MiniBar Workshops Presenter Bios

MiniBar Workshops Presenter Bios

Tom Allason
Shutl

A second time entrepreneur, Tom founded eCourier.co.uk, the online courier company with the purple vans in 2003 after a particularly painful experience with his local courier firm. Tom served as eCourier’s CEO from 2004 until 2008, overseeing the company’s growth to £7.5m turnover and over 250 staff (including couriers) and raising $16m investment. In 2007, Tom was named “Top Gun” by Growing Business magazine and eCourier “London’s Most Inspirational Business” by the Evening Standard. In 2009 eCourier reached 6 on Deloitte’s list of UK’s fastest growing technology businesses with 5291% growth since 2004. With a professional management team in place, Tom left eCourier in 2008 to found Shutl.

 

Danvers Bailleu
Pinsent Masons LLP

Danvers is a solicitor at Pinsent Masons LLP in London who specialises in representing web based companies. He was previously at Winston & Strawn representing well known clients such as Huddle and Tweetminster. In particular, he advises on corporate structure, fundraisings, commercial agreements and intellectual property issues. Together with, Barry Vitou, Danvers runs Bootlaw (www.bootlaw.com), a free monthly meet up where web and emerging technology companies can learn more about legal issues relevant to their business.
Danvers can be reached on email or by via most social networks. You can read his occasional personal blog at http://danversbaillieu.blogspot.com or follow him on Twitter: @danversbaillieu.

 

Gavin Bell
Social Web Applications

Gavin designs social web applications for the Nature Publishing Group. He is an interaction designer, community advocate and product manager. He has been writing and designing for the web since the early 90s. Large scale web applications covering identity, on-demand media, geolocation and social software have been the main focus of his work at NPG and previously at the BBC. He has worked in academia, advertising, publishing and developed multimedia software

 

Jay Bregman
Hailo

Jay is the founder and CEO of Hailo and previously the co-founder and CTO of eCourier. He’s managed several large scale development projects in-house and with contractors – for some he even had to learn how to shout in German. Jay’s passion for technology was stirred at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, where he co-authored a study which was used to advise ICANN on its first member election. Jay holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Dartmouth College and an MSc in Media and Communications Regulation & Policy from the London School of Economics.

 

Malcolm Coles
Internet Strategy Consultant

Malcolm Coles is a consultant advising on internet content strategy and SEO, for everybody from small businesses to international companies. Before that, he was editor of which.co.uk, the UK’s most successful paywalled website.

 

Francesco d’Orazio
FaceGroup

Francesco, Face Group’s Research Director, is heading the social media team, also known as Face Wired. He holds a PhD in New Media and Sociology and has been heavily involved in social networking, grassroots marketing and immersive media as a researcher, strategist and (dontwannabe) entrepreneur. He joined Face in January 2009 to help bring co-creation back to where it belongs: social media!

 

Margaret Gold
The Mobile Collective and Over the Air

Margaret is active in the mobile industry as an innovation & business launch specialist, and is possibly best well known as one of the organisers of Over the Air ( a grass-roots mobile developer event and hack-a-thon). She works with a wide range of start-ups, corporate ventures and spin-offs. Past clients include the Mobile Application Centre at Imperial College, Vodafone Betavine, Mobillcash (now Boku), and Luup. Before focusing on the more
entrepreneurial side of the equation, Margaret worked for a boutique innovation consulting firm that helps FTSE100 companies identify and develop new product & service opportunities and launch them to market.
Marcin Grodzicki
Adtaily

Marcin is a business developer, focusing particularly on start-ups. Based in London, he is leading the global expansion of AdTaily, a self-service advertising tool which works for niche blogs as well as larger online media. AdTaily gives advertisers the opportunity to reach targeted audiences, regardless of their budget. The company was a finalist of Seedcamp Week 2008 and last year their network received over 500m page views per month.

In addition to his work his AdTaily, Marcin won Seedcamp Week 2009 with Codility and helped to establish the company in the UK. He graduated from Warsaw University in 2005.

 

John Lunn
PayPal

John Lunn is the Head Wizard of PayPalX. He has been building payments and fraud systems on the internet for over 15 years and has advised many of the successful and less successful start-ups on their payment strategies. Originally a java certified developer and now an all purpose hacker and Start-up mentor. John runs PayPal new developer network PayPalX in the EU.

 

Vladimir Oane
ContextVoice

Vladimir is a serial entrepreneur who has been running his own companies for over 6 years. He has extensive experience in the fields of digital media, online marketing and social services.

 

Richard Pope
ScraperWiki.com

Richard Pope is the Product Director of ScraperWiki.com, an online coding platform for screen scraping. He has been developing trouble making web based products, generally on a budget (or no budget) since 2004.

 

Glenn Shoosmith
BookingBug.com

Glenn is the founder and CEO of BookingBug.com, a scheduling and booking platform for SMEs. He has 14 years’ experience building and delivering software platforms, in a broad number of industries.

 

Daniel Sim
Plug in SEO

Daniel has over 10 years experience of helping small businesses profit online. He founded an SME Internet consultancy in 1999 which won a shedload of notable awards from RBoS, Scottish Enterprise and Shell. Now he’s CEO of Seedcamp finalist Plug in SEO: a web app aiming to make search engine optimisation so easy, instant and accountable his mom can do it.

 

Reshma Sohoni
Seedcamp

Reshma runs Seedcamp on a day-to-day basis as its CEO. She joined Seedcamp from the Venture team at 3i. Prior to 3i, Reshma spent over 3 years at Vodafone in their Commercial Strategy team, working across the Europe and Japan footprints in marketing strategy and pricing functions. Reshma started her career in the US in investment banking (Broadview) and venture capital (Softbank).

 

Barry Vitou
Winston and Strawn

Barry Vitou is a partner with Winston and Strawn’s London office and works almost exclusively advising web technology businesses. Barry is recommended by the Legal500 within Venture Capital which says: “Under Barry Vitou, Winston & Strawn London ‘knows its tech inside out’ and targets start-up companies in the digital, new media, and emerging technology fields.” Barry cofounded www.bootlaw.com for technology start ups the free monthly meet up covering essential law for emerging technology companies. You can follow Barry on twitter: @bazv.