Chris Shipley, Executive Producer
Chris Shipley is a leading technology and product analyst. Best known as the executive producer of the DEMO Conferences for IDG Executive Forums, Shipley has helped technology companies bring nearly 1,000 new products to market since 1996. As a founding partner and editorial director in Guidewire Group, she consults with emerging technology companies in the U.S. and Europe to identify market opportunities and accelerate products to market. Fortune Small Business Magazine placed Shipley on its "Top 10 Minds in Small Business," and the San Jose Business Journal named her a "Woman of Distinction." She has often been cited as a leading influencer by Marketing Computers magazine. Shipley has covered personal technology since 1984 and has worked as a writer and editor for a variety of technology and consumer media. She is currently authoring a book on the social impact of technology-driven change.
Shipley holds BAs in Literature and Communication Arts and pursues knowledge and understanding relentlessly.
Suw Charman, BlogOn 2005 Producer
Suw Charman is a renowned social media expert who specialises in the use of blogging and other social software in business, which she writes about regularly on her blog, Strange Attractor. An independent consultant, she works with companies in the UK and US advising on the use of blogs both behind the firewall and as marketing and external communications tools. She frequently speaks about blogging and social software at conferences and seminars. Recent engagements include Supernova, Northern Voice, the London School of Economics, New Media Knowledge's Blogging: A Real Conversation, and OpenTech 2005. A keen copyright and digital rights activist, Charman is involved with both the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Creative Commons. She has also written about file sharing and intellectual property issues for publications such as The Guardian. She is currently writing a book on the use of internal business blogs.
Guidewire Group, Event Producer
The Guidewire Group creates and fosters an environment where relationships and ideas flourish. We connect the people who unleash technology so others can harness it, whose innovations are more about market revolutions than evolutions, and who wonder “why not?” more often than “why”?
At the Guidewire Group, we believe that the innovation ecosystem is comprised of the entrepreneurs and innovators who create ground-breaking new products and services and the investors who fund them, as well as the technology executives who open new markets, the media who cover them, and the early adopters who embrace them. These individuals invest their careers in the early life cycle of a product—from conceptualizing new technologies to achieving an early market. And they rely on symbiotic relationships in the innovation ecosystem to succeed. Guidewire Group was founded to serve and support this ecosystem.
Chris Shipley and other respected high-tech editors analyze emerging products and markets on the Guidewire blog, providing a rich environment for impassioned debate among members. As members expand upon the expert analysis, new theories arise, relationships strengthen, and partnerships develop. In effect, the blog becomes both a soapbox and a reality check for our members—a focused place to share and leverage their unique connections, perspectives and experiences.
Online interaction serves as a powerful introduction to ideas and perspectives, and Guidewire face-to-face events incubate the relationships that help markets mature.
Our face-to-face events are designed to engage and inspire the innovation ecosystem at pivotal moments in their development. The Perspective series brings innovators, investors, and technology executives together to discuss, debate, and decide the real opportunities a new technology presents; the Vision conferences spotlight transforming innovation in existing markets—letting innovators communicate opportunities to early adopters and investors; and the Innovate events highlight emerging trends in established markets.
