A master mariner and a committed proponent of the maritime users’ perspective, Rear Admiral Nick Lambert concluded a long naval operational career as the UK National Hydrographer in December 2012. He advises on a wide range of maritime issues including the importance of spatial data infrastructures and hydrography for maritime economies, the evolution of eNavigation and GNSS vulnerability, near or real time situational awareness (especially that derived from space based assets and applications), human factors, and training and education in the maritime sector.

Rob O'Dwyer, Editor of Digital Ship, has been a maritime IT journalist since 2005. He has a Master's degree in business and law from University College Dublin and was previously a commercial writing consultant in Seoul, South Korea.

Rob was also previously Editor of Port Finance International.

Started a shared service company with common service catalogue and advanced pricing models. Manage a global IT company including import/export of equipment both onshore and offshore.

Vendor management ensuring optimal product mix for our customers.

Participating in global IT project steering groups, focus on implementing new technology and enabling our customers to work digitally and utilizing new functionality.

Building internal competence in the company, and focusing on application management. Process focus ensuring that we work according to our ISO 9001-2015 certificate.

Knut is a Marketing and PR professional with wide experience in Norwegian and international companies. Shipping, Telecom, Satellite Communications, Health Care and Legal are business sectors he has vast experience in.

Currently Press & PR Director at Marlink, a Global Telecom Company. Responsible for Press, Media relations, External communications and PR programs.

Michael joined Telenor Satellite in 2005 and is currently Director of Sales for our Network and Data services division, which is responsible for providing high quality data communication services over satellite to customers on land and sea.

He has over 14 years International Telecom experience, working for companies such as Tandberg (Now CISCO) and BaneTele. Michael has an MBA from Griffith University in Queensland, Australia and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Fonty's University in Eindhoven, Holland.

Kyle has 17 years' experience in the maritime satellite communication sector. Before joining Iridium as Director, Maritime Business in March 2015, Kyle worked for Station711 and before that as Director of Market Development at Thuraya, and was also previously Maritime Marketing Manager for lnmarsat in London, specialising in product development and the application of satellite communications to the maritime market.

His experience extends to working as a Vessel Monitoring Systems (VMS) Manager for the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency in the Solomon Islands. A native Australian, he has also held a number of leadership positions at the Queensland Department of Primary Industries. Kyle was also a soldier in the Australian Army (Engineer Corps) and grew up working with his family in a number of commercial fisheries on the South East Coast of Australia.

Martin has spent over 30 years working in the Telecommunications, Satellite and the IT industry and currently runs Maritime Sales in Europe for SpeedCast. Martin has been involved with the Maritime industry since 2008 first as Sales Director at Zynetix a company focusing on GSM calling at sea and then with Globe Wireless as Business Development Director. Martin currently spends a lot of his time with shipping companies advising on options for communications and IT at sea. The roles he has performed in Maritime have given Martin a unique and in depth knowledge on what customer requirements are for a communications and IT solutions at sea.

Stéphane Chenard attended the Institute for Political Studies, 1984. He was the Assistant editor of Interavia Space Markets, a Jane's Information Group trade publication, 1988-91 and joined Euroconsult in 1992.

Stéphane is currently a senior associate consultant, particularly in charge of the due diligence assessments, which he performs on satellite projects for or in relation with the financial community. Until 2002, also served as editor and principal author of Euroconsult's World Space Market Survey multi-client report series (annual), for which he developed a large part of the forecasting methodology and continues to perform in-depth research on all satellite communication markets, with special emphasis on Asia (including substantially all studies performed on the Indonesian market), Africa and the Middle East.

In 2014 Stéphane produced Euroconsult's comprehensive report on Military Satellite Communications, based on over nine months of dedicated research. He performed numerous consulting assignments to assess future satellite application markets, investment risks and business plans for clients satellite manufacturers, operators, service providers, pay-television operators, financial institutions and government agencies around the world.

Started a shared service company with common service catalogue and advanced pricing models. Manage a global IT company including import/export of equipment both onshore and offshore.

Vendor management ensuring optimal product mix for our customers.

Participating in global IT project steering groups, focus on implementing new technology and enabling our customers to work digitally and utilizing new functionality.

