Alex Balfour – Keynote Speaker

Alex Balfour is Chief Digital Officer of the Engine Group, the UK’s largest independent marketing communications group comprising 15 agencies and operating across 3 continents.

Previously Alex Balfour was appointed Head of New Media for the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) in 2006. At LOCOG he built a team from scratch that delivered 77 digital channels including london2012.com, two mobile apps, websites for ticketing, volunteering, education, on-line shop, and over 100 social media presences to a worldwide audience of over 150 million during the Games. During the Olympic and Paralympic Games London 2012 channels recorded 431 million visits, 112 million unique users, 15 million app downloads, and attracted 4.7 million social followers.

Balfour’s long and distinguished career in digital media began in 1994. Since then he has edited GE’97, the UK’s first General Election Website, made the first consumer Internet call to a traditional telephone and developed the first on-line government consultation. He went on to become part of the team that produced the UK’s Guardian Newspaper’s first significant websites.

Previously Alex Balfour conceived and delivered the world’s first international 2020 cricket tournament which was televised to 200 million viewers in 20 countries In parallel he was a founder of CricInfo, in its day the worlds largest single-sport website with an audience of 20m fans as early as 2000, and became Chairman when the business was sole to ESPN in 2005.

Alex Balfour is currently the Chief Digital Officer of Haymon Boxing, creators of Premier Boxing. He managed the official digital channels of the London2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games including a Webby-winning website, 70+ other sites, 3 apps and 100 social channels reaching an audience of 150m. He Also managed the Guardian newspaper’s first websites, the UK’s first general election website, the first UK government online consultation, Celtic FC’s first fan app, the first international 20/20 cricket tournament.

Balfour is also a member of the UK Government’s Digital Advisory Board, and a director of a number of businesses in the financial sector including The Pensions Advisory Service, Credec and Datatracks (UK).