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To get an idea of the variety of people who speak at WidgetWebExpo, have a look at the list of speakers from the recent WidgetWebExpo New York:

WidgetWebExpo New York Speakers

Linda Boland Abraham, Executive Vice President, comScore, Inc.

Linda Boland Abraham is an entrepreneur who has played a variety of leadership roles at comScore since its inception in 1999. Currently she leads Product Management and Product Marketing at comScore, a role that includes new product development, as well as enhancements to, and marketing of, existing products. She was a member of the management team that took comScore public in June, 2007.
Prior to joining comScore, Ms. Abraham played a key role in the launch of Paragren Technologies, Inc., which specialized in delivering large scale Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM) systems for strategic and target marketing. Paragren is now part of Siebel Systems.
Previously, Ms. Abraham held various management positions throughout eight years at Information Resources, Inc., and was instrumental in developing advanced analytical applications for which the firm received several industry awards.
Earlier in her career, Ms. Abraham was part of the marketing models group at Ayer, a NY based advertising agency. She began her career at Procter & Gamble as a member of the Crest brand management team.
Ms. Abraham holds a B.S. in Quantitative Business Analysis from Penn State University. Favorite pastimes include trying to keep up with her four children on the tennis court, ski slope or bike.

See Linda speaking in this session: Tracking widgets in the wild

Stephanie Agresta, InternetGeekGirl.com

Stephanie has more than 13 years of experience in the industry. She started her career with iVillage and has taken prominent sales, marketing and business development roles with Internet powerhouses including Barnes & Noble.com, Register.com, SpaFinder, Foxtons and Commerce360. She is an expert in online marketing, affiliate program management and web2.0 strategies, an industry speaker for trade show and panel discussions, and has been quoted in major publications such as Crain’s Business News, Realtor Magazine, Revenue and ClickZ. Affiliate-Karma is her new outsourced affiliate program management company.

See Stephanie speaking in this session: Micro Interactions: Can portable experiences go mainstream? (Panel)

David Armano, VP, Critical Mass

David has over 14 years experience in the creative field with the majority of his time spent in digital marketing and experience design. An active thought leader in the industry, David authors the popular Logic + Emotion blog currently ranked in the top tier of the “Power 150″ as ranked by Ad Age. David’s writing and visual thinking has been cited by Forrester, The Boston Globe and landed him in BusinessWeek on several occasions including their “Best of 2006″.

See David speaking in this session: Micro Interactions: Can portable experiences go mainstream? (Panel)

Steve Banfield, COO, Mixercast

Steve Banfield is a technology industry veteran who’s built and marketed consumer lifestyle products and services that are widely used by millions of consumers for premier companies like Sony, RealNetworks and Microsoft. Currently the Acting COO of Mixercast, Inc, a widget technology platform company specializing in ad campaigns within social networks, Mr. Banfield is also an advisor to a number of start-ups in the digital media arena.

Mr. Banfield’s experience also includes leading product development and marketing initiatives at such innovative technology companies as IBM, NCR and Microsoft, where he was involved in the development of Windows 95.

Mr. Banfield was an executive at two technology startups while a full-time MBA student at Harvard Business School. His received his undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Transylvania University in his home state of Kentucky.

See Steve speaking in this session: Widget platforms panel

Mike Berkley, Co-Founder & CEO, SplashCast Media

Michael Berkley brings more than a decade of entrepreneurial and programming experience, in start up companies as well as in large corporations.

Prior to launching SplashCast, Mr. Berkley was CEO of QMIND, Inc., an e-learning company with a number of Fortune 500 companies amongst its customers. Prior to QMIND, Mr. Berkley was a founder of the Kaiser Permanente national e-learning development group, providing interactive content development and management services to the corporation’s 150,000 employees. Mr. Berkley also built the company’s first standards-compliant Learning Management System (LMS) to manage and track e-learning courseware, currently in use across the organization.

Following college, Mr. Berkley launched and operated an independent record company called Numinous Records in San Francisco. Mr. Berkley holds a BA in Music from Middlebury College.

See Mike speaking in this session: Widget platforms panel

Josh Bernoff, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research

Josh, a Vice President at Forrester, is one of America’s most prominent and most frequently quoted research analysts.

