With Hong Kong as the backdrop, AsiaD united the leaders and visionaries from North America with the top players from across Asia — all while showcasing the uncompromising D formula of unscripted, unrehearsed interviews and dialogue. Where D has successfully united a community of North America’s most powerful and provocative figures in technology, AsiaD brought a global voice to the table from a region churning with explosive innovation.
AsiaD took place October 19-21, 2011. Here are speakers who joined us at AsiaD:
Peter Chernin
Founder
The Chernin Group and Chernin Entertainment
Peter Chernin is one of Hollywood’s top players and execs. The former senior News Corp. exec is now a movie producer — his first effort “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” is a big hit. But he’s also been increasingly active in media investing in Asia of late and has a lot to say about the global nature of entertainment in the digital age.
Brian Chesky
CEO and Co-Founder
Airbnb
Brian Chesky, CEO and Co-founder of Airbnb, the popular online vacation rental site recently got a huge dose of funding and an equally large amount of controversy. How Airbnb can take the company to the next level, including across the world, while dealing with the kinds of challenges the small management team has to face will be an interesting topic for discussion.
Jack Dorsey
Creator, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, Twitter
CEO, Square
Expect a deep dive into what makes the future Web work with Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey, who is someone breaking new ground as he tears down old digital paradigms. With Twitter, Dorsey redefined the real-time world and how the virtual one communicates; with Square, he is upending the payments arena, even as others try to upend him.
Dave Goldberg
CEO
SurveyMonkey
Longtime tech exec David Goldberg is now running one of tech’s most successful start-ups at SurveyMonkey, the dominant online survey company. With stints as founder of music site Launch Media that was bought by Yahoo and as an Entrepreneur in Residence with Benchmark Capital, he is the perfect person to explain what it’s like being an entrepreneur today in Silicon Valley.
Al Gore
Former Vice President of the United States
We may know him as the former veep or as the climate change gadfly, but these days Gore is chairing a partnership that is focused on a new approach to investing. He is also a senior partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a senior advisor at Google and a member of the Apple board of directors. You just don’t get much more Silicon-Valley-connected than that.
Gore was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives four times and to the Senate twice before being inaugurated as the 45th Vice President, where he served two terms. He is the author of four best-selling books, and is the co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Bradley Horowitz
VP Product Management
Google+
The search giant’s aggressive effort to break Facebook’s hammerlock over social networking — has a perfect perspective to talk about the fast-growing area and where it is going globally. With locally-based social companies springing up all over Asia, can Google establish one that the whole world will use? It’s an important question and Horowitz’s job #1.
Kazuo Hirai
Executive Deputy President
Sony Corporation
Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai is widely considered the second in command at the consumer electronics giant Sony, in charge of its key computer entertainment division, as well as now serving as executive deputy president of the whole company. In that role, the dynamic exec is in the nexus of the Japanese company’s efforts around tablets, smartphones, gaming and more. As Sony struggles to reassert its dominance over the arena, Hirai will be a key player in that effort.
Jen-Hsun Huang
Founder, President and CEO
Nvidia
NVIDIA is not only a pioneer of graphics chips, but now its processors are widely used in the latest mobile devices. That’s why its founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has a lot to say about the future of mobile computing, from smartphones to tablets and whatever’s next.
Dr. Won-Pyo Hong
Executive Vice President, Global Product Strategy
Samsung
Because of Samsung’s increasing importance as a global player in smartphones and tablets, we thought it was important to have Dr. Won-Pyo Hong. He heads global product strategy for Samsung’s mobile business, which has surged in the past year to make the Korean tech giant a leader in Android-based phones and tablets, and a significant challenger to Apple.
Andy Lees
President, Windows Phone Division
Microsoft
At Microsoft, Andy Lees is leading one of the software giant’s most important initiatives as president of its Windows Phone division. His come-from-behind job includes mobile software and hardware, as well as its key partnership with Nokia. With Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android far in the lead, Lees will need to win in markets globally, especially in Asia.
