Biographical note

Mike Moran has worked on the web since its inception, in both marketing and technical roles, including eight years at IBM.com, IBM’s customer-facing website. In 2008, Mike retired from IBM to pursue speaking, writing, and consulting at Mike Moran Group, and also serves as a senior strategist for both the social media consultancy Converseon, and its spin-off social analytics company, Revealed Context. He’s twice been named one of the top 50 Internet marketers and regularly consults for Fortune 500 companies around the world.

Mike is also the author of Do It Wrong Quickly: How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules, perhaps the first book on agile marketing. He writes regular columns on digital marketing at WebProNews and Search Engine Guide, and is the founder and senior author at Biznology (www.biznology.com).

He’s a Senior Fellow of the Society for New Communications Research and an Open Group Distinguished IT Specialist. Mike is a frequent keynote speaker on digital marketing at events around the world, serves as a Visiting Lecturer to the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, works as an instructor for both Rutgers University and the University of California at Irvine, and holds an Advanced Certificate in Market Management Practice from the Royal UK Charter Institute of Marketing.

Mike also has a broad technical background, with over 30 years of experience in search technology, working at IBM Research, Lotus, and other IBM software units. He led the product team that developed the first commercial linguistic search engine in 1989 and has been granted 11 patents in search and retrieval technology. He led the integration of ibm.com’s site search technologies as well as projects in content management, personalization, and web metrics. Mike led the adoption of search marketing at ibm.com back in 2001 and pioneered product search facilities that dramatically raised conversion rates. Mike was named an IBM Distinguished Engineer in 2005.

Mike can be reached through his website (www.mikemoran.com).

Bill Hunt has been a pioneer in search marketing, first optimizing pages in 1994. He is considered the top thought leader on enterprise and global search engine marketing and is an internationally recognized search marketing expert who has spoken at conferences in over 30 countries.

Press, industry analysts, and corporate leaders frequently seek Bill’s advice to help them effectively leverage enterprise and global search marketing. Bill is the CEO of Back Azimuth Consulting. Through Back Azimuth, Bill provides cutting-edge keyword data-mining models to identify missed opportunities and increase revenue based on understanding consumer needs. Bill is also responsible for Back Azimuth’s search marketing thought leadership and for developing global search marketing strategic roadmaps for multinational corporations such as Absolut Vodka, Cisco, HP, MGM, and Pernod-Ricard.

Bill is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, and he earned a B.A. in Asian Studies/Japanese from the University of Maryland, Tokyo Campus, and a B.S. in International Business from California State University, Los Angeles. Bill can be reached through his company website (www. back-azimuth.com) or his blog (www.whunt.com).