editorial systems for the Guardian, Newscorp, London 2012, and others.

Anand Krishnan

General Manager, Developer and Platform Group, Microsoft UK App Platform Division

In his role as Senior Director, Developer and Platform Group at Microsoft UK, Anand is responsible for new and emerging technologies and innovation programmes as well as relationships with UK developers & designers, IT professionals, students, startups and venture capitalists. He joined the UK subsidiary in mid-2012. Prior to this appointment he spent two years as Director of Global Cloud Strategy, where he worked with 100+ Microsoft subsidiaries around the world on bootstrapping Microsoft’s fast-growing Cloud business. Anand has spent most of his career in early-stage businesses. He previously led Business Development for Microsoft’s web platform products across 12 markets in Western Europe. Prior to that, he held several roles in strategy and marketing at Microsoft’s global HQ in Redmond, including helping launch Microsoft’s foray into Technical Computing. Anand came to Microsoft after 8 years in the start-up world, having held positions in sales, services and product management across several early-stage ventures.
Anand holds an MBA from Stanford University and a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin. He was born and raised in India and currently lives in England.

Fabrice Lacroix

CEO, ANTIDOT

Fabrice' career is intimately linked to the pioneering and to the development of the Internet. He began as a system developer in the Minitel's world and X25 networks. In 1994, he took part in the creation of the first French ISP as CTO until its acquisition by Belgacom in 2000. He also created a major French and Spanish gaming website which was acquired in 2002. Keen on innovation and entrepreneurship, convinced that the future is in the data, more than in the infrastructure, Fabrice created Antidot in 1999 to grow a major player in the data management technologies.
Fabrice graduated from ENSIMAG and holds a Master in Computing from the Imperial College London. After a stint at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, he gave up research to engage in the development of the Internet and in the software industry.

Graham Lock

Managing Director, Cogent Events

Graham draws on over two decades of experience of creating, leading and managing commercial B2B and B2C events for a world class event organising businesses across a variety of markets and sectors. His consultancy business was first established in 2007 in response to the demand for outsourced business development expertise from publishing and membership businesses facing enormous pressures on overhead costs. Having worked in partnership with many publishers in the creation of new events businesses as a senior business developer with BBC Haymarket, IIR, Clarion and Reed Montgomery, Graham now helps businesses create convincing commercial event propositions. Recent projects include events in the Dentistry, Automotive, Fire and Retail sectors working with both publishers and trade associations.

Richard Londesborough

CEO, Business Monitor International

Richard Londesborough is the co-founder and CEO of Business Monitor International Ltd, a fast-growing, independent, London-based information provider. BMI provides news analysis, data and forecasts on Country Risk (political, economic, financial risk) and Industry (20 industry sectors) across the globe, with the emphasis on emerging markets.

BMI has clients and subscribers drawn from multinational corporations, banks, academia and government in more than 140 countries (and was awarded the Queen’s Award for Export Achievement in 1997). Today, more than 400 of the Fortune Global 500 companies subscribe to BMI’s services (increasingly via its premium online platform).

In addition to London HQ, BMI has offices in New York, Singapore and South Africa. BMI won private equity investment backing from Spectrum Equity Investors of Boston in 2009.

Prior to launching BMI, Richard worked as a newspaper foreign correspondent in both Mexico and Iran.

Tony Macklin

Director of Product Development & Strategy , Immediate Media Co.

Tony Macklin is Director of Product Development and Strategy at Immediate Media Co, the leading cross-media special interest content company.

He is responsible for the on-going development of Immediate Media Co’s digital platforms, building out the product and development teams, and working with the senior management team on cross-media brand strategy.
Tony has spent over 20 years in a range of senior Online Product Development roles, focusing on building both new and established digital businesses. Prior to Immediate Media, he was based in San Francisco and was VP Product at Ancestry.com, the world #1 family history subscription site, and also Director of Search at eBay in San Jose. Prior to this, Tony was on the senior UK Exec teams of eBay.co.uk, Ask.com and Intuit. He launched Moneyextra.com, a pioneering UK online personal finance business, and was a Brand Manager at Procter & Gamble.

