MARIYA GABRIEL

European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society

Mariya Gabriel is the European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society since July 2017. The overall objective of her overarching portfolio aims at the full realization of the Digital Single Market. Her strategic vision has consistently placed European citizens at the center of the policies, helping them acquire digital skills to succeed in the digital transformation process. She has focused her efforts on putting forward an ambitious digital programme in the context of the next MFF, investing in HPC, AI, cyber security, but also the creative, audio-visual industries and media, bringing benefits to all European citizens. She has extensively engaged with external EU partners to enhance digital cooperation, in particular with the Western Balkans and the Mediterranean region.
Mariya Gabriel served as Member of the European Parliament from 2009 to July 2017. Being the EPP Group Vice-President, she tackled issues related to EU enlargement, Mediterranean region, Middle East and Africa and focused on priorities, e.g. security, migration, women issues. Mariya Gabriel also has considerable achievements in the area of the EU visa policy - she is the EP rapporteur on 1/3 of all EU visa liberalisation agreements.
She was awarded twice the prestigious prize "MEP of the year" - in 2016 for the Development category, and in 2013 for the Gender equality category. She is the 2018 winner of the prize "Tecnovisionarie" awarding excellence in research, technology, innovation, and business. In 2017 she was honored with the Royal Spanish Order of Civil Merit for her contribution to the foreign relations of the country and 2016 - with the Columbian Order of San Carlos for merits to the country in international relations and diplomacy.

Andrew Weld-Moore

Manager Global Marketing Solutions at Facebook

Andrew Weld-Moore is Head of Digital Business for the CEE region at Facebook’s Europe, Middle East and Africa headquarters in Dublin and oversees general management responsibilities while serving as a cross functional liaison, working with product, engineering, sales, business development, marketing and finance to drive Facebook’s most important strategic priorities within the region. He joined Facebook after a number of years at UTV Radio, where he was responsible for strategic sales & marketing policies, driving revenue across the company’s portfolio of radio stations. In that role he helped build UTV’s radio network into one of the largest in the UK/IRE marketplace. He also sits on the board of UNICEF Ireland.

DRAYTON BIRD

Top Marketing expert, known as the "father of the direct marketing"

In 2003, The Chartered Institute of Marketing named Drayton Bird one of the 50 people in the world who have shaped today`s marketing. David Ogilvy said he “knows more about direct marketing than anyone in the world”. Former Worldwide Vice Chairman and Creative Director of the agency now Ogilvy One he has had 60 years’ experience in 55 countries. He has worked for some of the world’s biggest brands including Audi, Bentley, British Airways, Cisco, Deutsche Post, Ford, IBM, McKinsey, Mercedes, Microsoft, Nestle, Philips, P & G, Toyota, Unilever, Visa and Volkswagen. As a writer, Drayton has helped sell a variety of products – from Airbus aircraft to the Peppa Pig animation. He has written 6 books, out in 17 languages, one “Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing” has been a bestseller since 1982. David Ogilvy also said his speeches are “Instructive and hilariously funny.”

JOHN TSCHOHL

Customer Service strategist and best-selling author

Called the “Guru of customer service” by USA today, Times and Entrepreneur magazine, John Tschohl is a internationally recognized service strategist and President of service quality institute, the global leader in Customer service.
For the last 34 years he has solely focused on helping organizations drive a service culture and create a customer experience through his technology built on practicality, simplicity and common sense.
With his credibility and focus on empowerment and the power of the social media he has the ability to emotionally communicate the power of the service strategy from Top executives to the total workforce.
Tschohl is dynamic, hard hitting, and inspirational. He will create an emotional Buy-in using measurable data that CEO’s respond to.
His books are recognized and highly esteemed by Senior executives as the most powerful must-reads in Customer Service.
John’s message is based on common sense built around his 44 years in speaking, designing training programs and developing a high performance workforce.
He is featured on major television shows from Good Morning America, CNBC and PBS to USA Today’s cover story, newspapers, radio stations, and magazines from almost every corner of the world. John’s technology and books are translated in 11 languages, represented in over 45 countries, and 90 percent of Service Quality Institute’s business is international.

MARCIN OLENDER

Public Policy and Government Relations Manager CEE at Google

Lawyer and alumnus of the National School of Public Administration of Poland. During his career he has worked in private legal practice, as well as several public institutions and ministries. Before joining Google’s CEE public policy team he was head of EU affairs unit at the Ministry of Administration and Digitization, where he lead the negotiations on the general data protection regulation and network information security directive for the Polish side, as well as dealing with other internet-related matters, such as digital copyright, audiovisual media services and net neutrality.

Shed Simove

Entrepreneur and must-see keynote motivational speaker, CREATIVITY, INNOVATION, SALES & GUERRILLA MARKETING

Shed Simove is an entrepreneur, author and keynote speaker. His core areas of expertise are creativity, innovation, guerrilla marketing and generating ideas which lead to increased sales and opportunities. Following a degree in Experimental Psychology at Balliol College, Oxford, and two years working in Disney World, Shed worked in TV Production, heading up programmes including The Big Breakfast and Big Brother. He then went on to forge a highly innovative merchandising empire – creating conceptual gifts, executive toys, best-selling adult sweets, books, greetings cards, and even his own currency. To date, Shed has sold over 1.5 million novelty gifts worldwide and has won Gift Of The Year twice. He is also the creator of Deets - an innovative app (and official sponsor of this conference), that allows people to swap and import their contact details, eliminating the need for business cards!
Shed performs highly memorable, entertaining, instructive and inspiring talks that showcase his business insights, methods for sales growth, tips for creative thinking and his amazing adventures. He uses his own entrepreneurial journeys to deliver concrete techniques that give any company, organisation or audience practical methods for creative thinking and ways to come up with new ideas, and his talks help people to think differently in order to obtain huge success.

