Speakers

Leon Levitt Vice Presedinte Digital Media Cox Newspapers, Inc, USA

Leon joined Cox Newspapers as Vice President of Digital Media in may 2005. He is responsible for helping Cox Newspapers build local audience, transition and grow revenue, and craft a sustainable internet strategy. Leon also oversees COXnet, the shared services group that provides Web based utility tools, nontraditional content, design assistance, project management, and infrastructure support.
Prior to joining Cox, Leon was executive vice president at The Arizona Republic where his focus was to develop strategies and business plans that aggregated audience across multiple online and print products. This included young readers, Hispanics, and convergence with a company-owned television station.
Leon joined The Arizona Republic as VP/Circulation in 1996. Prior to joining The Arizona Republic, Leon was vice president of circulation marketing for the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) where his responsibilities included developing programs to better understand readership trends, repositioning the role of circulation as a marketing function, and to add a more business-like approach to subscriber acquisition and retention.
Prior to NAA Leon worked at newspapers in Wilmington, North Carolina and Gadsden Alabama. Leon began his newspaper career at the Las Vegas Review-Journal after graduating from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 1979 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication Studies, and an emphasis in journalism. In 1978 he was editor of the Yell, the campus student newspaper. While in Arizona Leon served on the board of one of college football’s premier bowl games, the Fiesta Bowl, and in 2001 was the organization’s chairman.



Prof. Dr. Jo Groebel Director Institutul Digital din Berlin

Prof.Dr.Jo Groebel is Director of the German Digital Institute Berlin, Trustee German Mobile Communication Industry, was/is Co-Founder and Chair Curatorium “Médaille Charlemagne pour des Médias Européens”, member TV-Movie Film-Council.
He is Visiting Professor at, a.o., University of Amsterdam, UCLA, U.St.Gallen, member of the Royal Council for Culture at Dutch government, The Hague; held positions as DG European Institute for the Media, as Full-Professor and Chair Media Psychology University of Utrecht.
Had research co-operations on aggression, terrorism, media effects, communication strategies, international media policy with Harvard Law School, Cambridge Univ., Columbia Univ., gave (key-note) speeches at congresses, universities, institutions, companies around the world. Published several 100 articles, as author or editor 30 books . Was president of Dutch Association of Communication Sciences, Co-promotor Honorary Doctoral Degree Peter Greenaway Utrecht U., co-founded World Internet Project, chaired UNESCO Global Study on Children and the Media (with 5.500 children from around the world participating) and was member German UNESCO-Commission. Was/is consultant to heads of state and governments including personal consultations with Romanian Parliament, President of Romania, Pres.Clinton, German Pres.v.Weizsacker, Herzog, Rau, Prime Min./Chanc.Schroder, Merkel, Djindjic. Participated in/chaired workshops of the Asian-European Foundation in Singapore and Cyprus and at the Asia-Europe Summit, Helsinki. Jury chairman/member “ZEIT-Stiftung: Free Press”,”EU: World Press Courage”, “Bertelsmann Stiftung: Media Award”, “Deutsche Telekom: Digital Cities”, “Dutch Cable Award”, “VPRT: Anti-Violence Campaign”. Was cited/interviewed/contributed to/in media like Romanian TV (Talk-Shows, Host Florian), NBC, CNN, BBC, ARD, RTL, New York Times (Front page), International Herald Tribune (Front page), Financial Times London, Le Monde, El Pais, Der Spiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Volkskrant, Time Magazine, Veja Brazil, Indian Times, Kol Hair Jerusalem, et al. Groebel is TV-talk-show host for “Déjà Vu”/FAB Berlin TV-station. Honors: Outstanding Contribution Award International Council of Psychologists, Tokyo, 1990; Honorary Lecture “Socrates-Lezing”, Humanistic Society, Amsterdam, 1997. Honorary Member “European Association of Journalists”, 2002. Clubs: Rotary, Germany; Reform Club, London.



