BlogOn 2004 Speakers
BlogOn 2004's speaker lineup will be updated regularly. Please subscribe for updates and we will alert you when new speakers are announced.
Rafat Ali
Editor/Publisher, Paid Content
Ali is editor and publisher of paidContent.org, a digital media business news and analysis site that won the European Online Journalism Award for 2003, and the Find/SVP's Best of Business Web Award for 2003. He is also the editor of Moco.News, a news site devoted to mobile content.
Both of these sites form part of ContentNext, an independent media and information company covering the business of digital media.
Prior to this, Rafat was managing editor of Manhattan-based Silicon Alley Reporter," where he covered the Internet and tech sectors.
In 2003, Editor & Publisher referred to Ali as, "journalism's poster boy for career independence from news companies," and CBS MarketWatch called him "a pioneer in using the Web for an almost real-time business news feed."
He was the Knight Foundation Fellow in 1999-2000 at Indiana University, and has recently moved from London to Los Angeles.
Andrew Anker
Executive Vice President, Corporate Development: Six Apart
Blog: Venture Blog (a group blog)
Anker is executive vice resident, corporate development for blog platform developer Six Apart, creators of MovableType and TypePad. Prior to joining Six Apart, Andrew was a general partner for five years at August Capital, where he invested in such consumer facing internet companies as Tickle, Evite and Listen.com.
A veteran of two start-ups prior to his venture career, Andrew was the co-founder and chief executive officer of Wired Digital, Inc., a pioneering Internet news and media organization which launched the first advertising supported web site (HotWired) in 1994. Andrew led Wired Digital from its founding through 1998 and built it into one of the 20 largest networks of web sites.
Andrew created and still contributes to VentureBlog and has written for Wired and Business 2.0 magazines. In 1997, he was profiled in the book "Architects of the Web: 1,000 Days that Built the Future of Business."
Barak Berkowitz
CEO and Chairman, Six Apart, Ltd.
Barak has over 20 years of experience in general management, sales and marketing of consumer technology products. Prior to his position as CEO and Chairman of Six Apart, he was co-founder and President of OmniSky, the wireless Internet innovator which went public in 2000 and was later acquired by Earthlink. Previously he has served as Executive Vice President and General Manager at the Go Network and built it into one of the top five Web portals at the time uniting the Web properties of Infoseek.Com, Disney, ABC, ESPN and many others. Before the Go Network, Barak served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Americas for Logitech and also held key roles at Apple Computer and Macy's, as well as being the Founder of MarketCentrix, a technology strategy consultancy.
Sean Bonner
co-owner,
Bode Media, Inc.
Bonner has been putting things on the internet since 1994. As the creator of several widespread memes he has been featured in The Washington Post, The Industry Standard, CNN, Playboy, Salon, Forbes, ZDNet, Wired News, The Register, CBS, The NY Post, USA today, Chicago Sun Times, Silicon Alley Reporter, Yahoo! Magazine (Best of the Web) and more.
He and Jason DeFillippo created the hyper local group blog, Blogging.la and the city network blogs of Metroblogging. Additionally he blogs about Apple for Weblogs Inc, Politics for AmericaForSale.org, and a little bit of everything else for his own site seanbonner.com. Based in Los Angeles, he and his wife Caryn Coleman own the contemporary art gallery sixspace, where they work with and represent some of today's most talented artists. Their website, sixspace.com is one of the most highly trafficked art institutions on the web. Art and internet have come together more than once with projects he's co-created such at sarsart.org and SENT: America's first phonecam art show.
danah boyd
PhD Student, UC Berkeley
Blog: apophenia
boyd is a PhD student in Information Management at the University of California, Berkeley. She develops social visualizations, collects ethnographic data and builds on social science and humanities theories in order to understand how people negotiate their presentation of self in mediated social contexts to an unknown audience. Recently, danah has been studying Friendster, blogs and journals.
Previously, danah studied computer science at Brown University and sociable media at the MIT Media Lab. She also spent five years creating and managing an online support community for V-Day, a non-profit working to end violence against women and girls worldwide.
Stowe Boyd
Managing Director, Corante Research
Blog: Get Real
Stowe joined Corante in August 2003 as editor of the social tools Industry Insider Get Real, and assumed the new role of managing director of Corante Research in May 2004, where he directs all research and advisory activities for the company. Stowe has worked as software researcher, entrepreneur, analyst, and consultant, most recently through A Working Model, his personal consulting practice.
Over the past decade he has consulted, written and spoken widely on the challenges confronting business management and the social impacts of disruptive technologies. He has served in prestigious advisory roles: GIGA Senior Consulting Partner, Contributing Editor KMWorld, Cutter Consortium Senior Principal, and Research Fellow at the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change; a Research Fellow for the Market Intelligence Group; and he has served as editor and columnist for Darwin, Knowledge Management, Cutter, John Wiley & Sons, and Fawcette.
