Speakers' Biographies
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Founder and CEO, Fanista |
| Mr. Dan Adler's Hollywood career has
been focused on integrating talent and technology to launch new initiatives
and companies. Starting as a trainee in the mailroom at Creative Artists
Agency (CAA), Mr. Adler apprenticed under then-Chairman Michael Ovitz before
being promoted to agent. Dan served as a key architect of the agency's
corporate consulting and marketing practice while spearheading CAA's
early new-media initiatives. Most recently, he founded Media Eagles, a
boutique consulting firm that provides high-level strategic thinking to
a wide range of Hollywood and international clients. During that period,
Dan developed a business plan that eventually grew into Fanista, a next-generation
online shopping destination for movies, music, games, and books. It relies
on some of the best characteristics of social networking while offering
a first-of-its-kind rewards system. Dan also worked for the Walt Disney
Company as a vice president of talent and business development at Disney
Interactive, a vice president of creative development at Walt Disney Imagineering,
and the chief strategic officer of the Convex Group, a media network and
entertainment company representing new forms of distribution for entertainment
and advertising. |
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Founder and CEO, Foundation of Fantasy, Culture, and
Art |
| Mr. Lucifer Chu has dedicated himself to promoting
fantasy literature because of his passion for PC games and fantasy fiction.
Nearly all of the translated fantasy novels and manuals of PC games related
to fantasy literature in Taiwan are the result his work. Mr. Chu has translated
30 fantasy novels from English into Chinese, including the Lord of
the Rings Trilogy. This so-called ultimate classic of all fantasy novels was
a best seller in Taiwan for over three months. His foundation, which promotes
fantasy culture, is attempting to take root throughout China and bridge
the gap between the ethnic Chinese literature and that of the rest of the
world. In 2002, Lucifer began translating MIT's OpenCourseWare project,
a free and open educational collection for university faculty, students,
and self-learners around the world. In addition, the foundation has developed
the Opensource OpenCourseWare Prototype System, a bottom-up open-source
model designed to facilitate the sharing of knowledge between the English-
and Chinese-speaking worlds. The volunteer group has grown from two people
in Taiwan to 1,900 volunteers in 16 countries. Lucifer is an inspection
consultant with the Ministry of Education, and he works with Yuan Ze and
National Chiao Tung universities. He is the recipient of the 2007 China
Social Network Pioneer Top 15 Award, the 2006 Alumnus of Excellence Award
from National Central University, and the 2005 Presidential Culture Award
from the Republic of China. Lucifer has also been a judge and the chairman
of the Gamestar Awards in Taiwan. |
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Director, Research Center for Information Law
University of St. Gallen |
| In addition to his duties at the Research
Center for Information Law, Dr. Urs Gasser is a Berkman Faculty Fellow
at Harvard University and an associate professor of law at the University
of St. Gallen. At Harvard, Dr. Gasser was the lead fellow on the Digital
Media Project, a multidisciplinary research project aimed at exploring
the transition from offline/analog to online/digital media. At the Berkman
Center, Urs initiated and chaired the Harvard-Yale-Cyberscholar Working
Group. His current research projects explore the regulation of digital
media, with an emphasis on IP law, the anatomy of informational standards,
and information-quality issues. He has published and edited six books,
and he has written over 40 articles in books, law reviews, and professional
journals. In the context of the transatlantic collaboration between the
Berkman Center and the St. Gallen Research Center, he is working on a report
about teaching and researching exceptions in EU member states' copyright
laws, on a paper about digital institutions, and on a piece about participatory
culture and the future of information law. Urs is a registered attorney-at-law
in Switzerland and was the chairman of the Forum for European Information
Law at the First European Jurists Day. |
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Founder, Remixamerica.org |
| Mr. Fred Graver is a media producer and entrepreneur,
with his current projects being Remixamerica.org and StarWideWeb.com. Mr.
