Ashley Friedlein, CEO, Econsultancy

Ashley is one of the most influential and connected figures in the UK digital marketing and e-commerce sector. As a recommendation for him on LinkedIn reads, “If Ashley doesn’t know it – it ain’t worth knowing.”

He writes for a range of publications and is the author of two best-selling books which have been translated internationally. Ashley speaks worldwide at industry events, as well as making media appearances to promote both his own company, Econsultancy, and the interests of the sector in general.

He founded Econsultancy in 1999 with business partner Matthew O'Riordan. This award-winning company now has over 100,000 members worldwide, opening its first US office in New York in January 2009, and now also operating in the Far East, and Australia.  It's members include the cream of international media, retail, cultural and financial service organisations, as well as government departments. Econsultancy helps its members learn, make better decisions, build business cases, find the best suppliers, accelerate their careers and lead the way in best practice via research reports, how-to guides, training and development, forums and professional networking.

After graduating in 1995 with a 1st Class degree from Cambridge University, Ashley started out working in digital TV. After a brief spell as Producer at FT.com, his career took him to digital communications agency Wheel (now LBi) where he rose to Lead Strategist and launched numerous multi-million pound websites for major brands like Marks & Spencer, Five, Argos, Autoglass etc.

Following the dotcom crash he spent a pleasant year in the South of France writing the first of two best-selling books on web management (50,000 copies sold world-wide, translated into 4 languages). He is 38, married with two children.  In his spare time he enjoys photography, art collecting and a range of sports including skiing, walking, cycling and yoga. More recently he has taken up boxing, polo and poker...

Ashley contributes to many publications as well as the Econsultancy blog and his Twitter feed.

Gerd Leonhard, CEO, Futures Agency

The WSJ calls Futurist, Author and CEO of The Futures Agency Gerd Leonhard "one of the leading media-futurists in the world". Gerd is considered a thought-leader and global influencer in the media / content, technology, marketing & communications, telecom, and cultural industries, with a client list that includes many leading global companies. He delivers provocative yet inspiring presentations with "great balance of content covering innovations that are already upon us versus those that are still hypothetical" [client quote]. Gerd is also an author, a strategic adviser, and a fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts (London). Since 2011, Gerd's area of expertise also includes important "green" topics. He lives in Basel, Switzerland, and on the airplane.

Bruce Daisley, Director, Twitter UK

Bruce Daisley joined Twitter in 2012 as UK Director - he is responsible for generating advertising revenue for Twitter in the UK market. He previously ran Google's display business with responsibility for YouTube and the Google Display Network. He has also worked at Emap/Bauer and Capital Radio. In 2010 New Media Age recognised Bruce as having made the Greatest Individual Contribution to new media in the UK.

Bruce divides his time between pop music and laughing. He writes about things for the Huffington Post and tweets about them as @brucedaisley.

James Carson, Founder, Carson Content

James is founder of Carson Content, a content strategy consultancy that focuses on building engaged audiences for media companies and lifestyle e-commerce brands.

He was previously Head of Digital Marketing at Bauer Media, working on content strategy and digital audience growth for FHM, Grazia and heat. He has also had previous content roles at Greenlight Search Marketing and SEGA Games Europe.

He's spoken at a number of digital marketing events, focusing on social / search integration into content strategy and the wider marketing mix. James has a degree in English and History from the University of York and you can follow him at @mrjamescarson.

Will Critchlow, Founder, Distilled

Will founded Distilled with Duncan in 2005. Since then, he has consulted with some of the world’s largest organisations and most famous websites, spoken at most major industry events and regularly appeared in local and national press.

Previous jobs included programmer, strategy consultant in the telecoms industry and floor sweeper. He hated sweeping.

Neil Perkin, Founder, Only Dead Fish

Neil is a renowned blogger, writer and the founder of Only Dead Fish, a digital and media consultancy that specialises in applying strategic understanding of social and emerging media technologies to help businesses innovate and optimise their effectiveness within the new, networked communications environment.

Neil has over 20 years media owner experience and was latterly the Director of Marketing & Strategy and Digital for IPC Media, the largest consumer publisher in the UK and publisher of multimedia brands including Wallpaper, Marie Claire and the NME. In this capacity he ran award-winning strategy, planning and consumer insight functions and was at the centre of defining and implementing the digital strategy for one of the largest media owners in the UK.

Neil is an associate of The Futures Agency, a collaboration of some of the world's leading media thinkers and futurists, and for people who like shiny things, has won more industry awards than just about anyone in UK media, with five awards to his name including a Campaign Award, two Media Week Awards and an Association of Online Publishers award.

Toby Barnes, Product Strategy Director, AKQA

Toby is Product Strategy Director at AKQA, London where he leads the conception and creation of branded content and services, for companies including Nike, Barclays, Tui Travel, EDF, and Nissan.

Since 1995, Toby has been delivering award winning digital products and services, working in many roles in media and digital through publishing, production and development. His career has spanned across a number of key industry leaders such as Emap, Virgin, MTV Networks, and Two Way TV Games. He has also worked with a number of global clients including Microsoft, SCEE, Electronic Arts, RSC, Channel 4 and Mattel. He was a founding member of Virgin Media's Interactive Division launching Europe's first commercial interactive TV service.

Before joining AKQA, Toby was one of the principals at the Mudlark Production Company, and Executive Producer on Chromaroma, a successful urban social game that uses your Oyster card journeys as a currency for play.

Antony Mayfield, Founding Partner, Brilliant Noise

Antony Mayfield is Founding Partner at Brilliant Noise, a digital strategy agency working with brands including Porsche, Nokia, Kiddicare/Morrisons, University of Warwick and Picturehouse Cinemas.

