Robert LaPointe – President
Inc. Magazine

Bob LaPointe joined Inc. magazine at its inception in 1979 and was responsible for building  magazine readership from zero to more than 800,000 active customers. He launched and became President of Inc. Business Resources, a division of Inc. responsible for all of the brand’s non-magazine businesses. He went on to launch Inc.com in 1997. In 2001 LaPointe left Inc. and founded Trendline Communications an SMB relationship marketing services company serving Fortune 1000 companies selling into the SMB market. In 2009 Trendline Communications was acquired by Inc. Magazine and LaPointe returned as President of the company.

He joined IBM in 1985 as a sales representative in Jacksonville, FL.  Steve has held numerous sales and sales management positions with IBM Sales & Distribution Division as well as IBM Global Financing.

Steve is also responsible for many corporate and community activities in his capacity as Senior Location Executive for IBM’s North Florida offices located in Jacksonville, FL.  He has been a member of the Florida Chamber of Commerce, Board of Governors and served on the Board of Trustees of the Florida Chamber Foundation.

Steve is an active member of the coaching staff for First Coast Soccer Association in Jacksonville, FL and Florida State Referee, Inc.  Steve has been married 18 years to his wife, Tori, and has three children, two boys ages 16 and 14 and one girl age 12.

In 1984, Kevin produced one of the industry’s first 30 minute infomercials. Since then, he has been involved with over 500 product launches that resulted in sales of over $4 billion worldwide with 20 products that reached individual sales of over $100 million.

Kevin founded Quantum International, Ltd. in the mid 1980s, which merged into National Media Corporation in 1991. Under his leadership as President, National Media reached $500 million in annual sales, distributing in over 100 countries and 20 languages. This company’s success has been chronicled in a case study at Harvard/MIT for over a decade.

Keving Harrington – ABC’s Shark Tank

Kevin was also CEO of several other entrepreneurial companies including HSN Direct, a joint venture with Home Shopping Network, in 1994 and Reliant International Media in 1997. Reliant International Media was sold in 2007.

Throughout his career, Kevin helped to establish two of the most important and recognized global networking associations: the Entrepreneur’s Organization, or EO (formally known as the Young Entrepreneurs’ Organization) and the Electronic Retailing Association, or ERA. Today, the EO has 113 chapters in 38 countries and more than 924,000 members. The ERA represents the $125 billion electronic retailing industry and is comprised of over 450 member companies and subsidiaries that use the power of electronic retailing to sell directly to consumers via television, radio, Internet and wireless media in over 100 countries worldwide.

Due to his extensive resume, Kevin was selected as an investor “Shark” on the ABC television series Shark Tank produced by Mark Burnett. The show gives budding entrepreneurs the chance to pitch their products to a panel of acclaimed judges in hopes of turning their ideas into a successful business reality. He recently released a book entitled “Act Now: How I Turn Ideas into Million-Dollar Products” that chronicles his life and experiences in the DRTV industry.

Gary Vaynerchuk – Co-Founder, VaynerMedia

Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk (VAY-NER-CHUK), a wine and social media expert and business consultant who has revolutionized the wine industry. He hosts a daily webcast, tv.winelibrary.com, that attracts over 90,000 viewers each day and his podcast has become the most downloaded show on iTunes in the Food category, beating out venerable names in the industry including Martha Stewart and Jamie Oliver.

Gary has made numerous television appearances in several nationally syndicated shows including CNN Your $$$$, Fox Business’s Your Money Your Questions, The Big Idea, Nightline and Mad Money with Jim Cramer, as well as in the Late Night Show with Conan O’Brien, The Ellen Degeneres Show and The Today Show. He is also a New York Times bestselling author of Crush It! and has just released a new book, The Thank You Economy .

In this book, Gary reveals how companies big and small can scale that kind of personal, one-on-one attention to their entire customer base, no matter how large, using the same social media platforms that carry consumer word of mouth. Now customers’ demands for authenticity, originality, creativity, honesty, and good intent have made it necessary for companies and brands to revert to a level of customer service rarely seen since our great-grandparents’ day, when business owners often knew their customers personally, and gave them individual attention.

