Nathan Hull

Digital Publisher , Penguin

Nathan Hull joined Penguin in November 2010 as Digital Publisher. Prior to that he worked at Universal Music, where he oversaw digital strategy for major artists including U2, The Rolling Stones, The Killers and Take That and handled Universal’s relationships with key digital partners including iTunes, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, BT and Sky. He was instrumental in shaping the company's strategy for streaming, subscriptions, apps, virtual merchandise and anti-piracy and launched Spotify as well as negotiating deals with Shazam, eBay, Xbox and PS3.

As Digital Publisher, Nathan will take strategic responsibility for Penguin’s blossoming digital portfolio, which includes Stephen Fry’s The Fry Chronicles across five formats and a number of highly successful apps including, in the children’s space, Spot Goes to School and Topsy and Tim Start School.

Norah Casey

CEO , Harmonia

Norah Casey is CEO (and owner) of Harmonia, Ireland’s largest magazine company printing over four million magazines annually for the Irish, British, US market and more recently in China. Harmonia’s stable includes strong women’s brands: Irish Tatler, U, Woman’s Way and www.ivenus.com; and specialist titles like Food&Wine, Auto Ireland and Ireland of the Welcomes (aimed at the Irish Diaspora with over 80,000 USA-based subscribers). She is a member of the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board and the London-based Women’s Irish Network and The International Women’s Forum.  She was awarded The Veuve Clicquot Business Woman of the Year Award for 2007/8 and has won The Publisher of the Year Award for three years running. She is the latest Dragon to join RTE’s Dragons’ Den for 2011.

Bill Thompson

BBC

Bill Thompson has been working in, on and around the Internet since 1984 and spends his time thinking, writing and speaking about the digital world we are in the midst of building. He appears weekly on Digital Planet on the BBC World Service and writes a regular column for the BBC News website. He is also an advisor to a range of arts and cultural organisations on their digital strategies. He is currently working in the Archive Development team at the BBC building relationships with museums, galleries and institutions.

Edouard Lambelet

CEO , Paper.li

Edouard Lambelet is the Co-founder and CEO of Smallrivers, the creator of Paper.li, the leading social news publication application. Previously, Edouard founded Mobile News Channel, one of the first mobile application and service provider in Europe (acquired by Alcatel-Lucent in 2004). Edouard also worked as Vice Director for  Geneva Opera, large events executive producer, (new) media consultant for several large media corporations in Switzerland and France. Edouard holds a Master of Science in Business management - HEC Lausanne.

Mark Rock

Founder and CEO , Audioboo

Mark Rock is the founder & CEO of Audioboo, the social sound platform that launched in 2009 and already counts the BBC, Stephen Fry, British Army and countless more amongst its contributors. Users can post original audio recorded from their iPhone or Android device, add a photo, title & location and then it automatically shared with popular networks like Twitter and Facebook. Mark was previously co-founder of PlayJam, the world's largest interactive TV games channel.

Burt Herman

Co-founder and CEO , Storify

Burt Herman is co-founder and CEO of Storify, a platform for creating stories from social media, and founder of Hacks/Hackers, a worldwide organization bringing together journalists and technologists.

Herman previously worked for a dozen years as a journalist for The Associated Press. At the AP, he served as Korea bureau chief, founded a bureau covering the five countries of former Soviet Central Asia and reported on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq among other assignments worldwide. Herman was a 2008-9 Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University, where he also received a bachelor’s degree with honors in political science and master’s degree in Russian and Eastern European.

Roo Reynolds

Head of Emerging Platforms , Wieden+Kennedy London

Roo Reynolds is Head of Emerging Platforms at Wieden and Kennedy London. Previously he was the portfolio executive for social media at BBC Vision, where he developed the BBC’s strategy in the fascinating intersection between social media and television, working with teams across the BBC to help shape and deliver a wide range of projects and initiatives.

Outside of work, Roo co-creates Shift Run Stop , the popular weekly geek podcast which has featured as Time Out’s podcast of the week. Past guests have included an eclectic range of interesting people including comedians, writers, TV & radio presenters, particle physicists and astro-biologists.

