Engadget Expand
- Date
- Nov 9 - 10 2013
- Nov. 8 Press Preview Day
- Venue
- Javits Center’s North Hall
- Location
- New York City, New York
- Description
- Experience the future of technology at the premier hands-on event for fans
Don't miss these amazing speakers! We have put together a lineup of who's who in the technology world. We made it easy to follow them and the presenting companies during the event -- just subscribe to this [handy Twitter list]
Here is who will be joining us:
Annalee Newitz, Author/Editor, io9.com
Annalee Newitz is the editor-in-chief of io9.com and the author of Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction. She likes Dobsonian telescopes and ecosystems of the early Triassic.
Avinash Dabir, Director, Developer Relations, Leap Motion
Avinash is director of Developer Relations at Leap Motion. Prior to that, he was on NBC Universal's emerging media team, struck digital content deals for the NBA and managed major entertainment brands’ mobile initiatives at mQube (acquired by VeriSign). He is also the creator of Scene Near Me, a mobile app that helps you discover movie and TV filming locations.
Ayah Bdeir, Founder and CEO, littleBits
Ayah Bdeir, founder and CEO of littleBits, is an engineer, and one of the leaders of the maker movement. Ayah's career and education have centered on advancing open-source hardware to make education and innovation more accessible to people around the world. She is a co-founder of the Open Hardware Summit, an alumna of the MIT Media Lab and a TED Senior Fellow (her TED talk "Building blocks that blink, beep and teach" has over 700k views). Recently, Bdeir has been named No. 33 on Fast Company's Most Creative People in Business for 2013 and littleBits has been named as one of CNN's Top 10 Emerging Startups to watch and won over 18 toy and education awards. Originally from Lebanon and Canada, Ayah now lives in New York City.
Becky Stern, Director of Wearable Electronics, Adafruit
Becky Stern is a DIY guru and director of wearable electronics at Adafruit, an educational electronics manufacturer and kit company in downtown NYC. Every week she makes a new do-it-yourself craft+tech project tutorial & video, and hosts "Wearable Electronics with Becky Stern", a weekly live show on YouTube. She was five years old when she first wielded a video camera, cloned her first Beanie Baby at age eight, and has been combining textiles with electronics since 2005. Becky studied at Parsons The New School for Design and Arizona State University and teaches at School of Visual Arts' Products of Design grad program. She is a member of the Brooklyn art combine Madagascar Institute and the internet-based group Free Art & Technology (FAT).
Ben Heck, Master Modder on element14's, The Ben Heck Show
Ben Heckendorn, more commonly known as Ben Heck, is a master modder and star of The Ben Heck Show. Sponsored exclusively by element14, episodes of the show air weekly online at element14.com. Dedicated to the science and art of system and hardware modding, the show caters to a global audience of design engineers, students and electronic and tech enthusiasts. Each episode spotlights a mod of popular electronic devices and educates viewers on the underlying technology powering each project. The show is currently in its third season and has reached more than 10 million views globally. Ben is a self-taught electronics engineer, with a background in design. Today, Ben is well-known in the maker space, participating in panel discussions and as a guest speaker, with more than 120,000 subscribers on YouTube.
Ben Huh, CEO, Cheezburger
Ben Huh is the founder and chief executive officer of The Cheezburger Network. The former journalist, turned successful entrepreneur, has been credited with pioneering internet culture as entertainment, crowdsourcing and bringing internet memes to the mainstream. Since acquiring I Can Has Cheezburger? in 2007, Huh has grown the media company to now include more than 50 online humor sites that generate more than 400 million page views monthly. His internet culture empire includes popular sites such as Fail Blog, Know Your Meme and Memebase. The internet culture connoisseur has been featured in many high-profile media outlets, including The New York Times, Wired and Time. He was named one of the “100 Most Creative People in the Business” by Fast Company, and was recognized as one of the “Top 10 Worst Dressed Men in Silicon Valley” by GQ.
Beth Ferguson, CEO/ Designer, Sol Design Lab
Beth Ferguson is an ecological designer, public artist and founding director of Sol Design Lab based in San Francisco. She has an MFA in design from the University of Texas at Austin. She has engaged thousands of participants in her work that ranges from solar charging stations, bus stop interventions, solar payphones, ecological map-making and public furniture made from up-cycled materials. Ferguson has taught solar design and public art courses at Stanford University, Hampshire College Center for Design and the University of Texas at Austin. She has received commissions from SXSW, Zero1 San Jose Biennial in 2010 and 2012, TEDxPresidio, Austin Cultural Contracts, Mass Audubon, Coachella, Maker Faire, the University of Texas at Austin, Austin Energy, Sacramento Utility and The Art Institute of Chicago. Beth’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Make Magazine, PopTech, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Austin Business Journal and 7x7 and Beyond.