Jack Ma
Chairman and CEO
Alibaba Group
We are asking Alibaba Group’s Jack Ma onstage to talk more about his efforts to make the company a powerhouse in China and elsewhere. His recent bare-knuckled fight with Yahoo over Alipay, as he has built a wide-ranging Internet giant, should make for an interesting interview.
John Roese
SVP and GM
Huawei North America R&D
John Roese heads the North American R&D team for Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant making everything from heavy-duty gear for networks to mobile phones and tablets. The former CTO of Nortel, he’s heading up global development of Huawei’s cloud services for both businesses and consumers. Roese will also talk about the phenomenon of a Chinese-owned company emerging on the world technology stage.
Andy Rubin
SVP, Mobile
Google
With smartphones in ascendance globally, having Andy Rubin, who runs Google’s Android efforts, is a no-brainer. The longtime mobile exec is at the top of an aggressive push by the Silicon Valley Internet giant to dominate the important sector across the world.
Tim O’Shaughnessy
CEO and Co-Founder
LivingSocial
Also on deck is LivingSocial’s CEO and co-founder Tim O’Shaughnessy, who will appear with Daniel Shin, the CEO and co-founder of South Korea’s Ticket Monster, which the daily deals site just bought as part of its aggressive move into Asia. Competing there with its U.S. rival Groupon, as well as a myriad of local social buying services, the market is a tough one.
Jonney Shih
Chairman
Asus
Asus Chairman Jonney Shih has presided over the Taiwanese tech giant since the early 1990s. Most recently, the company pioneered the netbook market and is now plunging deeply into the tablet business, making Shih perfect to discuss these key issues in Asia and around the world.
Daniel Shin
CEO and Co-Founder
Ticket Monster
Daniel Shin is a big Internet star in digitally connected South Korea, even though he only recently returned to start Ticket Monster a year ago. We’ll have LivingSocial CEO Tim O’Shaughnessy on-stage with Shin to discuss the move into Asia, the competition and more.
Sukhinder Singh Cassidy
CEO and Co-Founder
Joyus
After stints as president of Asia Pacific and Latin America operations at Google and co-founder of the online personal finance company Yodlee, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy is trying her hand at a small start-up again. She’ll talk about how the recently funded Joyus, a new premium video commerce site trying to pioneer a new way to shop online, plans to expand globally.
Paul Srivorakul
Co-Founder and CEO
Ensogo Group
Srivorakul has been successfully building and spinning off start-ups in Asia for years. First it was Newmedia, a digital ad agency that merged with Edge Marketing Asia. Then it was DMS Group, which he co-founded and turned into one of the leading digital marketing companies in Southeast Asia. DMS holds Admax Network (the leading ad network in Southeast Asia), Syndacast (a social media agency), and Impaq Interactive (an exclusive partner for MSN in Thailand, now sold to MSN). He is currently based in Bangkok along with his latest project, social commerce site Ensogo (which, by the way, was recently acquired by LivingSocial.)
Prior to becoming a serial entrepreneur in Asia, Srivorakul learned everything he could from Silicon Valley at Quest Media and ask.com. His BA from Berkeley is in Anthropology. Go figure.
Rose Tsou
Senior Vice President, APAC Region
Yahoo
As head of Asia, Rose Tsou is responsible for managing Yahoo!’s businesses in Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and India as well as acting liaison with Yahoo!’s joint venture operations in Australia and New Zealand, and the company’s strategic partnerships in China and Japan.
Cher Wang
Co-Founder and Chairwoman
HTC
Also key in the mobile arena is Cher Wang, the chairwoman of three Taiwan companies, including HTC, the important and innovative handset and tablet maker which has been a key player in Android’s success story. But just this week she talked about the possibility of HTC buying an operating system, which would further strengthen its hand in the competitive market.
Jerry Yang
Co-Founder, Chief Yahoo and Director
Yahoo
Yahoo co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang, who will appear with the Internet giant’s Asia head Rose Tsou. For all of the noise around the company these days, Yahoo has a huge footprint in the region, maintains a big e-commerce business there and holds massive stakes in key firms, such as Yahoo Japan and China’s Alibaba. One of Yahoo’s first big investments came from Asian investor Masa Son, in fact, way back when.