Judges & MC

• John Beck
• Dylan Collins
• Michelle Daly
• Donal McGuinness
• Lavinia Morris
• Amy Neale

• John Beck

  Organisation: PillarProjects

  Job Title: MD

  John Beck has a Business Management education combined with 20 years working experience in the IT sector in the development & deployment of large scale IT projects, in the latter part of this period including end to end website developments, such as www.schiphol.nland the roll-out of a localised mobile phone gaming portal.

  In 2000 John moved from Holland to Ireland, expanding his Project Management experience in Project Office and Programme Management roles. In 2007 he co-founded PillarProjects to take this experience of delivering business solutions to the web. Projects include work flow, intranet, school portals, events registration, e-commerce & booking engines. The most recent go-live was for the booking engine website for members of the Irish self catering federation:  www.letsgoselfcatering.com.

• Dylan Collins

  Organisation: Jolt Online Games

  Job Title: Founder

  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.

• Michelle Daly

  Organisation: Paddy Power

  Job Title: Online Sportsbook Social Media Manager

  Michelle Daly is an expert in Communications and Social Media. She spent five years as a journalist working throughout the Middle East and Africa specialising in business journalism working in Ireland, US, Brussels,Tanzania and Dubai.

  She has spent the past number of years working with international brands such as Nokia and more recently Paddy Power in public relations and social media communications.

  Based in Dublin, Ireland now, Michelle specialises in Social Media Strategy, customer experience through social means and social content management.
  
  

  Michelle also is a brand builder and crisis management specialist. She sits on the IIA Social Media Working Group. In March 2011 Paddy Power was named as one of the Top 100 Social Brands in a global user-nominated report.

  
  Michelle herself is from Limerick and is a long time volunteer with Junior Chamber International. In 2009 Michelle Daly was elected as the 57th President Junior Chamber Dublin. She is currently the Deputy National President of JCI Ireland.  

  She also sits on the board of directors of www.irishwomeninbusiness.ie.

• Donal McGuinness

  Organisation: Zapa Technologies

  Job Title: CEO

  Donal Mc Guinness is Business Development Director of Zapa Technology.  A former winner of the Mobile Internet Net Visionary Award, Donal was a co-founder of Itsmobile back in 1999.

  Itsmobile developed and and sold award winning mobile payment and eCommerce products and services on a global basis.  Payzone acquired Itsmobile in 2004 and Donal¹s attention turned to offering online payment processing and fraud management solutions in Ireland, Sweden, Belgium and Germany.

  Donal currently sits on the board of a film distribution company, Dublin Film Distributors, and is resposbile for their new content acquisition.

  Donal is particularly interested in joining the Board of the IIA to help champion the area of Content 360; essentially enabling businesses to reap the benefits of using content across all media; internet, mobile & TV.

  Donal was appointed to the IIA Board in 2009

• Lavinia Morris

  Organisation: Friends First

  Job Title: Head of IT Infrastructure

  Lavinia Morris is Head of IT Infrastructure & Operations for Friends First Group with responsibility for Strategy Development, Infrastructure Management and Development, Service Delivery and Information Security. Lavinia has worked in the ICT sector for 16 years holding a number of technical, architecture and managerial roles within both Friends First and a number of other institutions. She is currently the chair of the Irish Internet Associations Working Group on Cloud Computing.

• Amy Neale

  Organisation: National Digital Research Centre

  Job Title: 

  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.