Speakers

Sante Achille - Multilingual Search news blog editor

Sante lives in Italy and works out of a small medieval town called L'Aquila, 1 hour east of Rome. After acquiring a degree in engineering in 1986, he worked for major aerospace companies as a design engineer. In 1991 he joined the European Space Agency as a project management team member. In 1993 was introduced to the World Wide Web and took an interest to the technology and the far reaching implications it would have on society. In 1994 he participated in the second World Wide Web Conference held in Chicago to better understand the Web, and immediately afterwards resigned from his post with the European Space Agency to start his own company. Today he is a Professional Search Engine Consultant to Industry, Regional Government, and provides consulting services in partnership with major Italian Web Agencies and WebCertain in the UK. Sante has spoken at Search Engine Strategies events in London, Stockholm and Italy. Sante Teaches Search Engines and Web Marketing at the University of Florence, in the framework of the Master in Multimedia and Content Design

Andy Atkins-Krüger - WebCertain

Having started his career briefly as a journalist, Andy quickly moved into marketing communications, where he has spent the last 20 years. He worked first in advertising, then founded a public relations consultancy, The Partners Group, before moving into corporate marketing. He's worked on pan-European advertising and public relations campaigns for many years and first "discovered" search marketing in 1997, when he was charged with developing the European market presence of one of the U.K.'s best known B2B brands, Portakabin. After five years as the client, he bought into the supporting agency - WebCertain Europe Ltd - where he became managing director. Under Andy's leadership, WebCertain has continued to focus on multilingual websites, handling Europe's major languages under one-roof, with partners around the world providing the more specialist language needs.

As a keen linguist himself, he has been a qualified member of the Institute of Linguists since 1984 and the Chartered Institute of Marketing since 1999. While he doesn't claim fluency in every language, Andy has some knowledge of French, German, Italian, Dutch, Russian, and of course English. He believes this helps in giving the best advice to clients who are planning website localisation, translation, and promotion. He is particularly keen to promote the opportunities of "reaching out to Europe" to clients and believes that the significant opportunities open to website marketers are largely under-exploited. He also edits the online newsletter www.web-marketing-secrets.co.uk and the blog www.multilingual-search.com, which report on search marketing developments throughout Europe - both often summarising reports published in other languages to help English-speaking marketers.

Rebecca Berkich - Xerox

Rebecca Berkich is Manager, Search Marketing and Domains for Xerox. She manages organic search programs for xerox.com and is a search evangelist throughout the Company. "When product and marketing managers see the benefits of organic search, they get excited and come to consider it part of the marketing mix."

Prior to joining Xerox in 2005, Rebecca had a search consultancy practice, assisting small company websites in the packaging equipment industry. She was introduced to search in its early days in 1999 when given the company website to manage as Corporate Communications Manager for Acterna, a former global company in communications test. Rebecca's career has been in marketing, so search as a key traffic driver became a natural and fascinating path for her to follow.

She has consistently brought a global perspective to her work, having earned an MBA in international marketing from Thunderbird School of Global Management, studying three languages, and doing undergraduate studies while living in Denmark and Mexico.

Volker Ballueder - WebCertain

Volker is the Business Development Manager for WebCertain and heads up its London office. His main responsibility is growing and promoting the business through direct client contact and speaking at conferences such as SMX and ISS. He possesses excellent knowledge of the full range of WebCertain services. Volker is originally from Germany but came to the UK to complete his Mechanical Engineering degree at Aberdeen University. Following his degree, he continued his studies, taking an MBA, also at Aberdeen. Since then Volker has worked in various sales and marketing based roles, most recently for the digital marketing exhibition ad:tech, part of dmg world media.

John Brenne - WebCertain

John Brenne has worked with WebCertain since mid 2006 and his current role sees him working to expand the WebCertain network. Currently he is setting up a Norwegian branch of WebCertain in his native Oslo. He holds a masters degree in E-Commerce from the Leeds Metropolitan University in the UK. For the last five years he has worked for web development and search marketing businesses based in Norway and in the UK. John can speak 5 languages and is on the top five list of WebCertain employess speaking the most languages.

Michael Bonfils - SEM International

Michael Bonfils is the Founder and Managing Director of SEM International (SEMI), a global search engine marketing network. Since 1996, Michael was one of the early pioneers in search engine optimisation and created Century 21's first SEO programme. From 1998 to 1999 he co-founded a real estate vertical search engine and was formerly in charge of Search Engine Strategy at Business.com in 2000-01.

By late 2001, he had started an online advertising agency which eventually was sold to his partners in early 2004. Part of the settlement allowed him to retain the Hong Kong based Search Engine Marketing office which was held under SEMI's parent company, Hyper Interactive Corp.

Recognising the need for US based agencies to properly provide SEM services for their clients in mainland China, Michael moved the office to Shanghai and tripled the revenue and client base of his Fortune 500 clientele. This event sparked a global need for his services in localised search marketing.

Today, SEMI is one of the leading global search engine marketing networks, covering Asia, Europe and the Middle East and Latin America.

Tor Crockatt - Microsoft AdCenter

As Editorial Performance Manager at Microsoft, Tor Crockatt is responsible for the editorial verification process for adCenter in the EMEA region. Tor is focused on driving user experience, maintaining ad quality and driving the best results through the editorial processes and policy.Tor has over five years experience in paid search and has worked on developing theories on keyword research, user intent and ad relevancy. A regular speaker at SES, she has had some of her theories published in Search Engine Marketing Inc.