He is the author of the best-selling book on how to manage personal reputation online, Me and My Web Shadow, which has been published in several countries by Bloomsbury.

In 2006, he founded the content and social media teams at iCrossing, which became the largest independent digital marketing firm in the world, before being sold to Hearst Media in 2010. Prior to iCrossing, Antony spent a decade in journalism and corporate communications, most recently as a director in the Bell Pottinger Group.

Sarah Wood, Co-founder and COO, Unruly

Sarah Wood is co-founder and COO of Unruly. She’s responsible for ensuring the company delivers the most awesome social video campaigns on the planet. Sarah convenes an MPhil course in Online Video Culture at the University of Cambridge and was voted 2011 UK Female Entrepreneur of the Year. She has been a member of Social Media Week’s Global Advisory Board since 2011.

When not working, Sarah spends way too much time on the ViralVideoChartwatching clips of kittens with her kids.

Steve Callanan, CEO, wireWAX

Steve studied Electronic Engineering but started his career in television production; producing over a hundred hours of prime time television before establishing his own successful production company, Wiseguy Pictures.

In 2005/6 video on the web became a viable asset and demand for short-form content grew. Wiseguy was credited with producing over 400 hours of short-form video every year working with publishers and brands who were looking for TV production standards for branded, commercial, online video. It was while producing content featuring products that brands were trying to sell, that it became clear that allowing viewers to click products in the video to buy on impulse would make much more sense.

After two years of development wireWAX was born and thousands of their users make their videos interactive using the free platform. Brands, agencies and broadcasters pay to unlock the extra features and customization to create powerful, engaging experiences with video. Successful partnerships include shoppable videos with Tommy Hilfiger, Rip Curl, SSENSE, ASOS, Target and Nike; as well as engaging video experiences with ITV, Channel 4, EMI and many more. Steve believes the future of the technology is all about making video intelligent; making the rest of the web understand what those pixels represent and... connecting all the dots.

Mark Cridge, Director of Consulting, BERG

Mark is Director of Consulting at BERG. He has worked in digital since 1995 when he left the world of architecture realising that it just wasn’t his cup of tea. After stints as an art director at agencies in Birmingham and London, he founded his own agency glue London in 1999; the UK’s original digital advertising agency. In 2010, he became Global Managing Director of Aegis Media’s global creative network Isobar, comprising 3,000 people in 34 markets, working with an enviable client list including; adidas, Coca Cola, Kellogg’s, P&G, The Guardian and Google.

After a step away from the world of advertising and an extended sabbatical Mark joined BERG in September 2012 to help grow and develop their consultancy.

A regular speaker at industry events he has sat on numerous awards juries, was cited by Campaign Magazine as a ‘Face to Watch’ way back in 2000, featured in the FT Creative Business 50, became an IPA Fellow in 2010 and was hilariously recently entered into the BIMA Digital Hall of Fame.

Dr Kate Stone, Founder and Managing Director, Novalia

Novalia develops technology to enable any printed item to become interactive. They use traditional print processes to deposit conductive inks alongside the graphic inks and compliment this by embedding a silicon chip in/on the print.

Kate Stone founded Novalia after being part of a Cambridge (UK) start-up company that was focussed on printing transistors. She realised however that this only enables products in the far future, and is a long way from being compatible with real world print.

Kate’s background started with a degree in electronics followed by a PhD in Physics. Although she knew nothing about printing, she was fascinated by it as a manufacturing process, and her education in print was a baptism of fire.

She bought a Gallus EM280 Flexo Label press with a lot of credit cards and figured out how to use it to do things she was told shouldn’t be done!

Simon Andrews, Founder, addictive

addictive is the business Simon launched in 2010. Clients hire addictive for mobile and social strategy, big ideas and to develop the apps etc needed to bring these ideas to life. Clients include ClearChannel, Intel, A&N Media & sofa.com. Addictive has a strong reputation as a thought leader. Senior people at Google, Facebook, eBay & Yahoo - as well as brands and agencies - read their weekly newsletter Mobile Fix.

Simon is a frequent speaker – recent platforms include Millward Brown, Google Firestarters and internal events at Google and Facebook. He has also spoken at events in the US, Brazil and China.

Simon has been running digital agencies since 1995 launching what became Modem Media in Europe. In 1999, he joined ad agency DLKW and grew Dialogue into one of London’s top digital agencies. He joined WPP MindShare in November 2006 as Global Chief Digital Strategy Officer.

Graham Cooke, Founder/CEO, Qubit

In 2010, Graham Cooke and three other ambitious Googlers flew the nest and formed a new breed of data intelligence company. Qubit's mission is to help businesses get closer to their customers by discovering behavioural insights in visitor data and delivering personalised content to improve the online experience.

In three years, Qubit has grown from four to over 50 people, and features a hearty mix of data scientists, artificial intelligence engineers and visionary analysts. The secret to their rapid growth lies in Graham's instinctive ability to embrace the latest technological breakthroughs, taking advantage of the cloud and advances in big data processing power. He honed these skills whilst working as Google's Global Leader on their ecommerce effectiveness strategy and also whilst driving Google’s internal strategy to develop an ecosystem to improve websites.

Graham has always been wired into interesting technology and cut his teeth whilst creating a new on-demand TV box in his pre-Google days. No stranger to the limelight, Graham has appeared numerous times for Google and Qubit on the FT, BBC, CNN, ITV and at regularly inspires crowds at ecommerce events.

Chris Smith, Product Manager, Emerging Technologies, FT

Chris Smith was appointed product manager for emerging technologies in September 2011. He is responsible for both web and native mobile apps across iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows 8 and other platforms, including the ground-breaking FT web app.  

Before joining the Financial Times, Chris worked on fixed and mobile content products at telecommunications provider Orange.