Tantek Çelik is Chief Technologist at Technorati where he leads the design and development of new standards and technologies. Prior to Technorati, he was a veteran representative to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for Microsoft, where he also helped lead the development of the award-winning Internet Explorer for Macintosh.

As co-founder of the microformats.org community and the Global Multimedia Protocols Group, as well as Steering Committee member of the Web Standards Project and invited expert to the W3C Cascading Style Sheets working group, Tantek is dedicated to advancing open standards and simpler data formats for the Web. He shares his thoughts on his personal weblog.

Jeremy Allaire founded Brightcove in early 2004 with a vision for the transformation of television with the Internet. As president of Brightcove, Allaire leads the company's technology, marketing, and business strategy. Prior to founding Brightcove, Allaire worked as a technologist and entrepreneur in residence for Cambridge based General Catalyst. Allaire was CTO of Macromedia where he helped define and launch the Macromedia MX platform for rich internet applications helping to evolve Macromedia Flash into a dominant platform for rich media applications on the Internet. Allaire joined Macromedia with its merger with Allaire Corporation, where Allaire was co-founder and CTO. Founded in 1995, Allaire Corporation was a pioneer in using the Web as an application platform and its industry leading and award winning products power millions of web sites and online services and business applications on the Internet.

As Akamai's Chief Marketing Officer, Lisa Arthur is responsible for Akamai's marketing strategy and operations, including product management, partner marketing, corporate and marketing communications, programs and sales training. Ms. Arthur brings more than twenty years of marketing experience to Akamai.

Mitchell Baker has been the general manager of the Mozilla project (officially known as its chief lizard wrangler) since 1999. The Mozilla project strives to create great software and maintain choice and innovation in key Internet applications, such as its flagship Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird products. It is one of the largest open source software development projects in existence. The Mozilla project combines dedicated volunteers, a set of paid contributors and some degree of engineering management. Baker focuses on making all these pieces work together. With the formation of the Mozilla Foundation in 2003, Baker also took on the role of president of the Mozilla Foundation.

Over his distinguished career in the gaming, entertainment and multimedia industries, Greg Ballard has served as CEO at SONICblue, makers of ReplayTV and Rio digital music players; MyFamily.com, a successful subscription-based Internet service; and 3Dfx where, over a three-year period, he grew the company from $4 million to an annualized rate of more than $400 million. He previously served as CEO and COO for Warner Custom Music, a division of Time Warner, Inc. Ballard was also president of Capcom Software, the U.S. subsidiary known for hits such as Street Fighter, Mega-Man and Resident Evil, as well as COO and CFO of Digital Pictures, a leading video game developer for Sega CD. Ballard currently sits on the board of directors for Pinnacle Systems (NASDAQ: PCLE). He holds a B.A. from the University of Redlands and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Jeff Barr is the technical evangelist for Amazon Web Services. In this role, focuses on helping the Amazon Web Services developer community achieve success in building innovative and successful businesses using Amazon.com data and technology. He served as a liaison for O’Reilly & Associates technical guidebook, "Amazon Hacks." Jeff has held development and management positions at KnowNow, eByz, Akopia, and Microsoft, and was a co-founder of Visix Software. He earned his bachelor degree in Computer Science from the American University.

Hank Barry is a partner at Hummer Winblad. He joined the firm in July 1999. Prior to joining Hummer Winblad, he was a partner with Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a leading Silicon Valley technology law firm, where he led the firm's interactive new media practice. At WSGR, Barry was principal outside counsel to several pioneering Internet companies, including Global Village Communications, Looksmart, Liquid Audio and NetDynamics. From May 2000 through July 2001 he served as Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board of Napster, Inc.

Tom Barton brings extensive operational, leadership, and technical expertise to Rackable Systems. He previously served as SVP of Client Services at Red Hat, where he held P&L responsibility for two-thirds of the company's revenue streams. Barton joined Red Hat via its acquisition of Cygnus Solutions, the leader in open source development tools. Barton held many roles at Cygnus including Interim CEO. He holds an M.B.A., B.S., and B.A. from Stanford University.

John Battelle is an entrepreneur, journalist, professor, and author. Currently founder and chairman of Federated Media Publishing, Battelle is also a founder and executive producer of conferences in the media, technology, communications, and entertainment industries and "band manager" with BoingBoing.net. Previously, Battelle was founder, chairman, and CEO of Standard Media International (SMI), publisher of The Industry Standard and TheStandard.com. Prior to founding The Standard, Battelle was a co-founding editor of Wired magazine and Wired Ventures. He is the author of "The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture" (Portfolio, 2005).

Gene Becker is director of the Utility Services Initiative at HP Laboratories, and is responsible for the development and commercialization of scalable computing services for digital media production and other large crunchy applications.

Ron Bloom is the visionary CEO and business leader behind the founding of PodShow. Mr. Bloom is ultimately responsible for PodShow’s business units, team building, operations, financing and hyper-growth. Mr. Bloom was the chief strategist in securing PodShow’s marquee partnerships and elite private investors, which includes Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital and Sherpalo Ventures. Mr. Bloom leads PodShow on the march to 100M listeners, and is shaping PodShow as this century’s prototypical media company.

Stewart Butterfield is a director of Product Management at Yahoo! where he oversees the development of Flickr.com. He also co-founded and acted as CEO of Flickr's parent company, Ludicorp, before its acquisition by Yahoo! in the spring of 2005.

Canter is involved in promulgating open standards for new kinds of micro-content; including people (FOAF), media (OpenMedia) and events (OpenEvents.) Broadband Mechanics designs and builds digital lifestyle aggregators (DLAs) for customers like Ziff-Davis Media (1UP.com), Tribe.net, and AlwaysOn Network. Broadband Mechanics is also working with Laszlo Systems to build hot compelling interfaces for these DLAs (which are the next generation portal.)