Building internal competence in the company, and focusing on application management. Process focus ensuring that we work according to our ISO 9001-2015 certificate.

Stein A. Orø is Vice President Sales in the Maritime business unit, with a sales responsibility for developing the global VSAT business including Fleet Xpress.

Stein has a background from the mobile industry as well as IT consultancy, and for the last 15 years in various positions in the Maritime Satellite sector for Ship Equip and Inmarsat. Most of these have been management roles in commercial development in sectors like fishing, offshore and shipping. Stein has extensive international experience in the Maritime industry, and he also spent 3 years in Houston, Texas.

Birgit Marie Liodden is the Director of Nor-Shipping and a Board Member of the Norwegian Sea Rescue Academy, Ocean Industry Forum Oslo region and WISTA Norway. She also chairs two commercial real estate companies.

Liodden is the founder and former Secretary General of YoungShip International. Prior to this, she held various corporate roles in the Wilh. Wilhelmsen Group, eventually as Project Manager of Global Systems & Processes (HR&IT), and is former President of YoungShip Oslo and YoungShip Norway. She holds 5 years entrepreneurial experience as owner of Liodden Projects, delivering project management and consultancy services to a.o. OECD, SeaTrucks Nigeria, Wilhelmsen Maritime Services and Nor-Shipping.

She has made her mark as a passionate shipping environmentalist and business activist, actively challenging the maritime industry on key challenges related to leadership, diversity, sustainable development, entrepreneurship and innovation. Liodden received the WISTA Leadership Award 2012 for her work to promote shipping and female role models to the next generation. She frequently contributes as speaker and panellist both within and outside of the maritime industry, and has served as jury member for several international maritime awards.

Tom Erling Hansen has double engineering degrees in Telecom and IT from the Royal Norwegian Air force complemented with a Master’s degree in Business administration and Management from the Norwegian Business School. Mr Hansen has worked with Maritime applications and communication for almost two decades and has extensive international experience from working and living in several maritime hubs including Dubai, Oslo, London, Brussels, Singapore and Houston. He is currently head of Sales North Europe for Maritime in Marlink.

A Cyber Security Professional with 20+ years’ experience in Enterprise Security & Infrastructure, Joseph is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP). An active member of the Cyber Security community and a frequent speaker at Cyber Security events globally. Joseph is an adviser to several governments, critical infrastructure, startups and cyber security conferences.

Raimo Warkki was born in Göteborg and currently resides on an island north of Göteborg. He worked at Xerox for 5 years before joining the Stena Sphere more than 30 years ago in the IT segment.

Raimo’s role has changed and developed during his time with Stena Line – he started as a technician, then held various managerial positions in different roles within the IT department. He has also been an IT demand manger within Ship management and been responsible for external IT systems onboard, for example: NAPA, XO Ombord data.

Since the late 90’s, Raimo has been intensely involved in Ship communications, and has installed the satellite communication on the Stena Line ferries. He is also commercially responsible for the Ship communication and ship systems.

Birgit Marie Liodden is the Director of Nor-Shipping and a Board Member of the Norwegian Sea Rescue Academy, Ocean Industry Forum Oslo region and WISTA Norway. She also chairs two commercial real estate companies.

Liodden is the founder and former Secretary General of YoungShip International. Prior to this, she held various corporate roles in the Wilh. Wilhelmsen Group, eventually as Project Manager of Global Systems & Processes (HR&IT), and is former President of YoungShip Oslo and YoungShip Norway. She holds 5 years entrepreneurial experience as owner of Liodden Projects, delivering project management and consultancy services to a.o. OECD, SeaTrucks Nigeria, Wilhelmsen Maritime Services and Nor-Shipping.

She has made her mark as a passionate shipping environmentalist and business activist, actively challenging the maritime industry on key challenges related to leadership, diversity, sustainable development, entrepreneurship and innovation. Liodden received the WISTA Leadership Award 2012 for her work to promote shipping and female role models to the next generation. She frequently contributes as speaker and panellist both within and outside of the maritime industry, and has served as jury member for several international maritime awards.

Lars brings 15 years of experience within the IT industry, both in Germany and in Norway. Prior to joining Dualog in 2006 he worked with solutions for efficient remote management of mission critical voice and IT infrastructure.

