Gunnar Garfors (born 29 May 1975 in Hammerfest) has worked with new media developments and mobile services in particular since 2001. He has presented on these topics at seminars and conferences on six continents and regularly takes part in panel discussions. He strongly advocates the necessity of broadcasting as a distribution technology, in parallell to the internet. Garfors writes garfors.com, a renowned blog on media, technology and travel.
Garfors has since August 2008 been CEO of Norwegian Mobile TV Corporation (NMTV) and also works as a consultant within New Media at the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation in Oslo. He is furthermore President of International DMB Advancement Group (IDAG) and sat one year as Vice President of the mobile expert group of European Broadcasting Union in 2008-09.
Garfors headed the launch of live TV to mobile phones for NRK as the first in the world. He was one of the pioneers of a number of other innovative mobile services, i.e. the "world's first" personalized ads in a mobile TV service and advanced forms of interactivity that combined mobile services and television.
Garfors holds a Bachelors Degree (Hons) from Falmouth College of Arts in Great Britain and a Master of Management degree from Norwegian School of Management.
He is from Naustdal but lives in Oslo. Gunnar Garfors used to play football for Førde IL in Norwegian Second and Third Division in the 1990s and was the top goal scorer for the team two seasons. Garfors played for Falmouth Town 1995-98 and trained with Plymouth Argyle in English Division 2 in 1996. He is also an avid traveler and claims to have visited over 180 countries. Garfors allegedly set a world record on June 18, 2012 together with British Adrian Butterworth by being the first to visit five continents in the same day.