Where 2.0 2011 Speakers

Jack is the founder and former CEO of Milo.com, which was acquired by eBay (EBAY) in December 2010. The idea to build a local shopping engine originated when Jack, then a junior at the Wharton School, went to buy a camera at a store in Philadelphia, only to be told that it was out-of-stock. The experience got him thinking about the potential for a local shopping search engine, one that could tell you which nearby stores currently had a product in-stock. Hence, Milo.com was born.

Jack always knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur. At age 12, he built some of comScore¹s (SCOR) first data extraction and processing mechanisms to help the company grow from three to 40 employees. His continuing interest in data... Read More.

Blaise Agüera y Arcas is the Architect of Bing Maps and MSN at Microsoft. He works in a variety of roles, from designer and coder to strategist, and he leads an Advanced Engineering team of researchers and engineers with strengths in social media, computer vision, and graphics. He joined Microsoft when his startup company, Seadragon, was acquired by Live Labs in 2006. Shortly after the acquisition of Seadragon, Blaise directed his team in a collaboration with Microsoft Research and the University of Washington, leading to the first public previews of Photosynth several months later. His TED talk on Seadragon and Photosynth in 2007 is still rated “most jaw-dropping” on ted.com.

Blaise has a broad background in computer science and applied math, and has... Read More.

Alasdair Allan is the author of Learning iPhone Programming and iPhone Sensor Programming published by O’Reilly Media. He is a senior research fellow in Astronomy at the University of Exeter, and as part of his work there he is building a distributed peer-to-peer network of telescopes which, acting autonomously, will reactively schedule observations of time-critical events. Alasdair also runs a small technology consulting business writing bespoke software, building open hardware and providing training. He sporadically writes blog posts about things that interest him, or more frequently provides commentary about them in 140 characters or less.

Sam Altman is co-founder and CEO of Loopt, a company that builds mobile applications to help people enjoy the friends, places, and events around you right now. Sam sees mobile location as completely transforming how people can and will communicate and consume content on their mobile devices. Since starting the company in 2005 while studying at Stanford University, Sam has consistently been recognized for his entrepreneurship. He was featured in Inc. Magazine’s Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30 and BusinessWeek’s Tech’s Best Entrepreneurs. As an early innovator in mobile location services, Sam joined Apple CEO Steve Jobs on stage at WWDC 2008, presenting Loopt as one of the first applications in the iPhone App Store. Sam has been a valuable source for many... Read More.

Alexa Andrzejewski is the founder of Foodspotting, a visual local guide that makes finding and sharing food recommendations as easy as snapping a photo. Foodspotting, an angel-backed startup, has received attention from the Techcrunch, Mashable, The Wall Street Journal and CNN blogs and was named one of Time Magazine’s 50 Best Websites of 2010.

Before launching Foodspotting in January 2010, Alexa was a User Experience Designer for Adaptive Path, where she helped both startups and established companies create great experiences that improve people’s lives. From redesigning MySpace to conducting the research that underlies the Palm Pre, Alexa has helped clients reimagine products from the ground up.

Following in the footsteps of Adaptive Path colleagues who’ve started their own UX-driven ventures, Alexa looks forward to... Read More.

Rob is currently the VP of Business Development for SimpleGeo. SimpleGeo provide tools and services that make it easy for developers to build location features and applications. During his time with SimpleGeo he and his team have work with hundreds of companies that are integrating location into their apps and web services. Rob previously was a Business Development lead for international telco/cable partnerships that included America Movil, Rogers and BT.

Rob is also a frequent advisor to early stage start-ups and currently is a strategic advisor to CloudCrowd, Liquor.com and Akkadian Ventures. He previously advised Frengo/Admarvel (acquired by Opera). You can follow Rob on Twitter @robmbailey. He has an MBA from MIT Sloan.

Alexandre Bayen received the Engineering Degree in applied mathematics from the Ecole Polytechnique, France, in July 1998, the M.S. degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University in June 1999, and the Ph.D. in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University in December 2003. He was a Visiting Researcher at NASA Ames Research Center from 2000 to 2003. Between January 2004 and December 2004, he worked as the Research Director of the Autonomous Navigation Laboratory at the Laboratoire de Recherches Balistiques et Aerodynamiques, (Ministere de la Defense, Vernon, France), where he holds the rank of Major. He has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley since January 2005, and an Associate Professor since 2010. He is the... Read More.

Tyler Bell is a geotechnologist with broad interests in open source and place-based information systems.

Recently named one of the top 50 most creative people in Business (Fast Company,) Genevieve Bell is an Intel Fellow and director of the Interaction and Experience Research Group within the Intel Labs.

Bell joined Intel in 1998 and has come to lead an R&D team of social scientists, interaction designers and human factors engineers to drive human-centric product innovation in Intel’s consumer electronics business. In this role, she is responsible for setting research directions, conducting comparative qualitative and quantitative research globally, leading new product strategy and definition, and championing consumer-centric innovation and thinking across the company.

Prior to joining Intel, Bell was a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University. She has written more than 30 journal articles and book chapters on... Read More.

Nathan Bennett is a Senior Technical Engineer at Esri who focuses on creating GIS web mapping demonstrations and prototypes.

Ben Berkowitz is the Founder/CEO of SeeClickFix a free web service that allows anyone to report local problems and collaborate to solve them. He is the founder of a neighborhood association district, the Upper State Street Association, and was named New Haven Town Green’s 2008 Collaborator of the Year.

Anne Bezancon is the Founder and President of Placecast, the leader in mobile location-based marketing at scale. Previously, Anne held senior executive positions at JiWire (Wi-Fi hotspot directory), Productopia (consumer advice), BEAP (CMS) and PCI (strategic consulting), working with clients such as AOL, Intel, Yahoo, Excite and ATT. In 1994, Anne organized the 40,000 participant Forum of the United Nations Conference on Women in Beijing, China, securing major corporate sponsorship from Apple and Hewlett-Packard. She also pioneered the French Minitel, the first large scale online network. Anne is the author of several patents and a frequent speaker and panelist at industry events.

Lukas Biewald is the founder and CEO of CrowdFlower. Founded in 2007, CrowdFlower provides Labor-on-Demand to help companies outsource high-volume, repetitive tasks to a massively-distributed global workforce.

Before founding CrowdFlower, Lukas was a senior scientist and manager within the Ranking and Management Team at Powerset, Inc., acquired by Microsoft in 2008. He led the Search Relevance Team for Yahoo! Japan after graduating from Stanford University with a B.S. in Mathematics and an M.S. in Computer Science. Recently, Lukas won the Netexplorateur Award for GiveWork – a collaboration with Samasource that brings digital work to refugees worldwide. Lukas is also an expert level Go player.

Nathan is the technical architect behind Airbnb. A pragmatist who translates vision and design into tangible product through fast iterations, Nathan uses data to identify and pursue high-growth opportunities. Under his leadership, the engineering team has developed a robust, secure marketplace which now facilitates a massive amount of commerce each day.

Nathan got an early start in business and technology when he founded an online marketing company while still in high school. Since then he has worked as a program manager at Microsoft, engineer at OPNET Technologies, and lead developer at Batiq. Nathan graduated with a degree in Computer Science from Harvard University.

Boris Bogatin founded NearVerse in late 2008 as a proximity Internet company and heads up the company as the CEO. NearVerse is the maker of LoKast, an instant social network for the physical world - allowing users to easily connect with others right next to them, share media, and jointly experience their physical settings. NearVerse uses its proximity platform to uniquely power LoKast and proximity Internet, leveraging 802.11 D2D tech and carrier networks in a unified system, to serve up the best-of-breed content delivery, location ID and proximity context, and other proximity functionality.

Previously, Boris helped start LightSquared and was the VP of Corporate Development and Technology Strategy for the company. Boris helped grow LightSquared from a $200 million company at its start... Read More.

Jessica Borak is a senior product manager at NAVTEQ. Jessica has over twenty years experience in the digital mapping industry where she has been involved in field data collection, production processes, technical customer support, and product management. Jessica has a BS in Geography from the University of California.