He is based in Oslo, Norway, and works particularly with solutions for optimizing efficiency and cost performance in ship-to-shore communications. Lars is focused on bringing Dualog Connection Suite to the market, a solution that in 2008 changed the game of maritime communication with its unique software approach and unparalleled user concept.

Even though imitators have recently emerged, Dualog retains the leading position in the market, fully independent of airtime vendors.

A master mariner and a committed proponent of the maritime users’ perspective, Rear Admiral Nick Lambert concluded a long naval operational career as the UK National Hydrographer in December 2012. He advises on a wide range of maritime issues including the importance of spatial data infrastructures and hydrography for maritime economies, the evolution of eNavigation and GNSS vulnerability, near or real time situational awareness (especially that derived from space based assets and applications), human factors, and training and education in the maritime sector.

Captain Jon Leon Ervik is Head of Department for Pilotage and VTS in the Norwegian Coastal Administration. He pursued a career in the Norwegian Coast Guard, also as Commander-in-chief at navy and Coast Guard vessels, operating mostly in northern Norway and Svalbard. He also has background from the merchant fleet.

Since 2002, Jon Leon Ervik has been the head of the Pilotage and VTS Department. This also includes being responsible for several systems like LRIT, SafeSeaNet, AIS, Satellite AIS and DGPS.

He is involved in the IALA VTS and e-navigation committee and Norwegian e-navigation delegate in IMO.

Since 2001, he has been involved in several R&D projects related to maritime safety, security and logistic in Europe. Captain Jon Leon Ervik holds a Nautical Bachelor degree in Maritime engineering. Maritime engineer from University College in Vestfold.

Thomas Porathe is professor of interaction design at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. He is specialising in maritime human factors and design of maritime information systems. He has been working with e-Navigation since 2006 in EU-projects like BLAST, EfficienSea, MONALISA, ACCSEAS and the unmanned ship project MUNIN. He is active in the IALA e-Navigation committee.

Bengt Sørensen joined ABB in 2011 and has since then had various roles in the organization ranging from corporate development and new sales of complete electrical systems for maritime vessels, to project management and latest business development for aftermarket services. Bengt has had positions in ABB’s Norway, China and Singapore offices. He is currently the business development manager for the marine service center in Norway, and the oil and service segment globally. Bengt is based in Norway.

Bengt has a M.Sc. degree in industrial economics and technology management from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and a B.Sc. in Structural Engineering from the University of Stavanger.

Markus Sandelin is a serial entrepreneur from Helsinki, Finland. A lifelong nerd, analyst and co-author of “The Sucking Manifesto”, a book about how people suck with numbers and data.

He is heading a variety of companies in industries including maritime (Sailortalk), data & marketing automation (Compomatic, Big Tags), augmented reality (Alvar) and media (Faneille.com). He is an actively participating business angel, coaching young companies into brighter futures.

Mr Sandelin has a decades long and proven track record in global sales, marketing and advertising, process design, user interface and experience design, new technologies, project management and writing in many forms, including blogging for over 10 years.

As Co-Founder and CEO of Sailortalk, he is trying to work with the limitations of the marine industry - especially focusing on bringing proven practises from modern web applications and interfaces, positive data fragmentation, the internet of things and usable big data. He greatly dislikes just throwing terms around and has a common sense approach into all new technologies, having implemented many of them throughout his career.

If there’s one superpower he has apart from drinking, it’s his ability to convey complex ideas in very simple forms and execute them into reality.

Harbour Master Trond Andersen is the head of Maritime Department in Port of Stavanger. He pursued a career at sea on shuttle tanker in the merchant fleet for almost ten years, operating mostly in North Sea, Baltic and the countries along the English Channel.

Since February 2015, Trond Andersen has been the head of Maritime Department. This includes being operative responsible in the region to Port of Stavanger, including administrative tasks imposed on them as port authority.

From 2010 until current position he was head of the shipping department in the Norwegian Hydrographic Service, responsible for vessels and crew that collected data to produce nautical charts. Trond Andersen was also project manager for the construction of three high-tech measuring workboats for the Norwegian Hydrographic Service. He started his career in the Hydrographic Service in 2007, covering tasks from GIS specialist to responsible for national products, in addition to the above-mentioned tasks.