Parry Malm

Account Director, Adestra

Parry joined Adestra in 2010 and having run marketing teams in his previous roles, he has a deep understanding of client needs. He is a seasoned digital marketer and is responsible for running Adestra’s Account Management team and for delivering high-level strategic direction to Adestra clients. On weekends, Parry can be found policing the mean streets of London in a Mountie uniform.

Audra Martin

VP, Advertising & Operations, The Economist Group

Audra joined The Economist Group in 2005 and is responsible for digital advertising, content marketing solutions, and publishing operations. Over the last 15 years, Audra has worked in several disciplines across digital publishing including product and content development, customer experience, and technology. Prior to joining The Economist, Audra worked for the New York Times as well as Hoover's Online, a subsidiary of Dun and Bradstreet.

Alex Martinez

CEO, Sigaria

Alex is CEO and co-founder of Sigaria, a multi award-winning business intelligence and networking organisation specialising in the area of procurement. In his role, Alex leads the growth of Procurement Leaders– www.procurementleaders.com - a membership driven community where senior executives join and gain access to independent research, trending data as well as collaboration and professional development opportunities. The community has a rapidly expanding global membership of over 600 leading blue chip companies, 15,000 executives and supports a worldwide community of over 300,000 professionals. Sigaria was founded in 2004 and has a growing team of 70 staff operating in London, New York, Toronto and Pune (India).
Starting his professional career in technology in 1997, Alex is passionate about everything digital and champions the shift of publishers towards digitally delivered high-value content, communities and collaborative networks. He is a double winner of the PPA Publisher/Manager of the Year <10m in 2011 and 2012, and recently picked up PPA Business Media Brand of the Year in 2013.

Raoul Monks

Founder & Director, Flume Training

Raoul Monks is Founder and Director of Flume Training, a sales learning & development business within the media, conference & events markets. Raoul has over a decade of experience in sales and sales management, including over three years heading up the learning and development function at one of the leading B2B media groups in the UK. Raoul founded Flume Training in April 2010, a business dedicated to helping sales teams adapt and succeed in today’s climate, using the most innovative and powerful methods to influence today’s buyer.

Carolyn Morgan

Programme Director, SIIA UK

Carolyn Morgan has launched, acquired, grown and sold specialist media businesses in print, digital and live events. A co-founder of the Specialist Media Show, recently acquired by SIIA, Carolyn has a deep knowledge of niche publishing and advises publishers on their digital strategy.

Colin Morrison

Media Non-Exec Director, Centaur, TW, other media companies

Colin Morrison has led magazine, B2B and newspaper companies in the UK, across Europe and in AsiaPacific.  He's now a non-exec chairman/director of a range of media companies including Centaur Media plc, Pharmaceutical Press, Travel Weekly Group, Globelynx Ltd and IPCN Ltd.

Colin is an enthusiastic observer of the UK media scene, and blogs at flashesandflames.com.  

Jeremy Phillips

Co-Founder and COO, StrategyEye

Jeremy is Co-Founder and COO of StrategyEye, the digital publisher and developer of the EditorEye content curation platform.

He started his career in Accenture’s strategy practice advising on new direct channels to market, then joined The Boots Group in a corporate development role, co-founding Wellbeing.com in 2000.

Jeremy saw his first startup through to multi-$m revenues and sustainable profitability (real estate deal intelligence), before co-founding StrategyEye for launch in 2006.

Jeremy is currently particularly interested in the balance between human and machine analysis, in particular how human decision-making can be triggered by presentation of the right structured content.

Peter Phippen

Dep Chairman, Chairman, co-Founder, Immediate Media Co, Sift Media, East West Relations

Peter has spent nearly 30 years in the media industry, holding board positions in the UK, USA, India and Australia. For many years he was a Board Director of BBC Worldwide Ltd, for whom he developed and ran BBC Magazines; he was also President and CEO of BBC Worldwide Americas Inc, launching the TV channel BBC America and chairing a joint venture with Discovery Inc. Peter is now Deputy Chairman of Immediate Media Co, a large PE-backed magazine and digital company and Chairman of Sift, a VC-backed pure-play digital B2B company and holds a number of other non-exec positions. In 2011 Peter founded East West Relations Ltd. to help western media companies identify and secure opportunities in India. Born in India, Peter has been a life-long ‘Indiaphile’; for 7 years he chaired a joint venture media company based in Mumbai.

