Local Search: Funding Geo

Widely considered a leading “search engine guru,” Danny Sullivan has been helping webmasters, marketers and everyday web users understand how search engines work for over a decade.

Danny’s expertise about search engines is often sought by the media, and he has been quoted in places like The Wall St. Journal, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, Forbes, The New Yorker and Newsweek and ABC’s Nightline.

Danny began covering search engines in late 1995, when he undertook a study of how they indexed web pages. The results were published online as “A Webmaster’s Guide To Search Engines,” a pioneering effort to answer the many questions site designers and Internet publicists had about search engines.

Danny currently heads up Search Engine Land as editor-in-chief, which covers all aspects of search marketing and search engine news. Danny also serves as Third Door Media’s chief content officer, which owns Search Engine Land and the SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series. Danny also maintains a personal blog called Daggle and microblogs on Twitter: @dannysullivan.

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Tyler has spent 15 years working with the spatial and geoinfomatic technologies that enrich the Internet and drive its mobile potential. After receiving his doctorate from Oxford University he founded spatial technologies startup. He is currently the Product Lead for the Yahoo! Geo Technologies Group.

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Michael Halbherr is Vice President, Social Location in the Services business unit in Nokia. In this role, Michael is responsible for heading the Social Location business including maps and other location based services. Before joining Nokia in 2006, Michael worked for the Boston Consulting Group and at europatweb, the Internet investment vehicle of Groupe Arnault, overseeing all technology investments, including gate5. After that Michael headed gate5 AG, the former leading supplier of mapping, routing and navigation software and services, for five years. Since the acquisition of gate5 through Nokia, Michael has been heading the location based experiences in Nokia.

Michael holds a PhD in Computer Science from MIT and a Masters in Electrical Engineering from ETH Zurich.

Marc has worked in the location industry for over ten years and brings a broad industry perspective. Prior to joining CloudMade, he was vice president of Marketing and Business Development at deCarta, Inc. where he was helped build a successful location software platform powering the leading location based services in North America and Europe. There, Marc led all aspects of marketing as well as business and corporate development. Before deCarta, Marc was responsible for the personal navigation business at SiRF Technology, contributing to that company’s IPO in 2004. Marc has also worked as a marketing executive at Trimble Navigation.

Marc speaks frequently at LBS and Wireless conferences. He has been a contributor to OpenStreetMap since 2006, mostly for streets and landmarks in Palo Alto, California and ski lifts and hiking paths in the Sierra Nevadas.

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VP of Product Development, MapQuest, Inc.

Mark Law is VP of Product Development with responsibility for MapQuest consumer, wireless and business products and services. Mark has over 15 years experience in geospatial and location technology.

Prior to his appointment at MapQuest, Mark was Senior Director at Yahoo!, where he led product management for Yahoo! Geo which included Yahoo! Maps channels and Location platforms and services. Before Yahoo!, he was Group Product Manager at Microsoft for MapPoint in Virtual Earth, MSN Maps and Directions and MapPoint Web Service. Mark also held positions involving GIS Technology at ESRI Canada, the Provincial Government of Ontario and Federal Government of Canada.

Mark has a Bachelor’s of Science and Master’s of Science degree from the University of Guelph in Canada and a GIS Diploma from Sir Sanford Fleming College in Canada.

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