MWS 2011 Speakers

Alexander Adolf - Condition-ALPHA Digital Broadcast Technology Consulting, Germany

Alexander Adolf received a Dipl.-Ing. (FH) degree in Data and Information Technology from the Georg-Simon Ohm University of Applied Sciences in Nuremberg (Germany) in 1995. After developing GSM terminals for Nortel, he entered the digital media industry in 1996 and joined BetaResearch as a Senior Software Developer. For BetaResearch, he helped in the commercial launch and operation of Premiere, the first digital pay-TV operator in the German speaking countries. In 1997, he joined the DVB TM-GBS technical experts group, which he is chairing since 2000. From 2001 through 2009 he was with Micronas, a provider of application-specific semiconductor system solutions for consumer and automotive electronics, where he was heading the team for middleware and application software stacks. Since 2010 he is working as an independent consultant for digital broadcast technology as the owner of Condition-ALPHA. Mr. Adolf is a member of the Association of Engineers in Germany (VDI).

Dr. Adel Al-Hezmi - QUWIC - Qatar university wireless innovations Center, Qatar

Dr. Adel Al-Hezmi received his PhD in 2011 and MSc in electrical engineering in 2003 from the Technische Universität Berlin, Germany with specific emphasis on telecommunication engineering and networks. Al-Hezmi has more than 10 years of international experience in the areas of wireless/telecomm R&D, innovations and development of multimedia content services and related platforms. He started his carrier at Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS where he led the R&D of NGN-based multimedia content delivery and emerging technologies. Thereafter, he worked as NGN and IMS design expert at LCC Saudi Arabia. Currently, he works as solution architect at Qatar University Wireless Innovation Center (QUWIC) in Qatar. He published more than twenty-five publications and constructed several workshops.

Dr. Nick Allot, nquiringminds, UK

Nick Allot has influenced the mobile industry as the CTO of OMTP (Open Mobile Terminal Platform Ltd) and Interim CTO for WAC (Wholesale Application Community Ltd), where he helped shape and deliver over 40+ collaborative technology projects including the Universal Charging Solution. Nick has been at the forefront of the new wave of Web based applications, he created the Open Source BONDI initiative, managed the initial WAC Waikiki releases, helped define and raise funding for the Webinos Initiative and was integral to the creation of the W3C Device APIs and Policy Working Group. Nicks primary expertise is the definition and delivery of high technology, disruptive products. He was Strategy Director and CTO for the VC invested fastmobile, later acquired by RIM, which delivered push email, push to talk and instant messaging solutions for mobile. And before that Nick was Technical Director for Motorola’s European Internet division. Nick has had a number of other executive and consultancy positions with companies as diverse as Shell, Pearson Group, Dorling Kindersley and Neural Computer Sciences, and consequently has a breadth of industry experience encompassing, Mobile and Web, Security, Multimedia and Gaming, Data Warehousing and Data Mining, Manufacturing and Engineering. Nick has a Joint Honours Degree in Computer and Cognitive Science from Nottingham University, and PhD in Artificial Intelligence, specialising in Computation Linguistics and Knowledge Representation. Nick is a Fellow of the Institute of Analysts and Programmers, a Member of the British Computer Society, has been published in scientific and mainstream media and is a regular speaker at international conferences on mobile and high technology issues.

Robert Amlung - ZDF, Germany

Robert Amlung is Head of Digital Strategy at ZDF. He joined Germany’s national Public Broadcaster in 2001 as deputy head of New Media, taking charge of the whole department in 2006. He worked among other things on the introduction of ZDF’s on-demand video service, ZDFmediathek. Robert is a TV news journalist by training, with a strong background in IT as well. Before working for ZDF, he was working in ARD’s central newsroom in Hamburg, and he was responsible for several innovation projects in TV news. In 1996, he founded ARD’s news website tagesschau.de. Robert was born in 1965.

