Aaron Strout, Vice President of Social Media of mZinga.


As Vice President of Social Media, Aaron focuses on creating business value for Mzinga through viral marketing channels, including blogs, podcasts, twitter, and webinars.



Aaron brings 15 years of online marketing and advertising experience to Mzinga, including a strong background in interactive and new media.

Brett McConnell, Community Manager for Kablink.com



Brent McConnell is the Director of Community Management for the ICEcore project, an open source team collaboration software endeavor. Prior to joining ICEcore as a paid member of the team, Brent spent 7 years with Hewlett Packards working in their Linux Expertise Center helping HP partners take full advantage of the Linux kernel on HP hardware.

Michael Pratt, Chief Technology Officer of GiftGirl.com



Evangelist & Technologist for our web properties http://giftgirl.com & http://styleobserver.com. A whole new approach to gifts and fashion/style. Interested in all things related to creating a better user experience and developing better ways to deliver guidance & advice.

Jeevan Padiyar of The Connectors Group



Mr. Padiyar is a technology entrepreneur and investor who has successfully built and exited several technology companies. Jeevan brings extensive experience in financial and competitive analysis, corporate re-structuring, private placements for early stage corporations, branding/brand management, new media, project management and operations. Currently Jeevan serves as an advisor to Squarespace, Inc.(a website/blog SAAS), Chairman of Intersuasive, Inc (a guerrilla marketing company), and is a principal in element^n (a rapid application technology firm).

Daniella Barbosa & Chris Saad Co founders of The Portability Project




Daniella, an information junkie fascinated by trends in information delivery and helping customers achieve successful information delivery and search strategies for users including collaboration with social software and other web 2.0 applications.Co-founder of the DataPortability.org project and current Chairperson of the Steering Committee.




Chris Saad founded and hosted the live radio/internet show Radioactive in 1997, and continued with the project until May 2000. The show also integrated online functionality with chat, forums, and voting to create an immersive experience. During this time he founded RedShift Pty Ltd, which he was involved with until 2006. He is currently involved with Faraday Media, APML Workgroup, Media 2.0 Workgroup, and DataPortability (all of which were co-founded by him).

Liam Supple, Director of Product Marketing & Hai Halbot, Marketing Manager of Conduit.com



Conduit provides website syndication solutions for web publishers that increase site traffic, revenue, and brand loyalty while simplifying access to the content, communities and applications that subscribers care about most. By creating a direct, always-on connection between publishers and subscribers, Conduit opens new channels for real-time communication and commerce. More than 140,000 publishers have joined the Conduit network worldwide, including major brands such as Fox News, Lufthansa, Major League Baseball, Greenpeace, TechCrunch, Softonic and small and medium organizations in 180 countries around the globe. Web publishers who become part of the Conduit network have the opportunity to syndicate their website content and applications directly to the browser by allowing subscribers to add them as simply as adding an RSS feed.

Michael Troiano Chief Executive Officer of Matchmine


Mike Troiano is a proven entrepreneurial leader with a track record of successes at the intersection of new technology and broad consumer adoption. He joined matchmine as CEO in November 2006 and has led the company to the successful launch of its product line and business strategy at DEMO2007.





In 1996, Mike co-founded New York-based strategic Internet services firm Brandscape. As the firm's CEO, he established client relationships with Unilever, HP, and EMC, before combining assets of that firm with Primix Solutions (NASDAQ: PMIX) in late 1998. A year later, he became President of Primix, increasing the annualized revenues from $5.6 MM to $30.8 MM, doubling gross margins, and adding nearly $200 MM in shareholder value.




Mike's views on digital media and marketing strategy have been featured in Forbes, Adweek, Advertising Age, CNET, HomePC, and the PBS program Frontline.

Mike holds a Bachelor's Degree in Public Communication from Cornell University and a Master's Degree in Business Administration from the Harvard Business School.

Sam Michel, Founder & Director of Chinwag.com



Sam, founded Chinwag, one of the UK's leading communities for new media and digital marketing professionals.



Chinwag is working with UKTI (part of the UK government) on Digital Mission to Web 2.0 Expo, a trade mission of some of the leading UK digital companies.

Luca Mascaro, Chief strategy officer of Dixero SA



Luca has more than 10 years of experience in information design, user interface design, interaction design, and accessibility for Web sites and Web applications. He is founder of SketchIn—a user experience design and strategy consultancy located in Lugano, Switzerland—and co-founder and UX manager at Phiware Engineering—a Swiss firm specializing in enterprise applications. Luca’s work focuses on agile UX design, applying user-centered design principles to projects for clients such as Generali Assurance, Swiss-Italian Television, the Swiss Post, and Italy’s Innovation Department. Luca is president of IOSHI (International Organization for Standards in Human/Computer Interfaces)—an association that promotes standards in Human/Computer interfaces—is a member of many international organizations—such as IWA/HWG (International Webmasters Association/HTML Writers Guild) and UPA (Usability Professionals’ Association)—and participates in the W3C HTML, Web Content Accessibility, and Web Application working groups as well as that for ISO software ergonomics.

Nicole Simon of CruelToBeKind.org



Nicole is a European pioneer with a passion for digital rights, social media and the way technology is revolutionising how we live and interact with each other. She has an eagle eye for detail and a talent for (beta) testing your products, ideas, business plans, and other things related to social media and the impact you can have.



Never shy of 'expressing difficult truths' or offering up stingingly constructive criticism, she is certainly cruel to be kind (http://crueltobekind.org), but leaves you feeling glad you asked for her help. As the queen of the pre-conference podcast, she is a familiar face at major tech and social media events in Europe.



When she's not extending her own personal blogging empire, Nicole enjoys consulting, teaching and speaking on how the online world can benefit business.