He is the coauthor of Groundswell:Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, a comprehensive analysis of corporate strategy for dealing with social technologies like blogs, social networks, and wikis, published in April 2008 by Harvard Business Press. Scott Cook, founder of Intuit, said of Groundswell, “This book will rock your world, if social technology hasn’t rocked it already . . . This book will be your bible.”

Josh joined Forrester in 1995. In 1996, he created the Technographics® segmentation, a classification of consumers according to how they approach technology. Forrester has used this segmentation as the basis of its consumer research offering, also called Technographics®, since 1997. Josh is also known for ten years of analysis of the television industry. In an interview for 60 Minutes, Mike Wallace identified Josh as “the top TV industry analyst at Forrester Research, the authority on where TV is going.” He chaired Forrester’s 2002 Television Summit, an event that was covered live on CNBC.

Josh’s research, analysis, and opinions appear frequently in publications like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Broadcasting & Cable, and on national television news programs.

See Josh speaking in this session: Using Widgets To Accomplish Business Goals

Stowe Boyd, Founder, The /Messengers

The /Messengers is the name for Stowe’s consulting business.

He is best known these days for his writing at /Message, hence the /Messengers. Stowe is specially interested in social tools, and their impact on business, media, and society.

His work is principally oriented toward the theory and practice of social web application design and development, as well as related product strategy (like the activities formerly known as marketing).

See Stowe speaking in this session: Social Meaning In A Fragmented World: Can We Come Together In A Web That’s Exploding?

Chris Brozenick, Vice President, Product Management, WeatherBug

In his current role as Vice President of Product management for WeatherBug, Chris Brozenick leads the overall product strategy for the company across its diverse business areas - interactive/web, mobile, government and enterprise. In this role, Chris is responsible for developing the company’s strategic road-map as well as managing the life-cycle of WeatherBug’s products and services to grow revenue and value to the end consumer and business customer. Prior to joining WeatherBug, Chris was Senior Director of Product Marketing at Acterna (now JDSU, Inc.) where he had a 10 year career in product management and marketing in the emerging wireless and fiber optic communications markets. In his increasing roles at Acterna, Chris was responsible for setting the strategy and product road-map for one of Acterna’s largest and most successful business lines - transmission test, which grew over 100% during his tenure with product revenues in excess of $200 million annually.

Chris holds as BS in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University and an MBA with a concentration in marketing from John’s Hopkins University.

See Chris speaking in this session: Creating an ecosystem for widgets on mobile

Marc Canter, Founder, CEO, Broadbandmechanics

Marc Canter is the CEO of Broadband Mechanics, purveyors of a white label social networking platform called PeopleAggregator. Marc started a company called MacroMind - which became Macromedia. That means Marc and his team created the world’s first multiple player (now called Flash), the world’s first multimedia authoring system (Director) and the first system where one could create a file once - and play it back on multiple platforms.
That was in the 80’s. Marc created Interactive Music Videos, Interactive TV Talk shows, scalable content and what’s now called Ajax in the 90’s.
PeopleAggregator outputs widgets and personifies all of the standards and principles of open social networking - eg. providing control to end-users to output and control their own user data. Marc will talk about how to “build the mesh” and how open standards and proprietary formats must live side by side. Marc blogs at marc.blogs.it.

See Marc speaking in this session: The value of open social networks for widgets

Chad Catacchio, Marketing Director, ZoomProspector.com

See Chad speaking in this session: Are widget standards an oxymoron

Lawrence Coburn, Founder & CEO, RateItAll

Lawrence Coburn has been writing about widgets and distributed business strategy on his blog Sexy Widget since 2006. He is also the founder and CEO of distributed consumer rating company RateItAll, and is a frequent public speaker on the topics of widgets, social media, and SEO. In his spare time, Lawrence can be found hanging around San Francisco’s Mission District, or playing hoops.

See Lawrence speaking in this session: Widgets to Features: Leveraging Widgets and Apps to Provide Cross Domain Functionality

Craig Cumberland, Director, Web and Widget Tools, Nokia

B. Craig Cumberland, a 15 year Software industry veteran, currently serves as Director of Web and Widget Tools for the S60 Platform. Prior to this position, he was heading a global team focusing on Technology and Application Marketing, Software programs group within Nokia. Before joining Nokia, Mr. Cumberland was Director of Global Product Marketing for AOL Wireless, focusing on mobile applications platforms and services. Additionally, Mr. Cumberland has held Sr. Positions at Openwave Software, Microsoft Research and Microsoft Corporation. A published technology author/editor, he holds degrees from Texas A&M and Indiana University.