Darren Patterson - Business Development Director for Eastern Europe

Darren is responsible for overseeing the expansion of Yahoo! both online and in mobile, developing market entry strategies as well as content and distribution partnerships. Darren has been actively involved in Yahoo!’s upcoming Romanian expansion.

Darren has held several senior management roles within the Media, Telecoms and IT world for the past 10+ years, with companies such as ECI Telecom, C&W, Energis and Cisco Systems, having worked throughout AsiaPacific, Europe and the Americas.

Darren began his working life with State Computers, Volante, in Australia, helping to found what later became an ASX listed company.

Darren has an MBA from the University of Chicago GSB and a B.Sc (Comp Sc) from the University of Technology Sydney.



Petar Pavic- Head of R&D Europapress Holding, Croatia

During period of active work in visual communications, led various projects and many of them received national and international recognitions (Winning entry Virginia Design Consortium, BIO 16. Biennale of industrial design, Slovenia; Graphis posters; 01Annual Croatian Design exhibition, Poster biennale Brno, Check Republic; Golden award Sempl8 for creative use of media) and was part of many other recognized and awarded projects as a senior designer.
Worked on various internet and marketing projects for large national clients. After being appointed as a head of R&D in EPH, worked on multi channel projects and products, with a mission to implement new media and new conceptual approach to traditional treatment of business areas of editorial and news segment, marketing, sales etc.
Within others, managed projects such as: first large news portal in the company, media brand web sites, restructure of the company’s marketing and promotional departments, loyalty program for the biggest daily paper in the company, launch and marketing of the national credit card project (in cooperation with major national bank), implementation of new standards in presentation materials of company’s sales teams and others. Besides working on projects, also implemented new business models on the market – was co-founder of the first local interactive agency; co-founder of the first regional full service internet advertising network.
In past two years, worked intensely on projects that innovate advertising concepts in perspective to media companies and emerging media (web, mobile) and developed concepts that focus on user interaction both in media content and media advertising segments. Held various national and international lectures on new media topics. Graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, VA, USA in 1997 in the field of graphic design and visual communication, specialized in “New Media Design” Domus Academy in Milan, Italy.



Danny Dagan – Online Communities Expert, UK

Danny Dagan managed online community services for Freeserve/Wanadoo, where he launched some of the biggest UK community applications of the early Internet mass market.
He later joined News International as Head of Online Community, where he designed and launched MY Sun, the online community section of The Sun newspaper. He is an expert on online moderation and community editorial, and is also behind the launch of www.newsgob.com- the news aggregation website.Currently Danny consults to media organisations about online communities, web 2.0 and digital strategy.





Jasper de Vreugt – Head of Sales EMEA MADS | MOBILE ADVERTISING

Jasper de Vreugt is a seasoned interactive marketing professional with a broad experience at agencies, advertisers and marketing technology companies. Currently, he is responsible for sales and business development for MADS, a new mobile advertising company specializing in multi-channel mobile profiling and ad serving solutions.
Before joining MADS, Jasper was director of client services at Lost Boys, a leading interactive agency in the Netherlands which is part of the international LBi Group. At Lost Boys, Jasper was responsible for key accounts such as KLM, KPN, Fortis, Sportlife, and USG People. At cross-media agency Media Republic, Jasper was responsible for all interactive and cross- media campaigns for clients such as Heineken International, Martinair and UEFA.
Before entering the media industry, Jasper held several key positions at ING Group, mainly in the fields of CRM and online marketing. Jasper holds a degree in business management and studied at The Hague Business School and Yonsei University in South Korea



Robert J. de Heer Business Development PubliGroupe, Elvetia

Robert Jan de Heer worked for three different Dutch newspapers (Nederlands Dagblad, Trouw and de Volkskrant), both as journalist and online marketer. In his journalistic career, he wrote many articles in the field of economics, new media and current affairs. As an online marketer, he was responsible for setting up and executing the online strategy operations of each of the three newspapers. Besides strategy, he initiated many new product inventions, amongst them the first worldwide online (pdf-based) newspaper and many innovative RSS-like applications. Since June 2006, Robert Jan works for the print and online sales & marketing organization PubliGroupe, responsible for new and emerging media opportunities in the so-called Emerging Media Network.
He has a Bachelor of Journalism (BJ, 1995) and a Master of Business Administration (MBA, 2006). Robert Jan In his sparetime, he has become a specialist in webbased geocoded services (like Google Maps), and launched several European crimesites which crawl, index and show local crimes, including a Dutch version (Misdaadkaart.nl) and German (beta)version (KrimiKarte.de). He is also the founder of Swisstrains.ch, which displays almost realtime the moving position of all Swiss passenger-trains.



