Ina O’ Murchu has spent the last seven years in both the Social Web and Semantic Web space. She graduated from DERI, the largest Semantic Web institute in the world, based in Galway on the west coast of Ireland. She also worked at DERI as a Social Media consultant. She did her research in Social Networks, Social Media and Semantic Web technologies. She completed her MSc “Connecting Local Community Groups with Semantic Web Technologies” using the Galway City Community Forum as a use case, whilst there and has several publications on Social Networks and the Semantic Web. She is an early adopter of technologies and is passionate about the Social Web space. She also runs Open Coffee Galway and Twestival Galway.

Knud Möller is a Web and Semantic Web researcher at DERI, where he spent several years working on topics such as collaborative technologies, data lifecycles and networked knowledge. He received a PhD from the National University of Ireland, Galway on the topic of “Lifecycle Support for Data on the Semantic Web”, and also holds an MA in linguistics from the University of Cologne, Germany, and a BA from the University of Bergen, Norway. Knud has published and continues to publish his research in a range of papers and has applied it in a range of European projects, such as Nepomuk and FAST.

Currently works as a lecturer at the University of Limerick, in Ireland, teaching several modules at UL. She is a researcher focusing on Social Media and Enterprise 2.0 – related topics. Between 2005 and 2008 she was involved in a project studying collaborative work practices in distributed software development. She currently works in the Interaction Design Centre at UL. She is an early adopter of the Social Web and Social Software tools.

James Corbett graduated from University of Limerick with a degree in Computer Engineering and went on to work for the multinationals Apple, Motorola and Analog Devices. With 14 years experience in the IT industry James co-founded Daynuv in 2009, a start-up backed by Social Entrepreneurs Ireland which develops educational software for children with a focus on special needs and disability. James has also been guest lecturer in Dublin City University.

Andreas Harth works as post-doctoral researcher at Institute AIFB at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology after pursuing a Ph.D. with the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) at the National University of Ireland, Galway. His research interests are large-scale data interoperation on the Semantic Web, Linked Data, knowledge representation, computational logic and user interaction on web data. Andreas has published over a dozen papers in these areas, and is author of several open source software systems. Two of his systems were awarded prizes at the Semantic Web Challenge co-located with the International Semantic Web Conference. In addition, he has participated in numerous EU and national projects, participated in various program committees, and has served in the W3C Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment and Rules Interchange Format working groups.

Nicola Riordan has spent the last 10 years working with online companies including Skype, TweetDeck, AlertMe and many other start-ups in the mobile, interactive TV and communications sectors. She specialises in helping businesses to develop their online strategy and use new and existing marketing channels effectively to launch, acquire new users, grow virally and monetise. Nicola uses her expertise in online, technology and mobile sectors using small budgets and customer-focused thinking to deliver marketing campaigns with demonstrable performance and success. Nicola holds a Masters in Strategic Marketing, Post Grad in Public Relations and BBS in Business Studies with eCommerce and Marketing.

John Breslin is currently a lecturer in Electronic Engineering at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He is also an associate researcher and leader of the Social Software Unit at the Digital Enterprise Research Institute at NUI Galway, researching semantically-enabled social networks and community portals. He is the founder of the SIOC project, which aims to semantically-interlink online communities. He has received a number of awards for website design, including two Net Visionary awards from the Irish Internet Association for the Irish community website Boards.ie, which he co-founded in 2000. Dr. Breslin is a member of the IEI, IET and IEEE.

Tom Murphy has worked as a producer/cameraperson specializing in current affairs and documentaries filming in many different environments, hostile and otherwise, throughout the world. In 1982 he spent three months behind the Russian lines in Afghanistan with the Mujahidin making a documentary. He has won Emmy awards for his coverage of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, a Moscow documentary shoot and for his footage of the Iraq War, filmed over more than three months in Baghdad in 2003, some of which was used in the Michael Moore film ‘Fahrenheit 9/11.’ He was at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on November 9 1989. All the earliest pictures of Germans breaching the Berlin Wall were Tom’s. His assignments have included the Bosnian War, US operations in Somalia, the 1994 Sarajevo marketplace bombing and, in 2004 through 2008, location filming in the Korengal Valley and Helmand Province, Afghanistan with American military forces. More recently he received a Polk Award for secretly filming in Burma in the aftermath of the Saffron Revolution. His most recent assignment took him on a tour of four African countries documenting the growing influence of both China and America in the region.