Graver worked at MTVi, the interactive group at MTV Networks, were he ran
VH1.com, SonicNet, and Country.com. Fred created “Best Week Ever” on
VH1, and the Bestweekever.TV web site. He also worked at Walt Disney Imagineering,
exploring telefusion, what would happen when the computer and the television
collided. Fred was a writer and co-producer of Cheers, and also had stints
at In Living Color, Norman Lear’s production company, “Late
Night with David Letterman,” and National Lampoon. |
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Associate
Professor, Department of Communication Studies, Northwestern
University |
| Dr. Eszter Hargittai is an assistant professor
of communication studies and sociology at Northwestern University, where
she heads the Web Use Project. Dr. Hargittai's research focuses on
the social and policy implications of information technologies, with a
particular interest in how IT may contribute to or alleviate social inequalities.
Eszter's projects have looked at differences in people's Web-use
skills, the evolution of search engines, the organization and presentation
of online content, political uses of information technologies, and how
information technologies are influencing the types of cultural products
people consume. Her work is funded by grants from the John D. and Catherine
T. MacArthur Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Robert
and Kaye Hiatt Fund at Northwestern University. She is regularly quoted
in media outlets, including The New York Times, the San Jose
Mercury News,
the Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington
Post. Eszter
is a member of the widely read group blog Crooked Timber and also blogs
on Eszter's Blog. During the 2006–2007 academic year, she was
as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
at Stanford. |
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Director of Global Technology
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom |
| Mr. Peter Lesser is responsible for Skadden's
technology strategy, planning, and implementation, and oversees applications
and user support, business systems, infrastructure and operations, security,
and development. Skadden is the largest law firm in the U.S. in terms of
revenue, and third-largest in the world, with over 2,000 lawyers in 23
offices worldwide. Before joining Skadden, Mr. Lesser helped create Kraft
Kennedy & Lesser, a systems integration and consulting firm specializing
in the legal community. Peter spent 18 years at KKL and served as the firm's
managing partner. Through Peter's commitment and service to the Legal
Aid Society of New York in 2006, he received the organization's Pro
Bono Service Award. |
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Professor of Educational Technology
School of Education, Communication, and Language Sciences
Newcastle University |
| Dr. Sugata Mitra works in cognitive science,
information science, educational technology, remote and rural education,
distance education, instructional robotics, self-organizing systems, and
collaborative systems on the Internet. As the chief scientist emeritus
at NIIT in India, Dr. Mitra's contributions include several inventions
and first-time applications, including the establishment of the database
publishing industry in India and Bangladesh, as well as implementing digital-multimedia
and Internet-based education in India. In 1984, Sugata set up India's
first LAN-based newspaper publishing system. He instigated the Hole in
the Wall (HIW) experiment, where, in 1999, a computer was placed in a kiosk
created within a wall in an Indian slum in Delhi, and children were allowed
to freely use it. The experiment aimed at proving that groups of children
can learn to use computers and the Internet on their own using public computers
in open spaces such as roads and playgrounds. The experiment has been repeated
in many places, and HIW now has more than 23 kiosks in rural India. His
work at NIIT created the first curricula and pedagogy for that organization,
followed by years of research on learning styles and methods, learning
devices, and multimedia. Sugata was among the first people in the world
to invent voluntary perception recording (a continuously variable voting
machine) and a hyperlinked computing environment, several years ahead of
the Internet. Since the 1970s, his publications and work have resulted
in the training and development of perhaps a million young Indians. |
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President, dotSUB |
| Ms. Laurie Racine's career has
been spent as a strategist, creating critical networks across a variety
of sectors, including media, education, healthcare, and philanthropy.
Ms. Racine is Co-founder and President of dotSUB, a technology/media
start-up that is eliminating language as a barrier to cross cultural
communication. Laurie served as senior vice president of strategy and
business development for the video mixing and distribution platform Eyespot.