As an online travel industry veteran, former co-founder of discount online travel company Hotwire and former president of Expedia’s luxury travel company Classic Vacations, Inc., Gregg knows the ins and outs of booking and planning travel online. When he realized the rapidly growing number of online travel options and sites was beginning to conspire against his own attempts to easily plan trips, he knew that non-online-travel-experts must be having a heck of a time keeping it all straight. Thus the idea for TripIt took shape.

Prior to his work in the online travel industry, Gregg was a director at the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman and worked in the merchant banking group at Morgan Stanley & Company. Gregg received his MBA from Harvard... Read More.

Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist and User Experience Designer from Portland, Oregon. She studies the interaction between humans and computers and how our relationship with information is changing the way cultures think, act, and understand their worlds. Her main focus is on mobile software, augmented reality and data visualization, as these reduce the amount of time and space it takes for people to connect with information. Case founded Geoloqi.com, a private location sharing application, out of a frustration with existing social protocols around text messaging and wayfinding.

Case has spoken at various industry conferences including MIT’s Futures of Entertainment and Inverge: The Interactive Convergence Conference, Ignite Portland and Ignite Boulder. She presented an Introduction to Cyborg Anthropology at Webvisions 2009 and Keynoted... Read More.

Krissy Clark is an award-winning journalist and documentary-maker, with a passion for location-aware technologies and their power as storytelling tools. Clark is currently the Los Angeles Bureau Chief for KQED public radio, where she uncovers the people, places and events that make Southern California such a fascinating region or, in the words of Wernor Herzog, “a place of cultural substance.”

Clark has spent more than a decade covering public affairs, politics, the economy and the environment for outlets including APM, NPR, and the BBC. She is a frequent contributor to the business show Marketplace, where she covered the gulf oil spill and its economic implications. She is a former staff reporter and editor for the weekly syndicated show Weekend America.

In... Read More.

TOM COATES is a technologist and writer, focused on the shape of the web to come and on developing new products that thrive in it. He’s worked for many prominent companies including Time Out, the BBC, and Yahoo! where he was Head of Product for the Brickhouse innovation team. He’s most known for the Fire Eagle location-sharing service, and for his work on social software, future media and the web of data. He writes (sporadically) at plasticbag.org.

Chris Conley is the Technology & Civil Liberties Fellow at the ACLU of Northern California, where he focuses on the intersection of privacy, free speech, and emerging technology. His current focus is Demand Your dotRights, a multi-pronged campaign to upgrade practical and legal privacy protections to match our modern world. He holds degrees in both law (J.D., Harvard Law School) and technology (S.M. in Computer Science, M.I.T.; B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering, The University of Michigan) and combines those skills to explore ways that technology can be designed and utilized to provide social benefits while protecting individual rights. Prior to joining the ACLU of Northern California, he has worked as a research fellow with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, as a software... Read More.

Aaron Straup Cope is Canadian by birth, American by descent, North American by experience et Montréalais au fond. Aaron spent five years as a senior engineer at Flickr, focusing on all things mobile, geo and “machine tag” related, before leaving to join Stamen Design in 2009. Once upon a time, he was still a painter. Aaron does not normally speak in the third person.

Daniel Cousineau is an Interactive Software Engineer for RAPP Collins in Dallas, Texas. He is a jack of many trades, jumping from back-end PHP development to front-end JavaScript development and into the mobile space through jQuery Mobile and Palm WebOS.

Dennis Crowley is the Co-founder and CEO of foursquare. Previously, Dennis founded Dodgeball, one of the first mobile social services in the U.S., which was acquired by Google in 2005. He has been named one of the “Top 35 Innovators Under 35” by MIT’s Technology Review magazine (2005) and has won the “Fast Money” bonus round in the TV game show Family Feud (2009). His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Time Magazine and Newsweek. He is currently an Adjunct Professor at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP).

Dennis holds a master’s degree from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and a bachelor’s degree from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University.

Jack Dangermond is the founder and president of Esri. Founded in 1969 and headquartered in Redlands, California, Esri is widely recognized as the technical and market leader in geographic information system (GIS) software, pioneering innovative solutions for working with spatial data on the desktop, across the enterprise, in the field, and on the Web. Esri has the largest GIS software install base in the world with more than one million users in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide.

Dangermond fostered the growth of Esri from a small research group to an organization of over 2,900 employees, known internationally for GIS software development, training, and services.

Dangermond holds ten honorary doctorates from California Polytechnic University-Pomona, State University of New York at Buffalo, Technical University for... Read More.

Greg Dicum is a technologist and journalist (New York Times, The Economist). As the founder of MondoWindow, the first ever web property for the connected air traveler, Greg is using location to disrupt the $6 billion in-flight entertainment space.

Adam DuVander is the Executive Editor of ProgrammableWeb, the premier resource for open Web APIs. He is also the author of Map Scripting 101, a cookbook-style approach to creating geographic maps on the web using Yahoo, Bing and Google Maps.

Di-Ann lives in Palo Alto, by way of Portland, OR, Boston, NYC and Amsterdam. Di-Ann is a neogeography pioneer and serial entrepreneur employing all means to increase the world’s citizen mappers. Di-Ann functions as both Chairman of Platial <http: />, The People’s Atlas, and as VP Community Geographer at Waze <http: />. Waze is free crowd-sourced navigation and real-time traffic. Started in Israel and well past critical mass, Waze now has top quality map, navigation and traffic data in the country. Di-Ann is setting up US operations and crafting the cartography of “live mapping”.

Chairman Platial, Community Geographer Waze. Currently raising chickens, studying transactional cartography and real time data geo displays.

I run the engineering team at Etsy where we apply a surprising amount of sophisticated technology to the problem of selling hand made goods. Before that I was the architect at Flickr. That takes us back to pre-history.

Jyri is founder and CEO of Ditto, a new mobile communication app. Jyri cofounded Jaiku, which grew into the leading European microblogging service and was acquired by Google in 2007. At Google Jyri was Product Manager of mobile applications including Mobile Calendar and the Gmail Mobile client, and started up social products including Google Buzz, Google Profiles, and Google Latitude. Jyri is an advisor/angel investor in companies such as Applifier, Betabrand, and Mobclix. Before founding Jaiku Jyri was Senior Product Manager, Internet Handhelds at Nokia. A sociologist by training, he is noted for coining the term ‘social object’ to refer to photos, bookmarks, and other shareable Web content. He blogs at zengestrom.com.

I am currently founder/ceo of Closely, Inc.

past: founder/ceo of Local Maatters, Inc.; chairman/co-founder of Jabber Inc.; co-founder/president of MapQuest Publishing Group.

Bo Fishback is the founder and CEO of Zaarly, a proximity based, real-time, buyer powered market where buyers make an offer for an immediate need and sellers cash in on their local marketplace. If you’ve ever said, “I’d pay _ for __” then Zaarly is for you. If you’ve ever said “I want money”, well… you’re welcome.

Previously Bo was the President of Kauffman Labs and the Vice President of Entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation.

Brady Forrest is co-chair for O’Reilly’s Where 2.0. Additionally, he co-chairs Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and NYC. Brady writes for O’Reilly Radar tracking changes in technology. He previously worked at Microsoft on Live Search (he came to Microsoft when it acquired MongoMusic). Brady lives in Seattle, where he builds cars for Burning Man and runs Ignite. You can track his web travels at Truffle Honey.

Vanessa Fox, called a “cyberspace visionary” by Seattle Business Monthly, is an expert in understanding customer acquisition from organic search. She shares her perspective on how this impacts marketing and user experience and how all business silos (including developers and marketers) can work together towards greater search visibility at ninebyblue.com

She’s also an entrepreneur-in-residence with Ignition Partners and Features Editor at Search Engine Land. She previously created Google’s Webmaster Central, which provides both tools and community to help website owners improve their sites to gain more customers from search. Her book, Marketing in the Age of Google, provides a blueprint for incorporating search strategy into organizations of all levels.

