Alex Trup / 杜安勇

Beyond his day job as Digital Marketing Manager, Asia Pacific for an international communications consultancy in Taipei, Alex has several side projects that echo his love for social media, multimedia and technology.

In recent times, Alex has...

• hosted and produced video interviews with singer David Tao (陶喆), TV host Janet Hsieh (謝怡芬) and Alvin Woon (雲惟彬) co-founder of Plurk (Taiwan's most popular microblogging platform).
• helped plan TEDxTaipei, a series of events in which interesting local and international speakers talk for 18 minutes on topics important to them.
• flown to Helsinki to take part in Nokia's annual OpenLab forum, where social media mavens from around the world are brought together to discuss the future of mobile technology.
• launched a record label to release independent music via popular social networks. The label's first artist is Taiwan singer/songwriter Naomi Yohani who will release her debut album in 2011.
• planned and produced a series of podcasts with The Dot Asia Organisation about the Internet in Asia.
• co-founded and planned a soon-to-launch coworking startup incubator.
• co-founded the Taipei Tech Club, a monthly meetup for those in tech industry.

With over 15 years of experience in website design and dabbling in Internet technologies, Alex has been an active participant in some of the internet's earliest social environments, such as WorldsAway (a 2D cartoon-like environment), IRC (text-only chat rooms) and Friendster (arguably the first popular social network). However, Alex has not remained stuck in the past. He stays up-to-date with all the latest social media and tech trends, primarily by regularly reading a number of great blogs on a daily basis, including TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, PaidContent, Engadget and Gizmodo. Alex's must-read magazines include Wired, FastCompany and BusinessWeek.