Judges

Stephen Beynon

Stephen was appointed to Group Managing Director of Consumer and Small Business in March 2010. Immediately prior to this, he had been working as an advisor to eircom and Meteor since July 2009.

For the four years before joining the eircom Group, Stephen served on the management board of Virgin Media, the UK’s largest cable operator, where he was responsible for their Business and Wholesale operations. During his time at Virgin, he was responsible for the merger of ntl and Telewest’s business operations and played a leading role in the transformation of ntl:Telewest into Virgin Media.

Earlier in his career, Stephen was the CEO of a private equity backed international telecoms provider, Band-X and worked in Australia for Optus where he ran fixed and mobile businesses in both consumer and business markets. His telecoms career began in 1988 with Mercury Communications for whom he worked for 10 years in a variety of roles including pricing, strategy and marketing.

You can follow Stephen on Twitter at www.twitter.com/stephenbeynon

Stephen Beynon

Stephen was appointed to Group Managing Director of Consumer and Small Business in March 2010. Immediately prior to this, he had been working as an advisor to eircom and Meteor since July 2009.

For the four years before joining the eircom Group, Stephen served on the management board of Virgin Media, the UK’s largest cable operator, where he was responsible for their Business and Wholesale operations. During his time at Virgin, he was responsible for the merger of ntl and Telewest’s business operations and played a leading role in the transformation of ntl:Telewest into Virgin Media.

Earlier in his career, Stephen was the CEO of a private equity backed international telecoms provider, Band-X and worked in Australia for Optus where he ran fixed and mobile businesses in both consumer and business markets. His telecoms career began in 1988 with Mercury Communications for whom he worked for 10 years in a variety of roles including pricing, strategy and marketing.

You can follow Stephen on Twitter at www.twitter.com/stephenbeynon

John Montayne

John has been lecturing at IADT for the last 10 years and has also been involved in commercial projects with GE Money, ESB, RTE, Women’s Aid and Airtricity. His areas of expertise include web development, interactive design and multimedia programming. John is a graduate of the National College of Art and Design in Industrial Design and studied his Masters at DIT in collaboration with the RCA in London in Digital Media. John was the coordinator of the BSc in Psychology Applied to IT degree programme at the institute from 2001 until 2005 specializing in interactivity design. John is also involved in the Centre for Creative Technologies & Accessibility.

Darragh Doyle

Professionally, Darragh Doyle is the Communications Manager for Boards.ie, Ireland's biggest and busiest discussion forum, where he looks after the education, engagement and involvement of over two million visitors every month.

He teaches and trains companies on online customer service and engagement and helps charities, small business and high profile brands communicate with people online to provide an easy and remarkable user experience. He is regularly invited to talk about the internet on a number of radio stations and conferences.

Personally, Darragh is an entertainment and events blogger, sharing experiences, interviews, photos, reviews and stories. His use of social media allows the companies and charities he helps get their message out to many people.

He tells very bad jokes on twitter and does not, surprisingly, have a blue nose in real life.

You'll find him at http://thisiswhatido.org, at http://www.linkedin.com/in/darraghdoyle and http://twitter.com/darraghdoyle

Krishna De

Krishna De (www.bizgrowthnews.com) is an award winning digital marketing, brand engagement and social media author, speaker, commentator and mentor. Her expertise in personal branding and leveraging online marketing and social media is featured in several highly acclaimed books including ‘World Wide Rave’ published by Wiley, ‘The Career Doctor: How To Get And Keep The Job You Want’ and ‘Client Science: The 5 C’s Marketing Plan for Professionals’.

Her company Biz Growth Media guides executives in how to develop and integrate social media into their marketing and communications strategy so that they increase their visibility, reputation and profits online.

Des Traynor

Des Traynor is the User Experience lead at Contrast. Contrast design and build web software for organizations of all sizes, from start ups to multi-nationals. In his role at Contrast, Des helps companies define a product strategy, identify their target customers, and design a compelling and engaging experience for their visitors.

Des speaks internationally at conferences such as the Future of Web Apps, LessConf, Flash on the Beach, and others. Des writes on the Contrast Blog and is on twitter as @destraynor. 

Barry Rhodes

Having qualified as a Chartered Accountant in London, Barry came to Ireland in 1977 as General Manager with US multinational, Burroughs Machines. His career has since seen him progress through a number of senior sales and marketing management roles within the high-growth ICT sector, including The Matrix Group, Business Automation (later renamed BA Systems), IMS Group, EUnet Ireland, and Esat Group companies.

Since September 2003, he has been CEO of INEX, Ireland’s neutral, not-for-profit, Internet Exchange, and has overseen the rapid growth of this organisation, which is now recognised as a vital element in Ireland’s ICT infrastructure. Outside of his work, Barry is an expert on the Rules of Golf and he writes a regular blog on this subject at www.barryrhodes.com.