Chris Lewicki, President and Chief Engineer, Planetary Resources, Inc.
Chris Lewicki has been intimately involved with the lifecycle of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers and the Phoenix Mars Lander. Lewicki performed system engineering development and participated in assembly, test and launch operations for both Mars missions. He was flight director for the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, and the surface mission manager for Phoenix. The recipient of two NASA Exceptional Achievement Medals, Lewicki has an asteroid named in his honor: 13609 Lewicki. Chris holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aerospace engineering from the University of Arizona. At Planetary Resources, Mr. Lewicki is responsible for the strategic development of the company’s mission and vision, as well as engagement with customers and the scientific community. He also serves as technical compass and leads day-to-day operations.
Chris Pickett, President and CEO, Pelican Imaging
Christopher Pickett, president and CEO of Pelican Imaging, is a seasoned senior executive and business strategist in both private and public company environments. During his more than 20 years of experience, Chris has helped to drive adoption and create financial success for companies with technologies spanning semiconductor packaging, camera modules, LCD displays, cryptography and memory systems. Most recently, Chris was the senior vice president of corporate licensing for Rambus, where he was responsible for global technology and patent licensing and helped grow Rambus’ aggregate revenue more than 50 percent during his tenure. Chris was also the executive vice president of licensing at Tessera Technologies, bringing the company from startup phase to a successful mid-cap public company. During his tenure, Tessera was cited by Businessweek as the Second Hottest Growth Company in America and by Electronic Business as the Fourth Best Small Electronics Company in the US.
David Gerrold, Legendary science fiction writer, DG Media
David Gerrold wrote “The Trouble With Tribbles” episode of Star Trek while still in college. That episode is now considered the most popular episode of the most popular TV series in history. Gerrold followed that success with scripts for Star Trek: The Animated Series, Land of the Lost, The Twilight Zone and other hit TV series. He also wrote three books on writing, edited five anthologies and wrote over 40 novels, including the Hugo and Nebula nominees When HARLIE Was One and The Man Who Folded Himself. His autobiographical tale of his son’s adoption, The Martian Child won both of those awards and became the basis for the 2007 film, Martian Child, starring John Cusack and Amanda Peet. His alien-invasion series, The War Against the Chtorr, has become a cult classic. The fifth book in the series will be published before the end of 2014.
Eric Migicovsky, CEO, Pebble Technology
Eric Migicovsky is the founder and CEO of Pebble Technology, the company behind the Pebble watch, a smartwatch for iPhone and Android. While studying engineering at the University of Waterloo, Eric began building smartwatches alongside a group of friends and created the first model, inPulse. In April 2012, Eric and his team launched the second generation, Pebble, on the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform, where it became the most successful crowdfunded project in Kickstarter’s history. An engineer and entrepreneur, Eric is passionate about developing well-designed, creative products that integrate smoothly into daily life. He lives in Palo Alto where he and the rest of the Pebblers are busy working on the first watch built for the 21st century.
Erick Tseng, Product Manager, Facebook
Erick is a product manager at Facebook focusing on Facebook Wi-Fi and Facebook for Google Glass. He joined Facebook's mobile team in May 2010. Previously, Erick was at Google for four years, where he was the lead product manager for Android, overseeing product management for Google’s mobile operating system. He has also held various product management and engineering positions at Microsoft, Yahoo and the MIT Media Lab.
Jeff Branson, Education Outreach Coordinator, Sparkfun Electronics
Jeff grew up in a family where people built and fixed things themselves. This upbringing gave him an appreciation of being hands-on with technology. As a teen, Jeff worked in his father’s machine shop and was introduced to CNC tools at an early age. After a long stint working with middle and high school students in robotics programs, Jeff found a place in the Education Department at SparkFun. Jeff travels around the country teaching topics involving DIY and embedded computing. Much of his work is centered on the Arduino microcontroller and its uses in education. Jeff's traditional education is in welding, fabrication, machining and automation. He also has a lifelong interest in STEM topics and, in particular, robotics -- the opera of math, science and technology.
