Speaker Profiles

Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary Vaynerchuk, self-trained wine expert, is revolutionizing the wine industry. His blog, Wine Library TV, boasts a cult-like following resulting from his enthusiastic, unconventional, and often irreverent wine commentary. In the name of “expanding one’s palate”, Gary convinced Conan O’Brien to lick salted rocks and shared samples of dirt and grass with Ellen Degeneres.

With a wealth of knowledge and an entrepreneurial spirit, Gary rebranded the family business as Wine Library. Within a five year time period, Wine Library grew from a $4 million dollar business to a $45 million business.

What raised Gary’s notoriety even more than his business acumen was his foresight. Inspired by sites such as youtube.com and facebook.com, Gary leveraged technology to reach an untapped audience. His daily 20 minute webcasts caught the attention of a demographic new to wine and eager to learn. Within a short time, beer sales were outpaced by wine. While his youthful following broke down barriers in the wine industry, the business world (and Web 2.0) admired Gary for creating a new generation of branding, focusing on the internet.

Gary’s unique identity as both a wine expert and a “real person” has reinvented the concept of wine tasting for a new generation.

Jeremy Schoemaker

Jeremy Schoemaker (widely known by his nickname of ShoeMoney) is an important player in the search engine marketing world, and his knowledge and expertise make him one of the top go-to guys for PPC, arbitrage, SEM, branding, and online income optimization. His weekly Internet radio show Net Income allows listeners to hear Jeremy’s honest assessment about his failures and successes in the online marketing space.

Neil Patel

Neil Patel is an Internet marketing consultant and the founder of Advantage Consulting Services which was started in 2002. He has lead Internet marketing strategies for small and medium sized businesses aswell as top companies such as Hewlett Packard and Wal-Mart. His experiences include search engine optimization, social media optimization, reputation management, and viral marketing.

Andy Liu

Andy Liu is CEO of BuddyTV, the largest independently held TV site on the Internet reaching over 4.3MM monthly uniques. Prior to BuddyTV, Andy served as President and CEO of NetConversions from 1999-2004 prior to its sale to aQuantive and served as VP and GM of its Site Optimization unit from 2004-2005. He’s also a founder of a non-profit focused on technology in developing countries and is very passionate about entrepreneurship. He brings deep experience in building companies, site optimization, SEO, community building, and product development. In 2003, he was named to Puget Sound Business Journal’s 40 under 40 and holds an MBA from Wharton.

Chris Winfield

Chris Winfield is President and Co-Founder of 10e20, a publicity company that specializes in social media and search marketing services. He is considered to be one of the leading authorities on social media marketing in the world today.  Chris has been featured in multiple articles by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, Investor’s Business Daily, The Boston Globe and over 100 other media outlets.  Chris has been a featured speaker at SES, SMX, Pubcon, DPAC, DM Days and is a columnist for Search Engine Land.

Stephan Spencer

Stephan M. Spencer, M.Sc., is president of Netconcepts, a full-service interactive agency with specialization in search engine optimization (SEO) and e-commerce, as well as email marketing through its GravityMail division. Stephan founded the company in 1995 as web development firm. Over time Netconcepts has become one of the leading voices for search engine ready ecommerce. Clients include Home Shopping Network, AOL, Verizon SuperPages.com, Discovery Channel, and REI, to name a few.

Kris Jones

Kris Jones is CEO of Pepperjam, a full-service internet marketing and technology company with over 100 employees. Pepperjam has been recognized for three consecutive years as one of the fastest growing companies in the United States. In early 2008 Pepperjam launched Pepperjam Network, considered the most significant affiliate network launch in the last 10 years (Electronic Retailer Magazine). Kris started out as an affiliate in 1999 and within a few short years became one of the largest super affiliates in the United States making more in one month than most people make in a year. Kris was a finalist in 2008 for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year and is the author of a best-selling book on search-engine marketing.