Mike Cassidy has been the co-founder and CEO of three start-ups: Xfire, Direct Hit, and Stylus Innovation. Xfire helps gamers play with their friends much more easily. Xfire is also an IM designed just for gamers and has reached over 1.5 million gamers in over 100 countries. Direct Hit was a revolutionary internet search engine whose customers included MSN, Lycos, AOL, and dozens of others. Ask Jeeves acquired Direct Hit for $500 million. Stylus Innovation's flagship product was the award winning computer telephony software Visual Voice. Cassidy studied jazz piano at the Berklee College of Music. He has a B.S. (1985) and M.S. (1986) in Aerospace Engineering from MIT and graduated from Harvard Business School in 1991.

Joe Chung co-founded Art Technology Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:ARTG) and was Chairman and Chief Technology Officer from 1991 to 2001. Along with co-founder Jeet Singh, he led the growth of ATG from a two-person consultancy to a publicly traded enterprise software company with over 1,200 employees and annual revenues exceeding $160 million. Chung personally directed technology strategy, product development, software engineering, and mergers and acquisitions. He co-directed the company’s public stock offerings and engaged extensively with key customers and partners worldwide. He holds BS and MS degrees in Computer Science from the MIT and is a trustee of the Massachusetts Software and Internet Council.

Bram Cohen has a long history of working at failed startups you've never heard of. He's also a college dropout. In case you're wondering why anyone cares to hear him speak, it's because Cohen is also the author of BitTorrent, a project he started working on in 2001 after the last startup he worked at stopped paying. BitTorrent has become successful enough that Cohen now does it full time.

Scott Cook co-founded Intuit Inc. in 1983 and now serves as the chairman of the Executive Committee.

Before founding Intuit, Cook managed consulting assignments in banking and technology for Bain & Company, a corporate strategy consulting firm. He previously worked for Procter & Gamble, the household products giant, in various marketing positions, including brand manager, for four years.

Costolo is cofounder/CEO of FeedBurner and has over 20 years experience managing and developing software for the enterprise and consumer markets. Previously, he cofounded and was CEO of Spyonit.com, which was acquired by 724 Solutions in September 2000. Dick spent a number of years performing with Chicago's Annoyance Theater and has performed at the celebrated Edinburgh Fringe and Montreal Comedy Festivals.

Rich Cox leads the Voice Enabled Services Research Lab, which is responsible for research in the areas of speech processing technologies such as automatic speech recognition, text-to-speech synthesis, visual text-to-speech synthesis, natural language understanding, and more. Cox is chair of the Technology Advisory Committee for Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, an organization that provides alternative access to textbooks and reference documents for the blind and visually impaired. He is also president of the IEEE Signal Processing Society.

In September 2001, Mark Cuban and co-founder Philip Garvin launched HDNet, the world's first national television network broadcasting all of its programming in spectacular 1080i high-definition television (HDTV). Fueled by Cuban's business leadership and enthusiasm, HDNet has quickly emerged as the leading provider of quality HDTV news, entertainment and sports programming.

Matt Cutts joined Google as a Software Engineer in January 2000. Before Google, he was working on his Ph.D. in computer graphics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Matt wrote SafeSearch, which is Google's family filter. Currently, Matt heads the Webspam group that works on search quality at Google.

Dayton is the chief executive officer and a director of SK-EarthLink, a joint venture of EarthLink and SK Telecom and the founder and a director of EarthLink. Dayton was introduced to technology in 1980 when he was nine years old, by his grandfather, an IBM Fellow. He graduated from the Delphian School, a private boarding high school, in 1988 and decided to forgo college to pursue his interests in technology.

Brian Dear is Founder and CEO of EVDB, Inc. in San Diego, CA. Prior to EVDB, he was founding Director of eBay Design Labs at eBay, Inc. Other engagements include work at Eazel, MP3.com, FlatWorks, RealNetworks, and Coconut Computing. He also runs a personal blog at brianstorms.com.

Bart Decrem is founder and CEO of Flock, the social web browsing company. He headed marketing and business affairs for the Mozilla Foundation through the Firefox 1.0 launch. An open source leader, Bart coordinated the creation of the GNOME Foundation and has worked at several Linux companies in the US and abroad. Bart was born and raised in Belgium and holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Satish brings more than 20 years of leadership, knowledge, and management experience to Zimbra. Formerly, was vice president of the messaging product division at Openwave Systems, responsible for the email, unified messaging, voicemail, and instant messaging product lines. Satish was part of the founding team at the unified messaging company Onebox. Before Onebox, Satish was at Sun Microsystems' JavaSoft Division where he lead the team that was responsible for the Java Servlets and the team that conceived Java Server Pages (JSPs). Satish has both a Bachelor of Science and master's degree in computer sciences and an executive management degree from Harvard Business School.

Barry Diller is the chairman and chief executive officer of IAC/InterActiveCorp, and chairman of Expedia, Inc.

IAC operates leading and diversified businesses in sectors being transformed by the internet, online and offline…its mission is to harness the power of interactivity to make daily life easier and more productive for people all over the world. IAC consists of HSN; Cornerstone Brands, Inc.; Ticketmaster, which oversees ReserveAmerica; LendingTree, LLC; LendingTree Loans; RealEstate.com; PRC; ServiceMagic; Match.com; Entertainment Publications; Interval International; Ask Jeeves, Inc.; Citysearch; and Evite.

Chas Edwards -- who blogs at http://chasnote.com -- is VP for sales and market development for Federated Media Publishing (FM Publishing), a network of leading independent bloggers.

Previously, Chas was vice president of sales and marketing for CNET Networks's B2B Portfolio, managing the team representing News.com, ZDNet and TechRepublic to business-to-business marketers. Chas also served posts as VP for CNET's broadband & webcasting unit and as VP of business development for mySimon, CNET Networks's comparison-shopping portal. Prior to joining CNET Networks, Chas was the National Sales Manager for TechTV, a 24-hour cable TV channel and Web site dedicated to computing and the Internet.

Hossein Eslambolchi is president of AT&T's Global Networking Technology Services (GNTS), AT&T's CTO, and CIO. He is responsible for the corporation's strategic technology direction, network operations, research and development, information technology systems and processes, and advises the chairman and senior leaders on technology issues. Eslambolchi is a member of AT&T's Executive Committee, the company's governing executive panel led by AT&T Chairman and CEO David W. Dorman.

