Speakers

Ian Bowen-Morris is Managing Director of Bowen-Morris Limited, consulting to directory publishers and local search businesses seeking accelerated online growth.

He is the former Head of Marketing / Senior Vice President of Yell.com, Yell's flagship new media division, a position he held from August 2000 to October 2008. He led the commercial marketing team and was responsible for the development of Yell.com's advertiser propositions and usage growth. Mr. Bowen-Morris has been a Committee member of the European Association of Directory Publishers (EADP) since 2001.
In his early career he held a number of product and marketing management positions at an auto company Unipart International, rising to Director and General Manager of a new division he set up.

Mr. Bowen-Morris has an MBA from Henley Business School, CIM Marketing Diploma and studied Business and Finance at the University of Glamorgan, Wales.

Tony Fish B-Eng MBA C-ENG FIET FCIM is the author of “My Digital Footprint: a two sided business model where your privacy will be someone else’s business” Nov 2009 and has previously co-authored two books on mobile and innovation: “Mobile Web 2.0: the innovators guide to developing and marketing next generation wireless/mobile applications”, August 2006; and “OpenGardens, the innovators guide to mobile data industry”, December 2004. 

Simon Greenman is Managing Director – Online at European Directories. His responsibilities include new online advertiser products, such as video and the recently announced Skype partnership, along with usage growth through IYP sites and new sites, such as the Tupalo.com.


Mr. Greenman  has fifteen years of global experience in the local search and yellow pages industries.  He was a co-founder of the MapQuest.com service in the US and was most recently based in the US as Head of Digital for R.H. Donnelley.  He joined them with the acquisition of Dex Media, where he had held the same position and was part of the team that completed a successful IPO in 2004.


Mr Greenman holds a MBA from Harvard and a BA in Computing and Artificial Intelligence from the University of Sussex, England.  

Andrew Grill

Andrew Grill is currently the UK head of Sales and Business Development for Visible Technologies, a social media monitoring and brand reputation company. He is also the editor of www.LondonCalling.mobi, a  website on social & mobile networking. Formerly resident of Sydney, he has been CEO and General Manager of Australia’s largest mobile property website, PropertyLook, and he held senior marketing and business development roles with Australian companies Telstra and Optus. Between 2004 and 2008, he was General Manager of mobile location provider, Seeker Wireless, opening their London office in 2006.

Currently he is writing a book on twitter, focusing on the business benefits from this new social medium due for release internationally in 2010 through Kogan Page.

Benjamin Jost 

Benjamin Jost is founder and Managing Director of TrustYou GmbH, the first semantic meta search engine for online reviews – hotels, restaurants, etc.

Before setting up TrustYou, Mr. Jost was, from 2006 to 2008, Executive M&A Investment Manager for France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey and Italy for Conenergy AG, a leading company in renewable energy.

From 2004 to 2005 he was investment analyst for Siemens Venture Capital (Siemens AG) the corporate venture organisation for the Siemens Group in Munich, Germany and prior to that he was an associate at Xange Private Equity, a venture capital and private equity company (La Poste Group) in Paris.

Jesper Kärrbrink is President and CEO of Eniro since 2008.  From 1983-93 he was Co-founder and Managing Director of FrontPage AB, a newspaper management consultant, subsequently becoming MD of local newspaper Östersunds-Posten and from 1997 to 1999 MD of Bonnier Interactive and Bonniers Veckotidningar within the Bonnier Group, Scandinavia's largest media company. From 2000 to 2003 he was Venture Manager and Partner at the venture capital firm IT-Provider Adviser AB. From 2004 to 2008 he was MD of AB Svenska Spel, Sweden's largest gaming company. 

Jesper Kärrbrink is co-author of "Den Digitala Mutationen" and of two thrillers. In 1998 he was nominated IT-Prophet of the year by Vision Business Magazine.

Jeroen Kuerble
 
Jeroen Kuerble is Director of the Business Leads Division of Reed Business Information (RBI), a company he has been with for the past 15 years in The Netherlands, Germany and the UK. He has worked in the corporate Strategy & Development unit, mainly focussing on organic growth opportunities.

He became the director for Kellysearch four years ago and over the past years his portfolio has been extended with highly verticalised online directories and qualified leads businesses. On January 26, 2010 RBI launched a new business model for its oldest and most successful online directory www.kellysearch.co.uk, combining traditional directory with “Request for Quote” and advanced call tracking.

Khashayar Mahdavi

Khashayar Mahdavi is Chief Executive Officer of Telnic Ltd., a position he has held since 2003. Mr. Mahdavi has successfully steered the Company through the 2004 ICANN application, and he is now managing the worldwide roll out of the .tel service.  He previously worked in the international department of Lazard Frères in Paris, where he led government advisory assignments, which included corporate reorganizations, privatizations, debt restructurings and bond offerings on the international capital markets.

Mr. Mahdavi holds a degree in finance from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris and an M.Phil in Economics from Oxford University.

Ralf Meister

Ralf Meister is Area Director of Sales & Marketing for Starwood Hotels & Resorts in Mallorca. He is responsible for three of the best hotels and four top golf courses in Mallorca, covering the brands of ‘Sheraton’ with the Sheraton Mallorca Arabella Golf Hotel, ‘Luxury Collection’ with the Castillo Hotel Son Vida and ‘St. Regis’ with The St. Regis Mardavall Mallorca Resort as well as the Arabella Golf courses of Son Vida, Son Muntaner, Son Quint and Son Quint Executive.

