TechCrunch UK & Ireland is edited by Mike Butcher, a former editor of New Media Age magazine, and The Industry Standard Europe. He has written for UK national newspapers including the The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times and magazines including The New Statesman. He has launched or relanched several media web sites and in 2004 he was voted ‘One of the 100 Innovators of the UK Internet Decade’ by GfK NOP, the fourth-largest custom research business in the world. He has appeared on BBC News, Sky News, Channel 4 and Bloomberg, commenting on technology and new media.

Suw Charman-Anderson is a leading social software expert, specialising in the use of blogs and wikis in business. She works with companies around the world, from sectors as diverse as technology, finance and public relations, to help them understand how social software can be used both behind the firewall and for customer communications.

After a short stint working as a freelance music journalist in the late 90s, Suw became a freelance web designer and project manager. In 2002, she launched her own internet start-up which she ran for two years.

She started her first blog, Chocolate and Vodka, in 2001, and began working as a social media consultant four years ago. She recently co-founded Fruitful Seminars & Events, covering Web 2.0 subjects, with Lloyd Davis and Leisa Reichelt.

A passionate digital rights advocate, Suw founded the Open Rights Group in July 2005, with the aim of raising awareness of digital rights issues, running campaigns and supporting grass roots activism. As Executive Director, Suw was responsible for ORG’s responses to the APIG public inquiry into Digital Rights Management and the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property.

She writes regularly with her husband, journalist Kevin Anderson, about social media, journalism and related subjects on their blog, Strange Attractor, and has recently written about social networks for CIO Magazine and about the psychology of email for The Guardian.

Alexandra was born in Montreal, Canada, but grew up in Paris and the Middle East. Returning to Canada, she first completed a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design at the Universite de Montréal only to move back to Europe to complete a Master’s degree in Interaction Design at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea.

She has been involved as a strategic designer and interaction design on project for clients such as Jaiku, Thinglink, Blast Radius, fo.am and Blyk before moving to London and becoming co-founding and CEO of technology and design consultancy Tinker.

She is also an active conference speaker on the next generation industrial design, ubiquitous computing and implications of open source hardware in the design world.

Based in London and Milan, Tinker supports creative minds and projects with technological implementation and world class knowhow in the areas of interaction design for interactive marketing, interactive lighting and retail environments, exhibition design. Since its beginnings Tinker have been involved with clients such as Artemide, Syneo, Icon Media Lab, YCN, Ico design and Accenture.

Brady Forrest is Chair for O’Reilly’s Where 2.0. Additionally, he co-Chairs Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and NYC. Brady writes for O’Reilly Radar tracking changes in technology. He previously worked at Microsoft on Live Search (he came to Microsoft when it acquired MongoMusic). Brady lives in Seattle, where he builds cars for Burning Man and runs Ignite. You can track his web travels at Truffle Honey.

In 2002 Lukasz Gadowski founded Spreadshirt.com (currently ~300 employees worldwide, backed by Accel Europe) and was the co-founder of the Social Network “StudiVZ” (sold to Holtzbrinck in 2007, today Germanies largest website). At the beginning of 2008 Gadowski moved from the Spreadshirt Board of Directors to the Supervisory Board, where he is now chairman.

Lukasz is an active internet investor since 2006 and has a portfolio of over 60 internet companies across geographies and stages (for example imagekind.com, rapleaf.com, panfu.de, zlio.com, dawanda.de, amiando.com, imedo.de, toksta.com, apomio.de, epuls.pl, netzathleten.de).

Since 2007 he was involved in the creation of numerous Internet companies, for example Brands4Friends.com, MisterSpex.com, Absolventa.com, Triphunter.com, Playnik.com as well as Kaeuferportal.de. For these ventures Oliver Jung (AdInvest, Zürich) is an important partner.

In September 2008 Lukasz launched ‘Team Europe Ventures’ which combines his existing portfolio. Within the new entity he plans to scale and expand his activities – among other towards investments in later stages and more international focus.

Lukasz was born in Poland and grew up in Germany. Today he lives in Berlin.

For more information about Lukasz and Team Europe Ventures, please visit the web site www.teameurope.net.

