Face of Facebook at Business Club

The European spokesman for Facebook will be the keynote speaker at a Yorkshire Post Business Club event this month to debate the future of social media and its implications for the business world.
By The Newsroom
Published 1st Nov 2011, 10:05 BST

Lord Allan joined Facebook in June 2009 as public policy director for Europe and works on issues including privacy, online child safety, freedom of expression, e-commerce regulation and public sector uses of social media. He appears regularly in the media as a spokesman for Facebook.

Founded by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, the website now has more than 800m active users who regularly post updates about their lives to friends online. Lord Allan will deliver a speech about Facebook and the revolution in social media and what it means for businesses in the UK. He will then take part in a panel debate featuring representatives from leading digital and creative companies in Yorkshire, including Fuse 8, NetConstruct and Numiko.

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Lord Allan was formerly the Liberal Democrat MP for Sheffield Hallam from 1997 until 2005, when he stood down to be replaced by Nick Clegg, the now Deputy Prime Minister.

He specialised in technology policy issues in Parliament and was a lead spokesman on several bills including the Data Protection Act, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and the Communications Act.

Prior to joining Facebook, he was European Government Affairs Director for Cisco from September 2005 and has been an academic visitor at the Oxford Internet Institute.

From 2008 to 2009, Lord Allan was chairman of the UK Cabinet Office’s Power of Information Task Force working on improving the use of government data.

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He has also worked as an archaeologist, an IT professional in the NHS and a locally elected councillor in the South West of England.

The Yorkshire Post is hosting the invite-only event at Shine in Harehills on November 11 as part of Leeds Digital Festival, the fourth annual celebration of the city’s digital and creative industries.

The newspaper launched the Business Club this year to provide a high-level networking forum for key decision-makers in the region.

It is supported by Aviva, DLA Piper, Goldman Sachs, PwC and Yorkshire Bank, the main sponsors of the Yorkshire Post Excellence in Business Awards.

Related topics:FacebookMark Zuckerberg