Your Keynote Speakers

Digby Jones

From July 2007 to October 2008 Digby Jones served in the UK Government as Minister of State for Trade & Investment. During his 15 months in Ministerial office he made 45 overseas visits, travelling to 31 different countries and meeting with the world’s top business leaders and politicians. He changed the way that UK Trade & Investment was perceived in delivering a record year for inward investment and expanded the UK’s presence in all of the major international markets.

Digby Jones was made a Partner at Edge and Ellison, the law firm, in 1984. He was responsible for developing the firm’s London presence and establishing its representation in many European countries and several states in America. He was involved in most of the major management buy-outs and merger and acquisition activity in the West Midlands in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He was made Deputy Senior Partner in 1990, becoming the Firm’s Senior Partner in 1995.

In 1998 he joined KPMG as vice chairman of Corporate Finance, acting as close adviser to many public companies across the United Kingdom and in KPMG’s global markets.

Digby Jones served as Director-General of the CBI, the Confederation of British Industry, the UK’s ‘Voice of Business’, from 1 January 2000 to 30 June 2006

where he regularly visited businesses in the UK and worldwide – taking their views back to those who make the rules. During his appointment he took the British business message to 70 different countries, internationalising the organisation and opening CBI offices in Washington DC and Beijing.

Following his departure from the CBI he held a number of senior corporate advisory positions – Senior Advisor to the Executive of Deloitte; Senior Advisor to Barclays Capital; Corporate and Governmental Affairs Advisor to Ford of Europe and its Premier Automotive Group; Senior Advisor to JCB; Special Advisor to His Royal Highness the Duke of York in connection with his role as the UK Special Representative for International Trade & Investment; Senior Advisor to Computer Science Corporation inc., Member of the Advisory Board of Monitise Ltd; Member of the Advisory Board of Thales (UK) Ltd; Advisor to Hugh James, Solicitors, Cardiff and London, Advisor to Wragge & Co., Solicitors, Birmingham and London, Non-Executive Director of Alba plc, i-Clean Systems Ltd. and Leicester Tigers Rugby plc.

In 2007 he served as the UK’s Skills Envoy, campaigning for both private and public sector employers to raise the level of skills of all of their employees to Level Two by 2010.

He accepted a lifetime peerage in the House of Lords where he now sits on the cross benches and is known as Lord Jones of Birmingham.

Fred Dinenage - Master Of Ceremonies

Fred Dinenage is one of the longest-serving broadcasters on ITV.

Fred Edgar Dinenage was born 8th June 1942 in Birmingham and is a television host and newsreader based in the south of England.

His career began with Southern Television in 1964 on a children’s programme called 'Three Go Round'. And he's been trying to get it right ever since!

In the late 1970’s for a brief period he covered regional sport for Yorkshire Television. He also appeared as a relief presenter of the networked ITV Saturday afternoon show 'World of Sport'.

He also has his own weekly column featured on the magazine of the Southampton local newspaper, Southern Daily Echo.

He has also appeared on Anglia’s 'Gambit', 'Tell the Truth' as well as the BBC Quiz Show 'Pass The Buck'

By 1966 he was appearing on a variety of programmes, including Southern's nightly news/magazine programme Day by Day - and 'HOW?’ the longest-running children's programme on ITV.

Fred Dinenage also did a lot of network sport and was 'front-man' for ITV at two Olympic Games. By 1984 he was co-presenting 'Coast to Coast', the TVS nightly news/magazine programme and, when Meridian took over in 1992 he took over the reins on Meridian Tonight. So he's been in TV for forty five years - and fronting the six o'clock programme for the past twenty five.

Fred Dinenage became co-anchor of a new pan-regional edition of ‘Meridian Tonight’ in February 2009 presenting alongside former South East anchor Sangeeta Bhabra.

'And', he says, 'I still love it now as much as the day I started'.

Alongside his television career, Fred Dinenage has written several factual books including ghosting on autobiographies ‘My Story’ and ‘Our Story’ for the Kray Twins.

He is a keen follower of Association Football and was on the board of Directors at Portsmouth FC for a number of years before retiring at the end of the 2005/6 season.

Your Workshop Speakers

Adam Stafford - Digital Marketing

Adam Stafford is managing director of award-winning web design, Internet marketing and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) agency Fresh Egg. Adam has worked in Internet marketing and website design for 12 years. His experience of various IT and Internet companies convinced him of the huge market potential of Search Engine Optimisation at a time when the power of Search Engine Marketing was just beginning to emerge.

He established Fresh Egg in March 2000 to offer outstanding web design underpinned by strong SEO expertise. Some nine years later Fresh Egg employs over 25 staff and is regarded as one of the leaders in its field by industry peers and leading businessmen such as James Caan. Impressed with the high returns on investment Fresh Egg achieves for its clients through continuing SEO work, James Caan invested in Fresh Egg through his private equity firm Hamilton Bradshaw and assumed the role of Chairman of the company in March 2009.

Fresh Egg continues to achieve recognition for its SEO and SEM work and the company has achieved various “finalist” nominations in a variety of award categories including Search Marketing, Business of the Year and Website Design.

Most recently, Fresh Egg has been nominated as a finalist in the prestigious New Media Age Effectiveness Awards 2009 for its work on CallTrackID, an internally developed application that enables telephone call tracking from your website to be fully integrated within Google Analytics.

Fresh Egg clients include Norwich Union, Liberty, The Sanctuary Spa, Nationwide Vehicle Contracts, Tropical Sky, RBS, NatWest, and Visit Wales as well as numerous locally based and national SMEs.

http://www.freshegg.com