Having pioneered French telematics (Minitel) as early as 1983, Rafi Haladjian went on to found FranceNet, France ’s very first ISP in June 1994. His intuition at the time was that the Internet, a highly confidential network in those days, was “history in the making”. FranceNet became Fluxus in 2000 and was sold to British Telecom in 2001. After heading one of the Internet’s major French players for over nine years Rafi Haladjian founded Ozone and Violet, another step forward in the great connectivity adventure he has been a part of for twenty years.

Ben Hammersley is a journalist, technologist, and broadcaster. As a foreign reporter, he has worked in Iran, Afghanistan, Burma, and Beirut. As a technologist he has written books for O’Reilly and others, built sites for the Guardian and the BBC, and consulted for the UK government. He is principal of Dangerous Precedent Ltd, and Associate Editor of the UK edition of Wired.

Dion Hinchcliffe is an internationally recognized business strategist and enterprise architect who works hands-on with clients in the Fortune 500, federal government, and Internet startup community.

Dion helps lead the industry by evolving the thinking for next-generation businesses in various social media including ZDNet’s influential Enterprise Web 2.0 Blog and the Web 2.0 Blog. He is extensively published in leading industry periodicals and journals including the Microsoft Architecture Journal, AjaxWorld Magazine, SOA/Web Services Journal, and is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Social Computing Journal. His thought leading work has been covered in BusinessWeek, CNET News, Wired Magazine, CIO Magazine, and many other well-known periodicals.

In addition to helping companies deliver effective Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 solutions with Hinchcliffe & Company, Dion is also is a regular keynote speaker on the topics of Web 2.0, SOA, and Enterprise 2.0 and has presented or keynoted at Web 2.0 Expo, CeBIT, Business Integration Forum, Interop, JavaOne, SOA Web Services Edge, Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Office 2.0, and many other major business and software conferences. Dion has also been instrumental in pioneering ideas around next-generation SOA and Product Development 2.0, with many of those ideas being shared in his blog on Musings and Ruminations on Building Great Systems.

He is also the founder and owner of the popular Web 2.0 University, the world’s leading education solution for Web 2.0 and next generation SOA as well as The Enterprise 2.0 TV Show. He can be reached at dion@hinchcliffeandco.com and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/dhinchcliffe.

Saul is a Partner at Index Ventures and The Accelerator Group. Saul is a serial entrepreneur having been co-founder and original CEO at what is now Lovefilm International. Saul has also founded Seedcamp and Opencoffee Club.

Tariq Krim is the Founder and CEO of Netvibes, one of the most popular and awarded web 2.0 startup.

He created one of the first on-line messaging systems in France while attending elementary school. During the dotcom bubble, he was the exclusive overseas correspondent in Silicon Valley for the French newspaper La Tribune. He left to create L8rmedia one of France most popular blog networks. Tariq has been advising CEO’s and politics on Internet strategy and is a regular speaker on web 2.0.

Tariq is consistently recognized as one of the most influential innovators in the European web space and was named one of the Top 35 Young Innovators Under 35 by MIT Technology Review.

Tariq holds a degree in Physics from University of Paris VII and a Master’s in Telecommunications from ENST (Telecom Paris).

As the chief executive officer of Mozilla, John Lilly is responsible for guiding the product and organizational development efforts for Mozilla Corporation. Before becoming CEO, John was Mozilla’s COO and focused primarily on day-to-day and international operations of Mozilla.

Prior to his career at Mozilla, John was the founder, CTO and VP products of Reactivity, an XML Security company. He served as a senior scientist at Apple Computer Research Labs, and has held positions at Trilogy Software, Sun Microsystems and HP, among other companies. John is a regular speaker at industry events and serves on the board of directors of the Open Source Application Foundation and Participatory Culture Foundation. He is also a member of the board of library trustees for the City of Sunnyvale. He earned a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in computer science from Stanford University.

Christophe has more than 15 years entrepreneurial and investing track record in Media- and Mobile communications-related technology areas. He has consistently delivered product innovation and has led the build-up of disruptive businesses (through both up- and downturns).