Michelle Royal

Michelle Royal is a dynamic Innovation Consultant, and founder of HDYI: How Do You Innovate?. For the past 15 years she has facilitated the development of the creative capacities and innovation potential within individuals and businesses both in the United States and the United Kingdom. Her consultancy practice has allowed her to work with such prestigious companies as Subway Sandwiches and Salads, Enterprise Development Group, Progress Energy, Bauer Engineering, CIDA (UK), and Collaborative Labs. Her custom workshops and programs result in united company visions, mobilized teams and sustainable innovation leadership. The HDYI process utilizes a unique fusion of Visual Thinking, Creative Problem Solving, Design Thinking and Appreciative Inquiry to accelerate business innovation. She is a co-founder of The Visual Seven: A Visual Thinking Movement and the Vice Chair of Creative Tampa Bay.

Josh Greenberg Chief Technology Officer of Grooveshark

Josh Greenberg is the Chief Technology Officer of Grooveshark, the fastest-growing on-demand music service in the world.  Originally from St. Petersburg, Florida, Josh co-founded Grooveshark during his freshman year at the University of Florida.

Josh is a lifelong developer and entrepreneur, having previously founded two web development companies. Josh has led Grooveshark as CTO since its inception in 2006. As CTO, Josh leads Grooveshark’s engineering, infrastructure, creative, data, and community teams. In addition to playing a large role in Grooveshark’s strategic planning, Josh guides the direction for Grooveshark’s unique set of products, spending most of his time coordinating high-level strategy with technological implementation.

The Big Summit

Ted is largely recognized as the father of paid blogging and the catalyst behind the sponsored conversation industry. Ted raised over $10 million in venture funding for IZEA from leading venture capitalists including Draper Fischer Jurvetson and Village Ventures. Under Ted’s leadership the IZEA network has attracted over 265,000 bloggers and 25,000 advertisers and continues to grow.

Ted’s enthusiasm for the unconventional has earned him the ear of some of the world’s largest marketing organizations including FOX, Bombardier, General Motors, SeaWorld and Disney. His efforts have received international recognition from media outlets including CNBC, Wired, USA Today, Forbes, New York Post, Business Week, PC World, CNN Money, Fortune, Fortune Small Business, Business 2.0 and others.

Bob Allen Disney Ideas

Bob began his career in the entertainment industry as a musician at the age of 16. After graduating from college, he spent 26 years with the Walt Disney Company, creating live-entertainment, theme-park experiences, learning programs and media. In 1991, he became Vice President of Disney Production Services, Inc., where he was responsible for all facilities and services at the Disney-MGM Studios as well as the operation of Disney IDEAS (Innovation, Design, Entertainment, Art and Storytelling), a full service Integrated Creative Content Studio.

In July of 2001, he formed Integrity Arts and Technology Inc., and completed a management buyout of IDEAS. The buyout allowed IDEAS to retain Disney as a client while broadening its market scope and facilitating the creation of original story-based content for converged media uses. Today, IDEAS uses the power of purposeful storytelling and “design thinking” to create brands, produce media, transform organizational culture and design and enhance immersive experiences in the location-based entertainment, hospitality and healthcare industries.

Leslie Hielema, Creator B.I.G SUmmit

Leslie Hielema has served as President of the Orlando, Inc. (Orlando Regional Chamber of Commerce) since November, 2008. She is leading the effort to launch the Chamber’s new mission focused on Regional Entrepreneurship. Before joining the Chamber, she was Managing Director at ProLogic, a software engineering firm, working on geospatial support systems for the Department of Defense. She had a 12 year career with AT&T ranging from R&D at Bell Labs to Managing Director of New Product Development for Europe, Middle East and Africa. While living in Europe, she was also a private consultant who helped entrepreneurs take new technologies to the marketplace. While living in Italy, she started a business that created customized art, music and culinary programs.

Leslie holds a M.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Michigan; a M.S. in International Management for the Boston University; and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Florida Institute of Technology. She is recognized for her development of curricula in entrepreneurship and e-commerce for Valparaiso University where she served as visiting professor. With a unique combination of technical knowledge and business expertise, she has continually pushed the boundaries on challenges ranging from product development to top-secret government contracting both stateside and overseas.

Tony Jenkins – Market President, Central Florida Region Florida Blue

Last year, Tony was recognized by the Orlando Business Journal as one of Central Florida’s Top 10 Business Men to Watch and was recently elected to be a Board Trustee at Stetson University.