Buzz Bruggeman
Founder & CEO: ActiveWords
Blog: buzzmodo
Bruggeman is a founder and EVP of ActiveWords Inc. where he is responsible for all marketing, evangelizing, and business development. Bruggeman. a DEMO God 2004 Award recipient, speaks regularly as a champion of both his company and the benefits of blogging as a low-cost, highly effective marketing tool on a global level.
Jupitermedia recently named ActiveWords as the 3rd Best Software Product of the year, after OpenOffice and Microsoft 2003. Bruggeman also serves on the advisory board of DEMO.
Jason McCabe Calcanis
Chairman: The Weblogs, Inc.
Jason McCabe Calacanis is currently chairman of Weblogs, Inc. Network. Previously, he created, with Barry Wine, a virtual chat environment called Restaurant City, where users could sit in a sushi bar — or dive bar — and chat. America Online bought the property in 1995.
Calacanis went on to consult for a venture capital firm in New York City, which would later be known as Flatiron Partners. He created a 16-page newsletter called Silicon Alley Reporter that quickly grew into a must-read. In four years Calacanis and his team built the company to $12 million dollars in yearly revenue. When the Internet industry consolidated in 2000 and 2001 Calacanis changed the name of the magazine to Venture Reporter and shifted from an advertising model to a database subscription model. That move saved the company while other Internet publications crashed and burned.
In April 2003, Calacanis sold Venture Reporter to Wicks Business Information, the owners of VentureOne and VentureSource—the most respected venture capital databases in the world. In March of 2004 Wicks sold VentureReporter and VentureSource to the Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal. Calacanis is currently a consultant to the Dow Jones corporation.
Calacanis is a highly regarded expert on issues related to media, finance, technology, the Internet and public policy. Calacanis regularly appears in the press and has been featured in and appeared on media outlets including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Wired, The Charlie Rose Show, 60 Minutes, CNN, CNBC, CNNfn, Bloomberg, Fox News, ABC News, and Nightline.
Jeff Clavier
Managing Partner, SoftTech VC
Based in Palo Alto, Jeff is the Managing Partner of SoftTech VC, a Venture Consulting firm serving the needs of the “software ecosystem”: startup companies, established vendors, venture capital firms and large IT buyers. He has spent over fifteen years in the software market, as an entrepreneur, a senior executive and a venture capitalist.
Prior to founding SoftTech VC, Jeff was the President of RVC Capital, the firm managing the Reuters Greenhouse Fund – the Corporate Venture arm of Reuters that has invested $560M in 82 companies since 1994, including Yahoo!, Verisign, Phone.com, and Infoseek. As the leader of US Operations, Jeff’s focus was on investing and managing the US portfolio, as well as supporting all companies in their commercial and business development efforts.
Jeff joined the Venture arm of Reuters from its product development division, where he was leading the development of the Risk Management and Desktop unit. He had direct responsibly for 250+ staff in Paris, London and New-York, developing a number of leading front and middle-office products. Jeff became instrumental in the development of the Reuters Open Systems product line since the early 1990’s, after its acquisition of Effix Systems, the Paris-based startup company he helped develop in 1989.
Henry Copeland
Founder, BlogAds
Convinced that blogs are a lifeboat for what’s best in journalism and that blog readers could be uniquely helpful to smart advertisers, in March 2002, Copeland started brainstorming on a service to connect bloggers and advertisers. Here’s the original Blogads manifesto. Today Blogads.com connects hundreds of blogs with a spectrum of advertisers including Time Warner, JohnKerry.com, The Republican National Committee, The New Republic, Rhino Records, O’Reilly Media and Bagnews.
Henry grew up in Wooster, Ohio and in 1984 received a BA in history from Yale University after nearly failing courses in economics, math and computer science. Henry’s favorite books are The Innovator’s Solution and The Loyalty Effect. After working on Wall Street from 1984 to 19991 and as a journalist in Budapest from 1991 to 1998), Copeland founded Pressflex.com, the parent company to Blogads.com. Pressflex today serves as webmaster for nearly 100 newspapers and magazines across Europe.
James Currier
CEO, Tickle.com
SVP Consumer, Monster.com
In 1999, Currier founded Tickle, a 70-person online (social) media company in San Francisco where he serves as president. Through Tickle’s self-assessment tests, social networking and matchmaking services, 50 million Tickle members have answered over 7 billion questions. Some 50,000 new members join daily and the company has been profitable for nine consecutive quarters..com acquired Tickle in May 2004.
Previously Currier was a Battery Ventures associate, where, in 1994, he became an early website developer and investor. Prior to Battery, he worked at Hong Kong’s STAR TV, Asia’s satellite television broadcasting company.After graduating Princeton in 1990, he joined GTE New Ventures in Los Angeles, developing and funding broadband applications for the entertainment industry.