Alan Eustace is Google's VP of Engineering where he is responsible for all aspects of the company's product research and development activities. He joined Google in the summer of 2002. Prior to Google, Eustace spent fifteen years at Digital/Compaq/HP's Western Research Laboratory where he worked on a variety of chip design and architecture projects, including the MicroTitan Floating Point unit, BIPS--the fastest microprocessor of its era.

Shawn Fanning is the founder and chief strategy officer of SNOCAP. Since the company's inception in 2002, Fanning has driven SNOCAP's mission to dramatically improve the consumer digital music experience and help grow the overall digital music market.

Usama Fayyad is Yahoo!'s chief data officer and senior vice president of the Strategic Data Solutions group. Fayyad is responsible for Yahoo!'s overall data strategy, architecting Yahoo!'s data policies and systems, prioritizing data investments, and managing the company's data processing infrastructure and analysis. The analysis and management of data within Fayyad's group enables Yahoo! to ensure customer satisfaction and develop innovative products and services that are essential to consumers' lives.

Josh Felser is the CEO of Grouper Networks. Prior to Grouper he was the President of Spinner.com, which was sold to AOL for $320 mm in 1999. After Spinner.com became a part of AOL, Josh served as the GM of the Spinner and Winamp brands. Prior to Spinner Josh worked at US West and News Corp.

Josh holds a BA in Economics and Political Science from Duke University, and an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business.

Bran Ferren is a designer and technologist working in entertainment, product development, engineering, architecture, and the sciences. He is the former president of Research & Development and Creative Technology for Walt Disney Imagineering. Prior to that, he was the president of and senior designer for Associates & Ferren, which Disney acquired in 1993. He left Disney in 2000 to start Applied Minds Inc., with partner Danny Hillis.

Dr. Flake is a Technical Fellow at Microsoft, where he is responsible for bridging Microsoft Research and MSN, and for setting the technology vision and future direction of the MSN portal, web search, desktop search and commercial search efforts. Prior to joining Microsoft, Dr. Flake founded Yahoo! Research Labs, ran Yahoo!s corporate R&D activities and company-wide innovation effort, and was Overture's Chief Science Officer. Before joining Overture, he was a research scientist at NEC Research Institute and the leader of its Web data-mining program. He has numerous publications spanning over 15 years which have focused on machine learning, data mining, and self-organization.

Mark Fletcher is founder and CEO of Bloglines, the world's most popular free internet service for searching, subscribing, publishing, and sharing news feeds and blogs. Fletcher is a serial entrepreneur who began his start-up career as a senior engineer at Diba, an information appliance technology company acquired by Sun Microsystems in 1997. Following Diba, Fletcher founded and was CEO of ONElist/eGroups, an email community service which grew, over 24 months, to 17 million members and 800,000 unique email groups before it was acquired by Yahoo! in 2000. The ONElist/eGroups service continues to successfully operate today as Yahoo! Groups. Fletcher holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego.

Paul Forster is CEO and co-founder of Indeed, the most comprehensive search engine for jobs - giving job seekers free access to millions of employment opportunities from company websites, job boards, newspapers and associations. Indeed.com was selected by Time magazine as one of the 50 Coolest Web sites for 2005. Paul previously co-founded Jobsinthemoney, the leading jobsite dedicated to finance professionals, which won Forbes Best Finance jobsite before being acquired in late 2003. Paul holds an MBA from INSEAD business school as well as Masters degrees from Cambridge and Oxford Universities.

Jason Fried is the founder of 37signals, an influential Chicago-based web application design firm. 37signals' BASECAMP (web-based project management), BACKPACK (web-based personal information management), and TA-DA LIST (web-based to-do lists) products are used on a daily basis by tens of thousands of people and small businesses in over 50 countries.

Jesse James Garrett is the Director of User Experience Strategy and a founding partner of Adaptive Path, the world's premier user experience consulting company. He is author of The Elements of User Experience (New Riders), and is recognized as a pioneer in the field of information architecture. Jesse's clients include AT&T, Intel, Crayola, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, and National Public Radio.

As cofounder and Chief Technology Officer of AllPeers, Matthew Gertner is the primary driver of the company's technical vision and plays an active role in its software development activities. He is also the author of the official company blog, Peer Pressure, with frequent posts on online identity, P2P, software development and next-generation web technologies. Prior to AllPeers, Matthew Gertner cofounded Schemantix, where he conceived and led the development of Schemantix Business Service Platform, an innovative framework for the creation of XML-based business applications. He has lived in a number of European countries, as well as the United States, and is fluent in French, German and Czech. As an authority on XML technologies, Matthew is the author of numerous articles and a frequent speaker at industry events. He received degrees in Computer Science and Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania.

As a principal reviewer with Byte magazine, Steve Gillmor covered beat areas including Visual Basic, NT open systems, Lotus Notes and other collaborative software systems. After stints as a contributing editor with InformationWeek Labs and as editor in chief of Enterprise Development magazine, and as editor in chief and editorial director for XML and Java Pro Magazines, he joined InfoWorld as Test Center director and columnist. Later, he wrote CRN's Emerging Opp's blog, and then became eWEEK OpEd columnist and contributing editor. Today, Gillmor is a ZDNet contributing editor, host of Podshow's Web radio programs The Gillmor Gang and Gillmor Daily, and president of AttentionTrust.org.

Mr. Goldberg spent eight years at Oracle Corporation, where he served as a vice president. He was involved in a variety of projects, all focused on making powerful database technology more accessible to users. When he left Oracle, he started mBED Software and built groundbreaking Web site technology. He founded NetSuite in 1998. Mr. Goldberg holds a B.A. Summa Cum Laude in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University.

Seth Goldstein founded and is the CEO of Root Markets, a financial exchange for internet lead generation. He also is the founding chairman of Attentiontrust.org, a non-profit group dedicated to rights of consumers to own records of their attention data. In 2002, Goldstein founded Majestic Research, the investment research firm providing hedge fund managers with data-driven insights. As the founding CEO, Goldstein created a multi-million dollar business with an emphasis on next generation Internet investment research.