See Craig speaking in this session: Widgets bring more value to mobile than desktop

Chris Cunningham, Founder, CEO, Appssavvy

As the CEO of appssavvy, Chris Cunningham leads the company and is responsible for establishing its position within the social media landscape. He continually meets with top level advertisers and partners to determine where the industry is going next. His longstanding position as a leader in the interactive advertising space allows for appssavvy to make connections with top advertisers and gives credibility to the partner network.

He has spoken on widget marketing at iMedia, OMMA, Millenials and Pipper Jaffray and was a driving force behind the highly successful first annual Widget Con and is a founding member and committee head of the Widget Interactive Marketing Association. His efforts in this area have garnered uniformly positive press coverage in the Washington Post, Business Week, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

Chris graduated from the University of North Carolina Greensboro with a degree in Economics & Marketing and is now based in New York City.

See Chris speaking in this session: Show us the money!

David Cushman, Digital Development Director, Bauer Consumer Media

David has worked in media for 20 years - in newspapers, magazines, radio, the internet and mobile. His role as Digital Development Director at Bauer Consumer Media (the world’s largest private media company) sees him tackling the new strategic challenges facing us all as we come to terms with a community-dominated, networked world.

He regularly shares his thoughts on this at his blog http://fasterfuture.blogspot.com

He is currently co-authoring a book about the disruption the media industry is going through.

Most likely to say: “That which the network touches, it disrupts”.
Least likely to say: “Relax, it’s business as usual.”

See David speaking in this session: Media Transformative

Matt Dickman, Vice President, Digital Marketing, Fleishman-Hillard

Matt Dickman is Vice President of Digital Communications in Fleishman-Hillard’s award winning digital practice. He brings over 12 years of emerging media, technology, and integrated marketing experience to this role. Matt’s extensive experience working with traditional offline advertising and public relations efforts affords him a strategic vision across marketing channels. Matt has worked with many Fortune 500 companies in consumer packaged goods and B2B marketing. His client work includes Motorola, AT&T, Lenovo, Nestle and Visa.
Matt is also the author of a top marketing blog according to Advertising Age and he is considered a leader in social media and emerging technology. The blog, Techno//Marketer, examines the impact of emerging media and technology on marketing.
Matt is a nationally known speaker on topics surrounding emerging media and loves golf and photography.

See Matt speaking in this session: Micro Interactions: Can portable experiences go mainstream? (Panel)

Ilicco Elia, Consumer Mobile Products Manager, Thomson Reuters

Ilicco Elia is the Reuters Mobile Products Manager for Europe. In this role, Ili is responsible for business strategy, advertising and production of Reuters portfolio of mobile & interactive TV services in Europe, Middle East & Africa.

An expert in Internet and mobile strategy, advertising solutions and information usability, Ili has had several roles at Reuters over the years: previous roles include Design & Experience Manager for Reuters Next-Generation products, Head of Online Customer Experience for Reuters Media, including reuters.com and Reuters Corporate Brand Manager, where Ili managed the implementation of the new Reuters corporate identity.

Ili joined Reuters in 1990 having graduated from Manchester University with a degree in civil engineering and has been at Reuters for 17 years.

See Ilicco speaking in this session: Creating an ecosystem for widgets on mobile

Rooly Eliezerov, Co-founder and President, Gigya

Rooly is Co-Founder and President of Gigya, managing the Palo Alto, CA office. An Internet advertising and marketing industry veteran with a focus on product development, Rooly has served on the board of Metacafe, and held positions as a GM at SmartShopper and VP of Products & Marketing at Hotbar. Rooly holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the Pratt Institute in New York City.

See Rooly speaking in this session: Widget platforms panel

Danny Espinoza, Founder, President, AmnestyWidgets

Danny Espinoza is the man behind the vision at AmnestyWidgets, a division of Mesa Dynamics, a software development company he founded in 2003 to build applications that bridged web content with desktop interfaces. The Amnesty brand of widget products was introduced in 2005 and encompasses industry-leading widget migration and conversion tools for the desktop.

Danny’s attention and effort for the past year have been on Hypercube, a consumer-focused platform for discovering, managing and sharing widgets across desktop and web destinations. An innovative twist on the Site Specific Browser movement, Hypercube allows web widgets and applications to be moved effortlessly out of the browser and onto the desktop. Hypercube also features inline translation of web widgets into desktop platforms such as OS X Dashboard and Windows Vista Sidebar, or web platforms such as Facebook, MySpace and Orkut.

