G8 iGaming Summit 2016 is organized by three people – Thomas Keen, Jennifer Donnely and Markus Summers. The three of them have been close friends since 2012, having first met due to their shared passion for online gambling. While none of them has any professional experience with iGaming, with the three of them treating online casino gaming more like a passion than a job, in early 2015 they finally decided to dive head-on into the business side of things by organizing a convention/summit dedicated to it.
Thomas Keen is a writer working on various contract work for some of UK’s biggest publishers. He first fell in love with gambling in the mid-2000s, when online casinos first began rising in popularity. In his own words, he was “kind of obsessed” with early online slots for a time, though thanks to his nigh-superhuman luck he actually managed to get not one, not two, but three jackpots from slots, which recouped his investment quite nicely and also rounded it up a little bit. Come 2015, Tom’s passion for gambling is just as large as it was 10 years ago, and he’s extremely enthusiastic to share it with other people.
Jennifer Donnely is actually a bit of a royalty – being the sole daughter of the owner of one of UK’s biggest multiple-venue businesses (which will remain unnamed, by her request), Jennifer felt pressured by her father’s influence from an early age. As such, the moment she turned 18 she decided to leave her home and try to strike out on her own, getting a student loan for her university tuition and attempting to live like a normal girl. If her degree in business management and high-ranking position in another company are any indication, we’d say she did pretty well for herself! According to Jennifer, business-minded people love to gamble – “it’s in [their] nature”, she says.
Markus Summers is a stay-at-home dad, and a proud one at that. Despite having a university education, when his beautiful daughter was born back in 2009, Mark and his wife had to make a choice – one of them had to quit their job and take care of the baby. Ultimately, despite what the (slightly misogynistic) tradition may dictate, the job fell down to Mark, and he handled it beautifully. He still had some disposable income thanks to prior investments, which allowed him to get into the online casino scene where he spent quite a lot of his limited spare time. “I’m pretty sure that iGaming was what kept me sane”, he admits.