David Smith
David L. Smith, CEO of Mediasmith in San Francisco is a veteran in the advertising media management arena. David is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of new media application, media strategy, media planning and metrics. He has a number of awards to his name including an Effie and an ad:tech Individual Achievement award. He is a regular contributor to iMedia Connection, MediaPost and other publishers and is in demand as a speaker at media and metrics conferences worldwide. As CEO, he wears many hats at Mediasmith. This includes hands on with client strategy, first hand involvement in the next great thing in media research, a passion for applying the next technology that "really makes a difference" and personal communications with clients and future clients.
Misha Cornes
Group Director of Strategy at Organic.
Misha Cornes is Group Director of Strategy at Organic. With over 16 years of experience leading the evolution of global brands like Bank of America, Best Buy, Dell, eBay, Microsoft, Mitsubishi Motors, Sprint, and Target, Misha translates strategic marketing goals into exceptional online experiences. He provides leadership to cross-disciplinary creative teams, runs the San Francisco Strategy practice, and ensures that every project is rooted in a deep understanding of customer needs. A frequent writer and public speaker on topics around digital content, social media, and interactive planning, Misha is editor-in-chief of ThreeMinds, Organic's digital marketing blog. Prior to Organic, Misha was a strategist at Pentagram, a multi-disciplinary design firm, and a management consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton. Misha also has a history as an entrepreneur, co-founding a technology start-up aimed at converting ocean wave energy into electricity. A graduate of UC Davis and Yale University, Misha earned his MBA with Distinction from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was a Walter A. Haas Scholar.
Caroline Dangson
runs the Digital Marketplace and New Media Watch program, which delivers timely and frequent strategic news analysis and opinions about the most important events in the online marketplace. Her research for the Watch program covers all aspects of the Internet industry, including Internet advertising, premium online content, online retail sales and auctions, consumer online behavior as well as search and enabling technologies and infrastructure. Prior to her analyst role, Ms. Dangson worked in marketing at IDC to promote and support 40 subscription services in the Mobility, Computing, Consumer Markets, and New Media and Worldwide Telecommunications research groups. Her work was instrumental in the successful launch of IDC's Digital Marketplace: Media and Entertainment and Digital Marketplace and New Media Watch programs. Before joining IDC, Ms. Dangson served as a research coordinator for Harvard Medical School's Department of Psychiatry. In this role, Ms. Dangson administered a battery of cognitive assessments to patients to gather and analyze data for research studies sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health. Ms. Dangson also has work experience in the media as a writer and producer for FOX8 WGHP-TV News in North Carolina. As a producer, Ms. Dangson directed FOX8's entire one-hour morning newscast from start to finish. Ms. Dangson graduated with highest honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism and Mass Communication.
Sonya Chawla
Managing Director, Advertising; Slide
Sonya is the Senior Director, Advertising at Slide, where she is responsible for executing Slide's advertising strategy, building the sales organization, and managing agency relationships. Prior to Slide, Sonya led U.S. and UK sales for mobile video advertising leader Rhythm NewMedia. She also managed WhenU's reseller program, which accounted for 70 percent of the company's revenue, and successfully executed sales and partner programs for Prio, which was acquired by Infospace for $1 billion in 1999. Sonya started her professional career in the Technology Group of Prudential Securities' investment banking division. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from University of California at Berkeley and a Masters degree in International Affairs from Columbia University.
Christian Perry
Head Business Guy, Room Full of People
Christian is the co-founder of Room Full of People, a leading producer of events and conferences focused on the Social Web. In his role, he oversees the company's strategy, explores new opportunities and partnerships, and maintains an active role in developing and producing events. Christian stands among the leading influencers in emerging technology under the age of 25. He has been featured in Wired, Business 2.0, Red Herring, CNet, and a number of prominent technology blogs. Prior to founding Room Full of People, he was the founder of ZapTix, an online ticketing service, which was acquired in 2008. He holds an Associates Degree from Simon's Rock College and a B.A. from the University of Chicago, Class of 2006.