Paul Graham is the author of On Lisp, Ansi Common Lisp, and Hackers & Painters; was co-founder of Viaweb (now Yahoo Store); discovered a simple Bayesian spam filter that inspired many present filters; and is one of the partners in Y Combinator. He has a PhD in computer science from Harvard and studied painting at RISD and the Accademia in Florence.

As a co-founder of LinkedIn, Konstantin is leading the efforts to spread the word about LinkedIn and to educate users about how to advance their career and business through their trusted contacts on LinkedIn. Prior to LinkedIn, Konstantin served as VP of Marketing at Presenter, where he led product marketing, public relations and corporate marketing. Before Presenter, Konstantin was as VP Sales & Marketing responsible for the initial public launch of social software pioneer Blaxxun. Other executive roles included EVP at Caligari and Project Director of publicly-traded Micrografx. At Beresford Partners, Konstantin helped the CEOs of over two dozen high-tech startups develop their positioning and marketing strategy. He graduated with distinction from Stanford University with a B.S. and M.S. in Engineering.

A pioneer in the internet sector and open source software community, Dick Hardt has been active in software development for nearly two decades. His most recent venture, Sxip Identity, provides enterprise identity management solutions for on-demand applications that leverage the power of Identity 2.0. Prior to Sxip, Hardt founded ActiveState in 1997. Under his leadership as CEO, ActiveState became a leader in open source programming languages and anti-spam software and was acquired by UK-based software company, Sophos in 2003.

Mickey Hart is best known for his nearly three decades as an integral part of an extraordinary expedition into the soul and spirit of music, disguised as the rock and roll band the Grateful Dead. As half of the percussion tandem known as the Rhythm Devils, Mickey and Bill Kreutzmann transcended the conventions of rock drumming. Their extended polyrhythmic excursions were highlights of Grateful Dead shows, introducing the band's audience to an ever-growing arsenal of percussion instruments from around the world. Exposure to these exotic sounds fueled Mickey's desire to learn about the various cultures that produced them.

Reed Hastings founded his first company, Pure Software, in 1991. He led Pure Software to go public in 1995, completed several acquisitions, and made it one of the 50 largest public software companies in the world by 1997. Pure was acquired in 1997 by Rational Software. Hastings and colleagues formed Netflix in 1997 and launched the subscription service in 1999. Today Netflix has more than 3,000,000 subscribers and expects to generate over $660 million in revenues in 2005.

Rolf Herken is the founder of mental images and the driving force behind its innovative technologies and products as well as its successful establishment as the global leader in core component technology for 3D modeling, collaboration, and visualization.

Mary Hodder is CEO of Bloqx, Inc., an early stage startup developing video web services. She is an information architect and interaction designer, developing extreme usability methods, and creating usability for web service companies with social media sites. She has worked with companies in open source, photo sharing, blog aggregation and search, legacy media and was at Technorati before leaving to start her company. She has written reports on blog search and recently one on New Media for the American Press Institute. She is a blogger at Napsterization, involved in issues with 'live web' spam control, weighting of blogs and topic communities, tagging, video blogging, and user generated content. She was an original author at bIPlog (the first UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism blog, on the topic of intellectual property, security and privacy). She has a Master's in Information Science from the School of Information at UC Berkeley.

Bradley Horowitz, director of technology development, is responsible for leading Yahoo!’s efforts in building innovative search technologies. Bradley’s expertise helps drive initiatives that enable the company to provide comprehensive and compelling offerings to customers. Previously he managed a portfolio of products for Yahoo!, including media search, desktop search and the Yahoo! Toolbar.

VC investor in Hotmail (MSFT), Interwoven (IWOV), and Kana (KANA). He also led the firm's investments in Tradex (acquired by Ariba for $6B) and Cyras (acquired by Ciena for $2B), and most recently, in pioneering companies in nanotechnology and molecular electronics. Previously, Jurvetson was an R&D engineer at Hewlett-Packard, where seven of his communications chip designs were fabricated. His prior technical experience also includes programming, materials science research (TEM atomic imaging of GaAs), and computer design at HP's PC Division, the Center for Materials Research, and Mostek.

Peter Kaminski has more than 20 years of executive management and technology development experience, specializing in leading-edge applications of network and information technologies, especially those that help interconnect people. Kaminski is also a General Partner of OakStone Ventures, Investigatorius of the Minciu Sodas Laboratories in Lithuania, Software Development Director of the Software Product Marketing eGroup, and a Senior Associate of the Foresight Institute. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two children.

Vinod Khosla was a co-founder of Daisy Systems and founding Chief Executive Officer of Sun Microsystems where he pioneered open systems and commercial RISC processors. Vinod serves on the boards of Agami, Centrata, eASIC, Indian School of Business, Infinera, Kovio, Metricstream, QWEST Communications, Spatial Photonics, Xsigo and Zettacore.

Vinod holds a Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, a Master's in Biomedical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and a MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

John Kish, President and CEO, Wyse Technology, has spent the past two decades inventing technologies to solve some of the most complex “big data” problems faced by major software developers, carriers and corporations. While at Oracle, John is widely credited with establishing Oracle on the desktop and led Oracle’s efforts to establish network computing. John has successfully led four software companies, applying his expertise in algorithm design to innovate large scale, transactional computing processes. Most recently, he developed the industry’s first “non-persistent” applications, and is now creating network management systems for the coming generation of stateless/flashless communications and computing devices. He holds a Ph.D in Mathematical Logics from The John Hopkins University.

As the individual responsible for Google's revenue generation efforts, Omid Kordestani is the tireless leader of an international sales effort that has brought Google to profitability in record time. Kordestani has more than a dozen years of high-technology consumer and enterprise experience, including key positions at Internet pioneer Netscape Communications. As vice president of Business Development and Sales, he grew Netscape's website revenue from an annual run-rate of $88 million to more than $200 million in 18 months.

