Speakers at the metadata conference

Yvan Cohen - Director & Co-Founder - OnAsia Images Pte Ltd
Launched in July 2007, Image Keyworder is a Window-based program developed by OnAsia through collaboration between photographers, keywording experts and software developers. The product has grown out of our company’s experience indexing and managing image collections.Image Keyworder is a comprehensive metadata management tool that comes with thesaurus comprising over 40,000 terms and a full range of template and batch functions to make the arduous task of indexing images more efficient.

Abbie Enock - Managing Director of Capture Ltd - Capture Ltd
Abbie is the founder and managing director of Capture - UK leading supplier of integrated image and asset library management software - and Travel Ink, a travel and lifestyle photo library.
Abbie started her career as a professional journalist, working on national newspapers and then later travelling all over the world on photojournalism assignments. The fruits of these assignments formed the basis of Travel Ink, which was launched in 1988 and now has several hundred contributing photographers. Unable to source a suitable business management system designed for image libraries, Abbie began development in-house of Capture software. The system was so successful that in 1998 she decided to make Capture software commercially available to other picture libraries that had seen the product and wished to use it. The Capture software suite quickly lead the field, became Travel Ink's core product and, with its success, the business was restructured in 2000 as Capture Ltd. She also, until recently, managed a publishing company, sourcing imagery, and designing and contract publishing top quality business magazines.

Stéphane Guérillot - Chairman of the IPTC

Andrew Labonte - Senior Manager, Search Metadata - Corbis
Andrew LaBonte has been working in the metadata field for over 15 years.
He has worked in the Cataloging department at Corbis for the last 8 years
as a cataloger, manager and currently as Senior Manager, Search Metadata,
overseeing the keywording and controlled vocabulary teams.

Harald Löffler - Research Manager - Ifra
Harald Löffler holds a university degree in mathematics. In 1997 he started to work as senior consultant for Ifra and today he is Ifra’s Research Manager. His focus is on process analysis and IT systems for all areas of newspaper publishing. He guided the Ifra working group “Integrated Publishing Systems”, is co-chair of the Ifra Middle East Committee and the Ifra Technical Group Publishing. He is Ifra’s representative to the IPTC and is the current Chairman of the AdsML Consortium. Harald Löffler is consulting Ifra members to optimise editorial and advertising processes and helps to select publishing systems.

Kirsti O'Sullivan - Manging Director & Founder - keywording.com
Kirsti O'Sullivan is the founder and managing director of Keywording.com. After working for several years in knowledge management for Accenture, Kirsti joined a dynamic RF stock company. During her tenure in the stock industry she recognized that keywording was a critical factor in image sales and an area under-served in the marketplace. This was the beginning of Keywording.com. Drawing on her stock experience and data managemant expertise, she developed proprietary software and a unique business model for keywording as an outsourced service. Realizing her vision for quality, consistent keywording, Kirsti launched Keywording.com in early 2003 and has since built a worldwide client base. She currently manages the business out of Portland, Oregon.

Gunar Penikis - Sr. Product Manager, XMP - Adobe Systems Inc.
Gunar Penikis is Senior Product Manager for Adobe XMP at Adobe Systems Incorporated. He is responsible for defining platforms and products that empower the creative community to better manage media assets and workflow, enabling them to more efficiently express their vision.
He has collaborated with international standards groups within the creative and publishing communities such as IDEAlliance, IPTC, PRISM, DISC, W3C, and Creative Commons to build awareness and drive adoption of metadata technologies.
Previously, he was Product Manager for Adobe Bridge and Adobe’s Asset Management technologies. Gunar holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering Physics from Queen’s University, Canada, and a Masters degree in International Business Administration from York University, Canada. He has been a featured speaker at industry events at more than 15 international conferences, demonstrating technology for audiences of over 3,000 attendees, including IFRA, Digital Asset Management Symposium, Global Society for Asset Management, Nexpo, Xtech and Seybold.

