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 Dutch Electronic Arts Festival 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 McGonigal takes play seriously. She is the director of game research and development at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California, and is currently writing a book about how games can save the real world (Reality is Broken, Penguin Press, 2010). She is also an award-wining game designer, best known for directing and designing alternate reality games such as The Lost Ring, World Without Oil, and Cruel 2 B Kind. She has a PhD. in performance studies from the University of California at Berkeley and blogs at www.avantgame.com.

Tim O’Reilly is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. O’Reilly Media also publishes online through the O’Reilly Network and hosts conferences on technology topics, including the O’Reilly Open Source Convention, the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, and the Web 2.0 Conference. Tim’s blog, the O’Reilly Radar “watches the alpha geeks” to determine emerging technology trends, and serves as a platform for advocacy about issues of importance to the technical community. Tim is on the boards of MySQL, CollabNet, Safari Books Online, Wesabe, and ValuesOfN, and is a partner in O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures.

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 the Lorry I. Lokey Visiting Professor in Human Biology at Stanford University and Director of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative. He received his bachelor’s degree from Stanford in 1993 and his doctorate in Immunology & Infectious Diseases from Harvard in 1998. The recipient of a Fulbright fellowship in 1997, Dr. Wolfe was awarded the National Institutes of Health (NIH) International Research Scientist Development Award in 1999 and the prestigious NIH Director’s Pioneer Award in 2005.

Dr. Wolfe has published over 50 articles and chapters. Among his major findings include the discovery of the first evidence of natural transmission of retroviruses from nonhuman primates to humans. His work has been published in or covered by Nature, Science, The Lancet, PNAS, JAMA, The New York Times, The Economist, Wired, Discover, Scientific American, NPR, Popular Science, Seed, and Forbes. He has received research support totaling over $20m in grants and contracts from the Google.org, The Skoll Foundation, NIH, the National Science Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Geographic Society, Merck Research Laboratories and various branches of the US Department of Defense, including: the Global Emerging Infections Surveillance & Response System (GEIS), HIV/AIDS Prevention Program (DHAPP), and the US Military HIV Research Program (USMHRP). He has extensive consulting experience and has served on a number of advisory and editorial boards, including, since 2004, the editorial board of EcoHealth and since 2008, DARPA’s Defense Science Research Council (DSRC).

Dr. Wolfe has over eight years of full-time experience living and conducting biomedical research in Southeast Asia (Malaysia) and sub-Saharan Africa (Cameroon, Uganda). He founded and directs the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative (GVFI), a pandemic early warning system which monitors the spillover of novel infectious agents from animals into humans. GVFI coordinates activities of over 100 scientists and staff from countries around the world. He currently has active research and public health projects in Cameroon, China, Central African Republic, DR Congo, PR Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Lao, Madagascar, Malaysia and Sao Tome.