Dave Gentzel
Co-founder and VP of Product Development, SocialMedia
Dave Gentzel is co-founder and vice president of product development of SocialMedia Networks. Building compelling Web applications for over 10 years, Dave is the resident expert on what makes a successful social media application. Dave developed the extremely popular Facebook applications FoodFight and HappyHour, which have each attracted over three million users. Dave oversees and guides the strategic and creative product development at SocialMedia Networks. In 2006, Dave's creation of the widget Trakzor for MySpace, which enables users to monitor visitors to their profile pages, attracted 3.5 millions users and 40 million pageviews per month. Dave was immediately brought on board at SocialMedia Networks when the Facebook platform opened to developers, and continues to educate developers on how to make the most successful applications for advertisers. True to his entrepreneurial spirit, Dave has been actively building online business ventures since the age of 15. In 1998, he launched the Trintium Gaming Network, a Web hosting and advertising agency serving video game and entertainment Web sites, which delivered over 100 million hits to fans worldwide. Dave graduated summa cum laude from at Virginia Tech with a B.S. in business information technology.
Anna Banks
Vice President, Digital Strategy, McCann Worldgroup
Anna has over 16 years of experience designing and developing consumer experiences across the online and offline space. Currently she leverages her direct marketing roots to build out the measurement capabilities of McCann Worldgroup's social media practice. Anna also drives Microsoft's international Emerging Media Trials program, regularly traveling to Microsoft international subsidiaries, demonstrating how emerging media can be effectively integrated into local marketing plans. Anna joined McCann Worldgroup as a digital strategy director for MRM Worldwide, the relationship marketing arm of McCann Worldgroup. Before joining McCann Worldgroup, Anna was vice president of strategy at data powerhouse Harte-Hanks, where she focused on new business and the development of integrated relationship marketing programs. Prior to Harte-Hanks, she spent six years with the WPP Group, the holding company for Ogilvy & Mather and Y&R. After completing their highly selective WPP MBA Marketing Fellows Program, she transitioned to vice president, interactive director at RTC Relationship Marketing, a Wunderman agency in the WPP network. At RTC she created a new digital capability and managed the strategy and production of the agency's interactive department. In her time as interactive director, she led relationship programs for a variety of consumer, technology, B2B and pharmaceutical clients. During her tenure, the team was recognized with honors from the American Advertising Federation's ADDY Awards, Caples, the ICON Awards, and the ad:tech Awards. Anna also spent time as a marketing consultant for Africa Online, a start up Internet Service Provider, in Nairobi, Kenya. In this role she managed all of their marketing efforts including advertising, public relations, and events for a successful launch of the first Kenya-based ISP. A veteran to the technology industry, Anna started her career at Lotus Development Corporation (now an IBM subsidiary), where she honed her analytic skills as a direct marketing manager for both lead generation and installed-base communications. Anna holds bachelor's degree with honors from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard University.
Arthur Chan
SVP, Managing Director, Palisades Interactive
Arthur Chan represents a brain trust of entertainment marketing expertise at Palisades Interactive. Over the last 3 years, his team has consistently delivered innovative media and creative for clients such as MGM, New Line Cinema, Lionsgate, Miramax, The Weinstein Company, Paramount Vantage and Helio. Many notable campaigns have earned Palisades Interactive awards ranging from W3s to Movie Marking Key Art Awards. Arthur Chan has also earned multiple awards over the years including a Gold Media Lion at Canne, an Effie, Mediaweek's Media Plan of the Year and the Media Magazine's "Best of the Net" (Automotive). In 2005, Chan was named one of the "Rising Stars" of interactive marketing in OMMA magazine. His diverse agency background includes serving as an Associate Communications Director at Team One Advertising in Los Angeles, where he was responsible for directing strategy, planning and implementation of digital media on behalf of a client list that included Lexus, Lexus Dealer Association and Boost Mobile. Since 1996, Chan has also worked with Toyota, Acura and Sony Music on both interactive and traditional media.