Outside of work, Currier has founded Richter Scales a 15-person San Francisco-based a-cappella singing group. He has hosted a TV show in Boston called High Tech Fever and sailed across both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Anil Dash
VP of Evangelism, Six Apart
Dash is a recognized expert on the weblog medium and on the blogging industry, having appeared on television, radio and print in addition to having founded one of the earliest and most popular weblogs on the Internet. In addition, Dash has given presentations around the world speaking about the weblog medium, microcontent software, personal publishing, the future of weblogs and business applications of weblogs.
Prior to joining Six Apart as its first employee, Dash worked in online communications and technology development for the publishing and music industries, both as an independent consultant and most recently for the Village Voice.
Dash lives in New York City with his favorite dog, cat, and human.
Chris DiBona
Co-Founder and Vice President of Marketing, Damage Studios
Blog: dibona.com
Chris DiBona is the Co-Founder and Vice President of marketing for Damage Studios, a California based game studio developing a massively multiplayer game, Rekonstruction. Before starting Damage, Mr. DiBona was an editor/author for the popular online website slashdot.org and He is an internationally known advocate of open source software and related methodologies. He co-edited the award winning essay compilation "Open Sources", writes for a great number of publications and speaks internationally on software development and digital rights issues. His personal website can be found at http://dibona.com
Mark Finnern
Collaboration Area Manager, SAP Developer Network
Blog at SDN: http://weblogs.sdn.sap.com (group blog)
Future Salon: http://www.futuresalon.org (group blog)
Mark Finnern has worked for SAP, both in Germany and the U.S., as a product manager, consultant and developer. He currently manages the Collaboration Area within the SAP Developer Network. Mark is also the founder and host of the Future Salon co-producer of the Accelerating Change Conference 2004 (10th-12th of September at Stanford).
Scott Gatz
Senior Director, Personalization Products, Yahoo, Inc.
Gatz is Yahoo!’s Senior Director of Personalization Products. He manages products and drives strategy for key personalization features across the Yahoo! network and is responsible for the popular My Yahoo! service. My Yahoo! recently introduced an RSS newsreader at http://add.my.yahoo.com/rss/. With Yahoo since 1998, he integrated the GeoCities technology and users into the Yahoo! platform after that acquisition, and went on to lead the team that negotiated and launched the relationship with Overture. Immediately prior to Yahoo!, Scott served as an independent consultant, building solutions for clients interested in using the Internet to increase productivity and strengthen customer and employee relationships. Gatz’s early career was diverse, ranging from television production at the Lifetime channel and NBC to product development and management for major information providers. In the early 90s, he was at Reuters where he managed a team that developed and marketed educational and online news products for the healthcare industry.
Dan Gillmor
Columnist, San Jose Mercury News
Blog: Dan Gillmor's eJournal
Gillmor is technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley’s daily newspaper. He also writes a daily web-based column for SiliconValley.com, a KnightRidder.com site that is an online affiliate of the Mercury News. His column runs in many other U.S. newspapers, and he appears regularly on radio and television. He has been consistently listed by industry publications as among the most influential journalists in his field.
Gillmor joined the Mercury News in September 1994 after about six years with the Detroit Free Press. Before that, he was with the Kansas City Times and several newspapers in Vermont. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Vermont, Gillmor received a Herbert Davenport fellowship in 1982 for economics and business reporting at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. During the 1986-1987 academic year he was a journalism fellow at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he studied history, political theory and economics. He has won several state and regional journalism awards.
Gillmor has had a longstanding interest in technology. He studied programming in high school. He bought his first personal computer in the late 1970s and first went online in the early 1980s. Before becoming a journalist he played music professionally for seven years.
Steve Gillmor
Contributing Editor: eWeek
Blog: Steve Gillmor's Blogosphere
Gillmor is eWEEK's OpEd columnist and contributing editor. He is also editor of eWEEK.com's Messaging and Collaboration Center. As a principal reviewer with Byte magazine, Gillmor covered beat areas including Visual Basic, NT open systems, LotusNotes and other collaborative software systems. After stints as a contributing editor with InformationWeek Labs and as editor in chief of Enterprise Development magazine, and as editor in chief and editorial director for XML and Java Pro Magazines, he joined InfoWorld as Test Center director and columnist.
Reid Hoffman
Chief Executive Officer, LinkedIn
LinkedIn Profile
Immediately prior to founding LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman was EVP at PayPal (Nasdaq: PYPL), where he was in charge of all external relationships and payments infrastructure. Reid serves on the board of directors for Grassroots.com, JumpStart Technologies, SixApart, and Vendio. Reid is an angel investor in Ironport, Friendster and Nanosolar. Earlier in his career, Reid worked at Apple Computer, Fujitsu Software Corporation, and SocialNet.com. Reid graduated with distinction from Stanford University with a B.S. in Cognitive Science and from Oxford University with a master’s degree in philosophy. Reid won the Dinkelspiel Award and a Marshall Scholarship while at Stanford.