Ben Fry runs a software and design consultancy in Cambridge, Massachusetts that focuses on understanding complex data. Fry received his doctorate from the Aesthetics + Computation Group at the MIT Media Laboratory, where his research focused on combining fields such as computer science, statistics, graphic design, and data visualization as a means for understanding information. With Casey Reas of UCLA, he develops Processing, an open source programming environment used by tens of thousands of students, artists, engineers, and scientists. At the end of 2007, he published “Visualizing Data” with O’Reilly. Fry’s personal work has shown at the Whitney Biennial, the Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His information graphics have also illustrated articles for the journal... Read More.

I fix problems.

Matt Galligan, 25, is the CEO and Co-Founder of SimpleGeo, based out of Boulder, CO that provides a ready-to-use location infrastructure for app developers. He previously founded Socialthing, a company that was chosen to be part of the inaugural year of TechStars. Socialthing.com went into private beta in March, 2008 at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. The company was acquired five months later by AOL. Socialthing was later rebranded as AOL Lifestream.

Matt currently resides in Boulder, CO and is an active member of the startup community there.

Marc René Gardeya is founder and CEO of Hoppala, the content platform for mobile augmented reality applications. Most popular recent projects include the “Berlin Wall 3D” and several international marketing campaigns. Hoppala is the only agency certified by all three major mobile augmented reality platforms: Layar, Junaio and Wikitude.

Marc has a master in mathematics and computer science and has been working in the field of software engineering and web applications for more than 15 years.

Mike Ghaffary joined Yelp in October 2010 as the Director of Business Development. Prior to Yelp, Mike was the Director of Business Development at TrialPay, where he led partnerships with Facebook and a variety of other companies. Before that, he was the co-founder and VP of Business Development at Stitcher, and VP at Summit Partners. He is also co-founder of BarMax and previously worked at the Boston Consulting Group and MSC Software. Mike holds a BS in Computer Science and a BA in Political Science from the University of Southern California, a JD from Harvard Law School, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Francoise Gilbert is the Founder and Managing Director of the IT Law Group (www.itlawgroup.com), a niche law firm that focuses on information privacy and security, cloud computing, and data governance. Francoise is also the author and editor of the two-volume treatise Global Privacy and Security Law (www.globalprivacybook.com) (WoltersKluwer Publishers), which analyses the data protection laws of 60-plus countries on all continents. She was rated as one of the top privacy advisers in the Computerworld “Best Privacy Advisers” list published in January 2011. For several years, she has been recognized by the prestigious Chambers USA and Chambers Global, as one of the leading lawyers in the field of information privacy and security. Chambers describes her as “superb on international issues.” She has also been selected... Read More.

Adam Goldstein was a co-founder of BookTour with Chris Anderson. He was the youngest author ever at O’Reilly, writing AppleScript: The Missing Manual at 16. He graduated from MIT in 2010 with degrees in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering, and was North American Debating Champion in 2010. Adam lives in San Francisco, and is co-founder and CEO of the travel search site Hipmunk.

Building on a passion for both computer science, sociology and art, Julia received her Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill with Honors. She went on to compete her Master of Science in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2007, focusing on communication and collaboration in online communities.

She joined IBM Research - Almaden in 2006, specializing in creating visualizations for large datasets of unstructured information. She went on to design and built innovative user interfaces and applications for a wide range of domains including healthcare, finance and government. In 2008 Julia joined the USER (User Sciences and Experience Research) group at Almaden, focusing on social and collaborative software. Her... Read More.

Jacek is the Co-Founder of Badger a location based social picture sharing platform that groups content around interest.

He has extensive experience in marketing, business model design, strategy formulation, implementation & planning from his time at Survival Guide Media; he was directly responsible for the creation of a joint mid cap property fund initiative for the City of New York and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

He is the founder of the entrepreneurship resource website f3fundit and is the co-creator of the “Next Top Startup” global entrepreneurship competition. He currently resides in New York and is the COO of Mobile Location Based startup Badger

Jacek holds a MBA from the ESADE Business School in Barcelona, and an... Read More.

Jason Grigsby was one of the project leads on the Obama iPhone Application and helped design the user inferface for the Wall Street Journal’s Blackberry application. He founded and organizes Mobile Portland, a local mobile group.

Jason is a co-founder of Cloud Four, a small start-up focused on mobile and web development. He blogs at CloudFour.com and provides a frequent updates about mobile on Twitter.

Bernie works on Python related projects for 10gen and MongoDB. Previously he worked at Cisco Systems as a core developer on IronPort Security appliances. He has a BS in Computer Science from the University of Maryland.

Vice President, Services Nokia

Michael Halbherr leads the Services Product Development at Nokia. In this role, he is responsible for defining the services product strategy and proposition to create and deliver superior experiences for consumers. Before joining Nokia in 2006, Michael worked for the Boston Consulting Group and at europatweb, the Internet investment vehicle of Groupe Arnault, overseeing all technology investments, including gate5. After that, Michael headed gate5 AG, the former leading supplier of mapping, routing and navigation software and services, for five years. Since the acquisition of gate5 by Nokia, Michael has been heading the location based experiences at Nokia, and, most recently, the Ovi Experience unit. Michael holds a PhD in Computer Science from MIT and a Masters in Electrical Engineering from... Read More.

Brenna Hanly leads Mullen’s dedicated mobile practice. Mullen is a full service ad agency in Boston. As Mobile Catalyst, she serves to evangelize mobile throughout the agency, understand the ever-changing mobile canvas and develop innovative mobile strategies for clients. Mullen has embraced the mobile space for the past couple years, building award winning campaigns for clients such as Timberland, Foxwoods, Ernst & Young, Bose and Stanley. Brenna serves as a guest columnist for Mobile Marketer and was recently named one of their Mobile Women to Watch in 2011.

Mary Haskett is a co-founder and President of Tactical Information Systems (TIS), a company developing a unique approach to biometric matching as an Internet cloud-based service, allowing the use of this technology in a wide variety of new consumer applications. She drives the business strategy and marketing direction, as well as manages the day-to-day operations of the business. Tactical Information Systems is her third venture.

In 1998, Ms. Haskett founded HCI Training, Inc., an Austin, Texas-based training development company she ran profitably until it was acquired by Ideal Innovations, Inc. in 2007. HCI Training was also bootstrapped and growth was funded through revenue.

After the acquisition by Ideal Innovations in 2007, Ms. Haskett was asked to stay on as the Vice President of... Read More.

Babak Hedayati, CEO of MobiLife (the makers of MyTymz, DeHood, Vyoom and other successful apps) has over 20 years of high-tech experience in LBS, gaming, social networking and software. Before MobiLife, he served as CEO of Vsolay/DemosOnDemand.com and prior to that he was SVP of worldwide marketing & applications at Cypress Semi-Conductor. Babak holds a BS-EE from SJSU, is a graduate of Harvard Business School Advanced Management and has attended the Stanford Business School AEA Entrepreneurial Program.

Christof Hellmis has a track record of more than 13 years experience in Research & Development, Consulting, Management and investing in media- and software-related technology areas. He currently serves as Director, Navigation & Context Services Platform in Nokia´s Services & Software Business Group, for Nokia. On top of Nokia’s context platform Nokia Maps, the world’s leading hybrid mapping and navigation service is being developed and operated. Christof Hellmis joined Nokia in 2006 and is located in Berlin. Prior to joining Nokia, Christof Hellmis took the position of Chief Operating Officer at gate5 AG where he helped to grew gate5’s navigation and mapping software business and built a strategic partnership with Nokia´s Multimedia devision. He also served as Manager, Case leader and Consultant with the Boston... Read More.

Christine Herron is a Director with Intel Capital and a Venture Advisor at 500 Startups. Previously, Christine was a Principal with First Round Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm, and a Director at Omidyar Network, where she developed the Media practice strategy. Prior to Omidyar Network, Christine held operational roles with Mission Research, NetObjects, and Microsoft, and was the founder and CEO of Mercury2. She started as an investor with Geocapital Partners, where she funded early Internet and network infrastructure businesses including Netcom and AXON Networks. Christine earned degrees from both Stanford University and Columbia University.

