2:30 - 3:15 PM

General Session I
Where Information Is Heading
The Internet has changed the information business from top to bottom, and the net itself is continuing to change our behavior and expectations. Consumers and businesses are creating their own user-generated information sources, and their focus is shifting from information dissemination to communication and collaboration. Where will consumer-created content, audio, video and social networking take the information business in the next five years and how should we prepare for the changes that are coming?
Barry Parr, Senior Analyst, JupiterResearch

Barry Parr, an analyst in the media group at JupiterResearch, focuses on news, information and entertainment. He is a frequent speaker on technology and media in the U.S. and worldwide, and has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes, Business Week, San Jose Mercury News and other publications. He has more than 15 years of experience in media, both online and off, including software development, marketing, editorial, circulation, online advertising and production management.

Parr has served as the ecommerce research director at International Data Corporation and vice president of news at CNET. At IDC, his research included consumer ecommerce, portals, Internet user demographics, international ecommerce and Internet marketing. As vice president of news at CNET, he co-created NEWS.COM, a technology news site which Walt Mossberg in the Wall Street Journal called, “a must read for anyone who cares about technology news.” In addition, Parr was managing producer at the San Jose Mercury News, where he was a key developer of Mercury Center, the first newspaper on the Web.

Parr holds an A.B. from Stanford University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

General Session II
The New Rules for Recruiting Talent
Bringing in great talent is the most important thing any of us can do to grow our companies, yet for most companies, recruiting is a game of chance. Find out the secrets of one of the world’s most successful executive recruiters and trainer of recruiters. There is a better way to improve your chances of success – find out how.
Lou Adler, President, The Adler Group and Author of Hire With Your Head

Lou Adler is the president of The Adler Group, a training and consulting firm helping companies find and hire top talent using Performance-based Hiringsm. He is the Amazon best-seller author of Hire With Your Head (John Wiley & Sons, 3rd Edition, 2007) and the new Nightingale-Conant audio program Talent Rules! Using Performance-based Hiring to Hire Top Talent (2007). Adler is a noted recruiting industry expert, national speaker and columnist for a number of major recruiting Internet sites. Adler holds an MBA from UCLA and a B.S. in Engineering from Clarkson University, NY.

General Session IV
Changing the Rules: The Consumer Reports Story
Consumer Reports is one of the most successful print publishers in the world. They are also one of the most successful online publishers with more than 2 million paying members to their Website. In addition, they are on the forefront of mobile information delivery and are building leading-edge mobile solutions. They are doing all this while growing their core magazine. Find out from the architect of Consumer Union’s publishing group how they have achieved their current success and where they are heading.
John Sateja, Senior Vice President, Consumer Reports

John Sateja is the senior vice president for information products for Consumers Union (CU), an expert, independent, nonprofit organization whose mission is to work for a fair, just and safe marketplace for all consumers. Mr. Sateja oversees the Publishing, Editorial, Technical and Survey Research Divisions of the organization and has ultimate responsibility for all information products at CU, including Consumer Reports magazine and ConsumerReports.org, the world’s largest publication-based subscription Website, as well as several other Websites, newsletters, books, special interest publications, a syndicated television news service and a mobile phone application. Consumer Reports has more than seven million combined paid subscribers to its various information products.

Mr. Sateja joined Consumers Union in 2000 as vice president, multi-media publishing and was later promoted to vice president, publishing. In that role, he oversaw publishing for all information products at CU. Under his leadership, ConsumerReports.org reached a record-setting milestone, exceeding one million active paid subscribers in fewer than five years. Currently, ConsumerReports.org has more than 2.2 million active, paid subscribers.

“We’re growing across the board,” Mr. Sateja says. “Despite a down industry, we’ve actually been bucking the trend and increasing our business in a tough economic environment.” Part of what makes Consumers Union different, he adds, is that its decisions are driven by “doing the right thing by the customer, the consumer.” As senior vice president for information products, Mr. Sateja devotes the majority of his time to ensuring that consumers are getting information that is relevant, timely and actionable, helping them take action and make sound decisions. “Our brand spells out trust in the marketplace, which is especially timely in today’s market,” he says. “We invest millions of dollars in our content development, and that’s what helps make us unique.”