Antoin O'Lachtain

Antoin is a psychologist and philosopher by training but now devotes most of his time to Digital Messenger, the strategy and technology-consulting firm that he runs as owner and managing director.
Antoin’s specialist areas of expertise are telecommunications, particularly mobile telecommunications and the Internet, multimedia and social software. The types of projects he most enjoys working on are: mobile and wireless applications; large-scale, low-cost systems; social software and blogging; developing consumer and business-led technology propositions; and technology forecasting.
Antoin is the author of ‘Making an impact online: creating a website that really works without breaking the bank (business on a shoestring)’.

He is also managing director of Swords Express, a coach service that connects Swords village with the city centre, via the port tunnel.

Cathy Grieve

Cathy Grieve is owner of Red Diamond Media and an experienced media professional specialising in digital media consultancy and content creation.

She has worked in front line journalism with the BBC for almost two decades, based in Northern Ireland, Washington D.C and London.

As a senior editor with the very successful BBC news website, she was involved in the development and commissioning of content for emerging digital media platforms over the past decade.

Cathy has won numerous awards throughout her journalistic career including a Royal Television Society award, several Webby awards and Online News Association and European Online Journalism awards for her work in digital media.

She has now established Red Diamond Media, situated in Dublin’s Digital Hub, bringing her extensive knowledge of journalism, digital media and technology to a new digital media company specialising in various media activities, including viral marketing, web user ability, TV, radio and online productions.

Adam Maguire

Adam Maguire is a freelance journalist specializing in the areas of technology, media and business.

He currently covers technology for Business & Finance magazine and edits Irish gadget website www.teic.ie. Besides this he also writes regularly for other publications including The Irish Times, Sunday Business Post, Technology Ireland and The Market as well as a number of local and regional newspapers.

Adam often guests on radio programmes such as The Last Word on Today FM and Culture Shock on Newstalk; discussing technology, politics and media amongst other things.

Many of Adam's articles focus on the influence technology and social media are having on the way people communicate, as well as changes they are bringing to the way business people, politicians and journalists work. He blogs about similar topics at AdamMaguire.com and is also the owner of a political podcasting project, www.dail30.ie.

Aisling Blake

Aisling is Commercial Director of Radical. Part of Core Media Group, Radical is a full service digital marketing and communications agency. Aisling is especially passionate about driving online conversions for clients through the use of digital media and communications, such as search engine marketing, usability and social media. These campaigns are always viewed holistically, taking into account the collaborative impact that digital and offline activity can have on success. Aisling and her team have delivered innovative and successful campaigns for a range of clients in Ireland, the UK and US.

A graduate of University College Dublin, Aisling has a degree in Commerce and French, and a Master of Science in Marketing Practice from the Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School. She has also just completed a six-month role as chair of the Online Marketing Working Group of the Irish Internet Association.

Jimmy Walsh

Jimmy is founder and Managing Director of Dara Creative. Establishing the company in 1994, he has managed its development into one of Ireland’s leading Graphic Design consultancies. Dara Creative has won numerous Irish and International design, branding and web design awards .

Jimmy holds a B. Comm. degree from NUIG and is a graduate of the Marketing Institute of Ireland. An active member of Dublin Chamber of Commerce, he served as Treasurer of Design Business Ireland from 2005 to 2010. He has twenty five years experience in marketing, client development and delivering effective design solutions.

He is also a Director of Bid Support Consultancy, Tender Team.

Paul Lynch

Paul is co-founder of Digital Mines and Centric Technology Group, two early stage Internet businesses specialising in the provisioning and delivery of cloud computing software with services. Paul holds responsibility for all sales and marketing activities, and bringing Digital Mines & CTG's product mix to market in Ireland and Europe. Previously Paul was a co-owner and Sales Director of Hosting365. In his time with H365 he grew the company revenue over 300%; introduced the Managed Services concept and increased average contract size six-fold. Lynch brought to market a Cloud Computing offering which successfully sold to blue chip companies and technology businesses. Paul has a background in senior sales positions within the telecoms industry having worked in among others Esat Telecom, Nevada Telecom and Smart Telecom. Paul has a Marketing degree from Dublin City University and is a fluent Spanish speaker.

CFIT

The NCBI Centre for Inclusive Technology (CFIT) is a centre of expertise in digital accessibility. That is, the accessibility of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), including websites and online services, to the widest audience, including older people and people with disabilities. Digital accessibility is a requirement for full social inclusion.

CFIT was established in 2005 within the National Council for the Blind of Ireland by Dr. Mark Magennis. It’s activities include advocacy and lobbying; awareness raising, education and training; consultancy and design assistance; research and standards development. Its main technological focus is on websites, online services and digital television.

For website managers and developers, CFIT offers services in accessibility auditing, user testing, training and general consultancy. CFIT has provided web accessibility consultancy services to over 50 organisations within the public and private sectors, including Government departments, local authorities, financial services companies, educational institutions, media companies and transport operators.

CFIT staff are active members of the Irish Internet Association’s User Experience Working Group, the W3C HTML 5 Working Group and the W3C/WAI Protocols and Formats Working Group. CFIT also participates in the High Level Group on Knowledge Society Strategy chaired by the Minister for Communications, the European Commission Mandate M376 work supporting ICT accessibility requirements in public procurement, and the United Nations Global Alliance for Technology and Development.