Raph Koster has been working professionally and as a hobbyist in the field of online worlds for over a decade. At SOE, he consults on all of SOE's titles, and is responsible for setting community relations policies and ongoing research into future technologies for games. He entered the industry professionally working as the creative lead and lead designer for Ultima Online, for Electronic Arts. He joined Sony in 2000. At SOE, he was the creative director for Star Wars Galaxies.

Joe Kraus is co-founder and CEO of JotSpot, the first application-wiki company. A long time entrepreneur, Kraus has been involved with early-stage technology development and starting companies for more than twelve years. Upon graduation from Stanford University in 1993, he joined with five engineering friends to found the highly successful internet company, Excite, Inc. The original president of Excite, Kraus was deeply involved in product strategy, direction, and vision as the company grew. He also held senior operational roles in business development, international development, and content.

As senior vice president of search properties for Ask Jeeves, Inc., a wholly-owned business of IAC/InterActiveCorp, Jim Lanzone oversees worldwide product, marketing, and revenue management of Ask Jeeves’ search websites and technologies. In addition, Lanzone is a director of Ask Jeeves Japan, a joint venture between Ask Jeeves and transcomos.

Previously, Lanzone was president and co-founder of eTour.com, which was acquired by Ask Jeeves in 2001. With over five million registered users, eTour was the Web's #1 ranked site in user frequency in 1998 and 1999 according to Media Metrix, and was rated "A+" by Entertainment Weekly. Prior to joining eTour, Lanzone worked in product management and marketing for KnowX.com, a division of the Thomson Corporation and one of the Internet's leading vendors of public records. Lanzone received his BA from UCLA and JD/MBA from Emory University.

Steve is the founder and CEO of Transparensee Systems, a startup pioneering new methods in the fields of structured and local search. Before founding Transparensee, Steve represented high-tech startups at Debevoise & Plimpton. Steve has written on technology for The New York Times and Linux Magazine. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School.

Ken is founder and CEO of RealTravel, a new travel information site that leverages blogging and social networking to provide a more personalized and informative experience to travel shoppers and a more effective venue for travel industry marketers than currently exists online. A seasoned entrepreneur, Ken brings two decades of experience to RealTravel. Prior to RealTravel, Ken founded Full Degree, a successful Product Information Management company that was acquired in 2004. Previous to Full Degree, Ken was head of business development at AdForce, a leading Internet ad serving company. Ken earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Western Ontario and an MBA from York University.

Kevin Lynch is the chief software architect for Macromedia. Lynch has been instrumental in shaping the Macromedia product family since joining the company in 1996. As chief software architect, Lynch is responsible for ensuring Macromedia tools, servers and players are practical, powerful, and enjoyable for its customers.

Speaker biography coming soon.

Ross Mayfield is a serial entrepreneur with over ten years of startup executive management experience and a focus on helping people and companies communicate effectively. Most recently, Mayfield served as VP of Marketing for a Fujitsu spinout developing enterprise software for the telecommunications industry and as interim VP of Marketing for an Immersive Group Simulation provider to military and homeland defense markets. Previously he was CEO of an enterprise risk management software company.

Brian McAndrews has served as the president and CEO of aQuantive, a digital marketing services and technology company, and parent to Avenue A | Razorfish, Atlas and DRIVEpm, since 1999. He brings more than 20 years of strategic management and marketing experience to aQuantive, including nine years with ABC, Inc. holding executive positions at ABC Sports, ABC Entertainment and the ABC Television Network. Brian has been named by Advertising Age as one of the top 20 players in the interactive advertising space.

McCarthy has pioneered products in the online media space for early-stage startups and for public companies like AOL and Sony Pictures Digital. At Sony, he ran Product Development for a business unit focused on providing media-editing software, online services, and Hollywood content to a wide range of Sony devices. Prior to joining Orb, he was CEO of GoPix, Inc., which provides integrated client/server solutions for mobile imaging.

Dave McClure has been geeking out in Silicon Valley as a technology entrepreneur for over fifteen years. In the early 90's McClure worked as a database consultant and developer for a variety of evil empires, including Microsoft and Intel. In 1995 he founded Aslan Computing, an internet 1.0 startup that failed to IPO for a bazillion dollars; however was still modestly acquired by Servinet/Panurgy in 1998. From 1999 to 2001 McClure helped other Silicon Valley startups as an advisor, and also led hi-tech / entrepreneur user groups on E-Commerce and Venture Finance for SDForum and SVASE.

Mary Meeker is a managing director and serves as leader of Morgan Stanley's global technology research team. Meeker co-covers US-based internet and consumer software companies including Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, eBay, and Amazon.com.

As senior vice president of the MSN Information Services & Merchant Platform division at Microsoft, Yusuf Mehdi leads the effort to empower people globally by helping them find, discover, and experience whatever they want online. In this role, Mehdi oversees the global strategy, design, development, programming, and marketing of Microsoft's information services such as MSN Search, MSN.com, My MSN, MSN Music, MSN Video, MSNBC, MSN Money, MSN Autos, MSN Shopping, and the rest of the MSN.com information channels. In addition, Mehdi is also responsible for leading Microsoft's platform efforts for online advertising and digital marketing with responsibility for brand, direct marketing, pay for performance, and business intelligence systems.

Peter Merholz is the Director of Practice Development and a founding partner of Adaptive Path, the world's premier user experience consulting company. He is an experienced information architect, writer, speaker, and leader in the field of user-experience design. Clients include Cathay Pacific, Yamaha, and the California Health Care Foundation.

Jonathan F. Miller is responsible for setting the strategy and overseeing the businesses and operations of the world's leading interactive services company. Miller came to AOL in 2002 with extensive management experience in interactive services, media, entertainment, and associated enabling technologies. Before joining AOL, Miller was president and CEO of USA Information and Services (USAIS). The 15,000-employee unit he led earned $3 billion in revenue and included businesses such as Ticketmaster and Ticketmaster.com, Citysearch and Match.com teleservices, USA Electronic Commerce Solutions, and the USA Travel Group comprising HRN, USA Travel Channel, and Expedia.com.

