Programme - IIA Conference - Events - Irish Internet Association

Richard Bruton TD was appointed Minister of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation in March 2011.

He is an experienced Deputy representing Dublin North Central and is a Research Economist by profession.

He was first elected to the Dáil in 1982. He was Minister for Enterprise and Employment 1994-97 and chaired the European Industrial Council during Ireland’s presidency in 1996.  He was Minister of State at the Department of Industry and Commerce 1986-87.

He has had wide experience in the Fine Gael Front Bench, holding eight different portfolios including Finance, Education and Science, Employment, Economic Planning and Public Sector Reform.  He also held the post of Director of Policy.

Prior to joining PayPal in June 2006, Louise was a member of the Senior Management Team for GE Money, a division of General Electric (GE), which specialises in small ticket lending for a client base comprising both consumers and commercial customers.   

During her 16 years with GE (formerly Woodchester Investments), Louise held a wide variety of Management & Leadership roles.  From 2000- 2006 she held the position of Compliance Leader with responsibility for leading change and integrating a compliance culture across the organisation.  While in this role, Louise was a member of the Business Quality Council and was Ombudsperson for the business. 

Louise’s earlier positions with GE included Business Development Manager for the prestigious Mercedes Benz marque; Finance and Insurance Manager and Collections Manager for the Call Centre Back-office environment with responsibility for a team of 100 people.  

Prior to her career with GE, Louise worked for 2 years in a Collections role for Mars Ireland. 

Louise is a member of the Association of Compliance Officers of Ireland and is a former Director of the Ombudsman of Credit Institutions of Ireland. 

In her spare time Louise enjoys travelling and exercising.  She organises an annual triathlon for a cancer charity – Tri-to- beat Cancer.

Dylan Collins is considered to be one of the most experienced Internet entrepreneurs in Europe, building three companies with three successful exits over the last decade.

In 2007 Dylan founded Jolt Online Gaming, which became one of the pioneering social games publishers in Europe. Jolt successfully launched a range of free-to-play games on browser and Facebook including Legends of Zork, Utopia Kingdoms and Playboy Party. The company was the first to attract major licenses into the social games space, signing deals with Championship Manager, Playboy and several others. Jolt was acquired by GameStop (NYSE: GME), the largest video games retailer in the world in 2009 and Dylan went on to spearhead their digital media strategy.

As founder and CEO of DemonWare in 2003, he led the company to become the leading online games technology firm in the global video games industry. DemonWare technology was used to connect players on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 consoles in some of the biggest games in the world such as Call of Duty, Splinter Cell, Guitar Hero and many others. In 2007, DemonWare was acquired by Activision Blizzard, the world’s biggest video games publisher.

Dylan’s first company, Phorest (launched in 2000), was one of Ireland’s leading mobile messaging (SMS) companies. Providing a range of SMS products and services to the small business sector, the company enjoyed rapid growth. In 2002, Phorest was acquired by MBO and is still a major player in the sector.

Dylan mentors several Internet start-ups in Europe and North America and occasionally advises media companies and venture capital funds on strategy and M&A matters. He blogs at www.dylancollins.com and can also be found @MrDylanCollins on Twitter.

Josh Holmes is a passionate soul who gets his kicks solving problems with deep fried awesomeness.

He is currently employed by Microsoft Ireland as an Architect Evangelist. Prior to joining Microsoft in October 2006, Josh was a consultant working with a variety of clients ranging from large Fortune 500 firms to smaller sized companies.

Josh is a frequent speaker and lead panelist at national and international software development conferences focusing on web technologies on the Microsoft stack such as ASP.NET, PHP, IronRuby, JavaScript and more.

Community focused, Josh has founded and/or run many technology organizations from the Great Lakes Area .NET Users Group to the Ann Arbor Computer Society and was on the forming committee for CodeMash. You can contact Josh through his blog at http://www.joshholmes.com.

Dr. Constantin Gurdgiev is the Head of Macroeconomics with Institute for Business Value, IBM and the Adjunct Lecturer in Finance with Trinity College Dublin.

He holds a PhD in Finance and Macroeconomics from Trinity College, Dublin and MA in Economics and Mathematics from the Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Dr Gurdgiev currently also serves as the Chairman of Ireland Russia Business Association and the Visiting Professor in Finance with the Russian State University.

Dr. Theo Lynn is the Director of the LINK Research Centre at Dublin City University and is Director of Industry Engagement at DCU Business School.

Theo leads the Techspectations initiative, a research and outreach programme that investigates how technology, and specifically e-learning and digital marketing, can serve as a catalyst for innovation in SMEs and educational institutions.  

Theo has established and sold a number of ICT companies and advises a number of domestic and international organisations.

Neil Leyden is a scriptwriter, ideas junkie, reluctant entrepreneur and relentless optimist.

He chairs the Digital Media Forum, a network of digital media companies in Ireland and is on the board of a number of start-ups.

He is project co-ordinator of Gateway Ireland - an initiative to connect the Irish Diaspora online.

He is also the winner of Your Country, Your Call - a competition to get ideas that will lift Ireland out of the economic gloom. The big idea: to create an International Content Services Centre to make Ireland the global gateway for digital content between the US and Europe.

Amy Neale is based at NDRC where her role focuses on building collaborations that will commercialise research-led ideas.

NDRC is a unique enterprise, dedicated to accelerating research from idea to income and positioned as a nexus between research, industry and venture investment.

Amy moved to Ireland in 2008 to work as part of NDRC’s start-up team, and has worked with the organisation to develop from green field to over 200 people working with NDRC on a day-to-day basis.

Prior to joining NDRC, Amy led the research and business development team at Queen Mary, University of London, developing collaborative projects between academic, business and public sector partners, across a broad discipline base.

Amy holds a PhD in Linguistics from Cardiff University, and is passionate about new models for innovation.

Sean Baker is an entrepreneur based in Dublin. He is a co-founder of IONA Technologies, and he held many executive positions in the company including CTO, Chief Scientist, VP Applied Research and SVP of Customer Services. He is a regular speaker on innovations and business.

He is a member of the Boards of 3Strata, National Digital Research Centre, Delta Index and Gridstore; and is a member of the Advisory Science Council, CIO Ireland and the Lero and ICHEC Advisory Boards.

He was the Chairman of the Irish Software Association from 2009 to 2011, and is currently active in the association in areas such as the Software Investor Forum and education policy. He is an Adjunct Professor at the UCD School of Computer Science and Informatics. He was a member of the Board of IONA, Havok and the Object Management Group.

He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Trinity College Dublin, and held a tenured post in the Department of Computer Science at TCD, where he helped form the Distributed Systems Group in 1980.

Colm Grealy has 16 years’ experience at the forefront of the Internet and digital media industry. Colm joined Ireland On-Line (IOL) in 1994 and was managing director until it was acquired by An Post three years later. He remained at the helm until its acquisition by ESAT Telecom.

He went on to co-found DigiServe (a new media group that included Online.ie, IrishAbroad.com and EDO Software Services) and the Dublin Daily newspaper.

In recent years, among other projects, Colm has advised O2 Telefonica on mobile Internet, advertising and new business models for the mobile sector. Visit DRG.ie