Our Speakers
1. Yean Cheong, Brisbane Account Director, eServices
Yean Cheong has over fifteen years marketing, advertising and management experience in numerous industries across Australia and Asia. With a strong background in integrated communications and a deep appreciation of business objectives and processes in both client and agency organisations, Yean plays a pivotal role in the strategy and development of multiple digital assets for clients.
Prior to joining eservices, Yean was Head of Digital and Direct at Clemenger Harvie Edge Brisbane, working with a diverse group of clients such as Tourism Queensland, Griffith University, Bank of Queensland and Telstra Country Wide. She was also a pioneer team member of ZUJI.com and Marketing Manager of BlueHolidays.com.au, the dynamic holiday packaging platform of Virgin Blue.
Yean is a member of the Australia Direct Marketing Association (ADMA) Queensland committee and tutors the ADMA Certificate in Digital Marketing course in Brisbane.
2. Dr Axel Bruns, Senior Lecturer Media & Communication, QUT
Dr Axel Bruns is a Senior Lecturer in the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. He is the author of Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage (2008) and Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production (2005), and the editor of Uses of Blogs with Joanne Jacobs (2006; all released by Peter Lang, New York). His book Gatewatching was nominated for the 2006 Communications Policy Research Award at Fordham University's Donald McGannon Communication Research Center.
Axel was a co-founder of the premier online academic publisher M/C - Media and Culture, which publishes M/C Journal, M/C Reviews, M/C Dialogue, and the M/Cyclopedia of New Media, and he continues to serve as M/C's General Editor. His blog is at snurb.info, the site for his latest book is at Produsage.org, and he contributes to the Gatewatching.org group blog with Jason Wilson and Barry Saunders.
Our Panel
Our panel will join our speakers to further discuss interactive trend predictions for 2008.
Stephen Phillips, Founder/ Lead Tech, Wotnews
Stephen Phillips is the founder of Wotnews (wotnews.com.au), one of Australia's most popular news search engines.
Wotnews monitors news from thousands of sources across Australia including the major news networks, blogs, corporate newsletters, government and industry news publications. Wotnews sells enterprise level news aggregation and search services to major Australian companies.
Stephen has an eclectic background, part business, part creative, part technical. He has professional experience in marketing, strategy, programming and design. Stephen has started several companies including a marketing firm and fashion retail store before founding Wotnews.
Tim Lovitt, Manager – Digital, Gold Coast Tourism Corporation
Having managed the sales and marketing of About-Australia.com prior to joining the Gold Coast Tourism team, Tim has also consulted on communication strategy, run retail chains and been through the dot com boom and bust once or twice, even taking a perverse pleasure in asking for a million dollars from VCs before breakfast.
When not taking terrible photos of himself that show off his amazing nephew Hamish, Tim likes to take moonlight bike rides (motor) and explore some of Australia’s dining options – sometimes both at once. His other major passion, learning, requires too much reading and is sadly only combined with eating as motor-bike riding and reading still have a ways to go.
Tim currently manages the Digital department for Coast Tourism and is ridiculously excited about the upcoming launch of the new GCT website.
Nick Crocker - Digital Music Strategist
After studying Law and Political Science and undertaking some passionless stints in the community and commercial legal sector, Nick realised that his future was elsewhere. Following his passion for music into the music industry, Nick was General Manager of Musicadium - Australia's leading digital distributer - before taking the leap in 2008 and branching out as an independent consultant.
A passionate writer, Nick has written extensively for old and new media - most recently directing music content for The Cool Hunter and maintaining a column in the Sunday Mail profiling young entrepreneurs.
Nick blogs at waycooljnr.com.au and spends his free time listening to music, watching rugby league and being lazy in New Farm Park.