Paul is Managing Director of Gavurin. In an earlier life, Paul directed many economics and economics related subjects for clients that included: Office of Fair Trading, Office of Deputy Prime Minister, Department of Culture Media and Sport, Department of Trade and Industry, UK Trade and Industry, Nominet, HSBC, Lombard Finance and many others.

Paul was always on the lookout for software to help analyse geographic data to help do those projects, better. He never found it, so decided to develop it himself (or at least start a company that did). G-View was launched in September 2008 and slowly… its now making ripples. In the next few months, it will make splashes and go on to make waves.

Paul began his career working in human resource management. Ultimately, he was Group Human Resource Adviser at Imperial Group where he was responsible for the recruitment and development of the Group’s most senior management. Paul’s time in a front line HRM post, informed his interest in strategy and how organisations’ strategies impact on their human resource management and vice versa. To pursue that interest, Paul went to the London Business School and then Newcastle University Business School – which he directed for a short while. His earliest published work on the relationship of strategy to human resource management remains one of the most cited texts on this subject.

Paul is a Member of the Editorial Board of Local Economy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Gilbert Cockton is a Professor in Northumbria University’s internationally renowned School of Design, a short walk from the Sage over the Millennium Bridge and up the banks of the Tyne. His research interests focus on garnering and exploiting human insights for design and evaluation. Gilbert has a strong interdisciplinary background, with a Cambridge MA and PGCE in History and Education (first class honours) and a PhD in Computer Science from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.

He has maintained his interest in the humanities and human sciences throughout his careers in technology and design. He believes that simple answers to hard problems can only be found by asking hard questions that cut through superficial complexities to the fundamental constructs underlying them. Such fundamental constructs can then be mixed and matched in infinite ways, creating new opportunities for design and evaluation approaches that support the complexity of connections needed for successful innovation in a world that is becoming ever more demanding and discerning.

Gilbert delights in softening up boundaries between academic disciplines, research and practice, public and private sectors, arts and sciences, creativity and rigour, and theory and practice. His career has mixed blue skies and applied research, education from primary schools to PhDs, business support, professional practice, invention, consultancy and training, and a few years of part-time childcare.

Mary Ann is currently Managing Director of Oblong Europe, the European division of Oblong Industries. Oblong is the developer of the g-speak spatial operating environment. Mary Ann’s background is in new technology, media and consumer products—always the bleeding edge of where new tech meets end consumer. Previously, she was Chief Operating Officer of IDP, an interactive television company based in Paris. Prior to moving to Europe, Mary Ann was Director of Strategic Planning at Mattel’s corporate headquarters in Los Angeles. Mary Ann started her career at The Voyager Company and moved from there to Sony Electronic Publishing, where she was Executive Producer of the first PlayStation games developed outside of Japan. Mary Ann holds a Masters of Science from the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Jer Thorp is an artist and educator from Vancouver, Canada. A former geneticist, his digital art practice explores the many-folded boundaries between science and art. Recently, his work has been featured by The New York Times, The Guardian, BusinessWeek and the CBC.

Thorp’s award-winning software-based work has been exhibited in Europe, Asia, North America, South America, and Australia and all over the web.

Jer is an instructor in Langara College’s Electronic Media Design Program, and a frequent guest lecturer at the University of British Columbia and Emily Carr University.

In his previous life as a Flash developer and designer, Jer produced work for a broad base of clients including Honda, The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, FOX, and the LA Kings. blprnt.com, Jer’s unique collection of organic Flash experiments and generative artworks, has won numerous awards and has been featured in many art and design publications, both online and in print.

Jer is a contributing editor for Wired UK.

Influenced by North American alt-indie bands and mixing delayed guitar soundscapes with compelling vocals reminiscent of Liz Fraser of Cocteau Twins, Let’s Buy Happiness stand apart from the typical sound normally associated with the North East.

The band has supported The Temper Trap, Vivian Girls and Idlewild in Newcastle on their sell-out tours, played for T4’s Outside-In Festival and have more high profile gigs are booked for 2010, including the Topman CTRL gig with The Futureheads, Evolution Festival and Glastonbury Festival (John Peel Stage).