See Danny speaking in this session: Exploring the Web and Desktop Widget Dichotom

Joel Fisher, New Product Development, Advertising.com

Joel heads up a New Product Development team at Advertising.com. He combines his strong sense of graphic design with his extensive knowledge of technology to help bring products from concept to reality. Joel currently leads both the Widgnet and Creative Survey initiatives.

For more than twelve years, Joel has lead interactive divisions at leading marketing communications firms and interactive agencies. Joel’s vast client experience includes major companies like Adobe, Careerbuilder, GEICO, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Kennedy Center, and Universal Records.

He has been a featured speaker at the Advertising Association of Baltimore, the AIGA, the D.C. Ad Club and the Washington Post’s interactive advisory panel. He is a graduate of the University of Delaware.

See Joel speaking in this session: Platform-A: Putting widgets to work

Matt Gross, General Manager of the WHERE Developer Program, uLocate Communications

Matt Gross is General Manager of the WHERE Developer Program at uLocate Communications where he manages the leading widget platform for GPS devices. Formerly, Matt ran MapQuest Mobile at AOL/Time Warner, growing it into the leading mobile application with 20% of revenue in the US market. Matt’s education includes a B.A. from Swarthmore and coursework at the University of Ghana. He is co-founder and organizer of Mobile Monday Boston.

See Matt speaking in this session: Creating an ecosystem for widgets on mobile

Brent Halliburton, Sr. Director of New Product Development, Platform-A

As director of network strategy for Advertising.com, Brent Halliburton is responsible the long-term development of the company’s industry-leading display advertising network. Brent previously served as director of Advertising.com’s suite of branding solutions. In this role, he oversaw both the daily operations and strategic development of the company’s extensive targeting, rich media and reporting tools.

See Brent speaking in this session: Platform-A: Putting widgets to work

Marcia Kadanoff, VP of Marketing, MuseStorm

Marcia Kadanoff joined MuseStorm in 2008 as vice president of Marketing from Mobio, a maker of mobile applications. Previously, she served as the CEO to Firewhite, an early-stage mobile infrastructure company and as CMO to Everypath, an early entrant in the race to make infrastructure for the mobile web. Prior to Everypath, Marcia served as CMO to IQ Commerce (sales promotion), and was VP of Marketing at Flycast (web banner advertising). She co-founded Miller/Kadanoff Direct & Interactive, and built this agency into a $20M business prior to selling it to IPG. Marcia got her early training in marketing at The Clorox Company, Apple Computer, and Sun Microsystems. An early adopter of web blogging for corporate collaboration as well as wireless data, Marcia has been profiled on the NBC Nightly News and in BusinessWeek and Mobile Computing magazines. Marcia is a frequent speaker at national venues including American Marketing Association, Ad:Tech and the Direct Marketing Association. She is a graduate of Stanford University (MBA) and Harvard (BA).

See Marcia speaking in this session: Widget platforms panel

Fraser Kelton, Director of Business Development, AdaptiveBlue

Fraser has spent his entire career commercializing emerging technologies. Currently, as the Director of Business Development for AdaptiveBlue, he’s helping to deliver the promise of the Semantic Web to the consumer market via a pragmatic, user-centric, approach.

Previously to joining AdaptiveBlue, Fraser was a Director at Trivaris, a Canadian seed-stage investment firm specializing in bringing new technology to market. Through their collaboration with national governments, a diverse group of government agencies including DARPA and the US National Laboratories network, as well as leading research Universities, Trivaris has become a respected leader in the commercialization of emerging technology.

Fraser likes running, reading is passionate about the positive impact that technology can have on social change and dislikes writing third person bios.

See Fraser speaking in this session: Widgets promoting widgets

Richard J. Krueger, Founder & CEO, AboutFaceDigital

Richard is Founder and CEO of AboutFaceDigital, a social media marketing agency focused on Facebook as a network for acquiring customers, building brand and driving sales. He has served as founder, CMO, and part of the original management teams of companies that brought true innovation in the areas of broadband infrastructure, content syndication, social media, mobile entertainment, online gaming and local search.