Matt Mullenweg is best known as the founding developer of WordPress, the blogging software he guided from a handful of users to the most widely used open source blogging package in less than a year. Matt blogs at http://PhotoMatt.net and has been implicated in founding the ping distribution service Ping-O-Matic and nascent standards organization the Global Media Protocols Group (GMPG). He recently moved to San Francisco where he works at CNET Networks. In his spare time he enjoys taking photographs and playing jazz.

Speaker biography coming soon.

Dianah L. Neff has 18 years experience in providing leadership and implementation of organization-wide strategic information technology planning, assuring reliability of information technology infrastructure, and directing information technology departments in their delivery of technology support services in both city and county organizations. Prior to working in government, she had 14 years experience in the private sector working for high-tech software and hardware firms in Silicon Valley.

Tim O'Reilly is founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. In addition to publishing pioneering books like Ed Krol's The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog (selected by the New York Public Library as one of the most significant books of the twentieth century), O'Reilly has also been a pioneer in the popularization of the Internet. O'Reilly's Global Network Navigator site (GNN, which was sold to America Online in September 1995) was the first Web portal and the first true commercial site on the World Wide Web.

Pierre Omidyar has been a technologist most of his life. He taught himself BASIC on a TRS-80 in middle school--and now is trying to figure out what his role can be in making the world a better place. He's probably best known for creating eBay.

Omidyar is CEO of Omidyar Network, chairman of eBay Inc., and a director of Meetup Inc. He also serves as a trustee of the Santa Fe Institute and Tufts University.

Ray Ozzie, the creator of IBM Corp.’s Lotus Notes, is an industry visionary and pioneer in computer-supported cooperative work. As a chief technical officer of Microsoft Corp., Ozzie reports to Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates. In this role, Ozzie has responsibility for influencing corporate communications and collaboration strategy, applications and platform infrastructure, and for helping drive Microsoft's software-based services strategy and execution across all three of the company's divisions. Ozzie is the founder of Groove Networks Inc., a leading provider of collaboration software for the virtual office, which Microsoft acquired in April 2005.

Rajat Paharia is a co-founder of Bunchball, where you can play with your friends. Prior to Bunchball, he spent four years at IDEO where he was co-director of the Software Experiences practice, working with clients ranging from small startups to companies like AT&T Wireless, HP, Philips, and Avaya. He has also worked for IBM Research, Philips Consumer Electronics, and ViewStar Corporation.

After 20 years in the Australian Army in a variety of technical roles including systems analyst, chief engineer (Army Battle Simulation), and staff officer Technology Development (Training), Mark Phillips was recruited to the Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center (VMASC) at Old Dominion University in Virginia in October 2000 to work on an Office of Naval Research Virtual Environments for Training project. Phillips co-founded the world's first public University Battle Laboratory at Old Dominion University and was appointed as the first battle laboratory director in January 2002 whilst conducting research for The United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) into Modeling and Simulation.

Mark Pincus is a new media entrepreneur who has founded tribe.net, supportsoft (NASD: SPRT) and freeloader. His prior life: TCI, Columbia Capital and Lazard Freres. He graduated from Harvard Business School and University of Pennsylvania.

Kim Polese is CEO of SpikeSource, a Kleiner-Perkins-backed startup. Polese served as president and chief executive officer of Marimba until July 2000. Prior to co-founding Marimba, Polese spent more than seven years at Sun Microsystems and was the original product manager for Java. During her tenure at Sun, she played a pivotal role in the strategic definition, direction, and launch of Java. Prior to joining Sun, Polese worked for IntelliCorp Inc., consulting with companies in the development of expert system application frameworks.

She holds a Bachelors degree in Biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley (1984) and studied Computer Science at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Michael K. Powell is the former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Powell was nominated by President William J. Clinton to a Republican seat on the Commission, and was sworn in on November 3, 1997. He was designated chairman by President George W. Bush on January 22, 2001. As chairman, Mr. Powell has set out to bring FCC regulations into the 21st Century and to recognize the move of voice, video, and data technologies away from limited analog platforms to powerful digital applications that bring more value to the public. He has focused on initiatives that encourage market-driven solutions that promote consumer interests. He supports new methods of deploying advanced services through the use of new alternatives such as power lines, unlicensed wireless devices and other technologies that will expand affordable broadband options to all Americans regardless of their geographic location. From campaigning for the right to keep your phone number when switching wireless carriers to fighting to allow the choice of avoiding telemarketing calls with a Do-Not-Call list, Mr. Powell has put consumers on the forefront in this exciting and dynamic marketplace.

Paul Rademacher is the creator of HousingMaps.com, a combination of Craigslist and Google Maps, described by Tim O'Reilly as "the first true Web 2.0 application." Paul holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UNC-Chapel Hill, and worked as an R&D Software Engineer for Dreamworks Animation. Since creating HousingMaps, he has recently joined Google.

Prabhakar Raghavan is Head of Yahoo! Research. Prior to joining Yahoo! he was Senior Vice President and CTO at Verity, before which he worked at IBM in a variety of technical and managerial positions. Raghavan is Consulting Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, and has also taught at Yale. He has authored over 100 papers in various fields including algorithms, optimization, web search and databases, an article on Web Search in Scientific American, a popular textbook on Randomized Algorithms and several patents. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the ACM, and a Fellow of the ACM and of the IEEE. Raghavan holds a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley and an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from IIT in Madras.

Srikanth works at Nokia in the Forum Nokia organization as Sr. Technology Manager and Head of Technical Services and Consultancy for the Americas region. In this capacity, Srikanth leads a team of technology experts who helps partners and software developers to develop and deploy solutions on Nokia platforms. Prior to joining Nokia, Srikanth worked as Staff Engineer and Principal Java Wireless Technology Evangelist at Sun Microsystems, Inc, where he worked for close to 6 years. In this capacity, he adviced, consulted, published, taught and spoke extensively around the world on Wireless and Java development. Srikanth also represented Sun in international industry standards committees.

