About

Adam Arvidsson

Adam Arvidsson is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the State University of Milan, where he teaches the Sociology of Globalisation and of New Media. After having obtained his PhD at the European University Institute of Fiesole in 2000, Adam Arvidsson taught in England and in Denmark where he has now been teaching for 6 years at the University of Copenhagen. After publishing his most recent book on the functions of brands in the information economy (Brands. Meaning and Value in Media Culture, London; Routledge, 2006, Italian translation Franco Angeli, 2010),  Arvidsson became interested in the new forms of production and economic organisation which had evolved around the new media. It is in this sphere he is currently working on a research project on the economies of reputation with the Copenhagen Business School, and is working too on a project, financed by the European Union, for the development of a platform for sharing innovation in fashion. Together with his colleagues from Ninja Marketing runs the blog Societing, which tries to gather news emerging from the Open economy. His area of research will be included in his next book, The Ethical Economy. Business and Society in the 21st Century, which is due to be published by Columbia University Press.

www.societing.org

Michel Bauwens

Michel Bauwens began his career as an information analyst and sector editor for the United States Information Agency, has worked as an information manager for British Petroleum and is the former editor-in-chief of the first European magazine on Digital convergence, Wave (in Dutch). During the dot.com boom he created 2 internet start-ups. Nowadays he devotes his time to the Foundation for peer-to-peer Alternatives which carries out research into peer/governance/proprietary and open/free and participatory forms of production, as well as commons-oriented ways of cooperation between people. He is the author of a number of on-line essays including an important thesis on Peer to Peer, Human Evolution and the Political Economics of Peer Production (CTheory). He has been a community manager of the P2P Foundation, responsible for an ecology of consistent collaboration in a wiki which reached 7000 pages and which was viewed 6 million times, a blog with a Google PR rank of 7, read by 2000 readers a day, a Ning community forum with daily activity of more than 300 members and various mailing lists.

www.p2pfoundation.net

Alex Giordano and Mirko Pallera

Currently considered the main exponents of a new advertising trend which is revolutionising the world of marketing and communications. Ninjamarketing.it is the first blog/observatory of non-conventional marketing and at present a reference point for many creative minds, marketing professionals and media-studies students, united in their desire to renew the ways in which companies communicate. Nowadays, Alex Giordano and Mirko Pallera – apart from being professionals involved in their own innovative consultancy firm, Ninjalab.it  – hold training sessions in their capacity as lecturers in Non-Conventional Marketing in Masters courses for professional and managerial training in various institutes, amongst which, the Academy of Communication, the Bocconi University Milan, the University of Salerno, the Uninettuno Telematic University, ‘La Sapienza’ the University of Rome, the University of Urbino and the University of Havana (Cuba). Alex Giordano and Mirko Pallera are the only Italian professionals who sit on the jury of Future Marketing Awards, the worldwide award for distinction in the New Marketing, the first Italians to sit on the jury in the ‘interactive’ section of the Art Directors Club Global Awards of New York, and the only Italians to present papers at the International Word-of-Mouth Marketing Conference of Barcellona as well as being ambassadors of the Webby Awards, which are considered the Oscars of web design. They are the only Italian members of the IADAS (International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences) of New York. They are the designers and promoters of the International Forum on Mediterranean Marketing – whose first congress was held in Ravello in 2006 – and which, with the support of a Franco-Italian research group, sustains and disseminates a new culture of  ”marketing nostrum” based on Mediterranean values (www.marketingmediterraneo.org ). They do consulting for important international advertising agencies and have developed marketing projects for large agencies and companies such as the RAI, MTV, Google, Saiwa, Diesel, Heineken, Barilla etc. In bookshops, published by Il Sole 24 Ore – Economics & Management Editions– is the first Italian book on the subject, written by Giordano and Pallera, entitled “Non-Conventional Marketing: viral, guerrilla, tribal and the 10 principles of post-modern marketing” written also with Bernard Covà (Guru of contemporary marketing and the founder of tribal Marketing).

Umair Haque:

Umair Haque is Director of the Havas Media Lab. He also founded Bubblegeneration, an agenda-setting advisory boutique that shaped strategies across media and consumer industries.

www.bubblegeneration.com

Nicolai Peitersen

The founder of Ethical Economy Ltd with headquarters in London, a company which develops solutions for social media aimed at including the stakeholders in assessing the ethical impact of the actions of businesses and organisations. Nicolai has made contributions to a series o papers, books and reviews on social innovation and the monetary economy, and for years edited the Global Data Watch for the JP Morgan Investment Bank. He used to be an economist for the Central Bank of Denmark, JP Morgan and the University of Copenhagen.

www.ethicaleconomy.com

Antonio Petraglia

A lecturer in Banking Technique at the University of Salerno, he has for years carried out studies in the fields of Finance and Ethical Economics. Consultant to the House Finance Committee in the previous parliamentary. His position as Bank manager at the Cava dei Tirreni (SA) branch of the Monte Paschi di Siena Bank has permitted him to reconcile his area of research interest with the management and development of the Ethical code of this Institute.