Prior to working at Microsoft, Tor was Global Editorial Director for MIVA, where she was responsible for setting editorial policy, strategy and best practice. Tor has also worked for wcities.com, where she gained much of her editorial experience through her role as Senior Editor.

Tor graduated from King's College, London with a degree in French and German.

Eyal Haik - WebCertain

Eyal is a Usability Consultant for WebCertain. Based at the York offices, he provides advice and conducts reviews for clients, on a variety of website types and industries. Eyal joined WebCertain after completing his PhD in Computer Science (in the field of Human-Computer Interaction). During his studies he also worked part-time as a university lecturer, and published and presented his PhD research at conferences both in the UK and abroad.

Kristjan Mar Hauksson - Nordic Emarketng

Kristjan Mar is the Director of Internet marketing for Nordic eMarketing and the CEO of Index ltd., an Iceland-based Internet marketing consultancy company. Kristjan has been involved in developing Internet solutions since 1996, and involved in search engine optimization and marketing since early 1999. He has worked with the Iceland Trade Council, eMarketservices.com, National Bank of Iceland (Landsbanki), Nexus Media, North Atlantic Solutions, RadisonSAS Iceland, Icelandair and the Icelandic Travel Industry Association among hundreds of others. Kristjan Specializes in tourism, the fisheries industry and other export industry segments in Iceland, assisting companies to gain international visibility through search engines.
Kristjan is the founder of the Iceland SEO/SEM forum and a popular lecturer around Iceland on SEO and SEM for schools, organisations, marketing departments and in the media.

Dixon Jones - Receptional

Dixon Jones is the managing director of Receptional LTD, which provides a tailored Internet marketing consultancy for many organisations in the U.K., such as Nokia, Daily Mail Group, and MoneyCorp. Receptional formed in 1999 when a large London property asked Dixon to look at why no serious prospects were looking at their website. Since then, one in three occupants in the large property in Mayfair found their temporary home via the Internet - clearly a dramatic turnaround. Dixon Jones is also a moderator on Webmasterworld, covering the Microsoft and the "Tracking & Logging" forums and is a regular speaker at search conferences around the world.

Anne Kennedy - Beyond Ink

Anne Kennedy is the Managing partner and founder of Beyond Ink. With nearly 40 years experience in marketing and public relations, Anne Kennedy founded Beyond Ink in 1997 to bring the fundamental principles of marketing communications to online media. A search engine marketer for more than 10 years, she is an industry thought leader and sought after speaker and writer worldwide.

Currently, Anne represents professional SEO firms on the Search Engine Strategies (SES) Domestic Advisory Board, an influential group of business professionals from various industries and fields of expertise selected to propel the search industry forward.

She further serves on the board of directors of Helium.com, a community of writers providing experience-based knowledge, wisdom and creativity to publishers and readers. Barely 18 months after launch, Helium gained 110,000 writers who have published one million articles on the site.

With a degree in Radio, Television and Film from Northwestern University, Anne was certified an Internet Professional by Novell, Inc. Anne served on the Board of Directors of Mesda, now TechMaine, the state's principal IT trade association for six years, and before that with various public relations and advertising in Connecticut and Rochester, New York.

In 2001 she launched SEOnews.net to foster better understanding of the emerging search marketing platform and opportunities to a growing market of potential customers.

Barry Lloyd - MakeMeTop

Barry is CEO of MakeMeTop, which provides a range of tools and services which facilitate SEM Campaigns and Barry is widely recognised as one of the pioneers of search engine marketing.
He contributes regularly to online publications such as Search Engine Guide and Search Engine Blog and speaks around the world at search marketing conferences. He has recently been working with WebCertain on its approach to the Chinese market and will be speaking on this topic at the summit.

David Segal - WebCertain

David is a Link analyst at WebCertain, and in charge of all of the link fluency projects. He manages and co-ordinates the activities of over 10 native speakers in different languages as they undertake various link building projects in different countries. David has come through the ranks at WebCertain, starting out as a part-time SEO assistant but quickly finding his niche in Link Building.

David is half-French, half English and has been bi-lingual from an early age. He was educated in France, at an international school where lessons were taught in both languages, and obtained a Baccalaureat in Economical Sciences. He chose to continue his studies in England, completing his degree at York St John University.

Kevin Starling - Exalead

Kevin is one of the UK's leading Enterprise search professionals with over ten years experience deploying some of the most complex search solutions for some of the largest organizations in the UK, Ireland and the USA. Kevin has worked for several enterprise search companies during his career, including Verity and Autonomy.

Now at Exalead, the industry-leading next generation search company, Kevin has been responsible for using the unique, highly functional features of Exalead to deploy solutions in amazingly short timeframes. UK based solutions include, among others, the Sanger Institute, currently operating on around 1 billion records in the genome research field, and Rightmove, providing structured and unstructured search on one of the busiest web sites in the UK.

Exalead was founded in France in 2000 by two Alta-Vista visionaries, with the UK division starting in 2007. In that short time, many organisations have successfully deployed Exalead-based solutions to unstructured information requirements. Exalead UK is essentially a specialist search practice, employing only Search veterans with proven track records.