Prior to joining Eyespot, she was president of a private foundation venture,
endowed by the founders of Red Hat, Inc. During her tenure she launched
Lulu Press, invested the seed funding in Creative Commons, and co-founded
Public Knowledge, where she still chairs the board of directors. Laurie
was also the president of Doc Arts, the corporation that produces the
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. In addition, she was the executive
director of the Health Sector Management Program at the Fuqua School
of Business of Duke University. At present, Laurie is chair of Teachers
Without Borders, and serves as a director on the boards of Creative Commons,
the Tribeca Film Institute, University of California Humanities Research
Council, and Splashlife, a media start-up. |
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President, Humanized, Inc. |
| The son of human-computer-interface
expert Jef Raskin, Mr. Aza Raskin founded Humanized Inc. to carry on
his father’s
legacy. Mr. Raskin leads the Raskin Center for Human Interfaces. Aza recently
introduced Songza, a music-metasearch tool for locating and playing audio
from YouTube videos. Songza includes habitual pie menus instead of linear
menus, few icons, high-density content with a correspondingly low amount
of interaction, and transparent messages designed not to break the user's
train of thought. In the week after its launch, Songza was used to play
over 1 million songs. Aza gave his first talk on interface design, at his
local San Francisco chapter of SIGCHI, when he was 10; he got hooked, and
has been speaking publicly ever since. By 17, he was talking and consulting
internationally, and at 19, he co-authored a physics textbook. |
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User Experience Consultant, Disambiguity.com |
| Ms. Leisa Reichelt is a user-experience consultant
by day and a blogger by night. Ms. Reichelt's work and interests
include user research, interaction design, information architecture, and
usability, all grounded in user-centered design methodologies. Leisa is
particularly interested in where these methodologies intersect with social
design, how social environments online shape us and how we shape them,
and how designers should be getting involved in improving our social experience
online. Her approach uses techniques such as ethnography, depth interviewing,
shadowing, day-in-the-life-ing, diary studying, concept mapping, formal
and guerrilla methodologies, and the developing of personas. Earlier, Leisa
was a principal consultant with Flow Interactive in London, where she practiced
contextual research and user-centered design for clients including Transport
for London, the BBC, and Moo Print. She was also an information architect
at One Digital, a senior producer at Massive Interactive, and a producer
at HWW Ltd. |
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Chancellor, Pontifical Academy of Sciences and
Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, The Vatican |
| In addition to his duties at the Vatican,
Monsignor Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo is also a professor of the history
of philosophy at the Libera Università Maria SS. Assunta in Rome.
Named chancellor of the two pontifical academies by Pope John Paul II in
1998, the same year he received his current academic appointment, the late
pope appointed him secretary prelate of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas
Aquinas in 1999. Msgr. Sorondo’s early research centered on the participation
of human beings in the divine nature in the work of Aquinas. Later, his
studies concentrated on Aristotle and the interpretation of Aristotle’s
thoughts by St. Thomas, Hegel, and Paul Ricoeur, especially focusing on “realized
freedom” as a hermeneutical criterion for studying history, religion,
and culture. A Cavaliere di Gran Croce, his many honors include the Francesco
Vito Prize awarded by the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, the
Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur, Chili’s Neruda
Award, and Brazil’s Decoration Grão Mestre da Ordem de Rio
Branco. In addition publishing articles in academic journals and essays
in volumes of collected works, Msgr. Sorondo is the editor or co-editor
of six volumes and the author of six books on theology and philosophy,
including La Gracia Como Partisipación de la Naturaleza Divina and
Aristóteles y Hegel. He was consecrated titular bishop of Forum
Novum in 2001 and appointed an official of the Roman Curia the same year.
Previously, Msgr. Sorondo was a lecturer in the history of philosophy at
Rome’s Lateran University, and served as dean of the faculty of philosophy
at the Lateran for nearly a decade. |
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Co-founder, Undercurrent |
| Mr. Josh Spear is a brand strategist, trendspotter,
blogger, and culturepreneur. As one of the youngest marketing strategists
in the world, Mr. Spear is regularly sought out for his fresh perspective
and no-holds-barred style of consulting on everything from design and gadgets
to authenticity and word-of-mouth. Josh's recent focus has been the
power of the blogosphere, technology, and the impact new social media is
having on the world. His blog, JoshSpear.com, emerged in 2004 from the
back of a Journalism 1001 class, driven by his disappointment with the
way major academics ignored the blog phenomena as a credible form of media.