With over two decades of experience in the mobile market is an industry visionary and the chief of innovation at Location Labs –- he specializes in launching massively scalable software implementing advanced algorithms. Prior to Location Labs, he was a lead architect at Silicon Graphics, Inc. where he spearheaded numerous enhancements to the SGI Irix operating system.

Scott was also a lead architect at the United States Department of Defense, where he implemented data mining and machine learning algorithms in Internet security and traffic modeling applications.

He has published in a wide range of disciplines from discrete mathematics and elementary particle theory to analytical chemistry and geo-physics. He has also at worked at three Department of Energy National Laboratories, including the National Institute of... Read More.

Tara is the cofounder and CEO of Buyosphere.com, author of The Whuffie Factor, (published in 8 languages) and public speaker who explains how the social web is changing the customer/business relationship. She also spends an inordinate amount of time on social networks.

Kathryn Hurley recently joined Google as a Developer Programs Engineer for Fusion Tables. In this role, she helps spread the word about Fusion Tables by presenting at conferences and developer events. She recently worked on Google’s 2010 U.S. Election Ratings gadget. She received an MS in Web Science from the University of San Francisco and a BS in Genetics from the University of California, Davis. Prior work experience includes research in mobile and peer-to-peer computing.

Jason Jacobs is the Founder & CEO of RunKeeper, a mobile fitness platform for runners that incorporates a unique blend of tracking, sharing, , and coaching to enable runners to get motivated, stay motivated, and improve their results over time.

RunKeeper built one of the first 200 apps on the iPhone, which has been downloaded millions of times and was named a top 10 iPhone app of 2009 by TIME Magazine. They continue to expand onto additional smartphone platforms and devices, and have a big, engaged, passionate userbase on the web at www.runkeeper.com

Prior to founding RunKeeper, Jason worked for 10 years in VC-backed technology companies, always longing for the day when he could start his own. He holds an MBA... Read More.

Daniel Jacobson is the Director of Engineering for the API at Netflix, responsible for delivering Netflix content to hundreds of devices. Prior to Netflix, he was Director of Application Development at NPR, leading the development of NPR’s custom content management system. He also created NPR’s API which became the distribution channel for getting NPR content to mobile platforms, member station sites throughout the country as well as to the public developer community.

Director of New Media Bill Jensen drives all content, development and social media for Village Voice Media (VVM), a chain of 14 city-specific websites (e.g., LA Weekly, Village Voice, Miami New Times, SFWeekly) and national blogs (e.g., Topless Robot) that has quadrupled in traffic since winter of 2007. After earning a BA from Boston University and a Master’s degree from the University of Kansas, Jensen played professional roller hockey and painted houses while writing and producing his hockey fight zine. The Fight Card was spotted by the Village Voice, which assigned him a story for the first issue of its Long Island edition. He rose through the editorial ranks, before moving on to help launch the Long Island Press weekly as managing editor, where he... Read More.

Dave is co-founder and CTO of Nitobi Inc, a Vancouver-based software development company that created the PhoneGap open source framework for cross-platform mobile app development. He holds a BASc in Electrical Engineering (UBC) and a PhD in Solid State Physics from London’s Imperial College. Dave has presented at various conferences, including CommunityOne, The Ajax Experience, XTech and JavaOne. He is a co-author of “Enterprise Ajax” and has written for numerous journals and magazines including JavaWorld.com, Adobe Developer Center and XML.com.

Colleen Jones is the author of Clout: The Art and Science of Influential Web Content. She has led interactive strategy for Fortune 500 companies such as InterContinental Hotels Group and Cingular Wireless (now AT&T) as well as for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the most trusted government agency in the United States.

As principal of the award-winning consultancy Content Science, Colleen helps executives and practitioners make their web content influence results. Colleen is a veteran of the interactive industry, a participant in the first ever Content Strategy Consortium, and the founder of Atlanta Content Strategy. She has spoken about the value of influential web content at conferences everywhere from Phoenix, Arizona to Paris, France.

Tim Jones is the Director of Web Communications at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC., where he leads NC State’s implementation of a custom suite of location-based services in partnership with TriOut NC. Tim has spoken at national and local conferences about how location-based services connect people to places, places to people, and people to people in places—largely through content.

Tim has worked in higher education for the past nine years. He has been a writer, editor of all sorts, programmer, producer, photographer, information architect, content strategist, manager, director and a slew of other things as part of university web, creative, marketing, and communications teams. Tim now directs NC State’s web strategy, from the central web presence to the furthest reaches of social and... Read More.

Tilman leads development of the JavaME Location API and Qt Location API at Nokia. From Technical University of Berlin Tilman receipt a Diploma degree in Informatics. In parallel he worked in the area of business software development with a focus on .net, Mono and JS. Since 2009 Tilman designs and develops Nokia Location APIs - first for web, afterwards for desktop and mobile platforms.

Nathaniel Vaughn Kelso has worked at The Washington Post since 2005. He creates maps and programs interactive graphics for the print and online editions in a deadline-driven journalism environment. He is also project manager and chief evangelist for NaturalEarthData.com, a free source of world vector and raster GIS maps. Nathaniel was lured to DC as an intern and, later, staff cartographer at National Geographic Maps where he researched wall maps and collaborated on the 8th edition Atlas of the World. He has won multiple awards from North American Cartographic Information Society and the Society of Newspaper Design.

Dev Khare is Vice President at Venrock, a premier venture capital firm with offices in Palo Alto, New York, Cambridge, MA, and Israel. Dev focuses on software, Internet and mobile investments. He sits on the board at Lavante, SlideShare and TurnHere; and observes on the boards of Redbeacon and BillFloat. Dev previously co-founded Covigo, a mobile application server company, acquired by Symbol Technologies. He blogs at NextWala.com and is on Twitter @dkhare. Dev holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS Computer Science and BS Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Rich is VP R&D for LivingSocial. Rich is leading LivingSocial’s efforts to dominate the local commerce marketplace through technological innovation. Rich, previously CEO and Co-Founder of InfoEther, also co-founded Ruby Central, a non-profit promoting Ruby and its community. Prior to InfoEther, Rich was CTO & Co-Founder of Roku Technologies. In his 20 years as a software technologist, he has been a CEO, CTO, sales engineer, designer, consultant and a systems security manager in the Air Force at the Pentagon.

Alex is the CTO and sole programmer for Tactical Information Systems (TIS). TIS is building a cloud-based platform for biometric matching, to allow for the rapid development of a wide variety of consumer biometric applications. Our first product is WanderID, a web-based solution using face matching to identify people with cognitive disabilities who cannot identify themselves.

Alex was an Air Force officer for 12 years, primarily working in R&D. In the past 5 years, he developed numerous biometric applications deployed in the Middle East, and traveled extensively to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Jordan.

Charlie Kim serves as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Next Jump, Inc. Mr. Kim founded Next Jump in 1994. He worked in the Information Technology and Human Resources groups of Morgan Stanley in New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo from 1995 to 1997. He returned to Boston in April 1997 to grow the business full-time. To grow Next Jump from a one-person operation to a multi-layered corporation, he raised millions in independent investments from Wall Street’s most influential players. He graduated with Honors from Tufts University in 1995, where he earned a B.S. in Computer Science and a B.A. in Quantitative Economics.

Brian is president of Pure Oxygen Mobile, a marketing consultancy he founded to help brands overcome the challenges of optimizing mobile campaign conversion across mobile search, social, and display advertising. An Internet entrepreneur, innovator, and veteran of search marketing, Brian previously co-founded and lead SEO-firm Netconcepts to acquisition by Covario in 2010, and developed award-winning Search and Mobile SaaS optimization technology used by brands like Zappos, HSN, Yahoo, Cabela’s, and Discovery. Brian’s a columnist for Search Engine Land’s Mobile Search Column, and speaks at industry conferences like SMX, AdTech, SES, eMetrics, and Shop.org. Follow Pure Oxygen on the PO2 blog or at @PureO2Mobile.

