Programme

  SPEAKERS

Bruce  Akhurst, CEO, Sensis, AU 

Bruce Akhurst has been the CEO of Sensis, Australia, since January 2005.  He reports directly to the CEO of Telstra and is a member of the Telstra Chief Executive Officer’s Leadership Team.

Mr Akhurst is responsible for Telstra’s digital media strategy, including its investments in the Pay TV company, FOXTEL, of which he is the Board Chairman. 

Prior to his current appointment, Mr Akhurst was Group Managing Director of Telstra Wholesale, BigPond and Media Services and was at the same time Telstra Group General Counsel (since 1996) and Sensis Chairman. 

Before joining Telstra, Mr Akhurst was a Managing Partner in a national law firm. 

Lex Cohen, CEO European Directories, NL

Having been CEO of De Telefoongids B.V. in Amsterdam since February 2003, Lex Cohen assumed the additional responsibilities as Group CEO of European Directories in November 2004. Having fulfilled these two distinct roles until  August 2005, the new owners decided to have Lex focus fully on running European Directories and to appoint a new CEO for De Telefoongids.

Lex Cohen was previously CEO of Wegener Direct Marketing International in the Netherlands between 2000 and 2003. Between 1991 and 2000 he was Vice President and Division Director with ITT World Directories and CEO of Gouden Gids B.V.

He also held the post of CEO of Graydon Holding NV in Amsterdam between 1987 and 1991, and between 1975 – 1987 held various management positions at Dun & Bradstreet International in the USA, UK and the Netherlands. 

Christopher Cummings, Chief Executive Officer,Marquette Group, USMotivation, USA 

Mr. Cummings has over 25 years of industry experience in National Yellow Page Programs.  He is currently the CEO and equity owner of Marquette Group, an advertising agency in Peoria, IL specializing in National Yellow Page Programs. Mr. Cummings purchased Marquette Group, the fifth largest CMR in the industry, in 1996.  In 2004, he also became CEO and equity owner of USMotivation, an incentive awards and event management company based in Atlanta, GA. 

Prior to becoming Marquette Group’s CEO, he held the position of President of Berry Network at The Berry Company for eight years.  He worked at The Berry Company for 17 years in total, including his nine years as Division Manager.

Mr. Cummings received his bachelor’s degree from University of Colorado.  He is a founding member of the Association of Directory Marketing (ADM) and served as Chair for six years.  He is currently an ADM board member, as well as a Yellow Pages Association board member.

Terry DiNatale, Founder and Chief Revenue Officer, WebVisible, USA

Mr DiNatale founded WebVisible in 2001 and established an effective service to meet the online advertising needs of local businesses.

Mr DiNatale is able to call on a quarter of a century of experience in the yellow pages industry, to which he has added more recent expertise in the local online industry. In 1999 he was Vice-President of Internet Sales and Marketing for BellSouth Intelligent Media Ventures, LLC; then, in 2000, Vice-President and General Manager of Engage Technologies Local Market Division, before going on to create his present company.

Hermann Futter, Managing Director, Compass-Verlag GmbH, AT

Hermann Futter has been working in the directory industry for almost 20 years, during which time he has anticipated several market trends.   Back in 1988 he initiated contacts in Hungary, which was still at that time a communist country, in order to establish one of the first information companies there.  In the course of the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall, he built up no fewer than ten companies in four different countries, providing employment for over 200 employees.

The companies were sold off in 1995 and he then put all his energies into the burgeoning internet market place.  Together with his brother Nikolaus he established compnet.at, which was one of the first b-to-b internet databases in Europe.

Hermann Futter was the first authorised internet expert in Austria and he gives lectures at the Danube University in Krems and at the Academy of Accountants in Vienna.  He has given presentations in many cities, as far afield as Kazakhstan, and for many different organizations, including UNIDO. 

Mr. Futter has recently become the President of the Austrian Association of Directory Publishers.