Dr. Stefan Arbanowski - Fraunhofer FOKUS, Germany
Dr. Stefan Arbanowski is head of the Competence Centre Future Applications and Media (FAME) at Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems FOKUS in Berlin, Germany. Stefan Arbanowski received his Ph.D and M.Sc. in computer science from the Technical University Berlin (TUB), Germany. He gave lectures in broadband networks, mobile communications, service platform, and middleware technologies at TUB. Since 1995, he participated several national and international research projects related to service platforms (e.g. IN/TMN, TINA, IMS), UMS, rich media, IPTV, mobile and personal communications.
Currently, he is coordinating Fraunhofer FOKUS' IPTV activities, bundling expertise in the areas of interactive applications, media handling, mobile telecommunications, and next generation networks. FOKUS channels those activities towards networked media environments featuring live, on demand, context-aware, and personalized interactive media.
He is member of eMobility European Technology Platform Steering Board and was chairman elect of the Wireless World Research Forum (WWRF) Service Platform Working Group (WG2) for 2004-2005. Beside telecommunications and distributed service platforms, he has published more than 70 papers in respective journals and conferences in the area of personalized service provisioning. He is member of various program committees of international conferences.

Dr. Alan Baldwin - Samsung, UK

Alan has been involved in the mobile and wireless telecoms industry for over 15 years working for a number of Tier 1 product and platform vendors. He has a strong background in embedded software development and has lead many successful software development projects through his time in the industry. He has a strong interest in web technology, software architecture and systems engineering, and holds a BSc honors degree from Southampton university.
Alan has a very strong background in product, platform and applications development; with many commercially successful projects delivered across millions of devices for global markets. In more recent years he has become an expert within the field of mobile web technologies and was part of Samsung's team that began working on the OMTP BONDI project.
He now leads the Technology Innovation Group for Samsung which helps define the roadmap for Samsung's Mobile R&D teams, based on technology trends and also the Operator customer requirements. He has been involved with the webinos project through from its initial proposal stages.

Dirk Bartels – Versant, USA
Dirk Bartels is a successful serial entrepreneur and innovator with 25 years experience in the global technology industry. Since 1995 based in the Silicon Valley, he founded and led 2 successful venture funded start up companies, Poet Software, a leading object database company that merged with Versant Corporation in 2004, and Progio Mobile, an innovative mobile personal training system. Currently, Dirk is responsible for Versant's product and marketing strategy.

Academic Studies and PhD at the University of Bonn in Informatics in Operating Systems Area, continued in Informatics at University Oldenburg. Since 1995 Professor for Informatics at Technische Universität München (TUM) focussed in the area of mobile distributed systems, involed in projects on mobile sevices, mobile operating systems, mobile web, and automotive.

Franziska Becker studied psychology at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with a focus on engineering psychology/ cognitive ergonomics as well as user integration in innovation processes. She is working at Telekom Innovation Laboratories (T-Labs) in the project field of User Driven Innovation. At T-Labs she supports several R&D projects regarding future media consumption with innovative user research methods.

Volker Blume – Philips, Germany

Volker Blume is the technical product manager for TV at Philips Consumer Lifestyle in Hamburg. He is responsible for the company's activities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The major focus of his current agenda is the market launch of Net TV. Blume also represents the interests of Philips in the standardization of hybrid devices as part of the German TV Platform. As an promoter for digital television without set-top boxes, he is additionally involved in the market launch and all coordination activities relating to the introduction of the CI+ standard for integrated digital devices.
After completing studies in electrical engineering, Blume began his professional career at the Institute for Communications Technology in Braunschweig and later moved to Philips Semiconductors Hamburg, where he worked as a system engineer. As a systems architect at NXP Semiconductors, he also developed efficient solutions for the mainstream TV market segment.

Since 2011: T-Systems Project Management Connected Car
2007 – 2010: ERTICO ITS, Project Management Technical Consulting Standardisation ETSI
1999 - 2006: T-Systems Team leader International Projects EC Funding office

Charles Dawes - Rovi Corporation, UK

Charles is an authority in digital television product management, having been involved in managing the development of converged content experiences for many years.
As Product Management Director at Rovi Corporation, Charles is responsible for Product Management of Rovi’s solutions for Service Providers (including guidance technologies, search & recommendations), Metadata and Advertising in EMEA.  Charles works closely with Rovi’s Global product management teams to ensure Rovi’s solutions are customised to meet local market needs across EMEA.
Charles began his career at Cable and Wireless, responsible for EPG development.Prior to Rovi, Charles held the position of Product Development Director at UPC/Chellomedia, overseeing UPC’s Digital Television Product Development across their European Footprint.

Henning Eid - Intel, Germany
Henning Eid is responsible for sales of consumer electronics products in the European region for Intel. Mr. Eid received an MBA in marketing at the Fachhochschule Akademie für Erwachsenenbildung in Lahr and graduated as electrical engineer at the FH Wiesbaden. Working for Intel, he has held a variety of functions from application engineer to leading the Business Development for CE. His focus is to develop the consumer electronics business for intel and win large customers for Intel CE products. In this mission, Mr. Eid works with manufacturers, system integrators and service providers to develop next generation solutions that also bring internet contents to TVs and create new user experiences.