With a DIY approach to their music and artwork, Let’s Buy Happiness self-released debut EP ‘No Hot Ashes’.

The EP has garnered much local and national interest. Lead track ‘Works Better on Paper’ has received multiple plays by Tom Robinson and Lauren Laverne at BBC 6Music and ‘Devil Show’ was chosen by Drowned in Sound editor Sean Adams as part of his ‘Class of 2010’ feature.

The ‘No Hot Ashes’ EP is available online now, with a follow-up single planned for June 2010.

David Siegel is an author, consultant, and investor focusing on the future of technology, the Internet, and business. Always on the cutting edge, David is credited with being one of the first entrepreneurs and designers in the emerging web site design business, designing his first site in 1993. He started blogging in 1994 (before the term was invented) and started one of the first web-design and strategy firms in the same year.

David has been writing books about the Web since 1995:

1995: Creating Killer Web Sites (Macmillan; translated into 16 languages)
1997: Secrets of Successful Web Sites (Pearson)
1998: Creating Killer Web Sites II (Pearson)
1999: Futurize Your Enterprise (Wiley)
2010: Pull (Penguin)

David has an undergraduate degree in applied mathematics from the University of Colorado at Boulder (1982) and a master’s degree in computer science from Stanford (1986). He worked at Pixar Studios one year before going into business for himself. He has designed or produced three of the world’s top-50 typefaces (in terms of sales) and started designing web sites in 1993. He has taught graduate design courses and seminars in marketing and business. He started one of the first online design and strategy firms, Studio Verso, which he sold to KPMG in 1999.

David has been lecturing and speaking about the Web since 1995, and about the semantic web since 1998. He has delivered over 100 speeches on the Internet and business. Since 2000, David as been an active angel investor, advisor, and board member. He is chairman of LTR.com, based in New York City, and Primoris Brick and Paver company in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He also lectures on dark chocolate and has been doing professional chocolate tastings since 2002.

Richard is the CEO of Associated Northcliffe Digital (www.and.co.uk) the digital subsidiary of Daily Mail and General Trust (LSE: DMGT). He oversees a portfolio of European digital businesses including Jobsite, Findaproperty, Primelocation, Motors.co.uk, and dating aggregator Allegran, and Teletext. Richard is charged with the operation and growth of the diverse AND portfolio, and the larger groups strategy on consumer digital products and services globally.

Previously, Richard led one of three BBC future media divisions as Controller Future Media, A&M and Mobile. In this role he is responsible for the strategic, editorial and technical delivery of its mobile products and services (including the award winning iPlayer) as well as a portfolio of pan-BBC product groups. He also oversaw its Audio and Music content on digital platforms including more than 50 regional and national radio stations. He was promoted to this role after leading an overhaul of the BBC’s Internet, mobile, IPTV and iPlayer services (with a combined audience of 50+ million UU’s). Managing 180+ people, he provided thought leadership, strategy across the BBC’s Future Media & Technology audience facing products and services.

Richard has founded or co-founded seven firms in his diverse entrepreneurial career including Razorfish LA and Schematic, an Adweek top 10 interactive agency where he served as President and Vice Chairman before its 2007 acquisition by WPP. Richard is a frequent public speaker on the impact of innovation and digital products and services in the technology, media & entertainment sectors. Outside technology, with his filmmaker wife, he has produced feature film and television projects including two Sundance Film Festival selections; 2002′s On_line and 2006 environmental documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?

Tom Wujec is a Fellow at Autodesk, the world’s leader in 2D & 3D design technology. As a recognized thought-leader and award-winning innovator, Tom works with the Fortune 500 to foster innovation practices at all stages, from strategic and business planning to the design and implementation of digital design tools. Common to each practice is the application of making work visible, and transforming ideas into images that enhance clarity, engagement and persistent intelligent action.

Tom Scott is a geek comedian. He’s won two Student Radio Awards, once got in trouble with the Cabinet Office for his version of their Preparing for Emergencies site, and has been described as a “sometime internet funny man” by The Register. He runs the British part of International Talk Like A Pirate Day, and accidentally spent a year as president of his students’ union after running as “Mad Cap’n Tom”.

His work has been shown on BBC One, Channel 4, and at the para-flows net-art exhibition in Vienna.