Prior to joining Consumers Union, Mr. Sateja was senior vice president, chief marketing officer, new media at Cahners Publishing (now Reed Business Information), the largest business magazine publisher in the U.S. He was responsible for managing the development of Manufacturing.Net, a business-to-business e-commerce venture,
and other electronic media initiatives across the company. Partners in this joint venture included Cahners Business Information and Aspect Development\i2 Technologies, a leading supplier of Supply Chain solutions. Subsequently, Mr. Sateja was named president of Manufacturing.Net.

In April 1999, Mr. Sateja was selected by Folio magazine as one of its "Folio 40 Entrepreneurial Leaders" for his role on a team "that created a powerful b-to-b [business-to-business] Web hub that has a clearly defined objective beyond promoting magazines."

Luncheon & Keynote Address
Hoover’s Vision: Original Thinking for Business Success
Gary Hoover is a true visionary. Not only has he founded several companies, he has invented several industries. He has a unique way of identifying business opportunities and is willing to share his winning approach with you.
Gary Hoover, founder of Hoovers (business information), BOOKSTOP (which was later sold to Barnes and Noble for $41.5 million) and other successful companies. Author of Hoover’s Vision.

Gary Hoover began his entrepreneurial journey at an early age. He grew up in Anderson, IN, a General Motors factory town, and began asking questions about business at an early age. Convinced that the best way to change the world (for the better) was to lead or create enterprises, he started subscribing to Fortune Magazine when he was 12. While other kids were playing baseball, he was memorizing the Fortune 500. He visited hundreds of corporate headquarters and offices before he was 18, and studied the stock market in depth. His question was the same, “What separates the losers from the winners?”

In this quest, Gary’s research was not limited to for-profit enterprises, but included the study of all types of enterprise from empires to unions, from General Motors to the United States of America. As part of his education, he studied economics at the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman and two other Nobel Prize winners, served as a securities analyst for CitiBank on Wall Street, worked as a buyer for Federated Department Stores, and headed up acquisitions and strategic planning for the giant May Department Stores Company.

At the age of 30, he finally took the plunge and created pioneering book superstore BOOKSTOP, which helped change the nature of book shopping in America. BOOKSTOP also won kudos for its preservation and restoration of historic buildings such as old movie theatres. This company was sold to Barnes & Noble for $41.5 million cash when it was seven years old, and became a cornerstone for their industry-dominating superstore chain, which today does over $4 Billion in annual sales out of 600-plus stores.

After he and his partners sold BOOKSTOP, Gary returned to his first love of understanding businesses, and (in 1990) began a small business information publisher, the Reference Press. This company, initially under the leadership of Gary’s college friend Patrick J. Spain, evolved into Hoover’s, Inc., the world’s largest Internet-based provider of information about enterprises. Hoover’s Online, at www.hoovers.com, covers over 40,000 companies around the world, and includes private, public and non-profit enterprises. Millions of users from all countries access Hoover’s every day for the site’s easy-to-use and easy-to-read information on enterprises, generating hundreds of millions of page views a year. In July of 1999, Hoover’s went public and in March of 2003, the company was purchased by Dun & Bradstreet for $117 million. Like BOOKSTOP, Hoover’s has changed the way we do things and today employs over 600 people. This is what Gary Hoover started out to do as a teenager.

Hoover also knows failure, having started travel superstore TravelFest in 1993 – and closing it down in 1998-99 as airlines slashed commissions to travel agents.

Improving Your Visibility on Google: An Overview of Google's Solutions for Online Publishers
Google doesn't want to compete with you. They want to act as a switchboard, connecting consumers with relevant information. Find out how to organize your information so that Google can access it, index it and send the right people to it.
Andrew Madden, Strategic Partner Development, Content Partnerships, Google, Inc.

Andrew Madden is a member of Google's Content Partnerships team, with a focus on newspaper publishers, magazine groups and content aggregators. He has worked at the intersection of media and the Internet for more than 10 years, starting as a writer and editor at Red Herring, a monthly magazine about the business of technology. His writing has also appeared in Nasdaq International Magazine, Wired and the M.I.T. Technology Review, where he was a contributing editor. Andrew also launched his own integrated new media company and did stints at CNET News.com, where he was director of editorial projects, and at KeepMedia, an online aggregator of magazine and newspaper archives, where he was a member of the management team. Andrew is a graduate of Princeton University. He joined Google in June 2005.