The Five Founders
Mark Evans
Principal, ME Consulting
Mark is a digital marketing and social media strategist who works with startups and fast-growing companies looking to improve how they are using the Web to meet their business goals. At the core of what Mark does is create compelling stories that tell the world what you do and why they should be interested. These stories are then delivered in places that will resonate and engage – a Web site, social media services, corporate videos, marketing collateral, or pitches to media/bloggers. Before starting his own business, Mark was a technology reporter with the National Post, Globe & Mail and Bloomberg News. He also worked with four startups – Blanketware, b5media, PlanetEye and Sysomos.
Mark writes several blogs, including Mark Evans Tech and Twitterrati, as well as a regular column for the Globe & Mail. When not working, Mark stays busy with family and playing hockey.
Connect to Mark: @markevans | LinkedIn
Rob Hyndman
business lawyer, Hyndman | Law
I’m a Toronto technology business lawyer – my clients are technology companies and their customers. My firm is Hyndman | Law, a boutique law practice that provides legal counsel to technology businesses on a wide variety of business law needs. I’m an unabashed life-long geek who got his start more than 30 years ago as the vice-president of a two-member computer club in high school. I’m passionate about helping grow the Toronto Web community and evangelizing the opportunities for connection, sharing and inspiration that the Web has given us. I have a personal blog here.
Connect to Rob: @rhh | LinkedIn | GigPark | blog
Mathew Ingram
Senior Writer, GigaOm.com
I’m a senior writer with GigaOm, one of the leading technology blog networks. Prior to 2010, I was a journalist with The Globe and Mail, where I wrote a column and a blog about technology both for the newspaper and the website. In 2008, I became the Globe’s first online “communities editor,” a job that involved thinking about all the ways in which the paper interacts with readers — blogs, comments, wikis, Facebook, Twitter, etc. — and developing new and better ways of doing that. I’ve been working online for the Globe since the site was re-launched as a breaking news site in 2000, and been living and writing online since the early 1990s when a 9600-baud dial-up modem was the hot-rod of the Internet. I have a personal blog at mathewingram.com/work where I write about Web 2.0 ideas and the intersection of the media and the Internet. I think that the kind of interactivity and dialogue that blogs and other Web 2.0 tools provide is already having — and will continue to have — a profound effect on the media industry and many other industries, and that’s why I wanted to be part of this conference.
Connect to Mathew: @mathewi | facebook | LinkedIn | tumblr | blog
Stuart MacDonald
Founder, TripHarbour.ca
I am your basic online business geek. My fate was sealed way back when I sat in my apartment marvelling at the glory that was eAAsy SABRE on 2400 baud dial-up. I remember watching as flight details, obtuse airport codes and impossible-to-understand pricing come up on my screen one character at a time. I felt like I had just landed on this big secret. I thought “This is going to be big.” Several years later, I brought Expedia to Canada and started Expedia.ca in my spare room. I ended up moving to Seattle as SVP/chief marketing officer for Expedia.com, as well as running the US packages business. Today, I’m an independent business advisor and investor, with a focus on online and web-enabled businesses, with Clients and Investee companies ranging from online start-ups through to Canada’s largest media and telecommunications organizations. I am also founder and CEO of Tripharbour Ltd., operator of Tripharbour.ca and Tripharbor.com, the web’s first online cruise vacation e-commerce and community site.
Now back in Toronto, I’m a blogger , passionate about what the Internet means for business and society, and very proud to be part of creating mesh.
Connect to Stuart: @stuartma |Facebook |LinkedIn | blog
Mike McDerment
CEO, FreshBooks Online Invoicing
Mike is the co-founder and CEO of FreshBooks, planet earth’s leading online invoicing and bookkeeping service for small businesses. Back in 2003, Mike built FreshBooks for his design firm and scratched his own itch. Since launching in May 2004 (from his parents’ basement!), FreshBooks has touched over 2,500,000 lives, and now moves billions of dollars on behalf of hard working entrepreneurs in over 100 countries. Mike and his team pride themselves on delivering extraordinary customer experiences for people who love their work, and want to focus on it – instead of focusing on their paperwork.