Jill Fehrenbacher, Editor-in-Chief, Inhabitat.com
Jill Fehrenbacher is a designer and the founder and editor-in-chief of Inhabitat.com -- a popular website dedicated to innovation in green design and clean technology. She created Inhabitat in 2005 as a way to catalog new and innovative ways to improve the world via forward-thinking, technology-driven and environmentally conscious design. In addition to running and editing Inhabitat, Jill consults and speaks widely on design innovation and has been cited in a variety of leading publications, including Wired, The New York Times, Metropolis Magazine and The Wall Street Journal. She studied architecture and design at Columbia University and Brown University and currently resides in New York City.
Joichi Ito, Director, MIT Media Lab
Joichi Ito is the director of the MIT Media Lab. He is a board member of the Sony Corporation, The New York Times Company, The MacArthur Foundation, The Knight Foundation, and Creative Commons, and a co-founder and board member of Digital Garage, an internet company in Japan. He is on board on a number of non-profit organizations including The Mozilla Foundation and WITNESS. He has created numerous internet companies including PSINet Japan, Digital Garage and Infoseek Japan and was an early stage investor in Twitter, Six Apart, Wikia, Flickr, Last.fm, Kickstarter, Path and other internet companies. He is the guild custodian of the World of Warcraft guild We Know (http://weknow.to/). He is a PADI IDC staff instructor, an emergency first responder instructor and a Divers Alert Network (DAN) instructor trainer.
Jono Bacon, Ubuntu Community Manager, Canonical, Ltd
Jono Bacon is a leading community manager, engineering manager, consultant and author. Currently he works as the Ubuntu Community Manager at Canonical, leading a team that grows, inspires and enthuses the global Ubuntu community; a community numbering the hundreds of thousands.Bacon is a prominent author and speaker on community management and best practice, and wrote the best-selling The Art of Community (O’Reilly), is the founder of the primary annual conference for community managers and leaders, the Community Leadership Summit, and is a regular keynote speaker at events about community management, leadership, and best practice.Bacon has provided community management consultancy for both internal and external communities for a range of organizations. This includes Deutsche Bank, Intel, SAP, Sony Mobile, Open Compute Project, IBM, Dyson, Mozilla, National Finishing Contractors Association, AlienVault, and others.
Julie Samuels, Staff Attorney and Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents, EFF
Julie Samuels is a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where she also holds the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents. Julie focuses on intellectual property issues, including patents, copyright and trademark. Before joining EFF, Julie litigated IP and entertainment cases in Chicago at Loeb & Loeb and Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal. Prior to becoming a lawyer, Julie spent time as a legislative assistant at the Media Coalition in New York and as an assistant editor at the National Journal Group in D.C. Julie earned her J.D. from Vanderbilt University and her B.S. in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Levar Burton, Actor, Director, Educator, co-founder, rrkidz
LeVar Burton has been capturing the attention of audiences and peers for over three decades. LeVar’s first career choice was not in the entertainment field. At 13, he entered a Catholic seminary to study for the priesthood. However, four years later, he decided on an acting career and accepted a full academic scholarship to the University of Southern California to pursue a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. LeVar’s first professional audition, at 19, led to his being cast as Kunta Kinte in the acclaimed miniseries Roots. LeVar is internationally known for his portrayal of Lt. Commander Geordi LaForge in the series Star Trek: The Next Generation. He served as host and executive producer of the highly acclaimed PBS children’s television series Reading Rainbow. In 2012, he launched the Reading Rainbow app, bringing one of the most cherished and revered children’s programs of all time into the new millennium.
Mark Frauenfelder, editor-in-chief, MAKE
Mark is a writer and illustrator living in Los Angeles. He co-founded bOING bOING magazine and MAKE, and was an editor at Wired from 1993-1998. For three years, he wrote a monthly column for Playboy called "Living Online," and was the co-editor of The Happy Mutant Handbook (Putnam-Berkley, 1995). He was also the design columnist for Mobile PC magazine and a contributing editor to TheFeature. He is a ukulele fanatic.
Michael Carroll, Professor of Law, American University Washington College of Law
Michael Carroll is a professor of law and director of the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at American University Washington College of Law. His research and teaching specialties are intellectual property law and cyberlaw, focusing on the search for balance over time in the face of challenges posed by new technologies. He is a founding member of Creative Commons, Inc., a global organization that provides standardized legal and technical tools that enable legal sharing of cultural, educational, scientific and other copyrighted works. In addition, he serves on the Board of Directors of the Public Library of Science, is an academic fellow of the Center for Democracy and Technology and is a member of the Advisory Board to Public Knowledge. He received his A.B. (anthropology), with general honors, from the University of Chicago and his J.D., magna cum laude, from the Georgetown University Law Center.
