Member Article

Snapchat executive to speak at Dynamo conference

A LEADING executive at one of the world’s most recognised digital companies has confirmed he will speak at an IT conference in his native Newcastle.

Former Royal Grammar School pupil Nick Bell is now Vice President of Content for Snapchat and has agreed to take part in the 2016 Dynamo Conference live from Los Angeles.

Nick grew up in Newcastle and was headhunted to join Snapchat from News Corporation International in 2013, where he was Senior Vice President of Digital Products and responsible for making some of the company’s shrewdest moves in digital.

He developed a taste for business and started his tech career at an early age, launching and selling a succession of early .com businesses, including Teenfront.com, which he sold when he was just 16. In his early 20s, he joined News Corp International to work in New York.

Now based in Los Angeles, he will join a host of big names from the IT world - including academics, business leaders and politicians - for the third annual Dynamo conference on Thursday, June 23.

Snapchat is an image messaging application used to send photos and videos - called snaps - to friends. The snaps can be viewed for up to 10 seconds, but then they disappear forever. One of the drivers behind the Snapchat concept was the growing concern over the permanence of messages and images on individuals’ digital histories.

In 2013, the company reportedly turned down a $3bn acquisition offer from Facebook, and is now estimated to have over 100m daily active users worldwide – over half of which are international. Snapchatters now view 8+ billion videos every day and over 60% of people who use Snapchat create content every day. Snapchat started as the idea of 3 undergraduate students at Stanford University in California in summer of 2011.

It launched on Android in the winter of 2012 and by May 2013 over 150 million snaps were being sent every single day. By the summer of 2014, the company’s value was estimated at over £10bn.

Charlie Hoult, who is chairing Dynamo, believes the conference is becoming an event of real significance and is delighted Nick has agreed join the regional discussion live from Los Angeles: “It’s always an inspiration to see local talent make it on the international tech stage, whether Jony Ive at Apple or Matt Ridley debating tech progress with Bill Gates. So it’s great to see a home team player at the heart of one of Silicon Valley’s go-ahead firms - and it will be exciting to follow his journey so others might springboard from here to make similar impact on culture and livelihoods across the world!.”

The Dynamo conference has become a hotly-anticipated event in the northeast technology calendar, and this year is being hosted by Northumbria University. The conference is a key project of Dynamo, an industry-led initiative to connect and grow the region’s tech sector – and shine a spotlight on the work that connects firms to key trends across the world. IT entrepreneur turned philanthropist Dame Stephanie Shirley will be the headline speaker. Other speakers will include Alex Depledge, founder of sharing economy marketplace HASSLE.com, and Giselle Stewart OBE, Director of Corporate Affairs at interactive entertainment business Ubisoft. Giselle is also a vice-chair at Dynamo.

Dynamo was set up in 2013 by Opencast Software Chair Charlie Hoult and Accenture’s Bob Paton, and is made up of IT organisations and employers, technology hubs, universities, colleges and local government.

A pre-conference Dynamo careers event – Get Into IT - for careers advisers and teachers will also be hosted by Northumbria University on Wednesday, June 22. And the following week Monday and Tuesday, June 27 and 28, Dynamo North East will be part of the Big Bang North East Fair, a free programme of events designed to get young people aged 7-19 excited about science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) in the world of work.

Dynamo 16’s headline sponsors are Sage and Accenture.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Julie Kemp .