Greg Jarboe
President and co-founder,
SEO-PR
Jarboe is the president and co-founder of SEO-PR, a search engine marketing firm that provides search engine optimization, search engine advertising, and search engine promotion services. The firm’s clients include Southwest Airlines, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), and the WiFinally (http://www.wifinally.com) blog.
SEO-PR has also formed a strategic partnership with PR Web, one of the Internet’s most popular newswires. Together, the partners help agencies and clients optimize, distribute and track press releases via blogs, RSS feeds, news search engines, and opt-in email.
Jarboe has more than 20 years experience in public relations, corporate communications and marketing at Lotus Development Corp, Ziff-Davis and other companies. He also writes articles for a variety of media, including e-marketing-news, SearchDay, WebProNews, The Measurement Standard, MarketingSherpa, and Ballyhoo Magazine.
Jeffrey Tarter, Editor of Softletter and a well-known industry analyst, says, “Greg Jarboe always seems to be ahead of the curve whenever there's a major shift in technology marketing. He's now figured out a brilliant way to integrate search engine optimization and public relations, creating a powerful strategy for generating leads, building Web traffic, and getting publicity messages in front of potential buyers at exactly the right moment.”
Chris Kelly
Chief Privacy Offier and General Counsel: Spoke Software
Spoke Profile
Chris Kelly brings more than 10 years in information privacy, public policy, and legal experience to the Spoke management team. He has previously created the Chief Privacy Officer position at broadband Internet service provider Excite@Home and digital marketing company Kendara (which was sold to Excite@Home). He joins Spoke most recently from international law firm Baker and McKenzie, where he advised major Internet and media clients on the increasing challenges of privacy and intellectual property protection in the digital age. Prior to his time in legal practice, he served as an advisor in the Clinton Administration with the White House Domestic Policy Council and the U.S. Department of Education. Chris holds a B.A. from Georgetown University, an M.A. from Yale University, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. At Harvard, he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology and was part of the founding team for the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
Mark Kvamme
General Partner
Sequoia Capital
Kvamme focuses on services and software investments. He is currently a director of Allocity, Cast Iron Systems, EMN8, Mark Logic, LinkedIn and StrongMail Systems. Previously, he had been a director of Corvigo (acquired by Tumbleweed Communications). Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 1999, Mark was chairman of USWeb/CKS and chairman and CEO of CKS Group prior to the merger with USWeb. Earlier in his career Mark was a Director of International Marketing for Wyse Technology, the President and CEO of International Solutions, and was a founding member of Apple France. Mark has a B.A. in French Economics and Literature from the University of California at Berkeley.
JD Lasica
Principal & General Partner, Open Media Consulting Group
Blog: New Media Musings
Lasica is a veteran journalist who writes frequently about the impact of emerging technologies on our culture. He has written for The Washington Post, Salon, The Industry Standard and other publications. He spent 11 years at The Sacramento Bee as a section editor and columnist. Lasica also headed the editorial department of the award-winning parenting site BabyCenter (where he was all too briefly a paper millionaire). He was the first new media columnist for The American Journalism Review and has written chapters for three books on Internet-related subjects. He lives with his wife and son in the San Francisco Bay Area and is a frequent speaker and panelist at technology and new media conferences. He is currently working on a book about the clash between entertainment companies and technologists.
Shripriya Mahesh
Sr. Director, Product Strategy, eBay
Shripriya "Shri" Mahesh is the Senior Director of Product Strategy at eBay where she is responsible for long-term product strategy and direction. Her team is also responsible for evaluating emerging technologies and trends including Social Networking and Blogging. Shri was formerly the Vice President of E-Commerce at NextCard where she led all business development, marketing and product management. Prior to joining NextCard, Shri was a management consultant at Mitchell Madison Group.
She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and currently lives in New York City.
Craig Newmark
Founder
Craig's List
Craig Newmark is a senior Web-oriented software engineer, with around twenty-five years of experience, and has become a leader in online community by virtue of running www.craigslist.org for over eight years.
Newmark's one of those guys you hear about who grew up wearing a plastic pocket protector, thick black glasses, (taped together), and watched Star Trek too much, though he's recently reflected that he never joined the A/V club. Since then, he's compiled extensive experience evangelizing, leading and building, including work at Bank of America, Charles Schwab, and craigslist.org.
craigslist.org philosophical themes say a lot more about Craig:
We're about people giving each other a break
We're about restoring the human voice to the Internet, reversing the corporate voice and over commercialization
We're about providing useful, down-to-earth, common-sense function
Jamie O'Donnell
Co-founder,
SEO-PR
O’Donnell is the co-founder of SEO-PR, a search engine marketing firm that provides search engine optimization, search engine advertising, and search engine promotion services. The firm’s clients include Southwest Airlines, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), and the WiFinally (http://www.wifinally.com) blog.
