General Sessions

2014 Keynote speaker info coming soon!

2013 Keynotes

danah boyd

Wednesday January 30, 8:00 am

danah boyd researches how social media like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube are integrated into people's daily practices. Much of her work focuses on American youth practices, popular social network sites, and sociality. She was one of the researchers in a major 3-year study of digital youth funded by the MacArthur Foundation, resulting in the publication of Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. She also studies blogging, media making and social media more broadly.

danah boyd is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, a Research Assistant Professor in Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, a Fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales. She has worked as an ethnographer and social media researcher for various corporations, including Intel, Tribe.net, Google and Yahoo! She has advised and consulted for dozens of other companies. She is a part of the Digital Media & Learning network and is on the Social Networks Global Agenda Council for the World Economic Forum. At the Berkman Center, danah co-directed the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, formed by the U.S. Attorney's General and MySpace and organized by the Berkman Center to identify potential technical solutions for keeping children safe online. She also co-directed the Youth and Media Policy Working Group Initiative, funded by the MacArthur Foundation.

danah maintains a blog called Apophenia, a valuable resource for anyone interested in social media or youth culture. She also regularly writes academic publications and mainstream essays, published in a range of venues , including the Guardian, The New York Times, and Time Magazine. danah was named one of the Most Influential Women in Technology by Fast Company. She was also named the smartest academic in tech by Fortune Magazine. She won CITASA's Public Sociology Award. And in 2010, she was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. danah has given more than 100 invited talks. She also regularly speaks at academic and industry conferences. Additionally, she is frequently cited as an expert in the press. She has published dozens of academic articles in venues like New Media & Society, First Monday, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, International Journal of Communication, and Information, Communication, and Society.

Nick Bilton

Thursday January 31, 8:15 am

As the lead technology writer for The New York Times' Bits Blog and the author of the acclaimed I Live in the Future & Here's How It Works, Nick Bilton is an expert on how our byte-sized and ever-mobile culture affects our brains and our lives, and how companies can harness that knowledge to engage consumers and grow their business.

Previously the design integration editor for The New York Times and the user interface specialist and researcher for The New York Times Company Research and Development Lab, Bilton explored technologies that could become commonplace within the next ten years.

Outside of The Times, he helped co-found NYCResistor, a hacker space in Brooklyn that offers hardware and programming classes and allows people to collectively work on innovative open source hardware and robotics projects. He is also currently an adjunct professor for New York University's interactive telecommunications program. His work has also appeared in Wired, Engadget, Scientific America, ABC, CNet, O'Reilly Radar, and AlleyInsider.

In an ever-changing world of technology, social media, mobile devices, and integration, it's hard to not only keep up, but plan ahead. In his enlightening multimedia presentations, Bilton bolsters his audience's confidence by explaining that despite living in an age of continuous advancements, the way human beings collect information remains the same throughout time: a method based in primitive storytelling.

Nick Bilton holds a degree in journalism and documentary film from the New School University and a degree in graphic design from the School of Visual Arts.

Rives

Friday February 1, 11:30 am

Rives (rhymes with 'weaves') designs interactive narratives for grown-ups. Part poet, part storyteller, Rives offers audiences uniquely intelligent and creative entertainment -- impossible to categorize for a print medium like this bio. He's extraordinarily deft with words, extremely clever, creative, and intellectually alive. His work bursts in multiple directions, makes surprising connections, and leaves you gasping and laughing. For his avid use of technology, he's been called "the first 2.0 poet," incorporating images, video, and text, often involving audience members. Rives is known for memorizing snippets of the preceding speakers' presentations and incorporating them into his own performance, to startling and often comedic effect. He is a very dynamic and spontaneous performer capable of brilliant improvisation, with an easy, relaxed presence on stage, made possible by impeccable preparation. He enjoys and encourages audience participation.

Rives co-hosted Bravo channel's new show Ironic Iconic America, a unique and whimsical tour of contemporary American culture debuting October 3, 2008. He also is the spokesperson for Orange, the key brand of France Telecom, doing ads as "the first poet 2.0". He is a regular at the annual TED Conference, where he earns standing ovations. He's appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and on the last four seasons of HBO's Def Poetry Jam. He was the 2004 National Poetry Slam champion.