Mr. Krueger previously served as Chief Marketing Officer for Boonty, Inc., the leading digital distributor of casual games. Prior, he served as Director of Marketing at broadband-provider Icon CMT, acquired by Qwest Communications. Mr. Krueger also served as part of the original management team for LocalEyes, Inc., a local search engine acquired by AOL. Prior to his entrepreneurial career, Mr. Krueger worked at several top ten advertising and public relations agencies in New York City, overseeing leading consumer technology accounts, such as RCA, Sony, Sharp and Nintendo. He presently resides in New York City with his wife, Cindy, and 5 yr old son, Lucas.

See Richard speaking in this session: Widget platforms panel

Albert Lai, Founder & CEO, Kontagent

Albert Lai is founder & CEO at Kontagent, a social network analytics platform venture.

Albert sold his first internet company, the MyDesktop Network while in his teens to JupiterMedia (JUPM) for 7 digits in cash. Most recently he was the founder/CEO of BubbleShare, a photo-sharing company sold to Kaboose (KAB) in 2007.

Over the past decade Albert’s entrepreneurial efforts have been recognized by multiple front page appearance of major national newspapers, and he is now hard at work on Kontagent, his 5th internet startup.

In his spare time, Albert blogs about disruptive simplicity and other random thoughts at SimplyAlbert.blogspot.com.

See Albert speaking in this session: The What, Why, Where and How of Widget Metrics

Michael Leis, Vice President, Strategic Services, Emerge Digital

Michael Leis is the VP, Strategic Services at Emerge (formerly Publishing Dynamics). Michael’s 17 years of experience across large-scale Web properties, national radio, television and print delivers Emerge clients a strategic edge in wisely choosing the interactive channels and tactics that activate audiences.
Michael helps companies like Visa, Miller, Aircell, Kraft, and Consumer Reports find innovative, integrated ways to engage the people who mean the most to their brands.

Before Bodek, Michael served as an officer of BankOne’s WingspanBank.com, and helped start-up GSI Commerce rocket to the #2 ecommerce website, behind only Amazon (Media Metrix, Dec. 1999) with leadership in developing all online content, offline marketing, and national radio. Michael has over 15 major websites to his credit. Michael started his career in 1991 writing, producing, and voicing a daily radio show and two national comedy pilots at Philadelphia’s WMMR - Westinghouse Broadcasting.
He’s a graduate of Temple University´s School of Film and Media Arts, with a concentration in television screenwriting and production.

See Michael speaking in this session: What does a widget campaign look like from an agency perspective

Khris Loux, Founder & CEO, JS-Kit.com

Khris Loux is a founder & CEO of JS-Kit.com, which empowers publishers through their lightweight Comments, Ratings, Scores, Polls, and Navigator features, promoting rich interactivity and community. JS-Kit’s newest widget, Advisor, uses real data from trusted sources on specific web items and services, bringing visibility into critical information needed at the point of a transaction decision. Khris has realized nearly 20 years of achievement in the software industry, specializing in negotiations and business development. Prior to JS-Kit, Khris founded security software firm, Securix, Inc., negotiated its exclusive distribution agreement and eventual merger with DynaSoft AB, and played an instrumental role in the $115m acquisition negotiations with RSA Data Securities. Prior to founding Securix, Khris held key sales and business development positions at Intelligent Electronics, Sybase, and Entre Computers. Khris attended Mount Saint Mary’s College in Maryland, and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area where he is an avid windsurfer.

See Khris speaking in this session: Licencing and legal issues and in this session: Open Standards or How the Community Got It’s Groove Back

David Malouf, Interaction Designer, Motorola Enterprise Mobility

David Malouf is currently an Interaction Designer at Motorola Enterprise Mobility. In this position David works at the fastest and most influential emerging areas of Interaction Design, where the behaviors of hardware and software converge together for a holistic user experience. Before arriving at Motorola, David has had a 15 year career applying interaction design theory and practice across a host of different types of software environments. During this time he has made himself into a thought leader around the topics of interaction design, rich-internet applications (RIAs), and enterprise interaction design.

David is also one of the key founders of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA.org), and was its first vice president. David speaks widely about topics of interaction design around the world and has been published in both online and offline publications.