SEO-PR has also formed a strategic partnership with PR Web, one of the Internet’s most popular newswires. Together, the partners help agencies and clients optimize, distribute and track press releases via blogs, RSS feeds, news search engines, and opt-in email.
Prior to co-founding SEO-PR, O’Donnell was the president of IDM Partners, an online direct marketing agency that had IBM Global Services, Sprint, and The Great Plains Software Division on Microsoft as clients. Before that, he headed a Bay-area PR and Marcom firm, JONA Group, which launched more than 40 Internet startups between 1995 and 1999.
Stuart McFaul, president and founder of Spiral Group Public Relations, says, “Jamie O’Donnell has a strong reputation in Silicon Valley for insisting that successful PR programs need to address the expressed interests of customers and journalists versus the self interest of a client company. SEO-PR now takes that principle to the age of search engines where customer interests are measured in top key words and phrases.”
Tony Perkins
Creator and Editor In Chief, AlwaysOn
Perkins is a leading media entrepreneur, a journalist, author. In 1993, he created the Red Herring, which was a leading publication during his tenure as editor-in-chief. More recently, he founded and leads AlwaysOn, a highly interactive, popular online network for technology insiders in many ways continues along the lines of the original Red Herring, providing commentary, analysis, focused reporting and research for technology enterpreneurs and investors.
Even as Red Herring's brand and revenues were soaring during the dot-com’s upward trajectory, Perkins co-authored The Internet Bubble: Inside the Overvalued World of High-Tech Stocks (HarperBusiness, 1999), a book that foretold the imminent bust and warned investors to get out. The Internet Bubble became an international bestseller; a sequel was published in 2001.
Perkins continues to chronicle the technology world in his Wall Street Journal column and as a commentator on MSNBC’s "Hardball with Chris Matthews,” CNN, CNBC, BBC and Bloomberg Television. A prolific writer, he consistently lands him on the AdWeek Technology Marketing magazine top ten technology business journalists list.
Perkins serves on President Bush’s Information Technology Advisory Council. He co-founded and chaired the Churchill Club, a Silicon Valley business and technology forum. Earlier, he was founder and CEO of Upside Publishing and vice president of business development at Silicon Valley Bank.
Mark Pincus
Co-Founder & CEO: Tribe Networks, Inc.
Blog: Mark Pincus Blog
Pincus is the founder and CEO of Tribe Networks, and a serial entrepreneur with a track record of growing venture-funded technology companies. Prior to founding Tribe Networks, Pincus founded and served as CEO of SupportSoft, Inc., provider of service and support automation software. Prior to SupportSoft, Pincus co-founded Freeloader, Inc., the first consumer push information service, which was acquired in 1996 by Individual, Inc. for $38 million. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Pincus worked in venture capital where he led investments in new media and software startups at Columbia Capital Corp. and at Tele-Communications, Inc. Before getting involved in new media, Pincus was a business consultant for Bain & Co. and an investment banker at Lazard Freres & Co. Pincus graduated Summa Cum Laude from University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School and he is a graduate of the Harvard Business School.
Lisa Poulson
President, Kirtland Enterprise Group
Poulson has more than 15 years experience in communications and marketing developed at a major technology company, small start ups and at one of the world’s largest public relations agencies. She brings a deep understanding of the processes of persuasion and building credibility to her work – reaching target audiences via programs designed to meet her clients’ business objectives. During her tenure at Sun Microsystems, Lisa launched the Java technology to business, trade and consumer press and analysts -- taking it from a lab project to an international force in software. She created and ran the worldwide PR campaign that evangelized software Java technology to software developers– in the face of intense competition. Lisa also led the communications strategy and served as spokesperson for the Sun v. Microsoft and US v. Microsoft lawsuits, building rare expertise in litigation communications. At Tumbleweed Communications Corp. and RealNames Inc., Poulson drove corporate communications programs including an IPO, acquisitions, reductions in force and investor relations. She also managed corporate marketing and lead generation programs with tight resources to deliver results that met and exceeded revenue and brand objectives. While at Burson-Marsteller, she served clients as diverse as IBM, the US Postal Service and Hydro-Quebec. Poulson, launched Kirtland Enterprise Group Inc., in July 2002, and has lived and practiced in Silicon Valley since 1995.