Michael Laine, President, LiftPort Group
Michael Laine is the President of LiftPort. Now being a president of a company sounds like a common job, however when you look at the company itself, one realizes this is not your average job. Having been called a troublemaker and never taking “No” for an answer has defined Michael. His motto is, “There is a profound difference between difficult, very, very hard and impossible!” As one can tell, he will never give up on his dream to build a space elevator. When he worked with NASA, he was on the team that was looking into building an elevator and when the funding ran out, Michael was there with the money to back up his dream. Even with the crash of the stock market and LiftPort having to shut its doors, Michael carried on and has restarted LiftPort with a successful Kickstarter campaign and a small, but growing team.
Michael Masnick, Editor and Founder, Techdirt and Floor64
Mike is the founder and CEO of Floor64, building up the core idea into reality and recruiting the management team. In addition to providing the strategic direction for the company, Mike oversees all editorial aspects of Floor64's public and customer sites. Mike's insights into the realms of business and technology are the basis for his frequent posts to the award-winning Techdirt blog. The widely followed, often-quoted blog was launched in 1997 and remains one of the top destinations online for discussions on the future of media, business models and policy. Mike is a sought-after conference keynote speaker, and regularly does executive briefings with C-level execs. He is also known for coining the term "The Streisand Effect," to describe how attempting to stifle speech online can serve to draw even more attention.
Oskar Kalmaru, Co-founder, Memoto
Oskar Kalmaru is the co-founder and chief marketing officer of Memoto, the Stockholm startup developing the world's smallest lifelogging camera. Oskar has a background in entrepreneurship and public relations. During studies at the Stockholm School of Economics, he founded two companies and was the chief executive officer of one of them, Netclips. During his time at Netclips, he launched Sweden's first online video community, Bubblare.se. As an experienced entrepreneur, Oskar is now preparing for the launch of Memoto, a wearable technology that will allow thousands of people to capture their lives and memories in a new way with the advent of the world's smallest lifelogging camera.
Pat Yongpradit, Director of Education, Code.org
Pat Yongpradit is the director of education for Code.org, where his goal is to bring computer science opportunities to every school and student in the US. He has spoken at multiple national conferences (ISTE, SIGCSE, CSTA, College Board, NBC's Education Nation); written and consulted on technology curricula at the local, state and national level; has been recognized as a Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Educator; and is featured in American Teacher: Heroes in the Classroom. As a high school computer science teacher, his passions included helping students create mobile games / apps for social causes and broadening participation in computer science among underrepresented groups. In addition to teaching computer science, he is certified in biology, physics, math, health and technology education. While he is currently not in a classroom, he will always be an educator.
Peter Molyneux, Creative Director, 22cans
Peter Molyneux is one of the best-known names in the international world of computer games. He co-founded Bullfrog Productions in 1987 and created a new genre of computer games, “the god game,” with the release of Populous. He also founded Lionhead Studios in 1996 and 22Cans in 2012. Peter has been responsible for a string of massive-selling games including Powermonger, Theme Park, Magic Carpet and Dungeon Keeper while at Bullfrog and, when at Lionhead, was responsible for titles such as Black & White, Black & White 2, Fable, Fable 2, Fable 3, The Movies and Fable: The Lost Chapters. He also launched Curiosity - What’s Inside the Cube, and is now working on Godus.
Phil Molyneux, President/ COO, Sony Electronics
Phil Molyneux is the president and chief operating officer of Sony Electronics Inc. He was appointed to the position in September 2010. In his role, Molyneux oversees the electronics business of Sony Corporation in the US. He is a 23-year veteran of Sony’s European electronics operation, where he most recently served as managing director of Sony Central and South East Europe. Molyneux led Sony’s entry into the computer peripheral retail market and played a pivotal role in its expansion into component supply for the mobile phone market. He joined Sony in 1987 as a sales engineer to develop untapped business for the semiconductor and component unit in the UK. Over the next 10 years -- in both sales and marketing positions -- he expanded the business across Europe, and led Sony to the No. 1 market share position in several related areas, including magnetic and optical drive technology.
Reggie Watts, Comedian/musician, reggiewatts.com
Comedian / musician Reggie Watts is a staple of the international performance scene. Reggie's improvised musical sets are created on the spot using only his formidable voice and a looping machine. No two songs are ever the same. An avowed "disinformationist," Reggie loves to disorient his audiences in the most entertaining way. As a solo performer, Reggie was handpicked by Conan O'Brien to open nightly on Conan's entire North American "Prohibited From Being Funny on Television" tour. On screen, Reggie has appeared on The Conan O'Brien Show, Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, HBO's The Yes Men Fix The World, Comedy Central's Michael and Michael Have Issues and Funny Or Die. As a musician, Reggie recorded the EP Pot Cookies, sang on Regina Spektor's "Dance Anthem of the ‘80s" and contributed two tracks to DFA Records' Spaghetti Circus. Also the frontman for Seattle rock outfit Maktub, Reggie and his band released five albums.