Ralf Meister was born in Berlin, raised in Mexico-City and finished his education in Munich. He has worked in the hotel industry for over 20 years, mainly in the area of sales and marketing. During his hotel career he has been based in Munich, Antalya, Turkey, Cancun, Mexico, the Algarve and Lisbon and for the last 5 years in Palma de Mallorca. Focusing mainly on resort properties with beach and/or golf, supplemented with meeting and incentive capacities, the different brands represented have been Sheraton, Luxury Collection and St. Regis – all brands under the Starwood umbrella.

Nick Monaghan 

Nick Monaghan was a founding member of the team that set up Active Hotels in 2000. In a subsequent merger with Bookings.nl in 2005, Mr Monaghan was appointed Director of Distribution at Booking.com. He has been a key figure in Booking.com’s European expansion and he has led all major European partnership deals since he joined the company.  Currently some of  Booking.com’s partners include Yell.com and other directory businesses as well as some key travel trade websites.

Booking.com has become the No 1 online hotel reservations provider in Europe and as part of Priceline.com is a major contributor to Priceline’s current valuation of $10bn+. Nick Monaghan holds an MBA from Cranfield School of Management in the UK and he is a graduate of Manchester University.

Elio Schiavo is CEO of Thomson Local. In November 2009 he joined Thomson Local from parent company, Seat Pagine Gialle.  Elio started at SEAT in 2000 in the Internet M&A department, managing the Group Venture Capital fund.  In 2002 he took charge of SEAT Corporate Business Development, to be then appointed in March 2003 as CEO of Consodata, SEAT Group Company operating in the Direct Marketing Services business.  Since October 2007 he holds the CEO position in Katalog A.S., SEAT Turkish joint venture with Dogan Media Group.

Elio has been fortunate enough to be able to work in countries such as Italy, Turkey, Tunisia and Belgium, and now looks forward to putting down roots in the UK.

Kate Stone 

Dr Kate Stone is the founder of Novalia Ltd., a Cambridge, UK, based company that develops technology to enable printed items to become empowered with interactivity, by combining electrically conductive inks, graphic arts and conventional silicon. 

Kate has a degree in electronics and a PhD in physics from Cambridge University.  She joined the Cambridge startup company 'Plastic Logic', which developed technology for a flexible 'e-reader.  After this she founded Novalia to identify possibilities to combine conventional print and printed electronics.

Charles Tonlorenzi
 
Charles Tonlorenzi is CEO of 118 000.  He founded 118 000 in 2005, initially as a 100% voice directory assistance service and meanwhile the second most used directory in France with over 90% of its usage online. He started as CEO of the company while it was the property of the German telegate AG group. He and his management took over the company from telegate AG in November 2009, with the backing of Newfund, an investment fund.

Charles Tonlorenzi spent the past 20 years building marketing and technology experience : still a student, he spent 2 years at Apple Computer to quench his geeky thirst for technology. He then spent 8 years “graduating in marketing” at Procter & Gamble in France, Germany and ultimately the USA, where he managed the Global Strategic Planning for the baby care sector. He joined AOL in France in 2000 as Vice-President for marketing, where he launched the first flat-rate Internet access in France and served there for 5 years, whilst the Internet was moving from early-adopters to mainstream.

Charles Tonlorenzi grew up in France, Germany and Italy. He graduated from ESCP.

Höddi Tryggvason is founder and partner of checkitmobile GmbH, in Berlin, a company specializing in services and development in the area of mobile shopping, which he started in 2008.

In 2000 he founded workXL AG, a leading information provider of public tender, construction and business project information in Germany and in 2003 together with a partner he founded Globis GmbH, offering consulting and professional/vocational training in Germany, working as CEO in both companies. Prior to that Höddi Tryggvason worked for The Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey & Company in Germany and in financial and marketing management in his native Iceland.
He studied in Reykjavik and Göttingen, Germany.

Edward Ungar

He has worked in online media for the last ten years, but since joining Google's Strategic Partnerships group in 2006 his main focus has been the local market.  After initially partnering with content providers on Google Maps, he began negotiating SME advertising alliances for Google's Authorised Reseller programme, establishing and growing the channel throughout Europe.  

He has led discussions with many of the 25 Authorised Resellers now active in EMEA, which include Yell (UK & ES), SEAT Pagine Gialle, BT, QDQ and Telegate.  Prior to Google and during five years at the Financial Times, Edward held a variety roles in online business development in the UK, US and Asia, before leaving as Head of Partnerships in 2004.  

He started his career in investment banking at Goldman Sachs, holds a BA from Cambridge University and an MBA from Instituto de Empresa in Madrid.

Andreas van de Castel

Before Andreas joined Facebook as Country Growth Manager Germany in March 2009, he held several Product Management and Consulting positions within the Internet and ICT industry.

Andreas van de Castel has a degree in Media Economics and many years of expertise in Social Media, Media Management, Business Development and IT.

Andreas has spoken at several conferences and is author of the book "Offshoring and Outsourcing in Eastern Europe".

Miriam cut her teeth during the first dot com boom in San Francisco where she discovered that the middle of the bubble as it expands is ground zero as it explodes. After the dot bomb she travelled the globe solo for a year before returning to reality at the largest health care company in the world.

She regularly reviews at miriam.yelp.com