Speakers

Eric Eldon
Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.

Brian Solis, Principal, FutureWorks
Brian Solis is Principal of FutureWorks, an award-winning PR and New Media agency in Silicon Valley. Solis blogs at PR2.0, bub.blicio.us, and regularly contributes marketing & tech insight to industry publications. He's a published author and an avid speaker on the topic of new marketing and engagement. Solis is among the original thought leaders who paved the way for Social Media. He's a co-founder of the Social Media Club and a founding member of the Media 2.0 Workgroup.

Moderator:

Larry Chiang, Speaker, Author
Hi there, I am Larry Chiang-I had friends who were in credit card difficulty and decided to do something about it. I started collecting deep underground credit knowledge (duck) into a controversial site: www.Duck9.com. It breaks-down the mysterious FICO score and graduates people with a FICO in the 90th percentile. SECRET: The key is to make the first 24 interactions with the FICO grid PERFECT ... email me and I'll send you the 101 secrets/tips or you can explore the secrets yourself by clicking on the ducks butt at duck9. I wrote the NY Times bestseller: "What They Don't Teach You At Stanford Business School". Its a book about sales, entrepreneurship and character compassing people. My mentor, Mark McCormack wrote, "What They Don't Teach You At Stanford Business School"
My writing centers around mentorship: whether you're building a business or improving your credit score, it is easier to do with a mentor. One of my proudest achievements was to testify in Congress on behalf of the financial services industry. Congressman Tom Campbell also wrote the foreword for my last book, "Internet Marketing Secrets" that I co-edited with Gerri Detweiler. I try to hide the fact that I am old - thank goodness I am Chinese cuz my wrinkles aren't here yet. When I crash campus gyms to play basketball, I lace my hair with mucho product so people don't see my grey hair. In addition to playing basketball, I love to write, coach entrepreneurs, and sneak into dorm cafeterias. Invite me to your house for dinner and I'll entertain with stories of credit ... my email is chiang9@duck9.com

Panelists:

Sumaya Kazi
Sumaya Kazi is an internationally recognized innovator, leader, speaker and award-winning entrepreneur. She has been featured in over 150 newspapers, magazines, radio interviews, and television spotlights in top-tier outlets such as Newsweek, BusinessWeek Magazine, CNN, ABC News and Washington Post. Sumaya frequently speaks at professional conferences and educational institutions inspiring audiences on topics such as entrepreneurship, non-profit work, intrapreneurship, young professional issues, social media, diversity and technology.

Adriana Gascoigne, Girls in Tech
Adriana is the Director of Global Communications for SGN. In her role as the Director of Global Communications, she provides strategic guidance on digital marketing and new media campaigns including word-of-mouth marketing programs, social media initiatives, and digital integration project management.
Most recently, Adriana was the Director of Global Communications for hi5. Launched in 2003, hi5 is now one of the world's largest social networks - ranked as a top 20 website globally and the #1 social network in 33 countries across Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa. According to comScore, more than 63 million individuals every month visit hi5, which is currently available in 50 languages options. Previously, Adriana was the Vice President of the 360 Digital Influence Group at Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide where she spearheaded operations for social media, word-of-mouth marketing and digital campaigns for clients such as Intel, Wells Fargo, Brocade, ACC, Sun Power, Case Logic, YieldBuild and Naked Juice. Prior to working at Ogilvy, she served as the Vice President of FutureWorks Media in San Francisco, managing all aspects of operations including business development, digital strategy and account management. Some of her clients included MeeVee, WooMe, Yojo Mobile, DocStoc, Magnify, Fantasy Sports Matrix, Ujogo, StreetAdvisor, Yoono, HeyCosmo, SayHeyHey, GoBig and YourTrumanShow. Adriana holds a bachelor's degree in Sociology and Economics from the University of California at Davis, received a certification from El Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico, and was enrolled in Semester at Sea, University of Pittsburgh in 1997. Adriana is also fluent in Spanish and speaks some Japanese and French.

Tony "Frosty" Welch, Lead Social Media Strategist, HP PSG
He's also the Community Manager for The Next Bench (www.TheNextBench.com) You can find him on Twitter at @frostola.

Marcus Nelson, Co-Founded, UserVoice
Marcus Nelson Co-Founded UserVoice, a SaaS provider dedicated to offering customer engagement tools for "Consumer Driven Initiatives." He also founded Superstarch, a design consultancy dedicated to designing & developing social-focused websites for a broad range of startups and community functions, including charter schools, task-management tools, co-working spaces, and a hyper-local citizen-journalism blog (citizenwausau.com). Prior, Marcus co-founded a non-profit youth center in 1996, creating a culture & community around Internet, coffee and live music. It was possibly the first CyberCafe in Wisconsin, known as RockWater. After a stint of world travel following college, Marcus became Director of Marketing for Metro One Records in Southern California, and later joined J.Crew as a catalog model from '95-'96.

Moderator:

Thomas Hessler, Zanox
Thomas Hessler is CEO and Co-Founder of zanox, a global market leader for performance-based online marketing. Based in the Silicon Valley, he is responsible for leading the company's marketing and sales strategy, as well as pushing international business along with the international expansion into new markets. He holds a degree in Business and Information Technology from the University of Applied Sciences, FHTW, Berlin.