Melanie Shah, Business Development Manager (Newsplex), IFRA

Melanie has been working with Ifra since May 2000, where she is responsible for business development and research for the Newsplex team. Part of her job includes researching best practice cases studies in the field of news multimedia, looking at video, audio and mobile services.
Recent projects have taken her to media companies in the UK, Portugal and India, where she has trained journalists in multimedia storytelling.Melanie has a batchelors degree in modern languages and economics, and a post-graduate diploma in marketing from the chartered Institute of marketers (CIM).



Dragos Novac, Metropotam

I am a Romanian entrepreneur running a small software development company, Krogos Software, located in Bucharest, Romania. Besides Krogos, at the moment I am also involved in various internet projects, such as FourHooks, Metropotam, Invita, Blonda or Podio. My experience covers specific projects involving finance, business development, consulting or top management and my educational background is in corporate finance (MBA major) and business strategy (MSc major).

I am interested in strategic management, disruptive technologies and cool business models. If you care about my thoughts or my comments you can read my English and/or Romanian weblog.


Bogdan Gheorghe, Founder Softpedia

Although he graduated from Carol Davila, Medicine University (military medicine section) he never professed in the field of medicine because ever since his 3rd year he begun the softpedia.com project which is now a site having 1milion visitors / day.
Calin Fusu, CEO Neogen

Having a previous experience in management and capital market, Catalin Fusu runs Neogen Company since year 2000.



Lucian Despoiu, General Manager Kondiment Group GmbH

One of the pioneers of Internet development as a business in Romania, Lucian Despoiu is founder and General Manager of KONDIMENT Group GmbH, the first interactive Romanian agency with global development, which has nowadays offices in Bucharest, Munchen and Chicago.

Running a 60 specialists team, Lucian is involved in the digital strategy for the Group projects. He worked in over 100 Internet projects in the past 7 years, having a direct involvement in developing the digital communication strategy for many brands as HP, UPC, DACIA, Petrom, CEC, Loteria Nationala or Germanos.

His expertise covers all the important aspects of a digital developing strategy such as consultancy, digital branding, and web presence, online communication (search engine, marketing, online display advertising, e-mail marketing, online PR, digital Sponsorship, viral marketing, online activism, and so on).

As an entrepreneur, he launched the first recruitment site in Romania, www.ejobs.ro- 1999 and in 2007; he launched the first social-political network in Europe www.inpolitics.ro.


Marian Costache, Managing Partner Motion Vision Communication

Marian Costache is an engineer, graduated from Politechnic Institute of Bucharest, year 1992. He founded Motion Vision Communication (www.mvcom.ro) and for the past 12 years he is responsible for creating and launching several unconventional adveritisng channels.

These alternatives of advertising communication were considered a niche secured by 16 international and national invention brevets.

Among some of Marian Costache most interesting works were in mobile outdoor, multisensorial advertising, mobile advertising via Bluetooth.

Regarding this special adverising channel, Bluetooth, Marian Costache was the first to start some works since 2005, in the present owning an international brevet for one of his advertising systems.

His bilief is that the remembrance of a campaign comes from the mixed stimulation of the consumer by exciting different senses. Here comes the conclusion of the need to use multiple channels of avdertising including NEW MEDIA.


Radu Ionescu, Founder Kinecto

After failing in his rock superstar career in the '90s, in 2000 web project development caught Radu Ionescu's eye, yet not knowing that his obsession was called usability. Doubled by a business journalist career he developed web projects for Imedia Group, where he also coordinated the sales team for corporate sites.