Lenn Pryor
Director, Platform Evangelism
Microsoft Corporation
Blog: Glittering Generality
Pryor is Microsoft's director of platform evangelism and manages the team behind Channel 9. Channel 9 combines video blogging, wikis, RSS, and a forums-based comments engine to bring Microsoft and its developers closer together through transparency and dialogue. Channel 9 was inspired by United Airline’s in-flight audio channel of the same name in which passengers can listen in to hear pilots and Air Traffic Control guiding flights in real-time. Lenn and his team launched Channel 9 as a rogue effort inside Microsoft on April 5, 2004 without use of traditional advertising or media to promote it. To date, an average of 700,000 developers have visited the site each month including a growing base of over 5,700 developers who post regularly to the site.
Pryor has been at Microsoft for seven years and has worked with developers worldwide to help them succeed on Microsoft platforms such as Windows, IE, .NET, Windows Mobile, and the upcoming Windows “Longhorn.” Previously, Pryor co-founded two San Francisco-based Web consulting firm.
John Roberts
AVP, Product Development CNET News.com, CNET Networks
Blog: clock
Roberts manages product development for CNET News.com, the leader in technology news and winner of the2004 National Magazine Award for General Excellence Online. Roberts introduced the CNET News.com RSS feeds (http://rss.news.com/) in early 2000. During his 11 years of professional online experience, Roberts has developed membership and personalization systems for Snap.com/NBC Internet. He worked at The Atlantic Monthly, first as a staff editor, and then bringing the award-winning magazine online, first on AOL (1993) and then the web (1995). He also served as the first webmaster for Fast Company magazine. Personal musings may be found on his blog, clock.
Steve Rubel
Vice President, Client Services: CooperKatz & Company
Blog: Micro Persuasion Weblog
Rubel is a PR strategist with more than 10 years of public relations, journalism, and marketing communications experience. He currently serves as vice president, client services, at CooperKatz & Company, a mid-size New York City public relations firm.
Rubel is an expert in integrating Weblogs into traditional consumer and B2B public relations campaigns. He authors the Micro Persuasion Weblog, which tracks how the blogosphere and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.
Since joining CooperKatz & Company in 2001, Rubel has led a diverse array of business-to-business and consumer client campaigns on behalf of organizations such as the Association of National Advertisers, WeatherBug, the Family Friendly Programming Forum, Invest Northern Ireland, Carrier, Otis Elevator, Canon, the Civic Alliance to Rebuild Downtown New York and France Telecom, among others. Rubel also co-developed Ziff Davis' ExtremeTech America's Fastest Geek campaign, which was awarded a 2001 Silver Sabre Award.
Jeff Sandquist
Jeff Sandquist
Technical Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation
Sandquist is a Technical Evangelist for Windows and is one of the people behind Channel 9. Channel 9 combines video blogging, wikis, RSS, and a forums-based comments engine to bring Microsoft and its developers closer together through transparency and dialogue. Channel 9 was inspired by United Airline’s in-flight audio channel of the same name in which passengers can listen in to hear pilots and Air Traffic Control guiding flights in real-time. Jeff and team launched Channel 9 as a rogue effort inside Microsoft on April 5, 2004 without use of traditional advertising or media to promote it. To date, an average of 700,000 developers have visited the site each month including a growing base of over 5,700 developers who post regularly to the site.
Sandquist has been at Microsoft for seven years partnering with developers worldwide helping them succeed on Microsoft platforms such as Windows, IE, .NET, and the upcoming Windows “Longhorn.”
Bill Schreiner
Vice President and General Manager of AOL Community Programming, America Online
As Vice President and General Manager of Community Programming for America Online, Bill Schreiner spearheads new programming experiences for such core AOL products as journals (blogs), chats, message boards, social networking, groups, home pages and more.
Bill began his career at AOL in 1996 as "CEO of Love" for his work on Love@AOL, which he developed into the largest romance and personals site on the web. With the acquisition of MapQuest in 2000, he moved onto Vice President of Product and Programming for MapQuest and led the redesign and growth of the MapQuest.com site, expanding traffic from 8 million to more than 16 million unique visitors per month. More recently, Bill served as head of Product Strategy for all of AOL Entertainment while also overseeing the creation and launch of AOL TICKETS.
Prior to his tenure at AOL, Bill had a long and successful career in the entertainment industry where he was an early adopter of new technologies and earned numerous credits in both television and film.
Robert Scoble
Evangelist
Microsoft
blog: http://scoble.weblogs.com
Scoble is one of blogging's best-known personalities. He is Microsoft's technical evangelist for the US .NET Platform Strategy. Before joining Microsoft, Scoble held a variety of jobs ranging from planning conferences at Fawcette Technical Publications, to being director of marketing for weblog software producer UserLand Software, to being sales support manager at NEC Mobile Solutions. He has a 10-year-old son and enjoys technology of all kinds, from playing with his Tivo and Xbox Live system to tinkering around with digital cameras.
