ETech 2009 Keynote Speakers

Coming soon.

Joichi Ito is the CEO of Creative Commons (http://www.creativecommons.org). He is a co-founder and board member of Digital Garage (http://www.garage.co.jp/) and the CEO of Neoteny (http://www.neoteny.com.) He is on the board of Technorati (http://www.technorati.com/) and helps run Technorati Japan (http://www.technorati.jp/). He is a Senior Visiting Researcher of Keio Research Institute at SFC in Japan. He is the Chairman of Six Apart Japan (http://www.sixapart.jp/) the weblog software company. He is on board of a number of non-profit organizations including The Mozilla Foundation, WITNESS (http://www.witness.org/) and Global Voices (http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/). He has created numerous Internet companies including PSINet Japan, Digital Garage and Infoseek Japan and was an early stage investor in Six Apart, Technorati, Flickr, SocialText, Dopplr, Last.fm, Rupture, Kongregate, etology Inc and other Internet companies. He has served and continues to serve on various Japanese central as well as local government committees and boards, advising the government on IT, privacy and computer security related issues. He is currently researching “The Sharing Economy” as a Doctor of Business Administration candidate at the Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy at Hitotsubashi University in Japan. He maintains a weblog (http://joi.ito.com/) where he regularly shares his thoughts with the online community. He is the Guild Custodian of the World of Warcraft guild, We Know (http://weknow.to/).

Ito was listed by Time Magazine as a member of the “Cyber-Elite” in 1997. Ito was listed as one of the 50 “Stars of Asia” by BusinessWeek and commended by the Japanese Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications in 2000. He was selected by the World Economic Forum in 2001 as one of the “Global Leaders for Tomorrow”, chosen by Newsweek as a member of the “Leaders of The Pack” in 2005, and listed by Vanity Fair as a member of “The Next Establishment” in 2007. Ito was also named by Businessweek as one of the 25 Most Influential People on the Web in 2008.

Dr. Mary Lou Jepsen was recently named one of the hundred most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in May 2008 for her work in creating Pixel Qi, and her previous work at One Laptop per Child where she was the founding chief technology officer. Notably Mary Lou invented the laptop’s sunlight-readable display technology and co-invented its ultra-low-power management system. Critically, she transformed these inventions into ready-to-ship hardware, integrated into the XO laptop. Mary Lou convinced some of the world’s largest electronics manufacturers to create the XO with her, and she created and managed the relationships between OLPC and them. She was responsible for all of the OLPC hardware, mechanicals, electronics, display, integration, manufacturating, certification, and environmental footprint reduction during her tenure at OLPC.

The XO laptop is the lowest-cost laptop ever made, the lowest-power laptop ever made, and the most environmentally friendly laptop ever made. It has received numerous awards, drawn widespread global attention, and spurred the new class of compact laptop – which is expected to grow to over 50 million units by 2010.

Mary Lou’s earlier contributions have had world-wide adoption in successful HDTV, projector and head-mounted display products. She has been a pioneer in single-panel field-sequential projection display systems and liquid-crystal-on-silicon system-on-chip devices. She co-founded the first company whose sole effort was development of microdisplays in 1995 (The Microdisplay Corporation) and served as its chief technology officer through 2003. Until the end of 2004, she was a group executive and the chief technology officer of the display division at Intel Corporation.

Mary Lou holds a Ph.D. in Optical Sciences, a B.S. in Electrical Engineering (with honors) and a B.A. (req.) in Studio Art all from Brown University as well as a Master of Science in Holography from the MIT Media Lab.

Kati London is Vice President at Area/Code, which creates cross-media games and entertainment. London designs and develops opportunities for interacting with others – whether that be for people and plants, residents of Gaza City and Tel-Aviv or gamers playing tag with tiger sharks in the Great Barrier Reef. Her collaborative projects have been featured in the Museum of Science & Industry, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Design Museum of London. She frequently speaks on digital/physical hybridization.

At Area/Code, London works with clients that include the BBC, the Carnegie Institute/Girls Math and Science Project, Disney Imagineering, the United Kingdom’s Department for Transport, Nike, Discovery Channel, CBS, MTV and the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.

Dr. Chris Luebkeman is a bridge builder of many kinds. He is a third generation educator who has been formally educated as a geologist, structural engineer and architect who believes that successful design cannot be separated from breadth of knowledge and steadfast inquiry. Prior to joining Arup in 1999, he taught in the Departments of Architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology [ETH] in Zurich, the University of Oregon, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT].

His industry funded research program at MIT, which continues today, is entitled ‘house_n; MIT’s intelligent home of the future.’ This is a technology and tectonic exploration of the integration of the digital with the physical.

He continues to utilize his broad interests and enthusiastic belief in our zeitgeist in his current position as Director for Global Foresight and Innovation at Ove Arup & Partners (www.arup.com) headquartered in London. His experiences have enabled him to specialize in being a generalist with a view to being “in league with the future.”

Chris joined Arup to become joint Director of Research and Development. He co-led a group of over fifty of the firm’s most highly skilled and technically able individuals. He was responsible for developing the role of the group with a focus on design research. He has enjoyed a particular responsibility within the Arup Group for encouraging and mentoring innovation projects.

