Speakers

Stewart Butterfield | Tiny Speck

Butterfield is the co-founder of the gaming startup Tiny Speck, whose debut title is an ambitious massively multiplayer online game called Glitch. Glitch hopes to revolutionize online gaming the same way Flickr revolutionized online photo sharing. Butterfield has been nominated for the Chrysler Design Award, and has been named a Best Leader by Business Week, and one of the Top 35 Innovators Under 35 by MIT. He also founded the 5k Awards, a competition highlighting the best use of simple design solutions. Butterfield co-founded Flickr, which became the world’s most popular photo-sharing service.

Sean Ellis | CatchFree

Sean Ellis is the founder and CEO of CatchFree, an online service that makes it easy to find and compare the best way to complete a specific task for free. CatchFree has raised $5.5m in venture capital and publicly launched in May 2011.

Before founding CatchFree, Sean ran marketing at LogMeIn and Uproar from launch to NASDAQ IPO filings & helped bring Dropbox, Lookout, and Xobni to market in interim marketing leadership roles. He also helped accelerate growth at Eventbrite, Socialcast, Webs, World Golf Tour, WordPress.com and Songkick.

Erik Blachford | Technology Crossover Ventures

A key player in the growth of Expedia, Erik led the creation of the brand as senior vice president of marketing becoming president of Expedia North America, and then president and CEO. Since 2005, Erik has been active within the startup ranks, serving as executive chairman of TerraPass, a leading retailer of carbon offsets, consumer energy efficiency products, and green gifts. He also the chairman of Butterfield & Robinson, and a director with Zillow and GlassDoor.

Carl Schmidt | Unbounce

Carl has been creating software professionally for more than 20 years, and been focused on Web-based software since 1996. As Unbounce’s chief technology officer, he’s well-versed in building and maintaining high-performance, highly available web sites. Carl is a passionate yet practical technology visionary, who brings a wealth of experience in software development and technology infrastructure management.

Janice Diner | Horizon Studios

Janice is a social media strategist with a creative director background. A leader in the arena, Janice and her team have conceived, developed and executed social media programs and technologies for such brands as TSN, BlackBerry, TD Canada Trust, PlayStation, Intel and Hershey. Currently Janice heads up Horizon Studios helping clients socialize their brands, empower customer engagement and bring communities to live across the social media space. She is considered a pioneer brand builder in Facebook, having executed initiatives in the space since 2006. She is on the advisory board for MaRS Discovery District and served as a judge for the Cannes Lions 2009 Advertising awards. Janice won several awards for her ground-breaking work for the TD Canada Trust Money Lounge and SPLIT IT application on Facebook.

Ali Davar| Zite

In 2005, while attending law school at the University of British Columbia, Ali founded Worio, a personalized Web search discovery technology. Worio’s technology has evolved into Zite, a personalized iPad magazine application that gets smarter as you use it. Ali holds a LLD from the University of British Columbia and is a member of the Canadian Bar Association.

Alexandra Samuel | Emily Carr University

Alexandra Samuel is the Director of the Social + Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University. Through the SIM Centre, Alex leads applied research that helps companies leverage the university’s strategic, design and creative expertise in digital media. Alex is also the co-founder and principal of Social Signal, one of the world’s most experienced social media agencies.  Founded in 2005, Social Signal works with business, government and non-profit organizations to build relationships, brand and issue awareness through online conversation and community. Alex blogs for the Harvard Business Review and on her own site at alexandrasamuel.com.

Darren Barefoot | Capulet Communications

Darren is a writer, technologist and marketer who runs Capulet Communications, a PR and marketing company that specializes in high-tech companies. Originally a technical writer, Darren has worked at Meridian Systems and Cape Clear Software (while spending two years in Dublin) before starting Capulet in 2003.

Jason Bailey | East Side Games

As the founder of KITN Media, Jason bootstrapped Super Rewards, a Web advertising company that offers points or other rewards to Web users who sign up for services, from no revenue to a $100-million run rate in just over 12 months before it was acquired by Adknowledge, one of the largest online advertising marketplaces. A founder and principal with GrowLab, Jason has invested in and is mentoring many local companies including DES Games, Compass Engine, PayPhone App, CrowdFanatic, and OverInteractive Media.

Links: Geek Speak (Georgia Strait)
Adknowledge Buys Super Rewards (VentureBeat)

Elijah van der Giessen | David Suzuki Foundation

Eli is a project manager and whipper-of-troops. As the Creative Services Lead at the David Suzuki Foundation, Eli leads the online acquisition and outreach work, and has helped the foundation create an online constituency. He also uses his experience in event production and volunteer management to connect web innovators with nonprofit campaigners so they can learn from each other. Eli volunteers his time as the organizer of the the monthly Net Tuesday meetup group, which connects non-profits with their allies in technology and marketing sectors.

Caroline MacGillivray | Beauty Night Society

Caroline is the National Executive Director and founder of Beauty Night Society, which builds self esteem and changes lives of women and youth living in poverty. A Gastown Actor’s Studio Graduate, she believes healthy self-esteem can be fostered through entertaining and interactive educational programming. Now in its 10th year, Beauty Night has given more than 11,000 life-makeovers to women who live in poverty. Caroline is also known as the host and producer of Sexy in Vancity Radio on 101.9FM CITR (Wednesday Nights at 10pm).

Mark Evans | ME Consulting, Co-founder mesh

Mark is a digital marketing and social media strategist who works with startups and fast-growing companies looking to jump-start 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.

Connect to Mark: @markevans | LinkedIn

Stuart MacDonald | FreshBooks, Co-founder mesh

Stuart is a digital business guy who loves making customers happy and building great teams. A mentor, investor, consultant and frequent speaker on things digital and entrepreneurial, Stuart is the veteran of several start-ups including starting Expedia.ca in his spare room in Toronto. He moved to Seattle as senior vice-president/chief marketing officer for Expedia.com, as well as running the U.S. packages business. Stuart co-founded mesh and meshmarketing, has traveled extensively, worked abroad on several occasions.

Connect to Stuart: @stuartma |Facebook |LinkedIn | blog

Mathew Ingram | GigaOm, Co-founder mesh

Mathew Ingram is an award-winning journalist, who has spent the past 15 years writing about business, technology and new media as a reporter, columnist and blogger. Mathew’s expertise is how the media landscape is being dramatically disrupted by the emergence of the Web. Before becoming a senior writer with GigaOm, Mathew was a blogger and technology writer for the Globe & Mail. He was also the G&M’s first online Communities Editor, where he helped the paper learn about and appreciate the benefits of social-media tools.

Connect to Mathew: about.me/mathewingram

Rob Hyndman | Hyndman Law, Co-founder mesh

Rob is a Toronto technology business lawyer – his clients are technology companies and their customers. His firm is Hyndman | Law, a boutique law practice that provides legal counsel to technology businesses on a wide variety of business law needs. He’s 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. He’s passionate about helping grow the Toronto Web community and evangelizing the opportunities for connection, sharing and inspiration that the Web has given us.

Connect to Rob: @rhh | LinkedIn | GigPark | blog

Mike McDerment | FreshBooks, Co-founder mesh

Mike is the co-founder and CEO of FreshBooks, the leading online invoicing and bookkeeping service for small businesses. In 2003, Mike started FreshBooks to meet the needs of his design firm. Since launching in May 2004 (from his parents’ basement!), FreshBooks has more 2.5 million users, and it now moves billions of dollars on behalf of hard working entrepreneurs in more than 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.

Connect to Mike: @MikeMcDerment | LinkedIn |  FreshBooks blog