He also once got five gold runs on ‘Blockbusters’.

Jodi Forlizzi is an Associate Professor of Design and Human-Computer Interaction and the A. Nico Habermann Chair of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, PA. She is an interaction designer contributing to design theory and practice. Her theoretical research examines theories of experience, emotion, and social product use as they relate to interaction design. Other research and practice centers on notification systems ranging from peripheral displays to embodied robots, with a special focus on the social behavior evoked by these systems.

Jodi was trained as an illustrator at Philadelphia College of Arts, and as an interaction designer at the School of Design, Carnegie Mellon University. She holds a self-defined Ph.D. in Design in HCI from Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to joining the faculty, Jodi Forlizzi was an Innovator and Project Manager at E-Lab, LLC.

Jon is Director of Changing Media, a consulting company that works with Government and other public bodies to develop creative and business strategy to help them to engage hard-to-reach groups. He is used to operating at Board and Ministerial level, both as an adviser and as a chair and facilitator. Jon is also Director of Changing Media Development, which develops novel interventions for children with cognitive impairments such as autism.

Jon has served on many public committees and has been a non-executive board member and mentor for large public projects, advising on policies, strategies and tactics to encourage innovation, to drive better performance, and to engage new audiences with services that people will actually use. He has worked closely with Ministers in the DCSF, DCLG , BIS and DCMS and has advised Parliament’s public internet project, Local Authorities, The British Library, Wellcome Trust, BBC Trust and NESTA.

Ralf Herbrich is the Director of Future Social Experiences (FUSE) Labs UK in Cambridge, England, which focuses on demonstrating and enabling new social experiences through development of computational intelligence technologies on large online data collections. He joins FUSE after nine years in Microsoft Research Cambridge, where he co-founded two groups with researcher Thore Graepel: the Online Services and Advertising (OSA) research group, and the Applied Games research group.

The OSA group focuses on the areas of online services, search and online advertising combining insights from machine learning, information retrieval, game theory, artificial intelligence and social network analysis. The Bayesian click-through rate learning and prediction technology adPredictor created and developed in this team shipped in adCenter’s production pipeline as part of the Bing release.

Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net, devotes himself to the application of mobile technology for positive social and environmental change in the developing world, and has spent the last 17 years working on projects in Africa. Recently, his research resulted in the development of FrontlineSMS, an award-winning text messaging-based field communication system designed to empower grassroots non-profit organisations. Ken graduated from Sussex University with honours in Social Anthropology with Development Studies, and was awarded a Stanford University Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship in 2006, and named a Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow in 2008. In 2009 he was named a Laureate of the Tech Awards, an international awards program which honours innovators from around the world who are applying technology to benefit humanity. He was also named a National Geographic Emerging Explorer in May 2010. Ken’s work was initially supported by the MacArthur Foundation, and he is the current recipient of grants from the Open Society Institute, Rockefeller Foundation, HIVOS, the Omidyar Network and the Hewlett Foundation.

Further details of Ken’s wider work are available on his website at www.kiwanja.net

Joichi Ito is the CEO of Creative Commons and founder and CEO of Neoteny, a venture capital firm focused on personal communications and enabling technologies.

He has created numerous Internet companies including PSINet Japan, Digital Garage and Infoseek Japan. In 1997 Time ranked him as a member of the CyberElite. In 2000 he was ranked among the “50 Stars of Asia” by Business Week and commended by the Japanese Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications for supporting the advancement of IT. In 2001 the World Economic Forum chose him as one of the 100 “Global Leaders of Tomorrow” for 2002. He was also listed by Vanity Fair as a member of “The Next Establishment” in 2007, and named by Businessweek as one of the 25 Most Influential People on the Web in 2008.

An experienced journalist, Christian Payne (AKA Documentally) maintains and host blogs and podcasts with readers and listeners in over sixty countries. With a hand in social media, citizen journalism, professional photography and audio and video podcasting.

His recent projects have included documenting the plight of Iraqi refugees for the United Nations; expanding the Open University’s new media remit; and working alongside Reuters on groundbreaking projects with Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

Christian shows by doing, he helps organisations place themselves on the platforms and devices of their audience and get them engaging. www.OurManInside.com