Lars Friedrichs - ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, Germany

Lars Friedrichs, Head of Teletext and Hybrid TV, ProSiebenSat.1 Digital, UnterföhringLars Friedrichs has worked for ProSiebenSat.1 Digital since 2004. In 2003, he worked as project manager for subtitles and teletext at Voice & Text GmbH. A business graduate, Friedrichs was also active as a project manager for audiotext competitions and teletext at Millemedia GmbH and as a project manager for teletext and subtitles at AdServ GmbH. ProSiebenSat.1 Digital extends the strong SAT.1, ProSieben, kabel eins and N24 brands to all multimedia platforms. Online, teletext, games and mobile are among the fields in this product portfolio. This media service is considered the most underrated medium in Germany, although it reaches almost 90 percent of households.

since 2009 – today Managing Partner and Founder QTom GmbH www.qtom.tv since 2006 – today Managing Partner and Founder TeraVolt GmbH www.teravolt.tv2001 - 2006 Executive Producer (TV, Mobile, Online) MME, Me, Myself & Eye, http://www.mme.de1998 - 2001 Managing Editor TV & Web TV, Verlagsgruppe Milchstrasse, http://www.tvspielfilm.de1996 - 1998 Managing Editor / Producer (VH-1) Viacom, MTV Networks Europe, Eye Love You, http://www.vh1.de1994 - 1996 Editor(Canale Grande, Studio Moor) MME, Me, Myself & Eye, http://www.mme.de

Nico Engelhardt is a designer from Berlin. Together with Johannes Ippen he created asidemag.com - the first HTML5 magazine for the iPad. In his lecture "Design ♥ HTML5", Nico will talk about their learnings, difficulties they discovered and why HTML5 is the perfect tool for editorial design.

Andreas Gnyp - Friendscout24 GmbH, Germany

Andreas is a Software Developer at Friendscout24, who received his B.Sc. in Mathematics from the Technical University Munich (TUM) in 2010. Gnyp is working at Friendscout24 since 2005. As a student at Friendscout24 he's built an Online-Management-System which handles all work related issues for the students.Currently, he is in the company's Optimization Team. Formerly he was building a Facebook-Application from scratch using Ruby on Rails.He is also developing in Java and PHP.

 Dr. Wolfgang Haberl received his Diploma in Informatics in 2006 from the Faculty of Informatics at the Technische Universität München. Accompanying his studies he worked, amongst others, at Infineon AG (Munich), MEDIAonAIR GmbH (Munich), and BMW AG (Muinch) as a working student. His activities and responsibilities included UML CASE tool support, software development for mobile applications, and systems acceptance testing. Wolfgang Haberl received a PhD degree from TUM in 2011 for his scientific work about automated code generation for automotive systems. He is currently working for BMW Forschung & Technik in the field of connected automotive applications.

Dr. Dirk Hetzer - Media Broadcast, Germany
1991 - 1993: research staff at Technical University of Berlin
since 1993: project manager at T-Systems Nova, Berkom GmbH:
2001 - 2003: head of department Middleware at T-Systems Nova, Berkom
2004 - 2005: head of department Services and Applications for NGN, TZ Darmstadt
2005 - 2006: head of department Media & Voice Solutions, T-Systems, ENPS TZ
since 2006: Head System Solution & Engineering, MEDIA BROADCAST

Steffen Holly - Aupeo!, Germany

Steffen Holly became an electronic technican before he studied music in Dresden. After his professional music carreer in Berlin he moved to the Rhein-Main-Area. There he worked as an export manager in a record company and later as supervisor for music rights and advertisement with an own publishing and production company. Parallel to this he studied busines administrations. In 2000 Steffen Holly moved back to Berlin and became Director of Audio Products and Technology Licensing at MAGIX AG, being responsible for all audio software product developments and technologies. This included a partnership with Fraunhofer IIS, IDMT and IAIS and he guided the buyout-process of Fraunhofer AudioID. Together with this new MAGIX subsidiary M2Any he lead the developement of several new recommendation ideas together with Fraunhofer IDMT and created the initial concept and name of www.mufin.com <http://www.mufin.com/> . Since 2009 Steffen Holly works as CTO for the Berlin Startup AUPEO! being responsible for technology, product and content which includes further cooperations with Fraunhofer and DFKI as well as global music rights licensing. Part of the product development are also new music promotion and licensing models for artists and rights holders. 