Dr. Ing Eckhard M. Geulen, Senior Executive Vice President, Deutsche Telekom Group, DE

Dr. Eckhard M. Geulen studied electronic engineering at Aachen University of Technology (RWTH) where he was awarded a doctorate for his thesis on "Open service provision in cellular GSM networks." He has worked in management in the fields of research, consulting and innovation in the telecommunications sector for the past 12 years. From 1993 to 1998, Dr. Geulen held various positions at Ericsson Eurolab Deutschland GmbH, including research engineer, group leader, and project manager. He spent extended periods abroad in Sweden, where he managed a multinational research project, and in Canada, as part of his work in the training department. At the end of 1996, he founded the Mobile Multimedia Applications research group, which he chaired until stepping down in 1998.
Dr. Geulen subsequently worked in strategy and management consulting for a number of years. He co-managed the establishment of the Telecommunications Practice of the Boston Consulting Group. He then spent 3 years at the German branch office of U.S. technology and management consulting firm, Sapient, where he was part of the management team. As overall department head of the media/technology/communication divisions, he managed the sales, strategy consulting and implementation (design & technology) departments.

Dr. Geulen joined Deutsche Telekom AG in 2004. After setting up and managing the Innovation Strategy department in Bonn for the entire Deutsche Telekom Group, he became head of Marketing & Sales, Value-Added Services (MVM) at T-Com in 2005. His areas of responsibility include among others public telecommunications, address-data management, public directory services, print media, value-added phone-numbers, and audio-conferencing. 

Michel Hamrouni, Topcom, BE

Mr Hamrouni joined TOPCOM as Product Mgr. in 2006 for voice products - DECT Phones and Walkie Talkie. Previously he worked as systems analyst for Pioneer Mobile Multimedia in car Navigation systems & Telematics.

Mr Hamrouni started as Hardware Engineer at Philips in the design of Digital Set top boxes.
He received an MSc. in electronics from the KHK Geel in 1998 and an MBA from Solvay Business school in 2005.

Erik Jorgensen, General Manager, MSN Search, USA

As a general manager with MSN Search, Erik Jorgensen leads the groups responsible for the development of Local Search, MSN Virtual Earth, MapPoint Web Service, Microsoft Streets & Trips and Mobile Search. His mission is to provide global access to local knowledge. 

Mr Jorgensen has been with the Microsoft Corporation for more than ten years and started with the Multimedia Games group.    He spent six years in Microsoft’s Financial Products Group and became recognized  in the industry as one of the most influential people in online financial services. He later ran several of the MSN portal businesses, including MoneyCentral, Carpoint, Travel, Sports and HomeAdvisor. 

Mr Jorgensen graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University.

Jean-Pascal Lion,Vice President - Electronic Directories, CA 

Jean-Pascal Lion has been Vice President, Electronic Directories, Yellow Pages Group since 2002.

Prior to his current position, Mr. Lion was Vice President, Local Markets, at Sympatico-Lycos Inc., Canada's leading network of Internet media properties. He headed the team that made YellowPages.ca the number one online directory in Canada.

Mr. Lion joined Bell Canada from Le Groupe Vidéotron Ltée., where he developed expertise in planning, managing and executing new media content development strategies (videotext, interactive TV and Internet). His marketing and managerial experience has helped further BCE's growth in the interactive and online media markets. In fact under his leadership, the Sympatico site has emerged as the leading French-language portal in Quebec. Mr. Lion also has considerable expertise in building relationships with federal and provincial regulatory authorities.

Patrick J. Marshall, USA

Patrick J. Marshall is an independent marketing strategy consultant and, as the founder in 1966 of SuperPages.com, the internet Yellow Pages, a recognized pioneer in the online directory industry.

Mr. Marshall  has been in marketing management for more than 25 years and served as a senior executive with Verizon, Frontier Corporation and Dun & Bradstreet.  He has been involved in mobile device applications, speech-based search services and the development of electronic information services generally.

He has served on the boards of various organizations, including the Interactive Advertising Bureau and  the University of Texas at Arlington’s e-Commerce advisory board, and is currently on the boards of Intelius and AgendiZe.

