Xavier van Leeuwe (1975) has over ten years of experience as a marketing executive in media companies Telegraaf Media Groep, de Persgroep and NRC Media in the Netherlands. At NRC Media, Xavier has successfully lead his team from decline to growth by building a customer-centric and data-rich culture at a news organisation with 189 years of heritage in Amsterdam. Prior to being a media executive, Xavier worked several years as a financial and political journalist in the Netherlands. He started his career as a researcher for The United Nations in Geneva. Xavier has helped media companies with actionable insights and has been speaker at newspaper conferences in Antwerp, Amsterdam, Cologne and Atlanta. He is an active blogger for INMA.org and publishes a frequent and free newsletter Changemediaforgood.com. Xavier is a cum laude Master in Business Administration from Erasmus University Rotterdam and holds a Post-Master degree in Journalism from that same university.

Koen Verstrepen performed scientific research on recommendations systems as a Ph.D. and Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp, at the Department of Mathematics and Information Science. Since his Ph.D. he works on artificial intelligence and machine learning for boosting conversion with the best in the world. Working closely with scientists from Netflix and Apple, he learned that true personalization can be achieved with artificial intelligence. 

During his scientific research, he recognized the need to bring state-of-the-art technology from a few top tech players, like Netflix, Apple, and Spotify, to the rest of the world. He made it his mission to help companies create a better user experience, by recommending the right content to the right user at the right time. Therefore, Koen together with Bart Goethals, a Vice-Chair Department of Mathematics & Computer Science at the University of Antwerp, founded Froomle.

 Froomle is the leading provider of artificial intelligence for boosting sales. Based on its self-learning technology, Froomle enables companies to automatically offer the right content for every consumer, using the most suitable channel, in real-time.

Jakob Moll is the founding partner (in 2012) and CEO of Danish media company Zetland. Zetland is a leading innovator of digital and analogue journalism in Europe. It was the first European publisher to market original longform journalism in the e-single-format. Furthermore, it has been at the forefront of the live-journalism-movement, filling major venues in Denmark (including The Royal Theatre in Copenhagen). Prior to founding Zetland Jakob worked in Danish mainstream media.

Johannes Knierzinger is the Head of Communications and Partner Management at Newsadoo. His focus is on setting up and supporting the Europe-wide publishing network. Newsadoo is a European project for the creation of a secure and functioning digital news market in the sense of the European publishers and quality media with the main location Linz. The father of two children studied at Kepler University Linz, initially working in strategy and marketing, and then spent years as a media manager, consultant and media activist. Through his work for various Austrian media companies, he is familiar with the processes, ways of thinking and, above all, the challenges of publishers and brings a lot of experience to the ambitious startup project newsadoo.

Dieter von Holtzbrinck Ventures GmbH, doing business as DvH Ventures, operates as a venture capital firm. The Firm provides media services and primarily invests in seed and early-stage companies in the field of innovative financial technology. With access to the media companies Handelsblatt Media Group, Der Tagesspiegel & DIE ZEIT. With focus on fintech and insurtech and special interest in artificial intelligence, cyber security, mobile...

Since 2012, Fabian leads the investment portfolio development of the Handelsblatt Group. Previously responsible for M & A, extensive transaction experience at home and abroad. Fabian studied in Paris, London and Berlin.

Carsten Groß is DuMont Rheinland's Head of Sales, Marketing and E-Commerce. Carsten studied Political and Historical Sciences (MA) and Marketing and Sales (M.Sc.). He has held various positions at Funke Mediengruppe starting 2005 before joining DuMont in 2013. After the trainee program with a focus on marketing and communication, he worked at Funke Mediengruppe in the reader service and project management. As of 2008, Gross managed the direct marketing of subscription sales for the Funke Mediengruppe NRW for almost three years. Since October 2011 he has been Head of Digital and Print Subscription Sales. He has bee appointed to the executive boards of the daily papers in the Rhineland area (Kölner Stadtanzeiger, Express and the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung) on January 2019.

Jochen Wegner is the Editor-in-chief of ZEIT ONLINE, Germany's most popular premium news site, and editorial board member of DIE ZEIT, Germany's most widely read weekly newspaper. The ZEIT ONLINE newsroom with its 90 editors is based in Berlin. Prior to his position with ZEIT ONLINE, Jochen spent five years as Editor-in-Chief at focus.de, which he developed into one of the largest and fastest-growing digital news outlets in Germany. As Managing Director of TOMORROW FOCUS Media, he was responsible for innovative media projects including the news aggregator nachrichten.de. He is the founder of mag10, an ecosystem for the creation, distribution and marketing of tablet media. Jochen also worked as a strategic consultant for leading publishing houses. Jochen started off his journalism career as a science and technology editor at Focus News Magazine. He graduated from the Cologne School of Journalism, went on to study Physics and Philosophy and wrote his master’s thesis about the chaos theory of the human brain. Jochen is the author of several books. In 1994 he founded jonet, the largest German-speaking journalism community.