See David speaking in this session: Micro Interactions: Can portable experiences go mainstream? (Panel)

Srinivas Mandyam, CTO & Co-Founder, Plusmo

Srinivas Mandyam is CTO and a co-founder of Plusmo. Based in Santa Clara, California, Plusmo champions and brings to the world the most prolific source of mobile widgets. Srini has more than 15 years of technical leadership experience building and delivering products. Previously, Srini was a co-founder and VP of Engineering at Covigo delivering a rapid mobile delivery platform to customers such as T-Mobile, SoftwareAG and Logica/CMG. Covigo was acquired by Symbol Technologies (now Motorola), where he headed engineering for Symbol’s Mobility Software Division. Prior to Covigo, Srini has held various engineering management and architect positions at Symbios, LSI and BusLogic. His professional background spans across Internet software and protocols, mobile and wireless products and embedded software with a focus on user experience. He has participated in many industry consortiums such as W3C and DMTF, and has several patents in the mobile space. Srini earned a master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Alabama and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the Institute of Technology, BHU in Varanasi, India.

See Srinivas speaking in this session: Creating an ecosystem for widgets on mobile

Jodi McDermott, Director of Product Management, Clearspring Technologies

In her spare time, Jodi enjoys spending time with family and friends, running, reading and can sometimes by seen in front of a crowd carrying a tune.

See Jodi speaking in this session: The What, Why, Where and How of Widget Metrics

Matthew McNeely, VP of Engineering, Sprout

Matthew has been writing software in one form or another since the Reagan era. At Sprout his focus has been on Sprout’s internal architecture and its interaction with various ad networks, interaction tracking services, and distribution networks.

Prior to co-authoring the original Sprout platform, Matthew was the principal of Boston Bit–a software consulting company that specialized in internet-based development. He was also a Software Engineer at ON Technology, Recital Corporation and Unisys. When he’s not laying down Actionscript code, you might find Matthew getting his hands dirty in his garden, riding or occasionally racing his bike, or playing the three chords he knows really well on his guitar.

See Matthew speaking in this session: Widget platforms panel

Jonathan Mendez, Founder & CEO, RAMP Digital

A leading voice at the intersection of technology and marketing, Jonathan is widely regarded as the foremost expert on landing page optimization, multivariate testing and onsite content targeting.

Jonathan recently founded RAMP Digital to work with clients in creating marketing solutions fueled by APIs, Semantics, Intelligent Web and emerging marketing technology. Prior to that he was the Founder & Chief Strategy Officer of OTTO Digital, the services division of the market leading optimization technology Offermatica (purchased by Omniture). He was also a Senior Consultant at Creative Good and founded VitaminLab.com that won the Nutrition Business Journal award for 5-year growth under his direction.

Jonathan authors the popular marketing blog Optimize & Prophesize. He has provided expert pre-click and post-click strategies and execution for online testing, targeting and optimization to the world’s leading brands and businesses including Amazon.com, Ameriprise, Disney, Citibank, H&R Block, IBM, Intuit, Microsoft, Monster.com, Sears and T-Mobile.

See Jonathan speaking in this session: Can widgets save display advertising?

Jeff Nolan, Vice President of Software-as-a-Service, NewsGator Technologies, Inc.

Jeff Nolan is the vice president of Software-as-a-Service at NewsGator Technologies, Inc. and has significant experience directing innovation in the areas of social media and Enterprise 2.0 technologies. Prior to joining NewsGator, Nolan led Teqlo, a high-profile startup that develops platforms for mashups and other user-assembled applications, and was also a general partner at SAP Ventures and later led the strategy team for the Apollo Group at SAP. Nolan also continues to author the popular Venture Chronicles blog and has significant experience in speaking at various conferences including Defrag conference in November 2007.

See Jeff speaking in this session: The Future of Online Branding, Content and Advertising on the Web

Ivan Pope, CEO and founder, Snipperoo

Ivan Pope is an Internet industry veteran, having founded the The World Wide Web Newsletter in 1994, the UK’s first web development agency, Webmedia in 1994, domain name registrar NetNames in 1997 and widget management company, Snipperoo in 2006. He is a blogger and authority on the subject of web widgets. On 6 December 2007 he created Europe’s first conference in digital Brighton dedicated to web widgets - known as Widgety Goodness.

See Ivan speaking in this session: Towards a long term widget strategy

Hooman Radfar, CEO & Co-founder, Clearspring

Hooman actively drives platform marketing and strategy initiatives at Clearspring. He was recently named one of Tech’s Best Entrepreneurs by BusinessWeek and was nominated for Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year. When he is not busy building a better Web, you can find him writing his blog Widgify. Radfar graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with degrees in Economics and Computer Science. He holds an M.S. from Carnegie Mellon University where he researched Social Networking Theory.

