Speakers

This event is now FULLY BOOKED. Please email Sarah at LEWIS (sarahbeavis@lewispr.com) to be placed on a waiting list in case of cancellations

Keynote speaker -

Shel Israel is a social media journalist, public speaker & senior fellow for the Society for New Media Research.

He is co-author of Naked Conversations - how blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers, The Conversational Corporation, a DowJones e-book, and most recently Twitterville, how businesses can thrive in Global Neighborhoods.

Chair -

Kevin Anderson is the Guardian's blogs editor. He writes about technology, US politics and media. Before joining the Guardian, he was the Washington correspondent for the BBC News website covering politics, technology and current affairs in North America.

Panelists -

Hugh Davies is director of Corporate Affairs and is responsible for 3 UK’s contact with a range of stakeholders including the media and analyst community, politicians, industry organisations, the 3 community and specialist customer and user groups. He is also responsible for managing consistent and effective contact between the company and its staff at locations across the UK and India.
 
He joined 3 in July 2006. Before working for 3 Hugh was head of PR at Microsoft in the UK. He also has experience working for some of the largest PR agencies in the world, including Cohn & Wolfe and Hill & Knowlton, where he worked for 3 Group parent company Hutchison Whampoa.

Tom Watson MP is a prolific blogger and was elected in 2001 to represent the people of West Bromwich East. Most recently Tom held the Ministerial post of Parliamentary Secretary at the Cabinet Office (up to June 2009) where, amongst other duties, he was responsible for transforming the delivery of public services by advocating the use of digital and social media within government departments. Tom remains a renowned expert in this field and was the first MP to blog actively, having started over five years ago.

In this role Tom established the Power of Information Task Force to advance the recommendations made in the Power of Information Report by Ed Mayo and Tom Steinberg. The report set out the social and economic gains that could be achieved through better use of the data that governments hold, with social media and mass collaboration as key means of releasing this benefit. Tom also had Ministerial responsibility for the Transformational Government (Enabled by Technology) strategy and has been credited with driving recent changes in public service delivery at a national and local level.

Peter Whitehead is editor of FT Digital Business. Peter joined the FT in 1987 and has worked in the newsroom, was Weekend FT deputy editor, and editor of the Special Reports department.

He is currently editor of Digital Business, a print, online and audio package focusing on the benefits that technology can bring to businesses. This involves commissioning and editing a monthly broadsheet section, presenting a weekly podcast – and plenty more. 

Ian McNairn is the Program Director for Web Innovation and Technology in the SWG Integration organisation within the Office of the IBM CIO, based in the UK in a world wide role.  He acts as a catalyst between innovators and implementers, facilitating the flow of ideas, best practices, standards and leadership and is an evangelist in the social software, collaboration and knowledge management arenas, regularly presenting at conferences and lecturing at numerous universities in the UK.  Previously he managed a global development team in IBM as well as having worked in both the sales and marketing organisations.  Before joining IBM he was the Global IT Strategy Director for the global insurance broker Sedgwick (Marsh & McLennan), and prior to that was a lecturer and researcher at the University of Witwatersrand.