Winner of the "Digital Leader 2018" award from the German Lead Awards, the "Grimme Online Award" for the democracy project "Germany Talks," and the 2018 "Scoop Award" for digital journalism. Named German "editor-in-chief of the year" in 2016.

Ulf Oliver Poschardt is a German journalist and book author. Since September 6, 2016, he is the editor-in-chief of the „Welt-Gruppe" from Die Welt and Welt am Sonntag. From 1987 to 1991 Poschardt studied journalism at the University of Munich and the German School of Journalism, as well as philosophy at the Munich School of Philosophy. In 1995, he received his doctorate from Friedrich Kittler on DJ Culture at the Humboldt University in Berlin. From 1996 to 2000 he worked as editor-in-chief of the magazine of the Süddeutsche Zeitung.  From 2005 to 2008, Poschardt was the founding editor of the German edition of Vanity Fair. Poschardt returned as deputy editor of Welt am Sonntag for at the Axel Springer group. In 2009 Poschardt was named deputy editor of the music magazines Rolling Stone, Musikexpress and Metal Hammer.

Stefan is Managing Director for the digital activities of Axel Springer’s media brands in Germany, covering the leading news brands BILD and WELT, the special interest portals SportBILD.de, ComputerBILD.de, AutoBILD.de and various content verticals like stylebook, travelbook and techbook. He is responsible for product and monetization strategy across all digital platforms.

Before joining BILD in 2009, Stefan was Co-Founder and Managing Partner at a digital media agency and worked in various leading roles at AOL and Bertelsmann. Stefan has 16 years work experience indigital media and holds a master degree in Business and Marketing.

Alix Nepveux is responsible for Simon-Kucher and Partners’ Software & Internet practice in France. She is based in Paris. An expert in revenue model optimization, she has developed winning packaging & pricing strategies for subscription and platform businesses, from Tech consumer apps to online real-estate or social media listening platforms. Her clients are both French and global players. She helps clients tackle acquisition, monetization and retention trade-offs in a profit-optimal way, in line with their overarching strategic goals.

Christian Hasselbring is working at the heart of digital media and transformation since 1997. Following management positions at AOL, Burda, Axel Springer, Tomorrow Internet, Heinrich Bauer Verlag and Gruner + Jahr, he has worked for six years as a freelancer for companies such as LaterPay, 1&1, FAZ, Lumina Learning, the Styria Media Group and more. Hasselbring focuses on strategy and product development with special emphazise on maximizing reach and revenue for publishers via paid content.

Johan Vercammen has over 15 years of experience in news and organizing newsrooms. He started his career as a regional journalist, and after three years became editor. In 2007 he started to work for Het Nieuwsblad as chief of the local news section. Some years later, he became chief of the national section. In 2018 he made the shift from daily newspaper production to transformation manager, aiming to reorganize the newsroom in order to tackle digital challenges.

As Senior Vice President of Sales, Bas is responsible for leading Piano's growing European business, building on its position as the preeminent digital content monetisation and audience intelligence platform used by the world’s leading content companies –– including The Economist, Axel Springer, Egmont Publishing, and The Spectator. Based in Amsterdam, he works closely Piano's London and Bratislava teams to build out the company’s European sales and service offerings.

Bas joined Piano in 2018 with a proven track record, having previously been the Director of Sales for the EMEA region at Magento Commerce, a leading provider of cloud commerce solutions. As a member of this company's key leadership team, he grew the Sales team significantly across EMEA during his tenure at Magento

Dominik Thesing works as Publishing Director at the Berlin based media house „Der Tagesspiegel“. Before that he was Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Quadriga, an educational and publishing company directed towards senior professionals. As the responsible board member, Dominik was in charge of finance, IT, structures, and workflows. From 2014 to 2016 Dominik was managing director and COO at WPP owned digital agency KKLD*, based in Berlin and New York City. Dominik started his career at Thesing in 2000 at Deutsche Lufthansa AG, afterwards he joined advertising agency Scholz & Friends as consultant, becoming managing director and member oft he partner board later. Dominik holds a master in economics and political science.