In 2000, Christophe founded and co-headed gate5 AG, the Berlin-based pioneer in mobile mapping & community service before selling the company to Nokia in late 2006. He led the company through multiple phases of venture financing and in turn grew gate5 to Euro 18 Mio in sales. As head of Maps and Explore, Christophe contributed to grow a very successful worldwide service business for Nokia (Ovi Maps). The former gate5 unit today employs more than 300 highly qualified developers in Berlin alone.

Before that, Christophe led Filmstudio Babelsberg FX Center, one of Europe’s largest digital media production venture at the time, raising equity from Bertelsmann, Vivendi and Deutsche Telekom. He also initiated Cyber-Cinema, the first European network of electronic cinema venues and co-founded 20/20 Vision, a Film production company focusing on feature films made in Europe and emerging countries. Christophe started his professional life as innovation & product design manager for Toto K.K. in Tokyo, Japan.

Christophe is one of the founders of Atlantic Ventures, a small outfit specializing in booting-up companies and supporting audacious entrepreneurs. Past and current engagements include, SoundCloud.com (Lead), StudentSN.com (Lead), Txtr.com (Lead), PlayAll.com (Lead), TooStep.com (joint lead with Accel India), Brands4Friends.de (co-invest only), StudiVZ.de (co-invest only, sold to Holtzbrinck) and Plazes.com (Lead, sold to Nokia). Christophe is on the board of European start-up organisation www.seedcamp.com and of the alternative investment fund Berlin Atlantic http://www.berlinatlantic.de/.

A Swiss citizen based in Berlin, he studied business at the Universities of St. Gallen and Barcelona and attended executive education curriculum in New York University and Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

McDevitt is vice president of global engineering for Tele Atlas, responsible for deploying innovative technologies that improve quality and reduce new content time-to-market. He oversees the development teams based in Belgium, Germany Poland, and the United States to help launch the technologies that support the range of markets the company serves, including the evolving location based services (LBS) marketplace covering navigation, internet and wireless navigation applications, as well as the enterprise and automotive sectors.

Previously, McDeviit served as vice president of database operations and director of engineering with Geographic Data Technology (GDT), which was acquired by Tele Atlas in 2004. Prior to joining the company, McDevitt spent 10 years working in the GIS industry mapping environmental hazards for commercial real estate lenders. He holds a bachelor’s degree from The College of the Holy Cross and a master’s degree in business from The College of William and Mary.

Tim O’Reilly is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. O’Reilly Media also hosts conferences on technology topics, including the O’Reilly Open Source Convention, the Web 2.0 Summit, and the Gov 2.0 Summit. Tim’s blog, the O’Reilly Radar “watches the alpha geeks” to determine emerging technology trends, and serves as a platform for advocacy about issues of importance to the technical community. Tim is on the boards of CollabNet and Safari Books Online, and is a partner in O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures.

Jennifer Pahlka is the co-chair and general manager of the Web 2.0 Expos for TechWeb. Previously she chaired Enterprise 2.0, and before that was the director of the Game Group at CMP. During her tenure in the games business, she oversaw the dramatic growth of the Game Developers Conference (GDC) from 1995 to 2003 and launched a number of notable programs, including the Independent Games Festival, known as the Sundance of the game industry, and the Game Developers Choice Awards. Her roles included publisher of Game Developer magazine and Gamasutra.com, the premiere web site for game developers, and executive director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), an independent non-profit association serving game developers around the world. She has served on the advisory boards of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) and the GDC and held a board of directors position on the IGDA for three years. She is a graduate of Yale University.

Freelance user experience consultant specialising in collaborative and guerilla user centred design and with a particular interest in designing for (and with!) communities

Luis Suarez has been working in IBM for over 11 years as a Knowledge Manager and Community Builder and the last five of those years he has been working as well as a Social Computing Evangelist helping various different business units with their rampant adoption of social software within the corporate firewall and beyond.

He is currently working for the IBM Software group where he is leading a community of Social Software Ambassadors helping spread the message on the potential impact that social computing has within the areas of finding experts, finding information and changing the knowledge sharing culture.

He currently maintains three different blogs, one internal and two external (http://elsua.net), where he gets to talk about Knowledge Sharing, Collaboration, Communities and Social Computing as well as the place where he has lived in for the last four years: Gran Canaria.