Kris Kolodziej is the Associate Director of LBS at Verizon Wireless, driving various LBS programs and initiatives, including Verizon’s LBS Developer Platform, NavBuilder. Kris has been in the LBS field for about a decade, during which he was responsible for research, technology engineering and business innovation for Silicon Valley startups as well as large organizations. Before joining Verizon Wireless, he was the CTO of Spime Inc. Kris has authored the highly anticipated book: “Local Positioning Systems: LBS Services and Applications.” Kris holds graduate degrees from MIT.

@raffi is the lead at Twitter’s Platform Services team, the custodians of Twitter’s core logic. Previously, he managed the Platform’s API as well as being the one of those behind Twitter’s Geospatial APIs. Before Twitter he used to create technologies to help people frame their personal energy consumption against global energy production, and also ran a consulting company building off-the-wall projects. At one point, he used to teach at NYU’s ITP and spent way too much time as a student at MIT and the MIT Media Lab.

Tod E. Kurt is co-founder of ThingM, a ubiquitous computing device studio based in San Francisco and Pasadena and is creator of BlinkM, the popular Smart LED prototyping device. Tod is a contributor to MAKE magazine, the author of “Hacking Roomba”, an active member in the Arduino community, and co-founder of the Los Angeles hackerspace Crash Space. His past work includes being the original systems architect of GoTo.com, the first public pay-per-click search engine, and a researcher in Yahoo Research Lab. Before that, Tod was a hardware, software, and firmware engineer working on robotic camera systems that went to Mars.

Scott brings 12 years of experience building technology, developing business strategy and leading engineering teams with companies like Amazon.com, Rulespace, JanRain and now Urban Airship. Urban Airship builds messaging and content delivery solutions for mobile publishers. Scott was the co-founder of the Open Source Lab helping open source projects like Mozilla, Linux, Apache, Drupal grow into mainstream usage. Scott was an active supporter of open web standards having co-founded the OpenID and Open Web Foundations. He currently lives in Portland, OR.

Kam Lasater is cofounder and Chief Strategy Officer of SeeClickFix. Previously, he was a software and data architect for Higher One, where he helped the company scale to 2-plus million users. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon in 2003 with a BS in Computer Engineering. He and his inner geek are fascinated with internet scale computing.

As the deputy director of the IAB’s Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence, Joe Laszlo plays a key role furthering the Center’s mission to grow the mobile interactive industry. Laszlo manages many of the IAB’s mobile standardization, best practices, research, and educational projects; provides guidance and advice for both buyers and sellers of mobile media; and oversees the IAB’s Mobile Committee and Tablet Task Force.

Laszlo served as the IAB’s director of research from Sept. 2007 through December 2010, a role in which he oversaw a variety of projects meant to illuminate the value of online advertising to a variety of stakeholders. He also managed the IAB Mobile Committee for much of that time. During his IAB career, Laszlo has... Read More.

Jennie is a product manager at Google in Mountain View. She was previously the founder of a web 2.0 startup in the UK which focused on getting quantitative intelligence from free-form text published on social media—collective intelligence meets natural language processing.

Jennie holds two Computer Science degrees from the University of Cambridge and left a promising Ph.D. there to pursue her startup ambitions. She first got sucked into the new media world while working as a blogger for AOL Weblogs Inc and has since spoken at various events in the UK including TechCrunch’s Realtime Christmas Crunch.

Jennie gets excited by data, information overload, making meaning from chaos and social games.

This talk is about work done by Jennie outside of her role at Google.

David Levine is the CEO of Geostellar, a big-data geomatics platform computing the precise solar power potential of every rooftop, lot and field in the nation.

Mr. Levine previously founded Gamebryo, the leading platform for 3D game development, and served as Vice President, Business Development for Lanworth, a natural resource intelligence company, Vice President, Geospatial Solutions for the James W. Sewall Company, where he led the operating unit responsible for GIS, enterprise systems engineering and integration, cadastral dataset production and forest cover-type mapping, and Senior Vice President for Imagetree, a LiDAR-based forest inventory platform.

In the 80’s he fronted the band Senator Flux.

Alex runs the mobile and tablet advertising product group at Yahoo!. His team is responsible for driving mobile support across the Yahoo! advertising ecosystem, delivering amazing ad experiences that compliment our mobile audience properties and developing the global marketplace for mobile & tablet media. Prior to joining the advertising team Alex drove the mobile platform at Yahoo! to help the company support web and app experiences on more than 5,000 different mobile devices.

Alex has spent the last 15 years in mobile - specializing in browsers, messaging and carrier services as an engineer, architect and founder of several start-ups. Initially from the United Kingdom Alex moved to the Bay Area in 2008 with his wife and four children.

bizdev & partnerships @foursquare, working between San Francisco and New York.

Tom is a GIS developer at Development Seed, a strategic consultancy that specializes in building maps, data visualizations, and open source tools for international development agencies. He is a lead architect of Development Seed’s open source mapping stack that combines Mapnik, Cascadenik, OpenLayers, and some other open source tools for use online, and is the lead developer behind TileLive, a dynamic tile rendering toolset that provides fast, non-Flash interactive maps.

Tom works closely with the mapping team on the development of MapBox, a suite of open source tools that make beautiful custom maps and host them in the cloud, TileMill, an open source map editor that makes it easy to design and generate beautiful custom map tiles without GIS software... Read More.

Chris is SCVNGR’s SVP and Chief Brand Alchemist. That means he’s in charge of using SCVNGR’s unique mobile gaming engine to turn brands into social engagement and awareness gold. More scientifically, that means that he deconstructs brands into their base matter, mixes them with fun mobile technology and powerful game dynamics, and produces awesome location-based social-media campaigns. Chris has deployed SCVNGR for organizations like Coke, Buffalo Wild Wings, National Geographic, GameStop and the Boston Celtics.

Prior to joining the SCVNGR team, Chris led sales, marketing and business development teams at juggernauts like Rightmedia Yahoo!, Informatica and salesforce.com. As SVP of sales at Informatica, he saw the company through its NASDAQ initial public offering; later at salesforce.com he led... Read More.

John Malloy, Partner, co-founded BlueRun Ventures in 1998 and brings over 25 years of experience in early stage venture and technology. John enjoys working with early stage companies and entrepreneurs as they chart their strategy and launch their products. John has successfully invested in a broad spectrum of technologies and services including companies such as Paypal (EBAY), Bitfone (HP), Slide (GOOG) and Pogo.com (ERTS). Today, John focuses on early stage opportunities particularly in mobile software and consumer internet. Some of John’s current investments include Chomp, Topsy, and Waze.

Prior to starting the firm, John spent more than 15 years in management and executive roles at Nokia, MCI and a communications services start-up. He holds a J.D. from George Mason School of Law and a... Read More.

Mano joined Google’s Geo API team in 2006. He helps people all over the world develop and deploy their content in KML and Google Maps, working with large companies, small startups, and international aid organizations. Before coming to Google, Mano had an eclectic career that involved getting a Masters in History, a Masters in Information Management and Systems, and working as a data manager in social service and public benefit organizations for over a decade.

360 Cities blankets the whole world in beautiful 360º photography. We are happy to discuss partnership with both small and large companies who seek to better visualize popular locations throughout the world and who would benefit from 360 Cities’ platform, content, and imaging technologies.

Jeffrey Martin is the founder of 360cities.net and is an acknowledged leader of the global panoramic photographer community. These days he splits his time between managing the evolution of Panomonkey.com and creating astonishingly large “Gigapixel Panoramas” such as the world’s largest 360º panorama, London 80 Gigapixels and the world’s largest interior photo .

Jeffrey will be launching Panomonkey.com at the Where 2.0 Launch Sessions on Wednesday April 20 at 14:10. Panomonkey is an online panorama stitcher, allowing... Read More.