Sumit Rai

CEO and Founder, Kulu Valley

Sumit founded Kulu Valley in 2002 to help businesses share important ideas and information more effectively by using engaging, interactive visual communications. He is responsible for developing Kulu Valley’s award-winning visual communications platform, which is now used by major corporations such as Deutsche Bank, Apple, RBS and City Wire to share breaking news, ideas and information with global audiences. Before Kulu Valley, Sumit worked as Chief Software Engineer for Twenty First Century Communications and Chief Technology Officer at Pukka films where he created an award-winning online video approval system.
He’s a guest lecturer of Computer Science and Business at UCL and has judged IVCA and BAFTA awards. Sumit continues to lead product innovation at Kulu Valley, striving to make visual communications more interactive & engaging.

Andy Rice

MD, Sport & Music, Future PLC

Andy is Managing Director of Future's Sport, Auto and Music Divisions. Future Plc is a world leader in digital publishing and content provision. Previously Managing Director (Commercial) at Press Association Sport, Andy was responsible for the profitable exploitation of international sports content. Whilst there, he negotiated contracts with companies such as BSkyB, MSN and the English Premier League. With a strong publishing background, he has held senior positions at Archant and SportBusiness International, as well as working in a consultancy capacity for dragon James Caan and businesses including Caspian Publishing and Leaders in Football. Andy has been a regular speaker on the International sports business circuit, invited to present on areas such as sports technology, sponsorship and tv rights.

Larry Schwartz

President, Newstex, LLC

Larry Schwartz is a co-founder of Newstex and President of the company. Larry has guided numerous entertainment and new media ventures, from start-up through growth, development and maturity, including Bolenka Games Online (Trivial Pursuit Online), GFI Group (Nasdaq:GFIG - financial), Wizard World (publishing), Patron Technology (technology) and Tickets.com (Purchased by MLB.com). Larry attended Bates College and the Yale University Graduate School of Drama. He serves on the Content Board of Directors for the Software Information Industry Association, and is a frequent speaker on content, product development, start-ups and turnarounds. When he's not adding value to content, Larry is a show manger for hunter/jumper horse shows, is on the Board of Directors for the Connecticut Horse Show Association and maintains several horse web sites and blogs (www.chsaonline.com, www.srostables.com). Larry, a confirmed gadget geek, also spends time on Broadway with his theatrical agent wife and two daughters.

Reehan Sheikh

CEO, Evolok

Reehan Sheikh is an industry leader within the technology sphere: he fuses his expertise with forethought in strategic planning and experience within the publishing and broadcast sectors.

With 15+ years of Technical Architect experience, Reehan has a comprehensive understanding of various project methodologies and architectural standards. Leading the web team at Sky for five years, Reehan pioneered a number of high profile technological advances, including Sky Player, before establishing First Clarity in 2006, a specialist web consultancy with a strong focus on delivering highly scalable and complex online solutions.

In 2008 Reehan founded Evolok to meet the critical challenges facing onlinebusinesses. Evolok delivers a sustainable identity and monetisation system that evolves with market needs and delivers increased value for consumers through cross-device socially enabled platforms. Acknowledging the correlation between the reader and the content provider the Evolok eco-system incorporates a metered access gateway that is “customer centric”, providing a great user experience which can be continually refined; at the same time the product allows the content owner access to an information stream which can be leveraged to provide tailored content and packages while driving customer engagement and increased ad revenue.

Saul Sherry

Senior Content and Community Manager of Big Data Republic, UBM

Saul Sherry launched the Big Data Republic community site in late 2012, after a gap was spotted which needed filling with pragmatic content. Big Data Republic quickly went on to win the Media Pioneer Award and a Gold Hermes Creative Award for Saul's handcrafted educational videos. He has been responsible for building the site's community from scratch, across the site as well as social media channels.