Since 2002 he co-founded and run KINECTO, a full-service agency of relationship marketing, specialized in implementing online tools and direct marketing in order to reach measuring objectives in business. In the same time he-s involved in several projects, online related, like Creditlink, Netclips sau Podio.


Sergiu Biris - Chief Crocodile of Trilulilu

Sergiu Biris is The Chief Crocodile of Trilulilu, the most ascending sharing platform in the Romanian internet.

His first encounter with the Internet business was in 2000, when he started off as a freelance designer, and two years later he managed to put up his own web design &development agency. He personally managed the business, gathering significant years of experience in what is called online project development.

In 2007, Sergiu put aside his main interest in web services, launching Trilulilu, a site that has become one of the main ten sites in the Romanian internet traffic after only one year from the launch. Trilulilu is considered his most successful project, being given that it has been evaluated at 1 million Euros in 2007. This was due to the sale of 10 % of the business to a french investor, for the sum of 100.000 Euro. Trilulilu received the title for "Best site for Entertainment and Spare Time" at the 2007 Internetics festival.

A graduate of the Cluj-Napoca European Studies University, the European Institution Management section, Sergiu developed a strong passion for the online, marketing and management. In 2007, with the help of Andrei Duca and Mark Trefgarne he co-founded LiveRail, a company that develops technology for online video advertising.


Val Voicu - Founder AdEvolution

He's one of the pioneers in the online advertising industry- he's selling advertising on the romanian interned for 10 yers now. His day to day job at that time was to persuade his clients that "internet is not a video game".

Now he runs one of the main online agencies in Romania, Ad Evolution, founded in 2006. Now he's explaining his clients that "video on the internet is a serious game".

For the past 10 years his portofolio sites run over 12.000 online campaigns.

Hi made his hand as an online specialist for 7 years working as publisher for iMedia, where he ran the advertising department of the company and became Developping Manager.

He concieved and participated in 40 sites and important platforms on the Romanian internet.

He's responsible for the first unconventional, with viral effect, campaignlaunched on the romaniana internet:


Calin Rotarus, Managing Director ARBOinteractive

Pioneer in online advertising in Romania. Since 2001 he was online Project Manager, Online Sales Director, TV Print &Online Sales Director, Strategy Director for ARBOmedia. He is now the head of ARBOinteractive the online department separated from Arbomedia. He was a constant promoter of the online industry and the supporter of a professional approach of the online communication- he coordinated the first socio-demographic study on Romaninan sites (2003), he also coordinated and supervised the launch of many services, such as ARBOcontext - context advertising, ARBOmedia online media plan- an online software for media planning, ARBOmedia Online flash- newsletter, and so on.

He's also founder member of the internet department for BRAT and founder of IAB Romania.


Ionut Oprea, Co-founder, Blog Agency

Ionut Oprea is co-founder of Blog Agency the online marketing agency, the first agency offering unconventional solutions to the online marketing through blogs. In less than a year since opening Blog Agency had over 20 clients among Romanian and multinational companies.

Ionut worked as a marketer for some of the biggest online Romanian companies Neogen, Netbridge and Media Pro interactiv and for several international start-ups before making his own marketing and communication agency together with Mihai Giulvezan, specialist in strategy, marketing management, advertising and internet, having over 10 years of activity for both multinational and Romanian companies such as Mc Donald's Romania, Flanco, Sensiblu, Germanos Telecom, Next Advertising, Samsung Romania.

Being an active supporter of the Romanian Internet industry, Ionut Oprea also works as a volunteer for IAB Romania, the Romanian Internet Industry Association.


Doru Panaitescu, Independent consultant Online Media

Doru Panaitescu graduated from the Academy of Economic Studies Bucharest and owns a Bachelor degree in Marketing Management and Business Communication. He is now freelance consultant in Online Media, one of the most important media branch in Romania. Doru gathered a vast experience in online advertising, marketing management, e-business, marketing research and PR in companies such Initiative Media, ARBOmedia, Astral Telecom and DNT.