Fintan O'Toole

Managing Editor , The Irish Times

Fintan O’Toole was born in Dublin in 1958. He is an assistant editor of, and a columnist with, The Irish Times.  He has been drama critic of In Dublin magazine, The Sunday Tribune, the New York Daily News, and The Irish Times and Literary Adviser to the Abbey Theatre.  His work has appeared in many international newspapers and magazines, including The New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, Granta, The Guardian, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Awards include the AT Cross Award for Supreme Contribution to Irish Journalism (1993), the Justice Award of the Incorporated Law Society (1994) and the Millennium Social Inclusion Award (2000). He has also broadcast extensively in Ireland and the UK, including a period as presenter of BBC’s The Late Show

Sarah McInerney

Political Correspondent , The Sunday Times

Sarah McInerney has been a political correspondent for the Sunday Times since 2008, during which time she has covered some of the biggest political stories of the last decade.

In 2009 she won the European Commission’s national journalism award for an article about whether the rights of non-EU spouses of EU citizens were being affected by new laws on sham marriages. Later that year, Sarah was awarded a certificate of merit by the Law Society, for an article on whether the Irish constitution is still fit for purpose.In October 2008, Sarah published a best-selling non-fiction book, Where No-One Can Hear You Scream, an account of assaults and murders in the Dublin/Wicklow mountains.

Previous to her current post in the Sunday Times, Sarah worked in the Sunday Tribune for five years. In addition to her work in print journalism, Sarah is also a regular contributor to national radio and television.

Vaughan Smith

Founder , Frontline Club

Vaughan Smith is the founder of London's Frontline Club, and the man who provided sanctuary for Julian Assange of Wikileaks during his extradition hearing from the UK.

He founded the Frontline Club in London in 2003 as an institution to champion independent journalism and promote better understanding of international news and its coverage. During the 1990s Vaughan worked as an award-winning independent cameraman and video news journalist covering wars and conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo and elsewhere. He was shot twice but escaped both times with light injuries.

Prior to this he was an officer in the British Army’s Grenadier Guards, serving in Northern Ireland, Cyprus and Germany. He captained the British Army shooting team and won the inter-army rifle shooting championship.

In 2007, Vaughan was the joint winner of a Guardian Media Innovation Award and in 2008 a Rory Peck Award finalist for his independent blog from Southern Afghanistan. Vaughan spent January 2010 filming with British troops in Helmand, Afghanistan.

Marek Walton

Co-founder , The Mustard Corporation

Marek originally trained as a screen-writer whilst studying at the University of Denver. In 2004 he graduated with a Masters in Creative Writing from  The University of Edinburgh, and was subsequently hired by Atari to  work on their next AAA title.

He later worked with the BBC on their JAM Education project and recently co-wrote his first radio play for them tackling the issues surrounding gaming addiction.

Since then he co-founded The Mustard Corporation where he has worked on a variety of games titles including Driver: Parallel Lines (2006), Driver ’76 (2007) and MindJack (2011). He also has experience script editing, having worked on titles such as Battleforge (2009), Lord of Ultima (2010) and forthcoming Ignition game, El Shaddai: Ascention of the Metatron (2011).

He is currently co-authoring a book on games writing and helping produce  an as yet unannounced title for The Mustard Corporation.

Hilary Perkins

Multiplatform Commissioner for Drama and Film , Channel 4

Hilary Perkins is Multiplatform Commissioner for Drama and Film at Channel 4, where she is responsible for online commissions around programmes like Skins, Misfits, Shameless and Hollyoaks. Previously she was Editor of Film4.com, looking after Film4's presence online and cross-platform. She joined Channel 4 in 2007 as Online Factual Editor after eight years at the BBC, including managing the interactive team at 1Xtra and six years as Interactive Producer for Radio 1. You can find her online in all the usual social spaces.

John Mulholland

Editor , The Observer

John Mulholland is a native of Ranelagh in Dublin and studied communications in DCU. In 2008 he took over as Editor of The Observer, the oldest Sunday newspaper in the world.  In February 2010 he redesigned the paper with a significantly enhanced 52-page New Review Section and restructured main paper, sport section, weekly magazine and monthly food magazine. Prior to that he was Deputy Editor for nine years with specific responsibility for the magazines and weekly features supplements. During that time John was appointed Project Leader overseeing The Observer's transformation from broadsheet to Berliner format.