Yossi Vardi is one of Israel’s early entrepreneurs. For 39 years he has co-founded, led, and helped build over 60 high-tech companies. Among them: Tekem (1969) one of Israel’s first software houses, Israel Chemicals (chairman 71-74), Alon Energy, Granite Hacarmel, International Lasers Technologies, and others.

Co-pioneered instant messaging, as founding investor and chairman of Mirabilis Ltd. The creator of ICQ, sold to AOL. Numerous investments went public (Answers.com, scopus, granite, International Tehcnologies Lasers ) or have been acquired (Gteko by Microsoft, Tivella by Cisco, Airlink by Sierra Wireless, foxytunes by Yahoo, Starnet by IAC, and more). Member of the Advisory board of Amdocs.

He has served on Boards of numerous state and private corporations including Bezeq, Israel Electric, Amdocs, Advisory board of Bank Israel. Served as advisor to the CEOs of AOL, Amazon, Allied Signal, Siemens Albis. Advised the World Bank, and UNDP.

Extensive government and public career: Formerly Director General, Ministry of Development (at age 27), Director General Ministry of Energy, Chairman: Israel National Oil Company. He is the Chairman Emeritus of the Jerusalem Foundation. Participated in the peace talks with Egypt, Palestinians, Jordan (led the economic cooperation negotiations), Syria.

Awards: Prime Minister Hi-Tech award for life achievements (twice), Industry prize, Entrepreneur of the year, C-E-O Hall Of Fame, Ramniceanu prize. D.Sc Operation Research Technion.

Martin Varsavsky is an Argentine/Spanish entrepreneur, founder of seven companies in the past 20 years.

In 1984, while still in college, Martin Varsavsky started his first business, Urban Capital Corporation, one of the early leaders of the loft movement in downtown Manhattan. This was soon followed in 1986 by Medicorp Services, a Canadian biotechnology company, a pioneer in AIDS and PSA testing. His third business, Viatel Ltd., Martin’s first venture into the world of telecom, was founded in 1990. This company is best known for inventing call back and building the first pan European fiber optic network ahead of liberalization.

MV’s best-known ventures were founded during the last decade. In 1998 MV started Jazztel Telecomunicaciones (Jazztel), Spain’s second largest publicly traded telecom operator. In 1999 he founded Ya.com, Spain’s third largest internet web site/DSL provider that includes the second largest Spanish language web agency www.viajar.com. But not all of MV´s companies were successful. In 2000 he started Germany’s largest ASP, Einsteinet, and the company was sold in 2003 at no return to him or investors.

Martin’s current venture is FON, an innovative WiFi start up founded in February 2006 and headquartered in Madrid, Spain, with some 100 employees located around the world. FON’s mission is to make WiFi universal and free by creating a unified global community of members who share WiFi. The FON Community already has close to 700,000 members and has become the world’s largest WiFi community.

FON has raised more than €30M in financing from among others Skype, Google, Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital and BT. These leading Internet and communications companies have shown the industry’s support for FON’s vision and business model.

Martin Varsavsky also engages in not for profit activities. For example, he manages the Varsavsky Foundation best known as founder of two large educational projects in Latin America, Educ.ar (Argentina) and EducarChile (Chile) and the Safe Democracy Foundation. Martin was Ambassador at Large of Argentina between 2001 up to 2005. He is also on the Board of Trustees of the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation, and is a board member of Instituto de Empresa, Spain’s leading business school, where he has been teaching entrepreneurship for the past 8 years.

Martin Varsavsky has written numerous articles on business and international relations that have been published in several international publications including El Pais and Newsweek. He is also a frequent speaker at conferences around the world and active blogger. He is the recipient of various honors and rewards, among them European Telecommunications Entrepreneur of the Year in 1998, ECTA´s European Entrepreneur of the Year in 1999, Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum in Davos, 2000, and Spanish Entrepreneur of the Year in 2000, Pickering Prize from Columbia University 2004.

Martin Varsavsky received his BA from New York University, and holds an MA in International Affairs and an MA in Business Administration from Columbia University. He is the proud father of four children.

In his spare time, Martin enjoys cycling, piloting, cooking asados and sailing.