Silke Pottenkaemper -- BlueBox GmbH

David Riecks - David Riecks Photography & ControlledVocabulary.com
Presenting on behalf of the Stock Artists Alliance
Photographer David Riecks is a sought-after consultant on digital imaging and metadata. Riecks is involved in recent standards initiatives, and has been a featured speaker at PhotoPlus Expo, Microsoft's Pro Photo Summit and last years Photo Metadata conference. He was the only stock photographer involved with the IPTC4XMP working group; authored the IPTC Core User's Guide and serves on the IPTC Photo Metadata working group. Riecks chairs the Stock Artists Alliance Imaging Technology Standards committee, was a founding member of UPDIG, serves as the Chief Technical Advisor to PLUS, and founded ControlledVocabulary.com to assist others with keywording and embedded metadata issues. His book on Digital Photo Management (Focal Press) is due this fall.

Michael Steidl - Managing Director - IPTC
IPTC Managing Director since 2003, Michael Steidl is deep in the business of creating, promoting and maintaining standards for the news industry. He has a long record with information technology for news as a consultant to news agencies for 20 years. Being an engineer by education he also worked as an editor and managing director for news agencies, hence knowing the news business in a broad sense. Among many other tasks at the IPTC he lead the development of the "IPTC Core" standard and is co-lead of the Photo Metadata Working Group.

Jessica Tier - Project Manager, The MILE Project (Metadata Image Library Exploitation) & The Bridgeman Art Library
After a brief introduction to some of the problems with metadata for fine art images, Jessica wrote a proposal for a 3-year EC funded project under the eContentplus programme - The MILE Project. As well as continuing to manage this project, Jessica also created a new company under The Bridgeman Art Library's umbrella in 2006 - Artists' Collecting Society
(ACS) Jessica is Chief Executive Officer of ACS, whose purpose is to manage Artist's Resale Right or Droit de Suite on behalf of over 250 member artists.

Raphaël Troncy - Researcher - CWI Amsterdam (Semantic Media Interfaces Group)
Dr. Raphaël Troncy is a researcher, having obtained his PhD from the University of Grenoble (INRIA/INA) in 2004. He selected as an ERCIM Post-Doctorate Research Associate 2004-2006. Raphaël Troncy was co-chair of the W3C Incubator Group on Multimedia Semantics. He is an expert in audio visual metadata and in combining existing metadata standards (such as MPEG-7) with current Semantic Web technologies. He works closely with the IPTC standardization body on the relationship between the NewsML language family and Semantic Web technologies.

Dennis Walker - President and Founder - Camera Bits
Dennis Walker is the Founder and President of Camera Bits, based in Oregon. Walker started Camera Bits in 1996 with its first product, the Quantum Mechanic noise filter plug-in for Photoshop. The following year Walker released Photo Mechanic, now an eleven-year mainstay of digital photojournalists for photo captioning and workflow. Walker is a graduate of UC San Diego with degrees in Computer Science and Cognitive Psychology. Prior to forming Camera Bits, Walker worked with neural networks and image processing. Walker is the 2004 recipient of the NPPA's J. Winton Lemen Fellowship Award in recognition of his continued efforts to improve photo editing software. In 1987, Walker co-authored the tremendously successful game Dungeon Master, the first 3D real-time role playing game.

Josh Weisberg - Director, Rich Media Group - Microsoft
Josh Weisberg is Director of Microsoft’s Rich Media Group and leads a team that is focused on building better technology for digital photographers. Both an avid photographer and technologist, Josh has more than 15 years experience in the digital imaging industry and has authored 4 books on digital imaging and color management. He is also Microsoft’s resident expert on metadata, regularly speaking on the subject at PMA, IPTC’s Photo Metadata Conference and I3A industry events.  Prior to his role at Microsoft, Josh spent several years at Apple Computer where he launched numerous products including ColorSync and QuickDraw. Josh has also served as a consultant to industry leading corporations, including Intel Corporation, Walt Disney Pictures and Television, and Canon.  Josh studied digital imaging at the Rochester institute of technology and holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of San Francisco.