Heinz Honemann- Alcatel-Lucent, Germany
More than 20 years of experience in commercial roles in transportation and telecommunication business. After several leading positions in Transport Automation, Radio Space & Defense, Fix and Mobile Networks Heinz served over 10 years as Director Pricing, Commercial Strategy for Alcatel’s world wide Switching, Next Generation Networks and Convergence Network business.
Since 2009 he is Vice President of Alcatel-Lucent Network Applications activity in Europe, Middle-East & Africa. Alcatel-Lucent’s Network Applications Enablers provide service providers, strategic industries, media companies and consumers with open, smarter & richer solutions on all screens and devices. Based on a broad commercial experience in several industries, Heinz is truly excited in creating new business models with an open eco system of partners in innovative environment. Heinz Honemann 45 Years, based in Stuttgart, Germany, married, has two children and is interested in sport & culture.

Dr. Philipp Hoschka – W3C

Philipp Hoschka is a Deputy Director of the W3C. His main interest is bringing the benefits of Web technology to mobile and other non-PC devices. In 2006, he founded W3C's Ubiquitous Web Domain which includes W3C's Mobile Web Initiative created by Philipp in 2005. In the past, he pioneered work on integrating audio and video into the Web. Philipp founded, chaired and served as editor for the Working Group that developed the W3C Standard SMIL which today is an integral part of mobile phone MMS messaging. Philipp also lead W3C's "Television and the Web" Activity. He previously directed W3C's Architecture Domain, which issues all core XML specifications from the W3C. Philipp chaired numerous W3C workshops that explored new Web developments, such as Workshops on the Mobile Web Initiative, Web Services, Television and the Web, Push Technology and Real-Time Multimedia and the Web. Philipp holds a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science, and a Master's Degree in Computer Science from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany.

Yun Chao Hu - Huawei

Yun Chao Hu is currently employed by Huawei Technologies and is heading the European fixed broadband solution management department. He is very much involved in driving innovative solutions in the area of the IP Video and Digital Home. Areas of his interest are CPE virtualization and introducing Hybrid IP Video solutions such as HbbTV and webTV. Furthermore, he is very interested into an eco-system on the IP video industry.
Mr. Yun Chao Hu has the Open IPTV Forum Chairman/President since April 2007 till 2011 when he transited from Ericsson to Huawei. He was very actively involved in the initiation of this forum which targets the development of the next generation IPTV providing end-users a completely new experience for their entertainment and communication services. He guided the forum from the initial 9 Founders towards a forum of currently 58 Members.
Yun Chao Hu was employed within Ericsson Sweden and works within the Product Line IMS within the Business Unit Networks and drives IMS solutions over cable access networks. In this dual responsibility, he is very actively driving for synergies between Telco-based and Cable-based IPTV solutions over broadband access networks (i.e. xDSL and Docsis based). He is also actively involved in the IMS portfolio and business management activities within the Product Line IMS.

Sabine Irrgang - Gofresh GmbH, Germany

Sabine Irrgang is COO and Co-Founder of mobile social media specialist Gofresh.
Gofresh owns the brand “itsmy” (m.itsmy.com) which develops and distributes HTML5 social games for touchscreen devices and mobile web, like “Criminal Pizza”, a game you can play on Facebook with any internet device. Gofresh also publishes books with a special focus on how social media changed our generation and influences our future, like the recently published “Social Network Photography”.
Sabine manages Gofresh’s worldwide partnerships and the newly established book publishing business. Before co-founding Gofresh with her two partners in Munich, Germany, in 2003, Sabine worked as international Mobile Product Manager at iobox, a Telefónica company, where she launched the first mobile info- and content channels in Germany with international music and entertainment stars, well-known publishing houses and Bundesliga football clubs.

Sabine Irrgang has been named as one of the “Top 50 Women in Mobile Content worldwide” by Mobile Entertainment Magazine in 2008, 2009 and 2010. She is a member of the Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network (DWEN). Sabine is co-author of the book “Social Network Photography”.

Johannes Ippen - Aside Mag, Germany

Nico Engelhart & Johannes Ippen are designers from Berlin. Having worked on projects in university together, the Apple fanboys decided to create asidemag.com - the first HTML5 magazine for the iPad. In their lecture "Design ♥ HTML5", they will talk about their learnings, difficulties they discovered and why HTML5 is the perfect tool for editorial design.

Simon Isenberg is a research assistant at BMW Forschung & Technik and is preparing a doctorate at Technische Universität München. He has received an university degree in Business Information Technology from Regensburg University of Applied Sciences in 2010. From 2004 until 2010 he was a member of BMW Group's Trainee Promotion Program which combines a fully accredited vocational training as a Management Assistant in Informatics (2006) with a university degree in Business Information Technology and internships at BMW Group offices in Munich and Palo Alto. His research focuses on the integration of Web technology into in-car infotainment systems

Ajit Jaokar – Futuretext, UK
Ajit Jaokar is the founder of the London based publishing and research company futuretext focussed on emerging Web and Mobile technologies. In 2009-2010, Ajit was nominated as part of the Global Agenda Council on the Future of the Internet by the world economic forum. Ajit chairs Oxford University's Next generation mobile applications panel and conducts a course on Web 2.0, Social networking, Mobile Web 2.0 and LTE services at Oxford University.
Ajit’s thinking is widely followed in the industry and his blog, the OpenGardensBlog, which was recently rated a top 20 wireless blog worldwide. Media appearances include BBC – Newsnight – 3phone launch; CNN money; BBC digital planet.
Ajit’s latest books are Open Mobile, Social Media Marketing and Mobile Web 2.0.
His recent talks and forthcoming talks include: CEBIT 2009;MobileWorld Congress(2007, 2008, 2009); Keynote at O Reilly Web20 expo (April 2007);Keynote

Stefan Jenzowsky - Siemens AG Österreich, Austria
Stefan Jenzowsky studied communication science and psychology at the Free University Berlin and the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. After this, he worked in media effects research, entertainment research and advertising effectiveness at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich. From 1999 to 2006, Stefan was responsible for business innovation at Siemens Communications in Munich. As VP Strategy and Head of Business Innovation he was leading a think tank for new business models in telecommunications. In this think tank, future topics and disruptive innovations were developed for Siemens, with the goal of changing the business models of the telecommunication, internet, media and entertainment industry. In this think tank, innovations like IPTV (e.g. Belgacom TV, Belgium, mineTV, NL) were developed, piloted and introduced to the market.After this, Stefan became Partner at trommsdorff + drüner innovation + marketing consultants, consulting companies from the media, entertainment and telecommunications industries in developing and introducing innovative new services and products. From 2007 to 2010, Stefan was the managing director of moreTV Broadcasting GmbH in Potsdam-Babelsberg, developing innovative TV centric services like video recorders that know what I want to watch. Since October 2010 Stefan is heading the Media business unit at Siemens Communication, Media and Technology in Vienna, being responsible for the media business worldwide.
Stefan has co-authored various books and publications on the future of media, including the book “Fernsehwerbung - Television Advertising”) and “Die Zukunft des Fernsehens - The Future of Television”. Together with Sven Gabor Jansky, Stefan also wrote “Rulebreakers”, which stormed the German business book charts in 2010. In addition, Stefan is teaching at various universities like the Karlshochschule International University and the European Business School.

Dr. Stefan Lietsch - Zattoo, Germany

Stefan Lietsch is the Head of Engineering at Zattoo. Before joining Zattoo, he was a System Architect and Project Manager at a German savings bank where he designed and coordinated the implementation of financial IT solutions. Stefan holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Paderborn in Germany. He did research on distributed visualization and simulation on hybrid cluster systems and published his findings in several articles for renowned conferences.

Frank Lonczewski - Deutsche Telekom, Germany
Frank Lonczewski graduated in 1990 and holds a Dipl. Math. from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. After stations at the Institute of Computer Science of the Technical University of Munich and the German digital TV pioneer Kirchgruppe, he joined T-Online International AG in 2005. Following the merger on Deutsche Telekom AG in 2006, today Frank is responsible for the product management of Deutsche Telekom’s IPTV product T-Home Entertain.In this position, he is in charge of managing all customer facing aspects of the product core, including the definition of its hardware and service propositions as well as its user experience.
Frank is one of the founding members of the German Usability Professionals’ Association (German UPA) established in 2002 where he continues to put his focus on strengthening usability engineering in German-speaking countries especially in the field of consumer electronics.He also is a member of the Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

Anirban Majumdar - Dolby, Germany
"I am a result oriented business leader with an in-depth understanding of technology. Presently as Sr. Manager strategic sales EMEA I am responsible for managing the entire 360o relationship with “Implementation partners” of Dolby in EMEA and India. The role involves managing the relationship from initial interest through licensing till engineering support. The objective is to drive adoption of new technologies/formats and this involves close alignment and co-ordination with Online, Digital Broadcast and connected electronics value chain – involving IC makers, middleware makers, device manufacturers, professional equipment makers and service providers.
My strength is in creating and communicating a vision and in driving execution around shared goals. I have worked in various countries and in culturally diverse teams. Through the years by virtue of my different roles I have a thorough understanding of various aspects of business and an in-depth understanding of mobile communication, online, digital broadcast and semiconductor eco-system."

Markus Mäurer - Vodafone D2 GmbH, Germany

Education
Aug 1991 – Jun 2000 Max-von-Laue Gymnasium, Koblenz Abitur
Apr 2002– Sep 2004 Johannes Gutenberg Universität, Mainz
Aug 2003 – Feb 2004     Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Netherlands International Erasmus-exchange studies
Oct 2004 – Dez 2006 Universität Koblenz-Landau, Koblenz Degree: Bachelor of Sciences in Information Management
Title of Bachelor-Tthesis:Development of busines models for technology innovations based on internet integration – exampled by the integration of DSL Acces, Fixed-line telephony, IP-telephony and IP-TV.
Work Experience
Jan 2007 – Oct 2009 Vodafone D2 GmbH (until May 2010: Arcor AG & Co. KG) - Projectmanager Customer Relationship Management.
Nov  2009 – Mar 2010 Vodafone D2 GmbH - Productmanager DSL.
Apr  2010 – thitherto Vodafone D2 GmbH - Productmanager TV.

Klaus Merkel - IRT (Institut für Rundfunktechnik GmbH), Germany Klaus Merkel, born in 1966, graduated as an telecommunications engineer from the Technical University in Munich. He joined IRT in 1992. Since 1995 he has been working in programme distribution over various digital platforms, including interactive applications. Since 2004 IPTV and hybrid systems have been the main focus of his work.

Philipp has been running software projects for the last 10 years, working in mobile entertainment, e-commerce and games. He used just about every methodology to manage software projects so far, from waterfall over scrum to kanban, but he is still looking for the holy grail. Since 2009 he is responsible for the game development at wooga, where some unique requirements around developing games with flash entered the mix. So far his team developed 3 of the current top 15 games on Facebook, and they are on an ambitious mission. wooga is the third biggest developer of Social Games in the world and with 31 million active users the number one from Europe.

Dr. Randolph Nikutta - Deutsche Telekom Laboratories, Germany

Randolph Nikutta started his career at Deutsche Telekom in 1996 at a R&D subsidiary. Between 2002 and 2008 Dr. Nikutta has been working for Detecon International GmbH (consultancy subsidiary of T-Systems International). Since April 2005 Dr. Nikutta has been assigned to Deutsche Telekom Laboratories which he joined in April 2008 on a permanent basis. He is responsible for the project field “New Media” dealing with IPTV, mobile TV, 3D TV, Web TV and OTT, Convergent TV, TV Apps and also more mid- to long-term related innovation topics like Free Viewpoint TV.

Claes Nilsson - Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, Sweden

Claes Nilsson is working as senior researcher at the Technology Research department of Sony Ericsson with focus on web technology. He has been involved in the development and standardization of the mobile web since the early days of WAP in the mid 90’s until today’s capable HTML5 based environment. Current specialities are device APIs and service discovery for Web Applications. Working tasks are for example internal and collaborative research projects, definition of technology strategies, demo and prototype implementations, standardization and operator dialogues.

Christian Nord - Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, Sweden

Christian Nord is a Director at the CTO of Sony Ericsson where he has been leading the Standardization and Technical Areas organization. He specializes in mobile and web technologies. Christian has 15+ years in the mobile telecom industry and has held various product, software and network architecture manager roles at Ericsson and the France Telecom/Orange Group. He currently leads the Sony Ericsson delegation at W3C and has participated in many different standardization forums including 3GPP, OMTP and NGMN.

Dr. Lyndon J B Nixon joined STI International as senior postdoctoral researcher in November 2008. He currently works as a workpackage leader in the European IP NoTube (semantically enhanced television), project leader for the Austrian hypervideo project ConnectME, and scientific coordinator of the European IP LinkedTV (interlinking television with the web).Previously he was a researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS(2001-2003) and the Free University of Berlin (2004-2008). He received his PhD in January 2007 with the topic 'Semantic Web enabled Multimedia Presentation system'. His research interests cover multimedia annotation and processing,  augmentation of media with associated content and interactive interfaces to mobile and TV content.

Dieter Plassmann - net mobile AG, Germany

Mr. Plassmann was born on August 7, 1963 in Aachen. He graduated from the University of Aachen with a degree in electrical engineering in 1992. From 1992 to 1997, Mr. Plassmann did research on UMTS networks at the University of Aachen. From 1997 to 2000, he was responsible for the WAP & multi access portals at E-Plus in Duesseldorf as the technical director and project manager. By joining the net mobile AG in 2001 as technical director (CTO), Mr. Plassmann can look back on a long professional experience in the telecommunications market.

At YOC AG Jörn Rehse is in charge of operational business and consulting in the units Mobile Marketing and Mobile Internet at the Berlin project center. Before joining YOC, he was CTO at a mobile LBS/social games platform. Jörn Rehse holds a degree in Informatics from the University of Karlsruhe. After his studies, he held different positions at an international IT consulting agency.

Mr. Rosier has more than 20 years of technical and commercial experience in the Television and IT marketplace. Eric joined Ericsson in 2011 and is responsible for driving Telecom Segment Strategy in the area of Compression. Eric's experience spans several companies in the TV space, on a variety of aspects related to TV business, from providing services to developing consumer devices. Prior to joining Ericsson, he was driving Envivio's market presence and solution innovation as VP of Business Development, He also served as a Marketing Manager at Canal+ Technologies, in charge of MediaHighway Interactive Middleware and MediaGuard Conditional Access products. He has a strong interest and involvement in advanced subjects such as Adaptive Streaming and MPEG DASH, as well as turning new technologies into successful businesses for customers.

Dr. André Schneider - Samsung, Germany

Dr. André Schneider, geb. 20.7.1970, ist seit 2004 bei Samsung und lenkt als Head of Product Strategy die Produkt- und Content-Strategie. Dazu gehört auch die strategische Positionierung vernetzter Unterhaltungselektronik insbesondere im Rahmen des Content/ App Geschäfts und die Koordination technologischer Entwicklungen wie 3D, HBBTV, CI Plus mit den Inhalteanbietern. Ehrenamtlich ist er zudem als Mitglied im Beirat des Fachverbandes Consumer Electronics (CE) und Leiter der Kommission für Technologie und neue Medien im Zentralverband Elektrotechnik- und Elektronikindustrie e. V. (ZVEI) sowie in der Deutschen TV Plattform e.V. tätig. Zuvor war er bei Panasonic für das Europäische Digital-TV Betreiber Geschäft zuständig. Den Einstieg in die Branche fand er 1999 bei der Betaresearch GmbH der KirchGruppe. Herr Schneider studierte BWL an der European Business School (ebs), Östrich Winkel, und promovierte in VWL an der Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen (RWTH), Aachen.

Robert Shilston - Assanka, UK

​Robert is the founder of Assanka, which has recently been lauded for its HTML5 apps which harness web technologies to create user experiences perfectly customised for the touch screen tablet and smartphone. After launching the Financial Times web app in June, it has rapidly become the canonical example of how a great news app should be done, and more will follow soon. Robert also recently advised Morgan Stanley on the evolution of the web and is attempting to finish a PhD.

John Simmons - Microsoft, USA

John Simmons leads an internet television platform effort at Microsoft, engaging industry organizations to adopt standards for internet television, specifically authorization frameworks for DRM interoperable adaptive bitstream live and on demand video. John led the creation of Microsoft’s DRM-interoperable “Protected Interoperable File Format” specification, which resulted in the new ISO MPEG common encryption (CENC) standard. He also drove publication of Microsoft’s Smooth Streaming Transport Protocol, which contributed to the creation of the new ISO MPEG Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) specification. He represents Microsoft in the W3C Web and TV Interest Group and the “TV Everywhere” Open Authentication Technical Committee. He has also represented Microsoft in standards bodies such as AACS, where he was co-chair of the technical working group, the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) Digital Rights Management, Broadcast working groups, and the Alliance for Telecommunication Industry Solutions, where he is participating in the specification of a downloadable security model for broadband-broadcast convergence. John received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley, where he honed his software development skills doing scientific programming at the Space Sciences Laboratory. He holds patents for DRM interoperability, online content discovery, authenticated online content acquisition and mobile device design. Prior to joining Microsoft John managed software development for Philips’ award-winning Windows CE based handheld PCs, and held an executive position in three mobile technology startups.