Danny Meadows-Klue now runs Digital Strategy Consulting, which provides a range of company support programmes, from management clinics for critical issues to workshops for staff at all levels.   Mr Meadows-Klue is also currently the Chief Executive of the Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe, after having been its President for four years.

His digital media career began with United News and Media where he originally trained as a traditional newspaper and magazine publisher, before beginning research into digital publishing.  In 1995 he was recruited by The Telegraph to be the brand manager of the UK=s first online newspaper, Telegraph.co.uk, which he helped to run for five years. The brand won several Internet Newspaper of the Year awards.

Mr Meadows-Klue  pioneered content management and brand development strategies and has managed a range of online firms, including retailers, portals, search services, media brands and agency design services.  His wide-ranging roles in the digital industry - as commentator, author, columnist, TV presenter, Government advisor, university and conference lecturer - have brought him recognition as one of the leading figures in the industry.

Prior to his nomination as Head of Business Development, Media Industry, Matthew spent the past 3 years, as General Manager, Mobile Search Business Development, where he spearheaded the strategy for the formation of the new platform and business activity of Mobile Search in Nokia.

In the past, Matthew specialized in SW and HW Engineering at SONY Corporation in Consumer Video Products, leading many design, manufacturing and product teams.  Following that, he started a Pan-Asia consultancy company specializing in semi-conductor packaging and design consulting between Singapore , Hong Kong and Japan that included wireless concepts for Citizen Watch, Kenwood, VLSI and Motorola.

Since 1995, Matthew led the first Japan initiated terminal development program in Nokia. He won the “Design Excellence” award from Japanese MITI, as well as invented many advance developments in mobile music, imaging, and terminal engine architectures.  He developed and led the business for the first Nokia Music product and service for Nokia in 1999 with a pilot service to ‘buy” music online via SMS with the Company Elisa Communications, Finland . 

Following his work in music he continued to lead several Nokia handset program activities and moved to Vancouver , Canada as the Head of Global Operations for N-Gage (Nokia first Rich Gaming Terminal) to build the global manufacturing, logistics and distribution framework for the business.

Donat Rétif has been the Managing Director of Promedia (Belgium) since May 2005, after having acquired very wide international experience in the telecom and directory sector.

He began his career with Euro Directory, Belgium in August 1993, first as Marketing Manager and later as Finance Manager.  His next moves were to Belgacom Directory Services as Production Director, then to VNU Promedia (Belgium) as Operations Director and finally to Verizon Information Services (Canada and USA), where his last job was Vice-President Sales West USA with responsibility for revenues of around half a billion US dollars.

Donat Rétif graduated as a Commercial Engineer from the University of Mons, Belgium.

Lars Runov has responsibility for all Krak’s media products, including krak.dk, roadmaps, directories and the Export Directory of Denmark.

He began his career in the strategic consultancy department of Accenture and later became a marketing manager in the telecom industry, e.g. in Orange A/S,  Denmark and Sense Communication A/S,  Norway.

Mr Runov has an MSc in Economics and Business Administration and also an  MA in Development Economics from Kent University, UK.

Andreas Weiss, Strategic Resources Director, MediaLogics, DE

Mr Weiss began work at MediaLogics in Düsseldorf in 2002 as Head of Research. He was promoted to the position of Strategic Resources Director in January of this year. 

After studying communications, Mr Weiss began his business career as project manager with Germany’s central newspaper marketing organisation, ZMG, in 1998.  A year later he moved to IFAK, a market research company.  There he was responsible for media market studies and developed a market research methodology.

MediaLogics is the Central Services Centre in Germany for the Publicis Media Group. 

Rabin Yaghoubi, Google , UK

Rabin is Director of Strategic Partner Development at Google, where he is responsible for Google's media, commerce and local partnerships across Europe, the Middle East and Africa .

Previously, Rabin was global Vice President of Media at DoubleClick, and founder of an independent investment and consulting firm focusing on digital media and marketing businesses in Europe and North America .

Rabin holds an MBA from Stanford University , and a BA and BS from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania .