Back to Plan your Day Tech, Gaming and Social Media GSAL Futures Conference, 2024 Session Choice #2 Panelists Naeem Shabir (GSAL12) – Intergalactic Gaming Faisal Galaria (OL92) – Blippar Alex Knight (OL99) – Answer Digital Chris Poad (OL95) – Google Cloud Matthew Wyatt (OL99) – NHS Digital Vandan Parmar (GSAL14) – Data Scientist Tech, Gaming and Social Media Who is it for Profile of panelists Naeem Shabir Naeem is a Law Graduate from the University of Manchester with a solid academic background. As an avid gamer with a competitive nature, Naeem fell in love with esports on discovery. So much so, he independently published ‘Esports; The Complete Guide 17/18’ on Amazon, which aimed to codify what he had learned regarding competitive gaming over the years. Naeem is the co-founder of Intergalactic Gaming (IG), a UK based esports company that is developing a multi-faceted web-based platform that is powered by the TRON blockchain and digital tokens. As a predominantly digital and global industry, esports is expected to be among the first economies to fully embrace these modern technologies, to the benefit of the passionate fan base. LI profile Website Faisal Galaria Faisal is the CEO of Blippar the Augmented Reality company. He previously served as Global Head of Business Development at Spotify Limited, as Managing Director of Europe and Asia at Kayak and was early member of the Skype team. At Skype as Director of Europe, he was responsible for key partnerships across the US, Europe the Middle East, with companies such as Sony, Bebo, British Telecom, Dixons and HP. Prior to joining Skype, he was a member of the Policy Executive of the UK’s telecom and media regulator Ofcom. He has been educated across Europe and graduated with honors from UMIST (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) with a Bachelors in Management Sciences in the UK. He also holds an MBA from IESE in Spain. LI profile Website Alex Knight Alex is Solutions Architect at Answer Digital, Trustee Board Member at Better Leeds Communities and owner of Alex Knight Photography. Alex has previously worked in Infrastructure, Data and Architecture roles for a major software vendor in the IT industry. LI profile Chris Poad Chris is a general manager at Google Cloud with deep experience in global e-commerce. He has led high-growth businesses up to $XX billion in sales and organisations of up to 50,000 colleagues, and uilt commercial, product development, software engineering, data science, and operations teams across the world. Google Cloud helps businesses with their digital transformation journeys: to become more customer-centric, more data-driven, and to position technology as a source of growth and value. Chris partners with the CEOs, CTOs, and CDOs of the largest retailers in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa to bring the best of Google and their software partners to help customers. LI profile Matthew Wyatt Matthew works for NHS Digital as a Principal Consultant in Cyber Security. After leaving Leeds Grammar School in 1999 Matthew studied Theology at the University of Birmingham. Vandan Parmar Vandan worked as a technology consultant for IBM, specialising in Data & Analytics. He worked for clients in the Healthcare, Renewable Energy and Financial Markets sectors, across Data Science, Architecture, Engineering and Strategy projects. Vandan has recently taken up a position as a Customer Facing Data Scientist and DataRobot. Vandan completed a degree in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge. LI profile
