Each year, producers Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher invite an eclectic mix of the most creative, forward-thinking, insightful people in the digital world to be speakers at D. From founders to CEOs, from industry legends to brash young innovators, D brings together the people who are shaping the way we work, play, communicate and live.
D10 took place May 29-31, 2012 with the following speakers:
Tony Bates
President, Skype Division
Microsoft
Born in the U.K., Bates taught himself code by reading programming manuals on his way to work as a network operator at the University of London. From there, he went on to write nine patents (in the area of Layer 2 and Layer 3 innovations), while working in telecommunications at Internet MCI and at Cisco. At Skype, he is in charge of strategy and mission for the Internet telephony giant.
Michael Bloomberg
Mayor, New York City
Although not a native New Yorker (he was born in Boston, in fact), Bloomberg has shown his love for the city as only a transplant can. As its 108th mayor, over the last decade he has brought down all those things that should be brought down (crime, teen smoking, ambulance response times) and increased those things that should be increased (graduation rates, parkland, jobs). Before he was mayor, Bloomberg founded Bloomberg LP, a global media company with more than 300,000 subscribers to its financial news and information service.
Dr. Ed Catmull
President, Walt Disney Animation Studios & Pixar Animations Studios
Computer graphics in movies has become de rigueur and Catmull has been there since the beginning. He founded three of the leading centers of computer graphics research: The computer graphics laboratory at the New York Institute of Technology; the computer division of Lucasfilm Ltd.; and Pixar Animation Studios. He is one of the architects of the seminal program RenderMan, which has been used in 44 of the last 47 films nominated for an Academy Award in visual effects. Catmull has won five Oscars.
Tim Cook
CEO, Apple
Even before taking the reins as the head of Apple, replacing its late legendary co-founder Steve Jobs, Cook was responsible for the company’s worldwide sales and operations, including end-to-end management of Apple’s supply chain, sales activities and service and support in all markets and countries. Prior to joining Apple, he was VP of Corporate Materials at Compaq, COO of the Reseller Division at Intelligent Electronics and director of North American Fulfillment at IBM, where he led manufacturing and distribution functions for IBM’s PC Company. Ah, sweet irony.
Daniel Ek
Co-Founder and CEO
Spotify
A serial entrepreneur and technologist who started his first company at the age of 14, the Spotify co-founder’s love of music -- the guitar in particular -- led him to innovate in the entertainment and fashion community (Stardoll) to the buying and selling of unique items (Tradera, acquired by eBay) to advertising (Tradera, snatched up by TradeDoubler). Also: Challenge him to a game of FIFA championship soccer at your peril.
Larry Ellison
CEO, Oracle
Ellison has been in charge of database giant Oracle since he founded the company in 1977. Since then, Oracle has grown into a multi-million dollar company, knocking out (Informix) or absorbing (Sun Microsystems) its competition. Ellison also races sailboats -- his team won the America’s Cup in 2010 -- as well as flying planes. He also plays tennis and guitar.
Ari Emanuel
Co-CEO, William Morris Endeavor Agency
At the intersection of entertainment and digital technologies as the co-CEO of WME, Ari Emanuel built the leading entertainment and media firm in Hollywood and well beyond that zip code - first as founding partner of the Endeavor Agency until its mid-2009 merger with the legendary William Morris Agency.
Consider a short list of actors, writers and directors that Emanuel represents: Michael Moore, Martin Scorsese, Nancy Meyers, Matthew Vaughn, Peter Berg, Steve Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin, M. Night Shyamalan, Errol Morris, Larry David, Charlie Rose, Charlize Theron, Mark Wahlberg, Michael Douglas and Sacha Baron Cohen.
He's also just struck a very intriguing "strategic partnership" with large private equity firm Silver Lake, which is buying a 31 percent stake to help turbocharge WME's digital efforts and help it cope with the changing nature of entertainment distribution as consumer Internet use has exploded.
As changing it certainly is, with Emanuel charged with figuring it all our for his impressive stable of clients, in what has been a long career in Hollywood. Prior to founding Endeavor, he was a partner at InterTalent and a senior agent at International Creative Management. He began his entertainment industry career as an agent trainee at Creative Artists Agency. Raised in the suburbs of Chicago, Emanuel graduated from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn.
John Hennessy
President, Stanford University
This guy wrote the book on computer architecture design. Literally. First as a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford and later as an administrator, Hennessy has brought Silicon Valley and the university closer than ever. Even as president of Stanford, his research continen ues to push out the boundaries around the architecture of high- performance computers.