Panelists:

Jeffrey Kalmikoff, Digg
Jeffrey is your average tattooed metal-head with an eye for design and nose for tomfoolery. Previously as chief creative officer for the Chicago-based, community-business-centric company skinnyCorp, he focused on design and strategy for numerous internal web projects. The best-known of these projects is Threadless.com, a tee shirt business and ongoing online open-call for tee shirt design submissions which sells 100,000+ tees per month and has 1 million+ registered users. He left skinnyCorp in August of 2009, but remains an owner and advisor. In September of 2009, he joined Digg as their Director of Design and User Experience

Fabien Degaugue, Peerpong
Got a question? Fabien knows how to get your answer. He's the CEO and founder of PeerPong, a service that taps the power of Twitter to make it easy to ask questions and get relevant answers from people in the know. A lifelong questioner dedicated to finding better and better answers, Fabien has been developing consumer online services for over 15 years and filed an early patent around Social Search in 2004. Fabien is a graduate of Ecole Central and ESC Management School in France.

Yaniv Bensadon, Fixya
Yaniv Bensadon is a seasoned internet entrepreneur who over the past 10 years founded and led several successful consumer internet ventures.
His recent venture, FixYa, is establishing itself as the first and largest crowd sourced Product Support community on the web. Bensadon's core expertise focuses on envisioning innovative solutions that accommodate the growing needs of online consumers, yet are holding an abundant economic potential for monetization.

Moderator:

Sam Levin
Sam Levin is currently an on-air technology and entertainment Host for Sam's Cool Picks and Co Host of Rock & Roll Geek Gadget Show. He is also a consultant in the emerging technology industry. Sam is the former Co founder of the Stanford Mac Users' Group, a key special interest (Mac) group representing one of Apple's first Consortium based Universities.
Levin plays a critical role in forging a path for airing new products and technologies, and is widely credited in developing crucial relationships between entertainment and technology industries. Levin works with leading Macintosh, PC and mobile developers on influence, social media, business development, and brand evangelism. Sam has also directed licensing initiatives for leading entertainment companies including Virgin Interactive, Broderbund, and Mattel.
For more than 20 years, Sam has worked closely with technology companies, providing him a special insight on the trends and future direction of personal computing and consumer electronics.

Panelists:

Adil Lalani, Twitvid
Adil Lalani is a young Canadian entrepreneur, who is currently the Co-founder and CTO of TwitVid.com, the leading video sharing service for Twitter. TwitVid is used by many celebrities including Britney Spears, Coldplay, Demi Lovato, Jonas Brothers, and many more, and has raised money from DFJ, the late Rajeev Motwani, Amidzad, and other prominent angels in the valley. Prior to starting TwitVid, Adil was studying Software Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He also had another start-up called Surfyourwork.com, an online collaboration system for teachers and students, which got acquired in May, 2005 for over a million.

Fergus Hurley, Clixtr
Fergus Hurley, CEO of Clixtr, is an Irish entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley. He graduated from University College Cork in Electrical Engineering in 2006. He completed his Master's thesis in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2008. He attended the Stanford Summer Institute for Entrepreneurship at the Graduate School of Business during the summer of 2008. Following the course at Stanford he started a mobile web company called Clixtr, The Ultimate Social Camera. Clixtr, at it's core is a real-time, location-aware, mobile photo sharing platform which allows people to collaboratively share photos at events and tune into events happening nearby and around the world. Clixtr secured seed funding from DFJ and Silicon Valley angel investors in March 2009. Clixtr released the first version of its iPhone application in September 2009 at TechCrunch50. Clixtr was one of the top 50 companies selected by TechCrunch, out of over 1,000 applicants, to launch on stage at TechCrunch50. You can start having fun with Clixtr today by downloading the Clixtr iPhone app from the Apple App Store or by using the Clixtr web app at www.clixtr.com.

Ben Satterfeild, Twiddla
Ben has been building and growing internet-based companies for the past 3 years, and has been an avid user of internet technology since the early 90s. Ben studied biology and psychology with a minor in Asian Studies at Drew University, where he got his first taste of the potential for technology and the internet. He was doing his homework on online forums as early as 1994. Ben traveled extensively throughout India (working on a research project), Yemen (working with UNESCO) and China (where he did his thesis on Traditional Chinese Medicine).
In 2001, he began his Masters in Traditional Chinese Medicine at Emperor's College in Santa Monica, CA. It was during this degree that Ben realized that he could combine all his interests and skills into a business, and so he founded Rootdown.us, an online hub for the Traditional Chinese Medicine community. During the process of making Rootdown.us, Ben saw the need for an easy way to collaborate with a remote team. Working closely with one of the lead developers on Rootdown, Jason Kester, Twiddla was born.

Moderator:

Shobeir Shobeiri, Plug and Play
Shobeir Shobeiri was a founding member of Plug & Play Technology Center in 2006. He is the director of operations at the Palo Alto campus. Shobeir hosts monthly Web and Mobile Meetups with high level speakers and startup presentations. Shobeir is an Analyst for Amidzad. He is responsible for bringing deal flow for investment arm by analyzing startups team, industry, and technology. Shobeir is the host of PAPA (Plug and Play Angels). PAPA is a new angel group that meets twice a month helping startups with advice and raising money. Shobeir is also is involved in the local community by being an advisor for the Entrepreneurship Society at San Jose State. He also is an advisor for an international youth television show called Iranican. Shobeir received his BS in International Business at San Jose State University.

Panelists:

George Zachary, CRV
George Zachary joined Charles River Ventures in 2004. He brings more than 17 years of operating and investing experience in computing and consumer technology. George's focus is on building great services and software technology companies. George led CRV's investments in Areae, Geni.com, GoTV, Millennial Media, Skyrider, SocialMedia Networks and Twitter and is a board member at Twitter.

Joseph Galante, Reporter, Bloomberg News
Joseph Galante is a reporter at Bloomberg News in San Francisco, where he covers technology and e-commerce companies. He's written about trends on Twitter and how companies are using the site.