Dr. Stephan Steglich - Fraunhofer FOKUS. Germany

Dr. Stephan STEGLICH is Head of department Future Applications and Media (FAME) at Fraunhofer FOKUS. He received his M.Sc. in computer science (in 1998) and PhD (in 2003) in Computer Science from the TU Berlin. His fields of interest include, e.g., context-awareness, user-interaction, and service front-ends. In 1998 and 1999 he has worked intensively in the research area of Intelligent Mobile Agents. Since 1999 he has started research activities in the area of user-centric communication. He has been involved in a number of projects that were related to Human-Machine-Interaction, UMTS/VHE, personalization and user profiling. Currently Stephan is working the area next generation Web platform (WebX.0, mobile Web) for cross-platform and cross-device applications and media. Stephan is managing international and national level research activities and has been an organizer and a member of program committees of several international conferences. He has actively participated in standardization activities in these research areas and gives lectures at the TU Berlin, chair for Open Communications Systems (OKS).

Michael Vakulenko - Visionmobile, UK

Michael has over 15 years experience in mobile telecom and wireless Internet with track record of product and technology innovation. He started his involvement in wireless in QUALCOMM and later worked for number of wireless startup companies in Israel and in the US.
Michael's broad professional experience spans mobile internet services, smartphone software platforms, handset architectures, cellular networks and wireless silicon.
His ability to link technology with business drivers and separate hype from reality is based on solid understanding of industry trends, technology roadmaps and deployment aspects of mobile applications and services.
Michael actively participates in industry debate speaking at industry forums, taking part in panels and blogging on smartphone strategy and competition.

Jan Wendt - MMH NetRange, Germany
Jan Wendt (43) is founder and CEO of  NetRange MMH. With more than 100 clients MMH is a major brand for technical solutions in the interactive television sector. Jan Wendt started his career as a consultant for Sportfive, one of the market leaders in global sports marketing, where he was working for more than 6 years as Vice President. Before setting up MMH in 2004, Jan Wendt was working as Commercial Director for a Formula 1 racing team for 3 years.

Markus Willner - T-Systems, Germany

Markus Willner is working as a Senior Project manager and Scrum Master at the Next Generation Client department of T-Systems. He has been involved in Developer Marketing and Technical Project Management for the Developergarden.com project. Currently he is working in an automotive software project and in several T-Labs research and development projects.
His work experience since 2000: IT- and Telco project management in international research-, development and innovation projects, IT consulting, E-Commerce and E-Business lecturer, project fields: P2P, Galileo, IP v6, IPTV, community services, VOIP IM clients, international working experience in France, Hungary, Canada, Brazil and China.

George Wright - BBC, UK

George Wright is the Head of Prototyping section for BBC Research Development and runs their Central London Lab.His team includes software and systems engineers, technologist, user experience and interaction designers, information architects, production staff and researchers.The Prototyping Team creates experimental and prototype services across all major digital platforms for the BBC.George leads the BBC's work on EC FP7 projects P2P-Next and FI-CONTENT as well as several nationally funded projects.Previously, George worked on the development and production of services for interactive television platforms (DCABLE/Liberate and DTT/MHEG-5)He joined the BBC in 1997 after working in radio production and sound recording and a 5 year stint as a professional musician.

Arkady Zaslavsky - CSIRO, Australia

Dr Arkady Zaslavsky is holding position of Science Leader in Semantic Data Management science area. Before coming to CSIRO in July 2011, he held a position of a Chaired Professor in Pervasive and Mobile Computing at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden where he was involved in a number of European research projects, collaborative projects with Ericsson Research, PhD supervision and postgraduate education. Between 1992 and 2008 Arkady was a full-time academic staff member at Monash University, Australia, where he held various academic and administrative positions including Director of Monash Research Centre for Distributed Systems and Software Engineering. Arkady's research interests include context- and situation-awareness, pervasive computing, personalised media content delivery, sensor information management. Dr Zaslavsky is a member of IEEE Computer and Communications Societies and a member of ACM.