Safa Rashtchy is a managing director of Piper Jaffray and a senior research analyst focused on internet media and marketing. He joined Piper Jaffray as a research analyst in 1997 and has published several technical papers and presented at various industry conferences. In addition, Rashtchy was named to The Wall Street Journal's "2002 Best on the Street" analyst survey and was also a winner in Institutional Investor magazine's "Home Run Hitters of 2001" top stock pickers list. Rashtchy also consistently enjoys the top ranking for his earnings accuracy, as compiled by Starmine. He is quoted regularly in many top publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Time, BusinessWeek, and Fortune, and he makes regular appearances on CNBC and CNNfn.

Ron serves as Chief Technical Officer and Vice President of Product Development for KnowNow, Inc. He brings over 20 years experience delivering distributed enterprise class infrastructure solutions. He is responsible for driving the company vision and delivering the products that realize the vision. Prior to joining KnowNow, Ron served as Senior Vice President of Engineering and Operations at Digital Impact Inc., where he was responsible for the development of hosted enterprise applications used for direct marketing by the Fortune 500. He also led the successful development and delivery of the company's first end-user marketing automation application-IMPACT. Before that, Ron served as Vice President of Product Development -Server Products Group at SCO. While there, he led product development for both new and existing server software, driving the development of the company's top revenue-generating OpenServer product line.

Danny Rimer joined Index Ventures in 2002 as the partner responsible for establishing the firm's London office and expanding the firm's presence in Northern Europe. His investment interests include enterprise infrastructure, applications, and services. He currently serves on the boards of KVS, MediaSurface, MySQL, Skype, Video Island, and Zend, and is an observer on Betfair. Prior to joining Index, Rimer was a general partner of The Barksdale Group, where he invested in a dozen companies including CrossGain (now BEA), myCFO (now Bank of Montreal), Neoteris (now NetScreen/Juniper), Ofoto (now Kodak) and TellMe. Prior to joining The Barksdale Group, Rimer was managing director in Hambrecht & Quist's (now JP Morgan) Equity Research Group. At H&Q, Rimer was the underwriting analyst for companies including Amazon, CheckPoint, CNET, Netscape, and Verisign. He also sponsored direct investments in over 20 companies. He holds an A.B from Harvard College.

Philip Rosedale is the founder and CEO of Linden Lab, producer of the acclaimed 3D digital world Second Life. Rosedale has an extensive background in the development and pioneering of streaming technology, having built his first computer in 4th grade, and started his first computer software company while still in high school. In 1995 he developed FreeVue, a low-bitrate video conferencing system for Internet-connected PCs, resulting in the acquisition of his company in early 1996 by RealNetworks. For three and a half years, Rosedale served as Vice President and CTO at RealNetworks, where he was responsible for the development and launch of RealVideo, RealSystem 5.0, and RealSystem G2. In 1999, Rosedale returned to San Francisco, joined Accel Partners as an entrepreneur-in-residence, and began the basic research that would become the technology behind Linden Lab. Rosedale holds a B.S. degree in Physics from the University of California at San Diego.

Joshua Schachter started del.icio.us as a hobby in 2003 and ignited the whole tagging phenomenon. He began to work on it full-time with the founding of del.icio.us inc in March, 2005. Before that, Joshua worked in financial services in NYC for ten years, including most recently with Morgan Stanley. Joshua has a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

Sam Schillace spent his first 20 years in the midwest before realizing that being a "serial entrepreneur" didn't involve farming. After college, he headed to the bay area to write video games. Since then, he's been involved in a number of startup ventures because that's his idea of fun, and sold various technologies to Ashton-Tate, Macromedia, Intuit and others as a result. He seems to think his 15 years designing software gives him some kind of vision into the industry -- spend 10 minutes with him and you'll probably agree.

Toni is in charge of the Yahoo! Developer Network, a new initiative to turn Yahoo! into an open web services platform for third party developers to create a new generation of web-based products. Toni joined Yahoo! last year through their acquisition of Oddpost where he was CEO. Prior roles include VP Marketing, VP Technology and Software Engineer at various Silicon Valley startups. Toni studied Computer Science at Stanford ('93).

Sam has overall responsibility for CIC and identifying, evaluating, structuring and managing Comcast's venture capital investments. He also advises the management of CIC portfolio companies and Comcast on strategic and operational issues and works to foster partnerships between the cable industry and entrepreneurial enterprises. Sam has extensive experience working with high-growth technology companies, having served on the Boards of Directors of numerous companies from seed to post-IPO stage.

Terry Semel joined Yahoo! as chairman and chief executive officer of Yahoo! Inc in May 2001. He has led a successful transition of the company by identifying and pursuing new opportunities within Yahoo!'s two core businesses, marketing services and consumer services. He has also assembled a talented executive team that has overseen the continued growth of Yahoo!'s global user base, a turnaround in Yahoo!'s marketing services offerings, and introduced new revenue opportunities, including sponsored search, listings, and services bundled with high-speed internet access.

Dmitry Shapiro is a world recognized thought leader and visionary in electronic communications, peer-to-peer networking, online community, and computer security. Shapiro is a frequent speaker at major technology and business events, and is widely quoted in the press, including InfoWorld, PCWorld, Computer World, eWeek, Internet World, and other publications.

David Sifry is a frequent speaker and lecturer on a variety of technology issues, ranging from wireless spectrum policy, wifi, weblogs, and open source software. He is an accomplished entrepreneur with over 19 years of software development and industry experience. As founder and CEO of Technorati, Inc., Sifry created the vision and architecture of the world's leading index and search engine for weblogs. Prior to Technorati, Sifry was co-founder and CTO of Sputnik, Inc. from 2002-2003, and co-founder of Linuxcare, Inc., where he served as CTO and VP of Engineering from 1998-2001. He is a recognized expert on open source development, licensing, and the Linux operating system and served as a founding member of the board of Linux International and the technical advisory board of the National Cybercrime Training Partnership for law enforcement. He has a B.S. in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University. Sifry has a weblog where he comments on issues of the day.