Wendy Seltzer
EFF Intellectual Property Attorney
Blog: Legal Tags
Seltzer is a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, specializing in intellectual property and free speech issues. As a Fellow with Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Seltzer founded and leads the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, helping Internet users to understand their rights in response to cease-and-desist threats. Prior to joining EFF, Wendy taught Internet Law as an Adjunct Professor at St. John's University School of Law and practiced intellectual property and technology litigation with Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel in New York. Wendy has an A.B. from Harvard College and J.D. from Harvard Law School. She occasionally takes a break from legal code to program (Perl).
David L. Sifry
CEO: Technorati
Blog: Sifry's Alerts
Sifry is a frequent speaker and lecturer on a variety of technology issues, ranging from wireless spectrum policy, WiFi, Weblogs, and Open Source software. He is an accomplished entrepreneur with over 19 years of software development and industry experience. As founder and CEO of Technorati, Inc., Sifry created the vision and architecture of the world's leading index and search engine for weblogs. Prior to Technorati, Sifry was co-founder and CTO of Sputnik, Inc. from 2002-2003, and co-founder of Linuxcare, Inc., where he served as CTO and VP of Engineering from 1998-2001. He is a recognized expert on open source development, licensing and the Linux operating system and served as a founding member of the board of Linux International and the technical advisory board of the National Cybercrime Training Partnership for law enforcement. He has a B.S. in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University. He has a weblog where he comments on issues of the day.
Michael Sikillian
Senior Product Marketing Manager, Search and Web Publishing: The Lycos Network
Michael Sikillian is a marketing executive who combines strong online marketing skills with a database and analytics background. He is responsible for product marketing for web publishing, consumer search, and search engine marketing tools at Lycos, including brands like Tripod, Angelfire, Lycos Insite, Lycos Search and Hotbot. He led marketing efforts for Terra Lycos' initial launch of BlogBuilder, which was the first launch of a blog tool by a major portal site in 2003. It was awarded PC Magazine's Editor's Choice Award, as well as favorable reviews in The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, NPR, and CNN.
He has over 15 years experience in both consumer and business-to-business technology marketing, working for companies like Weather Services International, Philips Magnavox, and the Learning Company. Prior to that he founded Lexigen Software, a database analytics company with clients like Nabisco, Core States and Chase Manhattan Bank. He is a graduate of Columbia University with a degree in Classical Linguistics.
Jim Spohrer, Ph.D.
Director, Almaden Services Research, IBM Almaden Research Center
Jim Spohrer, Ph.D., Director of Almaden Services Research at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA, leads a team committed to providing research innovation for IBM Global Services (IGS). Human sciences, On-Demand Innovation Services (ODIS), deep industry knowledge of future trends and operations technology are areas of active exploration.
From 2000-2003, Spohrer was CTO of IBM's Venture Capital Relations Group, where he identified technology trends and established relationships between IBM and VC-backed portfolio companies. Previously, he directed Almaden's Computer Science Foundation Department and before that was senior manager and co-strategist for IBM's User Experience/Human Computer Interaction Research effort.
Before joining IBM, Spohrer was a DEST (Distinguished Engineer, Scientist, and Technologist) and program manager of learning technology projects in Apple Computer's Advanced Technology Group. He led the effort to create Apple's first on-line learning community and vision for mobile any time, any where e-learning. From 1978-1982, he developed speech recognition algorithms and products at Verbex, an Exxon Enterprises company.
Spohrer received a B.S. in physics from MIT in 1978 and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Yale University in 1988. He is widely published and has helped establish two education research non-profit web sites: The Educational Object Economy and WorldBoard: Associating Information with Places. He is a frequent advisor to the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Education, and other groups on the implications of rapid technological change to the future of education.
Halley Suitt
Senior Editor, Worthwhile Magazine
Blog: Halley's Comment
Halley Suitt is a Senior Editor at Worthwhile Magazine and author of the weblog Halley's Comment. She was named Author-In-Residence for the National Center for Women and Information Technology in 2004. She also writes for the weblogs Misbehaving.Net, Blogsisters and We Quit Drinking.
Halley has been involved in event planning and sales for technology conferences sponsored by Harvard Business School Publishing, TTI Vanguard and Tom Peters Company. Her own consulting work has included projects with Bob Metcalfe, David Weinberger, British Telecom and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young.
In 2003, she published a case study on employee bloggers in Harvard Business Review and a fictional short story in Penthouse Magazine. She has been quoted in The New York Times, Fast Company Magazine and other weblogs on the subject of marketing and blogging. She’s spoken at several conferences including O’Reilly’s Etech Digital Democracy Event, the Jupiter Research Weblog Business Strategies conference on "Strategies and Tips For Business Blogging" and at Harvard Law School's BloggerCon conference leading a discussing about her case study, "A Blogger in Their Midst" from HBR. She has appeared on Oprah.