Chris is an active facilitator and motivational speaker. He lectures widely [51 cities in 26 countries in 2006-2008] on the future, sustainability, and innovation, as well as on research at Arup.

facilitated the creation of an eCommerce strategy, initiated a series of research projects on the future and is constantly encouraging lateral thinking. He is a member of Arup’s Design and Technical Executive which promotes the highest standards of design and technical skill to ensure that Arup is one of the world’s leading practitioners in its chosen fields.

He is currently spending most of his time and energy building a better understanding of the way in which the driving forces of global change should be incorporated into more effective global business strategies. His current role puts him at the forefront of understanding where ‘things are heading’ and enables Arup to be there first.

Rebecca MacKinnon is co-founder of Global Voices, a global bloggers’ network. A veteran journalist, blogger, and China expert, she is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Center where she teaches online journalism and conducts research on the Chinese Internet, free expression and corporate responsibility. She also serves as Public Lead for Creative Commons Hong Kong. Before moving to Hong Kong MacKinnon was a Research Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, MacKinnon worked for CNN in Northeast Asia for over a decade, serving as CNN’s Beijing Bureau Chief and Correspondent from 1998-2001 and as CNN’s Tokyo Bureau Chief and Correspondent from 2001-03. Her blog is RConversation.com.

Jane is the New York Times bestselling author of Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World (Penguin Press, 2011) — and currently serves as the Creative Director for Social Chocolate, where she is making games powered by the science of positive emotion and social connection. She believes game designers are on a humanitarian mission — and her #1 goal in life is to see a game developer win a Nobel Peace Prize. She has created and deployed award-winning games and secret missions in more than 30 countries on six continents, for partners such as the American Heart Association, the International Olympics Committee, the World Bank Institute, and the New York Public Library. She specializes in games that challenge players to tackle real-world problems, such as poverty, hunger and climate change, through planetary-scale collaboration. Her best-known work includes EVOKE, Superstruct, World Without Oil, Cruel 2 B Kind, and The Lost Ring. These games have been featured in The New York Times, Wired, and The Economist, and on MTV, CNN, and NPR.

Tim O’Reilly is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media. His original business plan was “interesting work for interesting people,” and that’s worked out pretty well. He publishes books, runs conferences, invests in early-stage startups, urges companies to create more value than they capture, and tries to change the world by spreading and amplifying the knowledge of innovators.

Sameer Padania works at the human rights organisation WITNESS, where he runs the Hub, the first website dedicated to human rights video and action. Before joining WITNESS in New York, Sameer was the lead author on Reflecting the Real World 2, a report documenting the impact of new media on British public television’s global coverage, and he also wrote and edited WITNESS’ award-winning human rights vlog at Global Voices Online. Sameer worked for six years at the media development organization Panos London, designing and managing initiatives to support and strengthen local radio and online journalism worldwide. He has worked in film distribution and production, and as a film journalist and TV documentary researcher, and is a graduate of Oxford University.

Alex Steffen has been the Executive Editor of Worldchanging since he co-founded the organization in 2003, as the next phase in a lifetime of work exploring ways of building a better future. Worldchanging is rated the 2nd largest sustainability-related publication on the Internet by Nielsen Online, and boasts an impressive archive of almost 9,000 articles by leading thinkers around the world.

Steffen was also the editor of Worldchanging’s wildly successful first book, Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century (Abrams, 2006), a 600-page compendium of writings from over sixty noted leaders around the world, with a foreword by Al Gore and introduction by Bruce Sterling.

Steffen’s work has been subject of stories in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and other leading publications. His essays have been translated into German, French, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish, and widely reprinted and anthologized. Recently he was the subject of a CNN documentary, which envisions possibilities for the future, and was featured as one of six leading innovators in the New York Times Sunday Magazine’s “Ecotecture” issue.

He has also spoken and keynoted at many of the most renowned design and innovation conferences, including TED, Pop!Tech, and Design Indaba.

“We find ourselves facing two futures, one unthinkable and the other currently unimaginable,” says Steffen, “My beat is looking for ways to create a future which is sustainable, dynamic, prosperous and fair—a future which is both bright and green. WorldChanging is based on the premise that such a future is not a distant possibility, but a growing reality. We seek to connect worldchanging people with the tools, models and ideas for building it.”

Dr. Nathan Wolfe is an epidemiologist who fights disease pandemics with an unprecedented early-warning system to forecast, pinpoint and control new plagues worldwide before they kill millions. He is the Lorry I. Lokey Visiting Professor in Human Biology at Stanford University and the Founder and CEO of Metabiota, as well as the Chairman of Global Viral. His survey of diseases that have historically had the greatest impact on humanity revealed that most started with animals. Based on this, he created a global network of sites in viral hotspots where people are highly exposed to animals and are most at risk for early infection when viruses leap from animals to humans.

Dr. Wolfe has received numerous awards including a Fulbright fellowship and an NIH Director’s Pioneer Award and was chosen as a National Geographic Emerging Explorer and World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. He was also named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World for 2011. Nathan has over 80 scientific publications and his work has been published in or covered by Nature, Science, The New York Times, The Economist, NPR, The New Yorker and Forbes among others. He has received support totaling over $30m in grants and contracts from Google.org, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the US Department of Defense and others.