Sam Talks Technology

Peter Jones is the CEO of The Trusted Network and Smart Anchor Ventures.

He is passionate about business and technology, having over 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur, marketer and expert in digital marketing technology.

Between 1996-2003, Peter built and managed three Digital Agencies including Holmes & Marchant Digital, Arc Worldwide and TBWA-GGT Digital. Clients included Coca-Cola, Mars, Procter & Gamble, News International and Prudential.

In 2003, Peter launched Poindexter in the UK, a New York based digital marketing behavioural targeting platform, as the first of many Joint Ventures launching US businesses in UK and Europe.

He also co-founded Versatile Connections LLP in 2006, a specialist advisory firm focusing on identification, incubation and commercial acceleration of early-stage disruptive technologies in the digital media sector

As part of Versatile Connections, Peter has identified, launched, co-managed and advised a number of innovative and disruptive start-ups including:

SearchRev, UltraKnowledge, JiWire, Analogue Analytics and Klaustech Inc

In 2013, Peter founded The Trusted Network, a private members club for like-minded family offices, entrepreneurs, investors and corporate executives to share opportunities, invest, to network and make long-lasting friends.

Through Smart Anchor Ventures, he is now investing and raising investment for Welsh and UK businesses Start-up and Growth stage Welsh businesses with the potential to scale globally along with businesses that require succession planning.

Smart Anchor Ventures and its team offer a hands-on approach to Welsh and UK businesses looking to raise capital and scale.

Nicole Yershon is the CEO of the NY Collective, a business based in London but working all over the world. It applies the idea of collective intelligence through a leveraged model. That means it has virtually unlimited access to the very best resources in every discipline.

NYC is in business to remove the traditionally opaque practices of consulting and marketing agencies for the strategic and execution demands of its connecting the dots of a challenge and making it an opportunity.

Jane Dixon is the Managing Director of Willow Ridge Digital a full service agency with expertise in Analytics, Search, Merchandising, Personalisation, Email, CRM, SMS and Social Marketing.

Her clients come in all shapes and sizes, from big names like David Lloyd Gyms to small local start-ups. What they all have in common is a desire to get closer to their customers through exciting, highly personal, digital experiences.

Jane has over 15 years of experience in marketing tech, marketing automation and digital strategies having worked with many leading high street retailers including Burberry, Boots, Marks & Spencers and Easy Jet to name a few.

Lopa Patel (MBE) is a Digital CEO and entrepreneur with significant experience of creating start-ups and transforming businesses through technology.

The founder of two ventures in online media and a data-driven marketing consultancy, she is also the chair of equality and inclusion think tank Diversity UK; a Trustee of The Science Museum Group and a Non-Executive Director of the Intellectual Property Office (IPO).

She has previously been a Non-Executive Director of EMBG (Ethnic Minority Business Group), a Trustee of charity Raha International; a member of the DCMS BBC Charter Review Advisory Board; Deputy Chair of volunteering initiative, Sewa Day; a Board Member of social enterprise venture TSBC (The Small Business Consultancy); a Board Member of Tamasha Theatre Company and a Non-Executive Director of Becta (British Education Communications and Technology Agency), a Non-Departmental Public Body in the UK.

With a lifelong love of science and technology, she is an evangelist for STEM, innovation and bridging the skills gap in business. She has been recognised with many accolades including an MBE for services to the creative industries; the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion and an Honorary Doctorate by The Open University, in recognition of her efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in science and technology and her broader contribution to British industry, society and culture.

David Webster & Steve Kaminsky talked about the Web turning 30 this week. We discuss the early days of the web and the browser wars, when I was at Netscape, through to the present day with companies like Facebook and WeChat trying to replace the web with their silo'd platforms.

Finally, we discuss the future of the web. Can it become secure, private and distributed in the vision of Sir Tim Berners-Lee?

"the future is here it is just unevenly distributed" - William Gibson.

The first employee Google hired outside of the US.  She went became Google's UK MD before running AOL, Bebo, DailyMotion and BuzzFeed in Europe. 

We talked about her early days selling online classified adverts.  How Google changed online advertising forever and its' don't be evil' culture.

We discussed the major challenges facing Google from EU regulation and threats to break it up, as well as the opportunity and threat of voice search.

Katz Kiely is the CEO of Beep. (the Behavioural Empowerment Enterprise Platform). A platform to help leaders create a smart organisational memory from the bottom up by listening to the people that matter most, your employees. ie “It’s the people, stupid.”

She is a C-level award-winning business strategist and change agent. She built the first open innovation platform for HP, re-architected the way a UN agency does business and designed a behaviour change platform with Intel that connected mobiles, big screens and data.

She believes doing good is good business and is a proud ambassador for the Burning Man Foundation.

Matt Hodges-Long is CEO of TrackMyRisks, a SaaS Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) platform used by over 3,500 companies in 12 countries.

We make tracking spreadsheets, diary reminders, read receipts and nested file folders to manage GRC a thing of the past! We are proud to be helping over 3,500 companies get their GRC 'ducks in a row'. - Matt Hodges-Long

Sarah Lamb is the Digital Strategist at Digi.me whose mission is to enable a decentralised world where data is controlled by people for their own benefit and not held in silos by big companies.

She is also the founder Geek Girl Dinners. She began her career as a mobile .NET developer before joining Microsoft as an MSDN Evangelist and starting her side project Girl Geek Dinners to connect women in IT. This project grew to 100 countries running Girl Geek Dinners.

Benjamin Ellis is the CEO of SocialOptic, a SaaS driven technology business serving the Government, Education, Medical, Health and Professional Services sectors with AI/ML powered large-scale data analytics, planning and analysis tools.

Benjamin has worked at the cutting edge of technology and communication for over three decades, with expertise in Networks, Big Data, Machine Learning, data governance, privacy and security, organisational and perceptual psychology, and behavioural economics.

Benjamin has been a consulting engineer, a product manager, a Vice President of marketing, a CMO, a CTO, a CEO and an early stage investor and "Swiss Army Knife" employee in a long series of successful US and UK-based technology companies.

His efforts have taken multiple start ups from early stage to annual revenues in excess of $1 billion.