Prior to Big Data Republic's launch, Saul was a Communications Manager in the design sector, shepherding together a community of young, talented UK designers and helping them to make the most of their creative skills in a business setting.

Gehan Talwatte

Managing Director, Ascend

Gehan Talwatte is an entrepreneur and investor. He was the CEO of ASCEND (www.ascendworldwide.com), the world’s leading provider of data, analytics and advice to investors in aircraft. Gehan founded ASCEND by spinning it out of its parent company in 2006 with private equity financing from Lloyd’s Development Capital (LDC). Under his leadership the business witnessed rapid global expansion and the launch of industry leading online products and workflow solutions. Ascend was sold in June 2011 to Reed Business Information (a division of Reed Elsevier).
Gehan was previously Managing Director of Hoover's Online Europe, a subsidiary of the US business information company. In 2001, he led a buyout of the European business and later sold it to D&B in 2004.
In the late 1990s, Gehan was a founding partner at eccelerate.com, a Silicon Valley start-up specialising in real-time decision support solutions for e-business. He was also a director of D&B UK [NYSE: DNB], where he ran several global and European business divisions. Earlier in his career, he was instrumental in setting up D&B’s software business in India, now Cognizant Technology Solutions [NASDAQ:CTS].
Gehan holds an MBA and a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University, New York, and a BA (Honours) from Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania. He is an Ironman triathlete and an avid marathon runner.

Francois Thibault

Head of International Sales, Mondeca

François Thibault gained most of his experience working for American and Canadian-based companies in markets covering e-learning, globalization, text mining, enterprise data and content management. His roles involved both senior operational and sales responsibilities.

François joined Mondeca in 2009 to expand Mondeca's reach on international markets, selling the Smart Content Factory to global accounts from different industries including media and publishing, government/defense and healthcare.

Julian Turner

CEO, Electric Word

Julian Turner, led the floatation of Electric Word plc as Chief Executive in March 2000. He was previously the director of marketing at Euromoney Institutional Investor plc for three year. This followed five years at Guardian Newspapers Limited, where he had commercial management roles in the Product Development Unit, Guardian Magazines and Wired Magazine (UK). Julian has advised and trained SIIA members in subscriptions and marketing strategy.

Clementine Vioux

Product Manager, Dennis Media Factory

Clementine has 5 years experience as a mobile product manager. She joined Dennis Publishing’s in-house app development team, Dennis Media Factory, in 2012. This year, the Dennis Media Factory team has focused on the expansion of the existing apps such as The Week and the development of the Cyclist magazine app, which launched on five devices simultaneously. She is the voice of the user in the team and focuses on delivering long term digital products.

John Welsh

MD, Digital & Content, UBM Live, UBM

John Welsh is Managing Director, UBM Live Digital and Content. He leads teams in London, Manchester, Paris and Amsterdam covering over 15 different business communities. The team’s goal is to use content to engage with our communities to deliver the best outcome for customers and profitable revenue. The team does this through online communities of directories and bloggers, print, education, awards and show apps. John is a board member of UBM Live where he works with his fellow board members to develop the strategy of one of UBM’s five divisions.

Matthew Whitehart

Executive, MarkLogic

Matthew joined MarkLogic in 2012 as a Senior Technical Sales Consultant focussing on Media and Publishing. Matthew has over 10 years of presales experience working with organisations of all sizes and across all sectors. Matthew has comprehensive experience of a wide range of database and middle-ware technologies gained with leading vendors including Oracle and OpenText.

David Wormald

Senior Account Executive, MarkLogic

David has spent the last 17 years selling technology and solutions into global Media companies. Those solutions have encompassed CRM, News and Information Services, Search and Database technologies. With the advances in digital publishing and the digital content supply chain in that time, David has enjoyed the opportunity of working with technical and business stakeholders within Media and Publishing companies as they grapple with the continuously changing technology and content consumer landscapes.

David has worked at MarkLogic for 6 years and heads up Telcos, Media and Entertainment in the UK. He holds a degree in Applied Biochemistry from Liverpool John Moores University.