The Nesta Innovation Edge
Speaker Profiles
Profile
Helen is the Chief Executive of The Economist Group. She was appointed as a director in November 1996 and as Group Chief Executive in January 1997. Having joined the company in 1984, she was circulation and marketing director of The Economist from 1987 to 1993 and managing director of the Economist Intelligence Unit from 1993 until the end of 1996. Helen is a non-executive director of Centrica and of Rolls-Royce Group.
Profile
Giles spent the first ten years of his career in the motor industry pursuing his interest in all things automotive. This included co-founding Caverdale in 1992, a start-up taken to a £250m turnover motor retailer and sold for £45m. Giles then set up his own consultancy business whose clients included Tesco and Tesco Personal Finance. In 2004 Giles co-founded Zopa and led four fundraisings as CFO, raising a total of $33m. Giles is one of two Executive Directors on the Global Zopa Board since 2006 and in July 2007 he was appointed UK Managing Director. Giles holds an MA from Oxford and an MBA from INSEAD.
Profile
A graduate of Oxford University, Tim holds the 3Com Founders chair and is a Senior Research Scientist at the Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is co-Director of the new Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI) and is a Chair in the Computer Science Department at the University of Southampton, UK. He directs the World Wide Web Consortium, founded in 1994. In 1989 he invented the World Wide Web while at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory. He has received several international awards and in 2004 was knighted by H.M. Queen Elizabeth. He is the author of "Weaving the Web" .
Profile
Tom 'inkie' Bingle has revolutionised the UK's urban art scene where he has been a dominant force for over 20 years. Originally from Bristol but now an adopted Londoner, Inkie has turned his artistic affections to graphic and clothing design as well as a full-time role as Head of Creative Design at SEGA. His images are visually stunning with tremendous use of colour, panache and intricate designs.
Profile
Michael has been the driving force and chief architect behind the development of six consumer websites over the last decade. Bebo.com, recently sold to AOL, was founded in early 2005 by Michael and his wife Xochi. According to Alexa Internet, the site is the 85th most popular U.S. based website and the 3rd most popular social networking website. Previously, in 2001, Michael co-founded word-of-mouth marketing site, BirthdayAlarm.com, as a simple way to remember birthdays. The idea caught on, and today the site provides more than 45 million members with an assortment of e-greeting cards and services. Following this, he started Ringo.com, one of the first social networking sites, launched in 2003. The site was later sold to Tickle.com and is now owned by Monster.com.
Profile
Fred is Senior Director of Digital Development for Sony BMG in the UK & Ireland. His role is to contribute to the transformation of Sony BMG into a fully fledged digital music based entertainment company. Fred joined Sony BMG from the MCPS-PRS-Alliance, where he worked for just under two years monitoring the ways music is made, distributed and consumed, as well as how the underlying business models can work together in the context of convergence. Prior to joining the Alliance, Fred worked for seven years as a management consultant, advising ISPs, mobile operators and media companies on strategy. Fred also DJs a monthly jazz night, writes about obscure records and used to be in Canadian garage punk ‘sensations’, The Cryptics.
Profile
Patrick Butler has been a writer and editor at the Guardian for eight years. He is currently editor of Society Guardian, the Guardian's weekly social affairs supplement, and he also oversees its online equivalent, societyguardian.co.uk. Prior to that, he wrote on health and social policy for a range of national newspapers and professional publications.