Reid Hoffman
Co-Founder & Executive Chairman, LinkedIn
Six degrees of separation never had it so good. At LinkedIn, Hoffman proved that the “I know someone who knows someone” networking tenet could operate on a worldwide scale. He’s also been a longtime investor, as a venture capitalist at Greylock Partners, where he leads its Discovery Fund and as an angel investor, with stakes in in Facebook, Flickr, Last.fm, and Zynga. He serves on the boards of Airbnb, Edmodo, Mozilla (Firefox), Shopkick, Swipely and Zynga and has co-led investments in Coupons.com, Groupon, and Viki. He was also on the founding board at PayPal.
Salman Khan
Founder & Executive Director, Khan Academy
“Each one, teach one" is a laudable goal, but it led Salman Khan to tutor his young cousin in math, even though the two of them were not in the same town. So, he devised video tutorials that went viral on YouTube, and now Khan's eponymous Khan Academy has each one teaching thousands every day. Since launching three years ago, the Khan Academy has provided 150 million lessons over the Internet and is the most-used library of videos on the Web. According to its Web site, the lessons are open to all, even "a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology."
Jon Leibowitz
Chairman, Federal Trade Commission
During his stint at the FTC, Leibowitz has upheld initiatives protecting consumer Internet privacy, promoted competition and innovation in tech through laws and policy initiatives and worked to stop scams that preyed on consumers already suffering from the recent economic downturn. His previous appointments encompassed issues relating to telecommunications, terrorism and juvenile justice.
Mary Meeker
Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers
Since her days as the Internet’s most famous securities analyst, Meeker focused on discovering and understanding emerging technology trends and building relationships with entrepreneurs. She now leads Kleiner’s Digital Growth Fund. In that job, she serves on the board of Square and is actively involved in the investments in Twitter, Groupon, Legalzoom, Waze, 360buy.com, Spotify, Jawbone, One King's Lane and Trendyol. Her annual Internet Trends presentations is closely watch by industry professionals around the world.
Nathan Myhrvold
Founder and CEO
Intellectual Ventures
Myhrvold holds degrees in math, theoretical physics, geophysics and space physics and spent 14 years at Microsoft, where he founded Microsoft Research and many other technology groups. Now at the forefront of the modern patent wars -- with some calling him a dangerous patent troll -- his firm holds (and monetizes) more tech patents than almost any other company. An avid inventor, Myrvold holds hundreds of patents himself, but if you get a chance, ask him about his award-winning cookbook, “Modernist Cuisine.”
Sean Parker
Director, Spotify
Love Napster or hate Napster, which Parker co-founded at 19 years old, had a profound impact on how we share (or don’t share) information. He went on to found contact service Plaxo and later hooked up with a little-known start-up called Facebook to become its founding president. In a move back to music, he next launched social video company Airtime with Napster partner Shawn Fanning.
Sundar Pichai
Senior Vice President, Chrome & Apps, Google
Pichai leads the product management and innovation efforts for several products, including Google Chrome, Chrome OS, Gmail and Google Docs. Prior to Google, he held various engineering and product management positions at Applied Materials, and was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company for a variety of software and semiconductor clients.
Mark Pincus
Founder and CEO
Zynga Inc.
Fourth time’s apparently the charm. On his route to founding Zynga, Pincus started three other companies. In 2003, he launched Tribe.net, an early social network. Before that, he founded and took public Support.com, a pioneer in automating tech support. And, back in 1995, he launched FreeLoader, the first Web-based consumer push company. He also is an active angel investor, including making founding investments in Napster, Brightmail, Twitter and Facebook.
Aaron Sorkin
Screenwriter
You can spot a Sorkin project at 20 paces -- the snappy, overlapping dialogue, the whip-smart characters and the up-to-the moment political topicality. He’s been bringing his award-winning style to the stage, television and movies since “A Few Good Men” debuted on Broadway. His adapted screenplay for the Facebook movie “The Social Network” garnered him an Oscar. Next up for Sorkin is a Broadway musical of Houdini’s life starring Hugh Jackman and a new TV series called “The Newsroom.” As if that weren’t enough, apparently he has always wanted to direct: “The Politician,” the rise and fall of former Senator John Edwards, will mark Sorkin’s adapter/producer/director trifecta.
Jeff Weiner
CEO, LinkedIn
Before taking the company public last year, Weiner was an executive-in-residence at Accel Partners and Greylock Partners, where he advised the firm’s consumer technology portfolio companies and evaluated new investment opportunities. Before that, he was a top Yahoo exec, and also worked at Warner Bros., where he helped developed the initial business plan for Warner Bros. Online.
Susan Wojcicki
SVP, Advertising, Google
Longtime Googler Wojcicki was the search giant’s first marketing manager. In addition, she led the initial development of several key successful consumer products including Google Images, Google Books and Google Video. Now a veep, Wojcicki is responsible for the design, innovation and engineering of all of Google’s advertising and measurement platform products, including AdWords, AdSense, DoubleClick and Google Analytics.