Brian Aucoin
Partner, McCann World Partners
Brian has been working and playing in a digital capacity since early 1999. Through a number of agency stints, Brian has shown expertice in everything from online advertising, to mobile marketing and his current interest within advanced television platforms. Most recently he was with Mediaedge CIA in New York and then in Los Angeles. He developed online & emerging media strategy for such clients as Campbell Soup, XBOX, Sony Ericsson, Pizza Hut and Paramount Pictures. It was the Paramount opportunity that brought him west, as he accepted a postion heading up both Home Entertainment and Theatrical digital assignments (with an emphasis towards testing, learning and building in the digital emerging media space). In 2008 he joined the Universal McCann Interactive team in Los Angeles to head up the Sony Entertainment Digital team. Currently Brian manages a large & talented team tasked with creating engaging and attention-grabbing digital strategy for one of the largest Studios in the world. Within the agency assignment are the Theatrical, Home Entertainment, GSN and Sony Television divisions. If you know Brian, you know he has his hands in many cookie jars. When he is released from the office, he enjoys beach volleyball, mountain biking, camping, sailing and of course improv comedy.
Chris Cunningham
As the CEO of appssavvy, Chris Cunningham is responsible for establishing its position within the social media landscape. Believing that widgets and applications are the pinnacle of any viral and contextual marketing campaign, Chris has taken a strong advocacy position. His longstanding position as a leader in the digital advertising space allows appssavvy to make connections with top advertisers and gives credibility to the partner network. He is a frequent speaker on widget and application marketing and has spoken at iMedia, OMMA, Graphing Social, Widget Expo, Digital Hollywood, ad:tech and Piper Jaffray and was a driving force behind the highly successful first annual Widget Con in 2007. His efforts in this area have garnered uniformly positive press coverage in the Washington Post, BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Chris is also writes a monthly column for MediaPost. As a sales and new media entrepreneur, additional career highlights include: Global VP of Sales at Freewebs, VP of Sales at Bolt Media and Director of Sales for leading organizations including Digital Music Network and Music Vision where he pioneered the sales strategy for marketing online digital music platforms and built solid relationships with leading advertisers including Paramount, Verizon Wireless, Sony Pictures, Adidas, Proctor & Gamble and hundreds of other brands. Chris graduated from the University of North Carolina Greensboro with a degree in Economics & Marketing and is now based in New York City. He lives and works in SoHo, loves to travel and spends summer weekends in the Hamptons.
Davin Miyoshi
Davin is a co-founder and CEO of MesmoTV, the leading social TV community that, in less than a year, has amassed an audience of over 5 million passionate TV show fans on social platforms including Facebook and MySpace. MesmoTV users engage with TV show content in a number of ways including playing online casual social games and more traditional activities such as watching videos, participating in discussions, reading news, and acquiring show information. Davin previously helped build two Internet start-ups. In 1997 at Intraware, a pioneer in online digital media distribution, he was integral in helping the company achieve a $2+ billion market cap. After Intraware, Davin joined as VP of Business Development at EQuill, an early social web discovery company that was acquired by Microsoft. He started his career in Investment Banking at Montgomery Securities (acquired by Banc America Securities). Most recently, Davin led corporate development initiatives at 3Com. Davin serves on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors for Hands On Bay Area, a Bay Area non-profit where he previously served as the Board Chair and Treasurer. He received a Bachelors degree in Economics with honors from the University of California at Berkeley.
Helen Har
VP of Advertising Sales West, imeem
Helen serves as the Vice President of Advertising Sales, West at imeem where she is responsible for co-managing imeem's direct advertising sales and sales development teams. Together, these two groups manage advertiser communications strategy, marketplace outreach, integrated content sponsorships and program executions with brand partners. Previously, Helen was an executive at Time Inc.'s Sports Illustrated Golf Group, running national digital strategy and sales in New York. Prior to that, Helen spent a number of years working in sales and marketing at digital technology companies. Helen studied Biomechanics at UC Davis and has been part of the Big Brother, Big Sister program since 2002.