Martin Tobias
Venture Partner: Ignition Partners
Blog: Deep Green Crystals
Tobias is an Ignition Venture Partner. He works on Ignition's infrastructure software investments. Martin represents Ignition as director on the boards of Cloudmark and IP Fabrics.
Prior to Ignition, Tobias spent more than 15 years in operating roles in technology companies, including four years at Loudeye Technologies and six years at Microsoft.
Tobias was the CEO of Loudeye Technologies Inc, which he founded in 1997 and took public in March of 2000. Through his leadership, the company grew to be one of the largest providers of audio and video enabling solutions for the Internet. Martin developed many strategic partnerships and customers including Microsoft, Real Networks, NBC, CBS, AOL, Universal, Sony, Warner Bros. and EMI.
Prior to founding Loudeye, Martin spent six years with Microsoft where he played a key role in the launch of Select 3.0 (the volume licensing program for corporations) and developed the company’s channel policies to allow electronic software distribution (ESD). He also led operational projects critical to Microsoft International’s worldwide expansion, particularly in Europe, Scandinavia and Australia.
Prior to his time at Microsoft, Martin was with Andersen Consulting (Accenture). Martin is an active investor in high tech companies and participates on a number of boards.
Chris Tolles
VP of Sales and Marketing, Topix.net
Spoke Profile
Tolles is a marketing executive with extensive Internet and software industry experience. Prior to Topix.net, Chris co-founded Spoke Software, where he was vice president of marketing. Before Spoke, Chris was director of marketing for products at AOL Music, Netscape Search and the Open Directory Project. In 1998, Chris co-founded NewHoo, later acquired by Netscape and renamed the Open Directory Project -- the Web directory behind AOL, Netscape, Google, and Lycos. Between 1990 and 1998, Chris held sales and marketing positions at Sun Microsystems, including direction of all marketing for the network security product group, which provided encryption, firewall, and authentication solutions. Chris has degrees in Computer Science and Economics from the University of California at San Diego, where he was a Warren Scholar and recipient of the Michael Addison Award for his thesis on the Information Economy.
Mena Trott
Co-Founder and President, Six Apart, Ltd.
Blog: dollarshort.org
Mena Trott is co-founder and President of Six Apart, the creators of the TypePad service and Movable Type software, two of the leading tools for publishing weblogs. In addition to her role leading the management and business efforts of Six Apart, Mena enjoys working on making the products aesthetically pleasing as well as functionally intuitive. When she's not developing Movable Type, she writes for her own weblog, dollarshort.org, contributed to "Essential Blogging", and publishes posts regularly on the Six Apart company weblog at sixapart.com. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and co-founder of Six Apart, Ben Trott.
John Zeisler
Venture Partner, Gabriel Venture Partners
Zeisler has been active in venture capital since 1996, currently as a venture partner with Gabriel Venture Partners, where he leads new investment opportunities in software and services. Previously, he invested in mobile internet opportunities as a general partner with Nokia Venture Partners. He began his venture career as a general partner with InterWest Partners. He has been a member of the board and an investor in Infoseek (acquired by Disney), PlaceWare (acquired by Microsoft), Airgo Networks, eVoice (acquired by AOL), Lightningcast, NetBotz, and Applied Science Fiction (acquired by Kodak), among others. He is also an executive advisor to Six Apart.
Zeisler has significant operating, management,consulting and advisory experience with hardware, software, wireless, and internet companies, with credentials in strategy, business development, marketing and financing. Prior to venture capital, he gained over 20 years of successful operating experience thru roles as senior vice president of marketing at Netcom Online Communications (acquired by Earthlink); chairman and CEO of Pensoft Corp. (acquired by AT&T); co-founder and vice president of marketing at Claris Corp. (acquired by Apple Computer); and director of marketing at Apple. He has a B.S. in Communications from Boston University and a degree from the Executive Program on High Technology Management at Stanford University.
Anna Zornosa
Chief Marketing Officer, Knight Ridder Digital
Zornosa joined Knight Ridder Digital (KRD) as chief marketing officer in August, 2003. A customer-focused marketing professional with more than 20 years experience, Zornosa directs KRD’s business and product strategy, drives national marketing and communications and oversees audience metrics and analysis. Previously, Zornosa was CEO and president of Topica Inc., one of the largest email services providers. Earlier, as senior vice president of marketing at Women.com Networks, she developed a winning integrated marketing strategy, encompassing public relations, content syndication, membership, brand advertising, traffic measurement, advertising sales, and e-commerce. In addition, she managed relationships with 20 affiliated TV, book and magazine properties, including those of majority owner Hearst Publishing. Previously, she held senior positions at SmartAge and PointCast, Inc., where she drove sales strategy and created affiliate agreements with 15 media properties, such as the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Wired, and Times Mirror.