See Hooman speaking in this session: Keynote - Open Special

Scott Rafer, CEO, Lookery

Scott Rafer has been helping Internet publishers and users jump on What’s Right Now! since 1995. Today, that means delivering services for social publishing and discovery. Scott is CEO of Lookery, as well as co-founder of Mashery and chairman of Winksite. Lookery is an ad network and user-targeting service that is supporting the growth of social applications starting with Facebook. Mashery manages API and developer programs on behalf of web services providers. Winksite helps publishers large and small assemble active mobile communities around their brands based on the content they already syndicate.

Just before all that, he was CEO of MyBlogLog until Yahoo! acquired the company in January 2007. Before MyBlogLog, Scott tried and failed to build blog search companies in both 1998 and 2003. Before the first dotcom boom, Rafer led the Internet products group at Kodak Hollywood, worked in investment banking, and graduated from the Management of Technology program at UPenn. Check out http://blog.lookery.com for the latest.

Steve Rubel, SVP, Director of Insights, Edelman Digital

In addition, Steve is often sought out as a speaker and appears frequently in the press. He has been named to several prestigious lists, including: The Forbes.com Web Celeb 25, PC Magazine’s 100 Favorite Blogs, Media Magazine’s Media 100, the AlwaysOn/Technorati Open Media 100 and the CNET News.com Blog 100.

Prior to joining Edelman in 2006, Rubel worked in a variety of communications positions in corporate, non-profit and small/mid-sized PR firms.

See Steve speaking in this session: Micro Interactions: Can portable experiences go mainstream? (Panel)

Chris Saad, Co-Founder & CEO, Faraday Media and Co-Founder & Chairperson, DataPortability Project

Faraday Media is at the epicenter of the Attention Ecosystem. It has created the standards, initiatives, technologies, platforms and products that help participants experience a personally relevant Internet. The DataPortability project’s mission is to consult on, design, educate, and advocate interoperable DataPortability for users, developers and vendors.

Ian Schafer, CEO and Founder, Deep Focus

Most recently tapped as an AdAge 2007 Media Maven, Ian is considered by many as the foremost expert in interactive marketing and social media solutions, and has been featured in a number of outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Businessweek, Adweek, New York Magazine, Variety, CNN, Fortune and The Hollywood Reporter. He is also a featured columnist and blogger for Advertising Age.

Ian is a graduate of The George Washington University and currently resides in New York City with his wife, Cheryl and dog, Mookie.

Ian blogs at http://www.ianschafer.com can be followed on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/ischafer.

Patrick Sexton, SEOish

Patrick Sexton is a top Google gadget developer and author of Feedthebot which describes the Google webmaster guidelines. He specializes in direct traffic methods and the innovative use of widgets for brand promotion and traffic. He discusses Google gadgets and SEO at SEOish. He is an avid outdoorsman who is currently hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada.

See Patrick speaking in this session: Widgets and SEO: Guiding principles of widget promotion (enhance both your widget spread and your existing SEO strategy)

Ganesh Sivaraman, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Nokia

Ganesh Sivaraman heads the global marketing for Web Technologies and Web Apps in S60. He has been instrumental in creating awareness of the highly-acclaimed Web Browser for S60, based on WebKit. Prior to joining S60 marketing team, Ganesh was in-charge of product management of S60 Rich Call with global responsibility of product creation, management and strategic direction. He also represented Nokia as the lead delegate in mobile standardization bodies, such as SyncML and Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), as co-chairman in SyncML and vice-chairman in OMA. Ganesh has been with Nokia since 2000 and has a Master’s in Electronics.

See Ganesh speaking in this session: Creating an ecosystem for widgets on mobile

Michael Smith, CEO, MindCandy

Michael has been fascinated by games and puzzles ever since receiving a copy of Masquerade for his seventh birthday. More recent distractions have included Poker, Go, Set, Sensible Soccer, Burnout Paradise, and Guitar Hero. In his early twenties he co-founded the online retailer, Firebox.com. Firebox recently featured in 13th place on the Sunday Times Fast Track list of fastest growing companies in Britain. Michael launched Mind Candy in 2003 and development on Perplex City began soon after. Michael’s interest in Monsters probably stems from reading too much Doctor Seuss and Maurice Sendak as a child.