Ian Swanson
Ian Swanson is founder and CEO of Sometrics, an analytics company focused on social networking platforms. Sometrics provides detailed analytics of millions of daily users of social platforms like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and others. The Sometrics solution helps developers and advertisers better understand how people are using social media, so developers can monetize their applications and advertisers can more effectively reach their target audiences. Before launching Sometrics, Swanson was business development manager for Userplane, an AOL company that provides social media apps to hundreds of thousands of online communities, supporting millions of users daily. Swanson was instrumental in helping the company extend the reach of its hosted chat, IM and other communications apps, and in building the company's ad network. Before Userplane, he was an executive with Sprint and helped launch two mobile web startups. As a social media insider, Swanson has been invited to speak on many social media topics relating to platform apps, social marketing and performance-based analytics. Swanson actively advises several successful social networking applications, Fortune 500 companies and startups with their brand and marketing strategies within the social media ecosystem.
Kevin Barenblat
Kevin Barenblat is co-founder and CEO of [context], the premier provider of social marketing technology and services to the world's leading brands and advertising agencies. [context] offers a full suite of integrated social marketing solutions including social media ad buys, ad optimization, licensed branded applications, brand page management and promotion, and custom viral application development. [context]'s Social Application Server, the leading platform for viral marketing campaigns on social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, is used by brands such as Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Samsung, Ford, McDonald's, and Paramount Pictures. Kevin has a B.S. from Stanford University, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and 10 years of online marketing and business development experience.
Kim Kochaver
Director of Marketing, Federated Media
Kim Kochaver is Director of Marketing at Federated Media (FM), a leading digital media company that connects brands with the highest-quality conversational content on the web. Kim is currently heading up FM's conversational measurement initiatives, both to better understand and quantify audience in this emerging media as well as to help establish standards, frameworks and tools to help marketers gain greater insight into the value of their online campaigns. Kim has worked in the advertising industry for over 15 years, most recently at McCann Erickson, where she led the Microsoft Developer account. She has managed integrated brand campaigns for clients such as Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Macy's, Amazon and drugstore.com and now leverages her many years of agency experience to bring a high level of insight into social media and conversational marketing.
Mike La Rotonda
Mike La Rotonda is the CEO and Chief Product Officer of Votigo and is a seasoned product leader with over 12 years of experience creating and managing consumer internet services for companies such as Yahoo!, ConsumerReview, and PointCast. For the past 9 years, Mike has focused on online communities and user-generated media. Since co-founding Votigo, Mike has helped several leading consumer brands, including Victoria's Secret PINK, ConocoPhillips, and Gardenburger, as well as top-tier advertising and marketing agencies, like Fleishman-Hillard, MWW Group, and Fanscape, develop and implement innovative social media marketing campaigns. He is also a contributor to Adotas.
Peter Vogel
Senior Director of Marketing, Memolink, Inc.
Peter Vogel is a ten year industry veteran with expertise in performance based advertising, affiliate programs, media buying and monetization of social media. As a pioneer in CPA based advertising Vogel led Memolink's sales team from 1997 - 2002 establishing relationships with fortune 500 advertisers when performance based advertising was still in it's infancy. Currently Vogel serves as Memolink's Senior Director of Marketing and Industry Scout for, attending 2 -3 trade shows per month, to keep tabs on Industry trends and gain strategic insights for new business units. As social media has blossomed into a thriving industry, Vogel has become recognized as an expert in social media monetization, regularly writing and speaking about it's enormous potential.
Rachel Masters
VP of Strategic Relationships, Ning, Inc.