Steve is the Co-Founder of GroupMe. Previously, he was a Lead Software Engineer at Gilt Groupe. Before joining Gilt, Steve was the founder of Sympact Technologies, a startup focused on developing dynamic images for real-time email marketing. Steve also founded Bandwith.us, a friends and family ticketing platform for Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits and nationally touring acts. Steve graduated from Carnegie Melon University in 2004 with a B.S. in Information Systems. With a penchant for non-profits and community activism, Steve serves as a technical advisor to Headcount.

Dave is a consumer-focused inventor specializing in mobile, convergence and digital entertainment. He has worked at the startup stages of projects like boxee, Slingbox and is an inventor of the CueCat consumer bar code reader. Always tinkering, he has 65 U.S. patents granted and has appeared as a technology expert or host on some 300 television shows. Dave has written for PC Mag, is a founding contributor of O’Reilly’s MAKE and other consumer-tech outlets as well as industry publications. Dave is Founder and CEO of NeuAer, a mobile platform that enables any smartphone to automate aspects of your digital life from whom or what is detected in it’s physical space.

Marissa leads Google’s efforts on search products - web search, images, news, books, products, maps, - and other consumer-facing initiatives such as iGoogle, Google Earth, Google Chrome, and more. Her contributions have included designing and developing Google’s search interface, internationalizing the site to over 100 languages, and launching more than 100 features and products on Google.com. Several patents have been filed on her work in artificial intelligence and interface design. Google’s first female engineer, Marissa joined in 1999 and led the user interface and web server teams at that time.

Concurrently with her full-time work at Google, Marissa has taught introductory computer programming classes at Stanford University, where she earned both her B.S. in Symbolic Systems and her M.S. in Computer Science. Stanford has recognized... Read More.

Mike Mayo is the mobile apps developer for Rackspace. He built the Rackspace Cloud and Slicehost mobile apps, and he’s currently managing the OpenStack Client projects for the web, iPhone, iPad, and Android platforms. He also regularly contributes to various open source projects in the cloud and mobile spaces. When Mike’s not coding, he’s hard at work with his smoker perfecting his skills in the art and science of barbecue.

Duncan McCall is the CEO and Co-Founder of PlaceIQ. PlaceIQ is turning ‘location into context’. Extracting intelligence and meaning from the ever increasing mass of location specific data being created, enabling an understanding of a hyper local location like never before. Empowering advertisers, marketers and more to connect the right message with the right location, at the right time…

Duncan has played pivotal roles in a number of startups, including Founder and CEO of PublicEarth - a venture backed consumer internet business with the goal of enabling and empowering users of location aware devices. Prior prior to this he led the operational and system build of a retail organization from one location, into a multi state, 20 plus location retail enterprise – whilst... Read More.

Patrick Meier is the Director of Crisis Mapping at Ushahidi and the co-founder of the International Network of Crisis Mappers. He previously co-founded and co-directed Harvard University’s (HHI) Program on Crisis Mapping and Early Warning. He has consulted for many international organizations including the UN, OSCE and OECD on numerous crisis mapping and conflict early warning projects in Africa, Asia and Europe. Patrick is a recognized expert and thought leader on the intersection between new technologies, early warning, civil resistance, human rights and humanitarian response. He has written extensively on these topics and has presented his work at numerous high-profile conferences worldwide. Patrick is also completing his PhD at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University... Read More.

Michael Metcalf represents product management for the Yahoo! User Location team. Michael has a decade of product experience in geo-fencing, location-based services, geospatial, geo-informatics, and geo-targeting. Previously, Michael worked at the CIA’s venture capital firm In-Q-Tel (an early investor in Keyhole and MetaCarta), founded a geospatial social networking web site, and led a web and data team at Corporate Executive Board. Michael holds an MBA from NYU Stern and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon.

Mitchell is the Product Manager for the Google Maps API and Google Places API, based in Sydney, Australia. Prior to joining Google 5 years ago he worked in support and development roles at Sun Microsystems Inc. in the U.K. and U.S.A.

Kiran, a Founder of Unsocial, brings over ten years experience in technical marketing, sales and project management experience to the Unsocial team. Unsocial is a product of Apptango where Kiran is the Founder and Technology Director. Apptango is a mobile application development firm based in Seattle, WA. Prior to Apptango, Kiran was a Founder and Creative Director at The Blue Mango, and served as the VP of Strategic Development at Strix Systems. Kiran is frequently sought out for his opinions, advice and expertise in the arena of outsourcing web and product development teams overseas. Kiran holds an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School of Management and degrees in computer science and cost accounting from the University of Pune, India.

Danny Moon is the co-founder and CEO of UpNext, an interactive 3D mapping platform for mobile devices. The UpNext mapping platform is used by companies such as the NFL and NY Times and powers the award winning app, UpNext 3D Cities. Danny runs the business operations for UpNext. Danny holds a Master’s degree from Columbia Business School and a Bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley.

Ted Morgan co-founded Skyhook in 2003 to capitalize on the increasing demand for location-based services. Prior to founding Skyhook, Mr. Morgan was the VP of Marketing for edocs Inc., a provider of customer self-service solutions that was sold to Siebel Systems in January 2005 and worked in Product Management for Open Market, one of the early leaders of the e-commerce revolution. Prior to the technology industry, he spent four years in financial services. Mr. Morgan holds an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Georgetown University and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Marc leads the team that creates and operates the various programs and services that support individuals and companies that develop enterprise and/or consumer solutions using the NAVTEQ map®, including any related products and services. In addition, Marc’s team engages with key technical and strategic partners to accelerate development by providing choices in geospatial platform tools, business channels, value-added technologies and alternative content.

Marc joined NAVTEQ from Nokia, where he was the head of developer programs, based primarily at Nokia’s corporate headquarters in Espoo, Finland. While there he launched several developer and partner offerings, including Forum Nokia PRO. Prior to joining Nokia, Marc was with Motorola for several years, having worked in the mobile devices, cellular infrastructure, enterprise and semiconductor business sectors. Prior... Read More.

Srinivas Narayanan is an engineering manager on the Facebook Product Engineering team where he focuses on Facebook Places. He helped launch a number of different products at Facebook including Places, Profile Connections and Community Pages, Usernames, and several new versions of Pages. Prior to Facebook, he worked on database systems research at IBM Almaden Research Center and on enterprise software at Tavant Technologies. He has a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India.

Jan is a Product Manger for Location API at Nokia. He has started to develop for mobile devices (Windows CE 3.0) in 2000. Jan has a Diploma in IT science 2004 and since then has worked for multiple global players in mobile media (images, sound, video) and mobile gaming. Since 2008 Jan works for Nokia in Web APIs for Desktop and mobile, and sice 2010 is a Product Manager & Architect for Ovi Maps API

Max Ogden is a civic web and open government developer from Portland, OR but is currently operating as a Code for America fellow in San Francisco. In Portland, Max built a data interface between regional governments and community developers in the form of PDXAPI. With Code for America, Max is working on opening up as much government data as possible.

Mok is the Chief Innovation Officer at Where Inc. He is also the Founder and Board Member of EveryScape Inc.

I’ve been in the automotive industry, professionally, for the last 8 years utilizing digital technology to help accomplish the objectives of my organizations. I was integral in developing the digital sales strategy for Manheim’s Online Vehicle Exchange (OVE) and worked as a dealer consultant with Izmo Cars on website best practices, digital conversions and digital marketing campaigns. Currently, I’m the Manager of Digital Product Strategy at R. L. Polk, helping to leverage our data through all marketing channels for a truly integrated targeted marketing strategy for automotive clients.

I have a B.S. in Business Administration from Northern Arizona University and an M.S. in Integrated Marketing Communications from Eastern Michigan University

Nicole A. Ozer is the Technology and Civil Liberties Policy Director at the ACLU of Northern California. She works on the intersection of new technology, privacy, and free speech and is spearheading the organization’s new online privacy campaign, Demand Your dotRights.

Nicole graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College, studied comparative civil rights history at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and earned her J.D. with a Certificate in Law and Technology from Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California Berkeley.