See Michael speaking in this session: How we built a widget that can really interact with the users

Ori Soen, CEO & Founder, MuseStorm

Ori Soen founded MuseStorm in 2005. Apart from managing day-to-day operations, as CEO, he is focused on business development, sales, and building customer acceptance for MuseStorm as the professional way to widget. A serial entrepreneur, prior to co-founding MuseStorm, Mr. Soen held executive positions at Mercury Interactive before and after its acquisition by HP. Prior to that, he was involved in building two mobile companies: Followap (acquired by NeuStar) and MobileSpear. Ori holds degrees in Computer Science and Business from Hebrew University. A citizen of Israel, he now makes his home in Sunnyvale, CA with his wife and two daughters.

See Ori speaking in this session: Hands On Workshop: The Top 10 Widget Mistakes

Chris Thorpe, MindCandy

After a successful scientific career working on ways to design vaccines using very big computers Chris escaped the world of academia and joined London’s fledgling new media community as a project manager and developer at Webmedia on the Which? Online project in 1996.

He then joined NoHo Digital and became Creative Director on projects for clients as diverse as Unilever, Microsoft Network and United International Pictures, for who he created the website for “Tomorrow Never Dies” and managed the webcast of the film’s premiere.

After a few years working for two of the world’s largest scientific publishers on major online initiatives, including video libraries and automated publishing, Chris joined Mind Candy in 2006 and has worked on building the infrastructure, team and codebase required to develop large scale social projects like Moshi Monsters and Perplex City

Chris is always excited about things if there is a chance to use one or many very big computers; when they’re not around he’s interested in music, art, long walks and soccer.

See Chris speaking in this session: How we built a widget that can really interact with the users

Carnet Williams, Co Founder & CEO, Sprout

Carnet is co-founder and CEO of Sprout, a rich interactive content authoring platform for building and publishing Flash widgets, social ads, or any Flash files without programming. Prior to Sprout, Carnet built and sold several Facebook applications, founded ChipIn a widget fundraising service, was a professional snowboarder, and ran International Trade Policy for The Nature Conservancy. Carnet has over a decade of experience in the high-tech and internet industries and was the Director of Business Development at TurboLinx, a Linux OS and enterprise solutions startup, and co-founded NetCorps, a nonprofit technology assistance organization in Oregon. Carnet graduated from the University of Berkeley and has a law degree from the University of Oregon School of Law.

See Carnet speaking in this session: Promotional widgets for the masses

Fred Wilson, Partner, Union Square Ventures

Fred Wilson began his career in venture capital in 1987. He has focused exclusively on information technology investments for the past 17 years. From 1987 to 1996, Fred was first an Associate and then a General Partner at Euclid Partners, a New York based, early stage, venture capital firm founded in 1970. At Euclid Partners, Fred was responsible for a number of investments, including Freeloader, Multex, PowerCenter Systems and UCA&L. In 1996, Fred co-founded Flatiron Partners. While at Flatiron, Fred was responsible for 14 investments including, ITXC, Patagon, Starmedia, TheStreet.com and Yoyodyne. Fred currently serves on the boards of Alacra, Comscore, iBiquity, Return Path, Instant Information and Tacoda Systems. Fred has a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and an MBA from The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Fred is married with three kids and lives in New York City.

See Fred speaking in this session: Keynote - Startups with widgets, widgets as startups

Anthony Zito, CEO, mediaFORGE

Anthony Zito is the CEO of mediaFORGE, a technology company that socializes and monetizes branded widgets that leverage existing online advertising inventory. Zito joined mediaFORGE as a seasoned executive in 2005 and continues to provide vision and direction to the mediaFORGE team. Prior to his involvement with mediaFORGE, Zito managed and grew several successful technology businesses including Precision Data Link (President and Co-founder), acquired by The Profit Recovery Group, and ezADit.com (Co-founder and CEO), acquired by Y2M, a subsidiary of MTV Networks. ezADit.com aggregated ad inventory from over 4,000 college newspapers and categorized them demographically to allow advertisers to make ad buys directly through the ezADit.com portal.

Zito brings over 20 years of entrepreneurial experience to the table. He is an active angel investor and member of the Utah Technology Council.”

See Anthony speaking in this session: Agency Case Study