Laurent Haug
I am a entrepreneur and consultant based in Geneva, Switzerland, specializing in helping organizations use Internet technologies more effectively. An occasional writer, I am the founder of the LIFT conference and the cofounder of various Internet projects like coComment or chatUchat (coming soon).
I have been working with the web for more than ten years now in a start-up , a big five consulting company , a large Swiss bank and now my own company.
I am a regular speaker in media and at conferences, also invited as a guest speaker at various institutions on topics ranging from Web 2.0 to the impact of technologies on business and society.
You can contact me by emailing laurent@ballpark.ch.
The more complete and written in the third person bio
Laurent was born in 1976 in Reims, Champagne. After an uneventful first 18 years he moved to Switzerland to study at the HEC school of the University of Lausanne. He quickly got hooked on the PCs of the computers center and began surfing the web with Mosaic and Netscape 1.0, using webcrawler, yahoo.stanford.edu and the other early resources.
In 1996, Laurent joined a startup company called Netface as head of Web. During his two years tenure the company was given large-scale projects by high profile clients including the EPFL, Bernard Nicod (largest real estate company of the region) and Frequence Laser (formerly the biggest music retailer of Switzerland and the first large scale ecommerce site of the country). After leaving Netface, Laurent moved to Frequence Laser for one year to finish the online store project and then signed with Arthur Andersen Business Consulting in Geneva to work in the new technologies team.
For more than two years he served various organizations as a consultant then senior consultant. Among others he worked on projects for the United Nations in both Geneva and New York, using the web to facilitate information exchange and communication at OCHA, the agency responsible for humanitarian action coordination.
After the Enron scandal dismantled Andersen Laurent opted out of the new structure that later became Bearing Point. After a year of travel and independent consulting, he then joined the eBusiness team of the most renowned Swiss private bank: Pictet. There he worked on the bank’s technological projects, including the website, intranet and extranets.
On May 2005, Laurent founded ballpark, a small consulting practice whose mission is to design effective Internet strategies for its clients. He is a contributor to Le Temps (articles archived here), launched the LIFT confernece and is also the founder of the Swiss Internet Professionals Index.
Laurent is a regular speaker at conferences (First Tuesdays, AdTech, SHiFT, Inforum, etc…) and a guest speaker at various institutions (IMD Alumni Club, Mc Kinsey, United Nation, University of Korea, University of Lausanne, University of Geneva, etc..) on topics ranging from Web 2.0 to the impact of technologies on business and society.
In the news:
Newspapers
• L’Hebo: Les 100 qui font la Suisse Romande 2007
• Le Temps: LIFT, ascenseur vers les idées novatrices (23.12.05)
• TSR.ch: Des bloggeurs et une foule d’idées novatrices (13.01.06)
• L’Hebdo/Largeur.com: La blogosphère en question � Genève (22.12.05)
• Le Matin Dimanche: Les romands s’y mettent (22.01.06)
• Le Matin Bleu: Genève accueille Anina, top model et fan de blog
• The articles I wrote are archived here.
Radio:
• Radio Lac: Le Lunch tendance éco
• Radio Cité: Bilan LIFT07
• Radio Cité: Présentation LIFT07
• Radio Cité: Les changements de mode de communication
• Couleur3: Interview coComment
• Couleur3: PointBarre 21.01.06 (part 1, part 2)
• RSR: La capsulte multimédia: LIFT07
• RSR: La capsule multimédia: MySpace
• RSR: La capsule multimédia
Television:
• TSR: live LIFT07 interview
• TSR: Interview Nouvo
• TSR: Nouvo 26.01.06
• Culture Pod