Rachel Masters is Vice President of Strategic Relationships for Ning, Inc., social networking service with a twist - it empowers people to create their own social websites and social networks. Previously Rachel was the Associate Director of Strategic Relationship and Business Development at Warner Music Group. In this role, she launched new relationships with innovative digital media companies such as YouTube. Prior to Warner Music Group, she was an Associate at StarVest Partner, L.P. a New York-based venture capital fund whose portfolio companies include NetSuite and ComparisonMarkets. Rachel was also a television producer at Cablevision, Fox and MTV Networks. She holds a B.A. from Brandies University, where she was named a University Scholar and graduated cum laude and with High Honors. Rachel also received a MBA from New York University's Stern School of Business. Outside of the office she likes to ski down fresh powder, see live music and travel.
Steve Hall
Steve has written about and spoken for industry associations on topics such as the advertising's role in consumer-controlled media, the integration of public relations and advertising, the future convergence of media, and the decline of traditional media. He is co-founder of MarketingVOX, an online marketing publication, co-founder and publisher of the ad:tech industry trade show weblog and creator of the advertising social network AdGabber.
Steve Polsky
President and COO; Flixster Inc.
Steve Polsky is President and COO of Flixster Inc., an online movie and entertainment community. Flixster was launched the end of December 2005 and, in a little over two years, has grown to a top ten online movies and entertainment destination. Flixster is a leading application across Facebook, MySpace and Bebo with over 15 million monthly unique visitors actively rating, reviewing, recommending and socializing around films. Prior to Flixster, Steve's career has centered around founding, launching and managing early stage technology ventures. Steve was Founder and EVP of VoicePlex Corporation an early innovator in providing systems and services to wireless carriers in the US and overseas which was acquired in 1994 by Intervoice. Steve was also an initial team member and head of business development for Amber Networks an Internet infrastructure company acquired by Nokia in 2001. Finally, Steve was SVP of Business and Corporate Development for Edusoft, a leading provider of solutions for public schools through out the US acquired by Houghton Mifflin in 2003. Steve is a lecturer for the Wharton School of Business's Undergraduate Course in Entrepreneurship, serves on the boards of kTC Corporation and the University of Pennsylvania's Management and Technology Program. He is also actively involved in local charitable board work in San Francisco. Steve also holds five patents in the telecommunications network architecture.
Troy Young
Chief Marketing Officer, VideoEgg
Troy Young began his work in interactive media in 1992 when he worked on the launch and management of the first newspaper-owned online service in Canada. Troy later worked in marketing and sales at CTV, Canada's largest television network. Prior to joining VideoEgg, Troy served as EVP and chief experience officer at Organic, one of the world's leading digital marketing agencies. Troy spent his first three years with the company building the Canada office. Prior to joining Organic, Troy was a co-founder and managing director of Vickers & Benson Direct, Interactive (now Arnold Worldwide). Troy is a seasoned speaker and often lends his expertise on digital media to conference audiences nationwide. Recently, Troy has participated on panels at AdAge Digital Marketing Conference, ClickZ Specifics: Online Video Advertising, Digital Hollywood Spring 2007 and 2008, Digital Hollywood Fall 2007, OMMA Video and Thomas Weisel's Internet & Digital Media Conference. Troy has held board and advisory positions with several Internet and marketing firms. He is a graduate of the Queen's University Business School.
Warren Ackerman
Warren Ackerman is Principal and Vice President of the word-of-mouth and social media marketing agency Affinitive, heading up the San Francisco office. Warren has over 12 years of interactive marketing experience in positions based in New York, San Francisco, Hong Kong and Sydney. His accomplished track record of marketing brands, products and services has been instrumental to Affinitive's development since he joined in 2003. Prior to Affinitive, Warren managed e-commerce for Australia's largest sports & entertainment ticketing company, performed account services at the interactive agency The Web Connection (now Ion Global) in Hong Kong (managing Citibank, Mandarin Oriental Hotels and STAR TV accounts) and started his career in finance in the international emerging markets group of Merrill Lynch. Warren holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Vermont.