Rich Skrenta brings to Topix.net a background in both business management and technical expertise. In his last position, Skrenta held a variety of senior roles at Netscape/America Online, including director of Engineering for Netscape Search, AOL Music, and AOL Shopping. Skrenta joined Netscape/AOL upon its purchase of NewHoo/The Open Directory Project, where he was co-founder and CEO. The Open Directory is the largest human-edited directory of the Web, currently used by Google, AOL, and other major web portals. Prior to that, Skrenta led an engineering group at Sun Microsystems implementing network security and encryption products. Skrenta also operated a successful small online gaming company from 1994-2001. Skrenta has a BA degree from Northwestern University. Visit his web site for more background.

Seth is responsible for all things business at meebo, which he co-founded with Elaine & Sandy. Prior to meebo, Seth worked at IBM in Corporate Development leading M&A transactions and working on strategy and venture capital initiatives. Seth flies airplanes, rides motorcycles, and rollerblades. Seth majored in Political Science at Yale, and is in his second year at Stanford Business School.

Mark C. Stevens is a partner in the Corporate and Intellectual Property Groups of Fenwick & West LLP, a law firm specializing in high technology matters. Fenwick & West is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with an office in San Francisco, California.

Stevens represents companies ranging from newly formed startup teams to mature public companies, venture capitalists and investment banks involved in the information technology industries, with particular focus on complex transactions. As a lawyer and a business principal, Stevens has lead teams handling merger, acquisition and divestiture transactions with total announced value in excess of $20 billion. He has directed over 25 initial public offerings and hundreds of strategic alliance transactions, ranging from technology and distribution partnerships to multinational joint venture transactions.

Ethan Stock founded Zvents, the search engine for local events, in early 2005 with funding from NetService Ventures Group, where he has served as a partner since 2002. Stock brings an eclectic background in scholarship and technology to the pursuit of entrepreneurial ventures. In 1996, while in graduate school at UC Berkeley, where he was an NSF Fellow, he founded Bamboo Systems, an early entrant in the CRM market. In 2000, he served as COO of eBusinessMedia, the B2B Internet arm of UK publisher United News & Media, where he oversaw the launch of multiple industry-focused properties, including the first deployment of CommerceOne in Europe. A programmer since he was ten years old, the versatile CEO got his start as a systems engineer at EDS and was a principal consultant at strategy firm The McKenna Group during its high-tech heyday. He holds a BA in history from Ohio State and the nagging desire to someday complete his PhD thesis.

Speaker biography coming soon.

Michael is founder and CEO of Wink, a new Internet startup. Michael was founder of AdForce, a highly successful Internet ad serving company which went public in 1999 and was later acquired by CMGi. Michael also founded XDegrees which was acquired by Microsoft. Previously Michael directed product management at Verity, the leader in enterprise search. Michael is currently an active investor and advisor to several early stage Web 2.0 companies including LinkedIn, SimplyHired, and Snap. Michael holds an MBA from Stanford University and a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Alberta.

Mena Trott is co-founder and president of Six Apart, the creators of the TypePad service and Movable Type software, two of the leading tools for publishing weblogs. In addition to her role helping lead management and business efforts at Six Apart, Trott enjoys making the products aesthetically pleasing as well as functionally intuitive. Named one of Fast Company's "Fast 50 for 2004," Trott has been involved in the weblogging space since she first began publishing to her own weblog, http://dollarshort.org in early 2001. She speaks regularly at industry conferences--notably Supernova, South by Southwest, AdTech and DEMO 2004--and writes frequently about weblogging and Six Apart at Mena's Corner. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and co-founder of Six Apart, Ben Trott.

Jeffrey Veen is the Director of Product Design and a founding partner of Adaptive Path, the world's premier user experience consulting company. He launched HotWired.com in 1994, and is author of The Art & Science of Web Design and HotWired Style. Clients include PeopleSoft, PBS, and Macromedia.

Evan Williams co-founded Pyra Labs in 1999 and led the team that created Blogger, a major player in helping pioneer the blogging phenomenon. In early 2003, Williams sold Pyra Labs to Google, where he led the Blogger group until October 2004. Prior to Pyra, in 1994, Williams started an early internet company in Nebraska, his native state, and later worked for O'Reilly Media, Intel, and HP as a web application developer. He now resides in San Francisco and is co-founding a new startup, Odeo, which is helping democratize media in new ways.

Fred is a Managing Partner of Union Square Ventures which he co-founded in late 2003. He began his career in venture capital in 1987. He has focused exclusively on information technology investments for the past 16 years. From 1987 to 1996, Fred was first an Associate and then a General Partner at Euclid Partners, an early stage venture capital firm located in New York City. In 1996, Fred co-founded Flatiron Partners. Fred was the Managing Partner of Flatiron Partners. He built the investment team, which grew to 10 investment professionals, and managed the creation of a portfolio of 60 companies. Fred has a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and an MBA from The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

Bob Wyman, CTO and co-founder of PubSub has been developing innovative, industry leading products for over 25 years. Prior to PubSub Mr. Wyman was instrumental in the creation of DEC's ALL-IN-1, the first customizable and integrated office automation suite. ALL-IN-1 became the market leading OA product of the 80's, earning as much as $2 billion per year in leveraged revenue. Also while at DEC Mr. Wyman was software licensing architect and was awarded some of the earliest patents in the field of Digital Rights Management. As Senior Product Manager for Applications Programmability at Microsoft, Mr. Wyman was responsible for OLE Automation, the first widely used and practical architecture for implementing reusable code components. Mr. Wyman has held senior engineering positions at Medio Multimedia, HealthGate Data Corporation, Marketwave, Accrue Software and firstRain.

David Young is the founder and CEO of Joyent, Inc. Before Joyent, David worked at Moody's Investors Service in the Structured Finance, International, and Digital Media groups. He helped found and was CTO of manageStar, an enterprise services management software company whose customers included TimeWarner, Sodexho, and Global Signal. David founded Joyent (http://www.joyent.com) in 2004 to provide a comprehensive suite of internet-delivered software for small to medium organizations. David is a trustee of Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, CA, which the "National Review College Guide" called "one of the most rigorous curriculums of any school in the country". David holds a BA in Classics, cum laude, from Indiana University. He lives the joyent lifestyle in Marin County, CA with his wife Maria and two daughters.