Before joining the ACLU, Nicole was an intellectual property attorney at Morrison & Foerster LLP. Nicole was recognized by San Jose Magazine for being one of 20 “Women Making a Mark” in Silicon Valley. Nicole blogs regularly at... Read More.

Adarsh Pallian is the Co-founder and CEO of Geotoko, a location-based marketing and platform. Adarsh is a serial entrepreneur with over twelve years of experience as a software engineer and UXP designer. Previously, Adarsh co-founded Chart.ly (acquired by Stocktwits) and Tweetizen . Adarsh began his career by founding Pallian Creative, an interactive digital agency based in Vancouver with clients that included Starbucks, Sony Music and Music World Entertainment.

Mike works on distributed geodata storage at SimpleGeo.

Before that, he spent 3 years at Yahoo! performing a variet of roles. Initially hired to the Ops Tools team to work on infrastructure projects such as DNS automation, he then went on to spread his time around on automating abuse/spam prevention, rebuilding the offline batch processing system, optimizing database queries, building out high-profile integrations, and rescuing kittens at Flickr.

When not writing code, Mike spends his time playing soccer, occasionally giving talks at conferences, and learning about how computers work.

Aaron Parecki is a Portland-based iPhone and PHP developer interested in solving practical problems with technology. In his free time, he enjoys geolocation, linguistics, and building home automation systems and IRC bots with a sense of humor. For the past 2½ years, he has been tracking and visualizing his location every 6 seconds, making him a frequent presenter at the Portland data visualization group. His fascination with location sharing and GPS began at the age of 6, when he traced the routes of family road trips on a map with a highlighter. He combined these interests and created Geoloqi.com, a private, real-time mobile and web platform for secure location sharing with Amber Case in an effort to help people connect in the... Read More.

DJ is the “Data Scientist in Residence” at Greylock Partners.

Previously he was the Chief Product Officer for Color and the Chief Scientist at the LinkedIn Corporation, leading the and Data Teams. Some of the products shipped include, People You May Know, Who’s Viewed My Profile, Talent Match, Skills, and Career Explorer.

He has held roles at Skype, PayPal, and eBay. As was a member of the faculty at the University of Maryland, he helped start a major research initiative on numerical weather prediction. As an AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow for the Department of Defense, Dr. Patil directed new efforts to leverage social network analysis and the melding of computational and social sciences to anticipate emerging threats to the US. He... Read More.

Christian has worked with online and mobile apps for 20 years. He has worked internationally as an expert on mobile applications and advergaming for companies such as Macromedia, Microsoft, Symbian, Kellogg’s, LEGO, Mars, and Nestle. His insight in working with consumers, software developers and large brand advertisers enables him to understand needs, wants and benefits for all 3 groups. The last 3 years his focus has been taking location enabled apps with location based advertising beyond a great idea to become reality for mobile developers, smart phone users and advertisers. Christian key role is VP Community for CloudMade who have built a developer community of 19,200 developers and a platform for helping these developers create location based apps and increase their monetization. In addition... Read More.

Nick Pudar, Vice President of OnStar Planning and Business Development, is responsible for managing OnStar’s planning, business development, and service evolution. He has responsibility for future services development and for management of the overall service portfolio. He assumed the business development role in 2005.

Pudar started his General Motors career in 1981 in manufacturing, and held various positions in GM of Canada’s Windsor Transmission Plant. In 1986, he joined the Stamping Plant Modernization team as part of the Chevrolet-Pontiac-Canada Group and worked on metal-fab automation systems. In 1990, he joined the Industrial Engineering department in the Chevrolet-Pontiac-Canada to coordinate cross-plant throughput improvement efforts for GM’s newly modernized stamping plants. In 1993, Pudar joined the Corporate Strategy staff as a business analyst. Three years later, he... Read More.

Lenny is the founder of Localmind, a new location-based startup that allows you to find out what’s happening anywhere in the world, right now, by giving you the ability to send questions to people checked-in at any location. Prior to founding Localmind, Lenny was head of R&D at Webmetrics/Neustar in San Diego. He also puts both pant legs on at the same time. Want to know more? Click here.

Jeff Raimo is a Product Marketing Manager at NAVTEQ where he is involved in defining next generation digital map content. Jeff has held various sales and marketing roles in the semiconductor and electronics industries. He has an aerospace engineering degree and MBA from the University of Illinois and after college spent 7 years in the navy as a nuclear-trained officer.

Lior Ron is the lead Group Product Manager for Google Places. He has spent the last 12 years innovating in the geo industry where he was the CTO of the Israeli Intelligence mapping and search efforts, product manager at Yahoo, founder of a geo search startup and in the last 4 years part of the Google geo leadership team. He holds an MBA from Stanford GSB, BSc and MS from the Technion – the Israeli institute for technology.

As the Founder and Chief Troublemaker at Big Blue Moose, Robert Rose innovates creative and technical content marketing strategies for his clients.

An early Internet pioneer, Rose has more than 15 years of experience, and a track record of helping brands and businesses develop successful Web and content marketing strategies. He developed some of the the first Web strategies in the country for clients such as Mediamark Research (MRI) and CTAM (The Cable and Telecommunications Association) literally introducing these leading corporations to the Web.

Rose was an Associate Partner with USWebCKS/marchFirst, serving as the Executive Director in the Entertainment and Media Practice where he developed strategic online initatives for numerous startups, as well as established clients such as Sony Pictures, Nickelodeon, NBC and... Read More.

Laurel Ruma is the Director of Talent for O’Reilly Media. Most recently she co-chaired Where 2.0, OSCON Java, and Gov 2.0 Expo. She joined the company in 2005 after working for five years at various IT analyst firms in the Boston area. Laurel is also the co-editor of Open Government, published by O’Reilly.

Author of Mining the Social Web

BestParking is a leading provider of parking information, pricing, and reservations. Parking data is distributed via BestParking.com, BestParking mobile applications, our API, and strategic relationships with Google and Microsoft. The service has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, NY Daily News, Associated Press, Inc. Magazine, NY Magazine, Boston Globe Magazine, Fox 5 News, CBS News Radio, WNBC, Yahoo.com, MSN.com, MSNBC.com, and numerous other media.

@SchneiderMike is SVP, Director Digital Incubator for Allen & Gerritsen, ranked by Advertising Age in the Top 50 Independent agencies in the US. The Digital Incubator is a lab responsible for building products and engaging experiences rooted in ROI while helping define “what’s next” for the agency and the industry.
 Mike has crafted paid, owned and earned media strategies, built award-winning communities, designed and implemented B2B and consumer segmentation, content management and customer relationship management solutions. He blogs for several sites including a technology and social media blog called Digital Before Digital. He was recognized in 2010 as one of Boston Business Journal’s 40 Under 40. He is writing Location Based Marketing for Dummies with Aaron Strout.

Hamid Schricker drives all, but not limited to, the product marketing initiatives at Fwix, which is organizing all of the world’s information by location. He holds an MBA from UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, and a Masters and Bachelors degree in Computer Science from Cornell University and UCLA, respectively.

Robert Scoble is an American blogger, technical evangelist, and author. Scoble is best known for his blog, Scobleizer, which came to prominence during his tenure as a technology evangelist at Microsoft. He currently works for Rackspace and the Rackspace sponsored community site Building 43. He previously worked for Fast Company as a video blogger and is also co-author of Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers with Shel Israel.

Justin Shaffer is a Product Manager at Facebook, where he currently manages the Events and Places products. Previously, he worked on Groups. Prior to Facebook, Justin was the Founder and CEO of Hot Potato, an early stage startup that helped people socialize around live events and share what they’re doing with friends. Hot Potato was acquired by Facebook in 2010. Prior to founding Hot Potato, Justin served as Senior Vice President, New Media at MLB Advanced Media, the online arm of Major League Baseball. Previously, Justin served at ScreamingMedia Inc., a content aggregator and syndicator in New York. He’s an avid skier and racing sailor, and also enjoys engineering pursuits of all kinds.