Through the port's involvement in PortCDM, part of the EU-project Sea Traffic Management (STM), Andersen is the project leader in Port of Stavanger. STM is the next step for a safer, more efficient and environmentally friendly maritime sector.

Petter Brandt is the owner of the consultancy company Metapharos AB. He began his career at sea on board traditional sail training vessels in the late 1980’s. Following studies at Kalmar Maritime Academy (Sjöfartshögskolan) in Sweden he served on board but eventually returned as lecturer and instructor at KMA after which he spent a decade at Stolt Tankers as Navigation Superintendent.

Marco Vatteroni is a former Italian Navy officer who served for seven years before leaving to enter the IT market. For many years he worked for some important Italian IT companies, mostly in the defence market; then in 2001 he joined the Italian shipyard Fincantieri. He served in various roles: IT manager at Integrated Logistic Support (ILS) department, technical manager for Italian Navy “Technical Publications projects” based on S1000D standard and in Computer Based Training production.

In 2006, Marco joined SpecTec Group serving as ILS and Shipdex manager. He also served as author and technical manager at the non-profit Shipdex organization. He introduced the S1000D principles in the shipping community, developing the Shipdex protocol used now by many manufacturers to produce, manage and exchange technical manuals in an “xml based” standard format. More ship-owners are now requiring Shipdex data to manage the data under quality and configuration control and to automatically import the data into their ERP or CMMS systems.

In July 2016, Marco founded Shipdex Consulting Ltd to offer the best support to all the organizations that want to adopt Shipdex to produce, exchange and use technical information.

He still holds the Shipdex technical manager position for the non-profit Shipdex organization.

Rajan Vasudevan has 25 years of experience in leading, managing and building software and IT services & product companies. At OceanManager, he is passionate about Big Data, innovation, streamlining compliance and improving Safety at Sea. He has extensive experience with business development, product management and offshore strategy consulting complemented with business solutions and architecture for strategic and complex information technology projects.

Informed and well-tuned to contemporary business and technology trends in business solutions, Rajan has experience in key verticals, including Maritime, Healthcare, Insurance, Mortgage Banking, Real Estate, e-Learning, Bio-informatics, Business Intelligence, GIS, CAD and EAI. He is a self-motivated, team builder with strong leadership, analytical and communication skills, capable of working in entrepreneurial setups including the ability to deal with ambiguity.

Rajan is well travelled in US, Europe, Asia with education from IIT, Delhi and Stanford University, USA.

Petter Brandt is the owner of the consultancy company Metapharos AB. He began his career at sea on board traditional sail training vessels in the late 1980’s. Following studies at Kalmar Maritime Academy (Sjöfartshögskolan) in Sweden he served on board but eventually returned as lecturer and instructor at KMA after which he spent a decade at Stolt Tankers as Navigation Superintendent.

As an entrepreneur, co-founder of Shift Actions and startup trouble maker at Lean Innovation Lab, Christoffer focuses on innovation, disruptive business models and digital transformation. His day to day job is to challenge large and established companies to think differently, transform the way they adapt to change and create new business models. Born in a family of shipping entrepreneurs, Christoffer also has a long and passionate relationship with the marine industries.

Kenneth Nakken is Head of Integrated Operations Oil&Gas at ABB Marine and Ports.

Kenneth joined ABB in 2009 and has since then had various roles in the organization from technical positions such as lead engineer, site management, product management and has from 2014 been responsible for the integrated Operations in Norway, the ABB Marine location responsible for Oil&Gas Business.

Hildegunn leads on Norwegian Hull Club’s communications and marketing strategy. She has been with the Club for over 13 years, and during this time has worked across multiple departments, gaining significant insight and experience of the business. She spent seven years in the loss prevention and emergency response team, where the team collated 1500 claims annually to form best practice advice for clients. She provided contingency awareness and training for clients, as well as giving advice on how to adapt emergency response solutions to new technologies.

Hildegunn is currently completing a master’s degree in communications at BI Norwegian Business School, with a focus on digital communications and innovation.