He also spearheaded the development of The Observer's four monthly magazines.  Prior to joining The Observer John was Media Editor of The Guardian for four years.

John has presented a series of media programmes on both radio and TV for the BBC and Channel 4.

Evan Ratliff

Writer , Wired USA

Evan Ratliffe is an award-winning journalist and the editor of The Atavist, a digital platform for narrative journalism. A contributing editor for Wired magazine, his writing also appears in The New Yorker, National Geographic, and many other publications. He is the co-author of Safe: The Race to Protect Ourselves in a Newly Dangerous World (HarperCollins, 2005).

A past finalist for the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing and two-time finalist for the Livingston Award for journalists under age 35, his writing has appeared in numerous anthologies, including "The Best of Technology Writing" in 2006 and 2010, “The Best American Magazine Writing 2010,” and “The Best American Nonrequired Writing 2010.” He regularly appears in national and international media to discuss current topic.

Ciaran OGaora

Founder , Zero-G

Ciarán ÓGaora is founder of Zero-G, a Dublin-based brand and communication design consultancy.  He is a graduate of the National College of Art and Design where he studied Industrial Design and Visual Communications.  Prior to establishing Zero-G in 2004 Ciarán worked with Proforma, Rotterdam and was Partner and Creative Director with Designworks, Dublin.

He has worked with clients in Ireland, UK, US & Africa across a broad range of sectors including culture, tourism, science, media, financial services, venture capital, innovation, retail, health and government. He is a Director of the Corn Exchange Theatre Company and was Deputy Commissioner for Ireland’s entry at the Venice Architectural Biennale in 2006. His website is www.ogaora.com

Damien Mulley

Owner , Mulley Communications

Damien Mulley owns Cork based Mulley Communications and teaches organisations and enterprises how to communicate amongst themselves and with the greater world.

He is also the orgaaniser of the Irish Blog Awards and Irish Web Awards. Damien is in constant battle with Damien Rice and Damien the Omen for the top Google spot for his first name. It doesn't keep him awake at night though.

Follow Damien Mulley on Twitter @damienmulley

Nicholas Lovell

Founder , Games Brief

For fifteen years, Nicholas Lovell has been involved in the overlapping areas of technology, media and finance. His experience ranges from working in London on mergers and acquisitions, senior executive roles at Internet start-ups ShopSmart and GameShadow and starting his own consultancy Lodestar Partners providing financial advice to computer  and video games companies.

He is a keen writer, and is the founder of Gamesbrief , a blog that is dedicated to the business of games. He is a regular commentator on issues facing the games industry in trade publications such as MCV and Develop. He has also had several articles published in Steve Jackson Games's online magazine Pyramid and maintains a number of fiction-led websites.

Aidan Kelly

Editor , Candy Collective

CandyCollective started 6 years ago with the ambition of showcasing exceptional creativity, wherever it may be, through interesting formats and memorable projects. Since then they have produced 14 downloadable pdf magazines which have been downloaded tens of thousands of times.

They have curated 40 live SweetTalk creative-to-creative events in Ireland, UK, Denmark, Germany & NYC and  produced bespoke projects with Habitat Ireland, Sony PSP, Topman, Veer, Blanka, POD Concerts, LightHouse Cinema with PhotoIreland and this year a special collaboration with Body and Soul.  With little or no support they continuously update a special online blog-site, Candycollective.com that co-ordinates everything they see as interesting and noteworthy into one online experience.

Alison O'Connor

Conference Chairperson ,

Alison O’Connor is a journalist, broadcaster, and commentator. She writes a weekly column for the Irish Independent.

Alison regularly appears as a commentator on radio and television debates. She is a former political correspondent for the Sunday Business Post and the Irish Times. She received a national journalism award for her work on clerical child abuse in the diocese of Ferns, Co Wexford which she covered for the Irish Times, and has written a book entitled: “A Message from Heaven” on the subject.