Gina London

CEO of Language of Leadership Ltd. and former CNN anchor.

She has worked and lived in dozens of countries across six continents and she is proud that her speaking, training and coaching transform and positively influence lives. An Emmy-winning former CNN correspondent and anchor, Gina brings her passion for people and helping leaders tell their stories better to whatever event she is privileged to be a part of. She is an internationally recognized high energy speaker, facilitator and premier strategic communications expert based in Ireland.

Dale Howarth

Business Mentor, Professional Speaker & Writer delivering ‘Practical Lessons for Better Business’

For over 20 years he has mentored leaders and teams from new start businesses to some of today’s most successful SME’s. From new start businesses, entrepreneurial spirits and SME’s to well-known corporate clients, across a broad range of industries and sectors. He is an officer and board member to several companies.

ROD BANNER

Investor, Entrepreneur, Marketer, Brand and Proposition Architect [UK]

Rod is a MADtech lifer – Marketing Advertising and Technology. He founded the technology marketing group, „Banner Corporation”. It had grown to become the largest Business to Business agency in Europe. In 2014 Rod made it into the TechCity Insider 100 list and the 2014/15 Fresh Business Thinking Power 100. In 2015 he was chosen as one of The Maserati 100 – A list of UK-based entrepreneurs who are giving back to the next generation. Rod is also an angel investor – specialising in MADtech Specialties: Architecting and building brands. Discovering and telling corporate ‘stories’. Monetising social media, mobile and marketing automation. 25 plus years in creating tangible, marketing-driven success for technology companies located in EMEA.

MARC WESSELINK

Founder of Venturerock

Marc is a serial entrepreneur who started 12 companies between 1994 and 2008 and invested in over 150 between 2004 and 2018. His purpose in life is to help as many entrepreneurs become successful founders of companies which can create an impact. He is active in Europe & Africa.

As one of the founding partners of Startupbootcamp, he was part of the global roll out and recruited over 160 companies for the Amsterdam & Cape Town programs and have helped them raised over 150 MIO EUR funding. He was responsible of managing the portfolio of Startupbootcamp with a value of over 500 MIO EUR.

Since October 2018 he started his next challenge since the investment landscape in Europe & Africa is still in need of one: How to improve investment in Pre-Seed, Seed & Early Stage companies. He has created an entire digital way of investing in early stage companies at large scale and de-risk it at the same time. The platform will be capable in investing > 150 companies a year by using automated processes and follow on investment based on real time data. The fund will also offer execution power with a network of experienced professionals who will help single founders, founder teams & corporates to start & scale a company.

Jonathan Bixby

Active angel investor, Executive Director at Growlab [CA]

Jonathan currently invests out of both Stanley Park Ventures and Oak Mason Investments. Jonathan is a founder and on the Board of Advisors of HIGHLINE.VC a VC backed Co-Venture Platform with programming in four cities (Vancouver, Toronto, San Francisco, New York) and powered by some of Canada’s best entrepreneurs, investors and ecosystem partners. HIGHLINE is a merger of GrowLab and Extreme Startups. Jonathan was the Executive Director of GrowLab before merging with Extreme Startups. Jonathan Bixby was the CEO and a co-founder of Strangeloop Networks, creator of the first network appliance and cloud service for accelerating dynamic web applications. The Strangeloop Site Optimizer dramatically increases the performance of revenue generating websites, allowing for faster page loads, higher conversion and revenue. Under Jonathan’s leadership, Strangeloop raised over $21M in financing, including a Series A round of $11.5 million, one of the largest rounds of private Series A financing for a technology start-up in Canadian history. Strangeloop was selected the Best Employer in British Columbia for a record five straight years (2008 to 2013).

Michael Roberts

Lead Solution Engineer @ Salesforce

Michael started his career as a digital marketer and quickly became a thought leader on B2B Marketing trends in Australia. He is passionate thinking about how data and artificial intelligence is helping brands to deliver more personalised messages across every channel. He is an energetic communicator, speaking at Salesforce World Tour, Dreamforce and the B2B Marketing Leadership Forum in Australia. Michael is also passionate about #EqualityForAll, founding Salesforce`s interfaith group, Faithforce globally.

Fahim R. Kibria

CMO at Kotler Impact Inc. and Executive Director of the World Marketing Summit Group

Dr. Fahim R. Kibria is also working as exclusive Business Director worldwide for Professor Philip Kotler, the one & only re-known Guru of marketing whose books are taught in all the business colleges & universities around the globe. Lately, they together launched Kotler Business Program in collaboration with Pearson Education UK, in 35 + countries (to-date) around the world. Prior to joining Kotler Impact Inc., he worked as marketing management consultant with Prof. Philip Kotler. As Director on the Pan-American desk, his primary role in providing consultancy to both private and public sectors. Prior to that, he worked as Director Strategy & Business Development at Philip Morris, spearheaded the firm`s Global Products Development strategy firstly out of Albany-NY, and then in Toronto, where he moved to redefine the Canadian business. Fahim is also involved in marketing consultations to companies worldwide, while assisting for corporate governance assessments and improvement plans in NAFTA, SAARC, SAFTA & ASEAN.

Denis Rothman

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Deep Learning

Larry Biehl

Founder of Interculture and founder of Bulgarian Entrepreneurship Center (BEC)

Larry Biehl graduated Stanford University. After developing his own business in Silicon Valley, he starts helping young entrepreneurs to do the same. For over 50 years, he is a financial advisor and investment manager for different startups all over the world. He is the founder of Interculture foundation which finances the project Bulgarian Entrepreneurship Center.