Rodrigo Arboleda, Chairman and CEO, One Laptop per Child Association
Rodrigo Arboleda Halaby is currently chairman and CEO for the One Laptop Per Child Association. Born in Medellín, Colombia, he completed his bachelor's degree in architecture at MIT in 1965 and was elected president of the Colombian Society of Architects in Medellín in 1975. He has worked with Nicholas Negroponte since 1982 on projects oriented toward bringing digital-age technologies to educational systems in developing nations.He has been a Board of Trustees member at the Save the Children Foundation (1995-2001), the 2B1 Foundation in Boston and the Give to Colombia Foundation in Miami (2004-Present). At the helm since May 2009 of the One Laptop Per Child Association, the operating arm of the OLPC project, he has structured a Miami-based marketing, sales and service organization that has delivered more than 2 million laptops to more than 35 countries and 21 languages worldwide.
Shayne McQuade, CEO / Founder, Voltaic Systems
Shayne McQuade is an entrepreneur with an interest in sustainable design and environmental protection. He is the founder and CEO of solar products company Voltaic Systems (www.voltaicsystems.com). The company was built on his design for a solar bag and is expanding into solar lighting, particularly for developing countries. He serves on the board of Life Edited, a design company with a focus on small living (www.lifeedited.com). He has also served on the board of TreeHugger, where he facilitated the acquisition by Discovery Communications. Similarly, as an adviser to Inhabitat, he negotiated the sale to Internet Brands. Prior to this, he participated in a number of internet startups either as founder, CEO or board member. Shayne qualified as a Chartered Accountant in Australia. He has an MBA from Columbia University, and has worked as a strategy consultant with McKinsey & Company in New York.
Shoneel Kolhatkar, Sr. Director of Product Planning, Samsung Telecommunications America
Sonny Vu, CEO and Founder, Misfit Wearables
Sonny Vu is the founder of Misfit Wearables, makers of highly wearable computing products, including the award-winning Shine, an elegant activity monitor. He's also the founder of AgaMatrix, makers of the world's first iPhone-connected hardware medical device (Red Dot & GOOD Design Awards). Sonny built AgaMatrix from a two-person startup to shipping 15-plus FDA-cleared medical device products, 1 billion-plus biosensors and 3 million-plus glucose meters for diabetics. He worked at Microsoft Research on machine learning / linguistic technologies, studied math (B.S.) at UIUC and linguistics (Ph.D.) under Noam Chomsky at MIT. He also knows a number of interesting languages and is a patron of good product design. Sonny believes an era of wearable computing is coming soon where UX design will be geared towards glanceable displays as well as non-visual modalities.
Stormy Peters, Director of Websites and Developer Engagement, Mozilla
Stormy Peters is director of Websites and Developer Engagement at Mozilla. She is passionate about open-source software and educates companies and communities on the business aspects of open source and how it's changing industries. In addition to Mozilla, Stormy is an advisor for HFOSS, IntraHealth Open and Open Source for America, as well as founder and president of Kids on Computers, a nonprofit organization setting up computer labs in developing countries. Stormy joined Mozilla from the GNOME Foundation, where she served as executive director. Previously, she worked at OpenLogic, where she set up the OpenLogic Expert Community. Stormy graduated from Rice University with a B.A. in computer science.
Timothy Jordan, Senior Developer Advocate, Google for Project Glass
Timothy is a senior developer advocate at Google working on Glass. He loves solving problems and believes in improving life through science and art.
Tomasz Finc, Director of Mobile, Wikimedia Foundation
Tomasz Finc is the director of Mobile and Special Projects at the Wikimedia Foundation. He's been at the foundation ever since it moved to San Francisco and has helped the organization grow from a nimble 10-person nonprofit to an 80-plus international organization. When not tinkering with open mobile technologies, he can be found rock climbing new challenges, training in aerial circus arts or traveling to engage with new volunteers.
The session content is determined internally, and we work tirelessly to find the right fit for our discussions. Our goal is to create a program that balances a wide range of topics and formats, while also maintaining diversity of subjects and speakers. If you or someone within your organization are interested in being part of the program, please complete this form to make a submission. We will reach out to you if the speaker and topic is of interest to our team and will fit within our planned programming.