Mihir Shah is the Vice President and General Manager of Mobile at Groupon. Prior to its acquisition by Groupon, he was CEO and Co-founder of Mob.ly/Goodrec. Mihir also served in key product leadership roles at Yahoo!, most recently as Senior Director of Product Management for Yahoo! Search. Mihir was responsible for the US Web Search product and also helped launch Yahoo’s first mobile search products.

Before joining Yahoo!, Mihir was Director of Product Marketing at Grand Central, where he helped launch one of the first Web Services networks for businesses. He also served as Director of Product Management at Respond.com, a lead generation service for local businesses.

Mihir started his career as a management consultant at R. B. Webber & Company. At Webber he... Read More.

Darian Shirazi is the CEO & Founder of Fwix, which is organizing the world’s information by location. Prior, he was an early employee on the engineering team at Facebook. Darian studied Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley prior to dropping out to start Fwix. He also advises several early stage startups including Udemy and Mall World on Facebook.

Eric joined Yelp in November 2007 as a Product Manager and now is Yelp’s consumer product lead. During his two years with the company, most of his efforts have been focused on Yelp’s search and mobile products. Prior to Yelp, he worked as a product manager, UI designer and software engineer. Eric holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Northwestern University.

Pete Skomoroch is a Research Scientist at LinkedIn, focusing on building data driven products. For the past several years, he has been a consultant at Data Wrangling in Washington, DC, working on projects involving search, finance, and recommendation systems. Before joining LinkedIn, he was the Director of Advanced at Juice and a Sr. Research Engineer at AOL Search. He spent the previous 6 years in Boston implementing pattern detection algorithms for streaming sensor data at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and constructing predictive models for large retail datasets at Profitlogic. Pete has a B.S. in Mathematics and Physics from Brandeis University.

Clay Smith is a software engineer for Thomson Reuters based in Chicago. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 2009 after studying Computer Science and Geography and is particularly interested in how location-based applications can enrich and enhance the user experience on the web and mobile devices. In his free time, he can often be found kayaking on Lake Michigan or barbecuing.

Paul has more than a decade of geo-web content and location-based application experience. At C3 Technologies. he is responsible for leading the company’s revenue and product strategies.

David Staas brings to JiWire more than 13 years of marketing and product management experience in the mobile and advertising industries. David comes to JiWire from Ad Infuse, a leading pioneer in mobile advertising, where he was vice president of marketing. At Ad Infuse, David helped build a premium network and platform business with leading mobile operators.

Prior to Ad Infuse, David led the global product marketing team at Openwave Systems, responsible for a product portfolio with established mobile and broadband telecommunications providers in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. David has a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in business administration from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.

Kio Stark writes and consults on technology and human relationships, with a focus on stranger interactions, mediated intimacy, and technological authenticity. She teaches at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and makes interactive advertising for agencies including Ogilvy and Deutsch. Her first novel, Follow Me Down, will be published in June.

Greg Sterling is the founding principal of Sterling Market Intelligence, a consulting and research firm that tracks the impact of the Internet on offline consumer purchase behavior and its disruption of traditional media. SMI covers consumer adoption and ad models across a range of market segments, including local search, online yellow pages, online newspapers and classifieds, mobile search, social media and multi-channel shopping. Sterling is also the lead analyst for Internet2Go, an advisory service from Opus Research.

Before founding SMI, Sterling ran The Kelsey Group’s Interactive Local Media program. Prior to The Kelsey Group, Sterling was at TechTV where he helped produce “Working the Web,” the first national television show dedicated to e-business and the Internet. Prior to TechTV he was a founding... Read More.

Cecelia leads product marketing for Google’s local consumer products. Before joining the marketing team, she worked as a Product Specialist for local features, including Google Places accounts and local reviews. She’s worked directly with hundreds of users to get their businesses up and running on Google. Her passion for the local space and for helping small businesses get online stems from the the time she’s spent working for her mother’s tiny cafe in Dallas, Texas.

Krishna is a Mobclix co-founder and drives the advertising and marketing strategy. Krishna brings unique and creative ideas to drive optimal monetization for mobile applications. Prior to Mobclix, Krishna was a co-founder and general manager of new business for BlueLithium (acquired by Yahoo! for $300M), the world’s largest behavioral targeted ad network. Krishna has launched other successful businesses such as, MingleNow, which focused on mobile content and communication such as group text messaging and mobile video sharing; in addition to co-founding, Burrp!, a localized review and recommendation internet portal for metropolitan India (acquired by media conglomerate TV18). Krishna was also instrumental in growing ConceptK, a successful internet design services and web content development firm for mobile devices, to service many Fortune 500 clients.

He... Read More.

Bryan Trussel is co-founder and CEO of Glympse, a new company focused on making location sharing commonplace. A 16-year Microsoft veteran, Bryan has lead focused on delivering solutions for Windows, Interactive TV, Embedded Systems, Windows CE, MSN and Messenger Games, and Xbox Live Arcade. He has a BS in Computer Science and an MBA from Kellogg at Northwestern. The privately held company, headquartered in Redmond, Washington, was founded in 2008 by ex-Microsoft veterans Bryan Trussel, Steve Miller and Jeremy Mercer.

Andrew Turner is the CTO at FortiusOne, the company behind GeoCommons, a geospatial visualization and platform. He co-founded Mapufacture, a personalized geospatial search and aggregation system that was acquired by FortiusOne in August 2008 in order to combine real-time feeds with large GIS datasets. Andrew is focused on collaboration and user-generated content around location and time. He is actively involved in open-data projects such as OpenStreetMap and VoteReport, as well as open-source projects like Mapstraction and GeoPress. He regularly speaks at conferences on the benefits of open-source software and geospatial standards to communities and organizations. Andrew wrote the O’Reilly shortcut “Introduction to Neogeography” and “Trends in Where2.0” business report in Spring 2008. He is also published in MacTech and Make magazine on... Read More.

Tristan Walker does business development for Foursquare.

A former Apple engineer, Pete set out to build his own startup around large-scale data analysis and visualization.

Warren Webster is the president of Patch Media, a community-specific news and information platform in over 800 towns and neighborhoods across the U.S. Patch provides comprehensive and trusted original content created by its full-time professional journalists, as well as user-contributed events, announcements and discussions.  Patch’s mission is to strengthen communities and improve the lives of their residents through improved access to the information that matters most. 

Webster was the first to join the Patch team, in December 2007, when the idea was hatched by Tim Armstrong, then-President for The Americas at Google Inc.  Armstrong couldn’t find a local volunteer opportunity for his family one weekend; he founded Patch based on this, along with his belief that there was a troubling void in quality and quantity... Read More.

As Partner/CEO at imagistic, an award-winning Web agency in southern California, Michael serves as a dynamic force in the Web marketing and development industry as a veteran speaker, consultant, client advocate, and sales executive. Under Michael’s sales and marketing leadership, he has signed many world-renowned clients for imagistic, including: ACLU, Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, Network for Good, Technicolor, Walden Media, and Hollywood.com.

With his more than 20 years in the industry, Michael offers extensive experience conducting and leading sessions for such prestigious organizations as the Non Profit Technology Network, FS/TEC, Boston University, the Center for Nonprofit Management, Network For Good, and Pepperdine University. His business development background has also merited significant leadership recognition, including an American Business Award nomination for Sales Director of... Read More.

Steven heads up Industry Marketing for ATTi, leading a team that analyzes local advertising industry trends, conducts research, works with analysts, and develops and publishes insights via white papers, webinars, and research reports. Prior to AT&T Steven spent 10 years at RealNetworks leading research and marketing teams. Steven holds an MBA from the University of Chicago.

UrbanQ’s platform product Location Genome enables any app developer to offer 100% national location data coverage and the ability to intelligently personalize end user interaction from day 1.

Maria has 15 years experience in large scale data mining and machine learning solutions, and most recently lead the Personal Relevance team for MSN and delivered one of the largest real time content optimization system serving 200 million users. Maria also led Zillow’s Data Integration and Warehousing team. Follow her on Twitter: @MariaRenhui