Josh is the co-founder of Undercurrent, a digital think-tank focused on
exploring new ways to reach young people without interrupting them. He
has appeared in Time Magazine, The New York Times, Flair Italy, the Chicago
Tribune, and many other major media outlets. Josh's clients include
McDonald's, Leo Burnett, Columbia College, Pepsi, Virgin, and the
World Economic Forum in Davos. |
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Founder, Skribit.com |
| Mr. Paul Stamatiou is pursuing a major in
computational media at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
As a 19-year-old intern, Mr. Stamatiou founded Yahoo's corporate
blog, Yoidel Anecdotal. Paul also launched a successful startup, Skribit.com.
He was featured in a Nike online advertising video after blogging about
Nike Plus, and he received the Success Beyond the Campus Award from Georgia
Tech's Ivan Allen College. He also covered the Detroit Auto Show,
the DARPA Urban Challenge, and the final Challenge X competition on behalf
of General Motors. |
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Founder, Jooce.com |
| Mr. Stefan Surzycki serves as CEO and CTO
of Jooce.com, a Flash-based Web operating system and sharing platform targeting
the millions of people who conduct their Internet affairs using computers
in cybercafes rather than on their own desktop or laptop computers. Mr.
Surzycki has more than a decade of experience in high-level technology
positions in the United States and Europe. At the U.S. Department of Agriculture,
Stefan was one of the first to write bioinformatics software to analyze
genetic sequences, which led directly to the discovery of principles that
have changed the way geneticists conceptualize genome structure. He helped
develop Barrett Kendall's Online English Books for high school students.
Stefan also worked with the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris,
developing state-of-the-art, high-speed intranets for ICC's International
Court of Arbitration, the world's preeminent court of commercial
arbitration. He can occasionally be found performing bass with a rock band
in Parisian venues. |
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Founder, Reddit.com |
| Mr. Aaron Swartz is a blogger, hacker, Web
developer, entrepreneur, and activist. By 13, Mr. Swartz had created his
first Web application, a programming system essentially like Wikipedia’s,
which went on to make him a runner-up in the ArsDigita Prize for Web applications
developed by young people. At 14, Aaron co-authored the RSS 1.0 specification.
Since then, he has been a member of the W3C’s RDF Core Working Group,
and he co-designed the formatting language Markdown with John Gruber. He
founded the social news site Reddit, which has since been sold to CondéNet,
the online arm of Condé Nast Publications. Aaron manages the nonprofit
Open Library Project, which is building a wiki with a page for every book
ever published. He also co-founded Creative Commons. His writing has appeared
in various magazines and journals, and he has been profiled in Wired and Newsweek. |
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Director, MIT Initiative on Technology and Self |
| Dr. Sherry Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller
Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology
in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. Dr. Turkle founded
and directs the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, a center of research
and reflection on the evolving connections between people and artifacts.
Sherry's most recent work has led to three edited collections on
the relationships between things and thinking: Evocative Objects: Things
We Think With, Falling For Science: Objects in Mind, and The Inner
History of Devices. She is also the author of Psychoanalytic Politics:
Jacques Lacan and Freud's French Revolution; The Second Self: Computers
and
the Human Spirit; and Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age
of the Internet. Sherry is completing a book on robots and the human spirit based on her
ten-year research program on relational artifacts. She has written numerous
articles on psychoanalysis and culture and on the subjective nature of
people's relationships with technology, especially computers. Sherry
studies mobile cellular technologies, as well as robots, digital pets,
and simulated creatures, particularly those designed for children and the
elderly. She is a featured commentator on the effects of technology for
CNN, NBC, ABC, and NPR, and has appeared on such programs as Nightline and 20/20. |
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