Tim Wu is a professor, policy advocate and author of the best-selling booksThe Master Switch and Who Controls the Internet. He is a veteran of Silicon Valley, professor at Columbia Law School, and the chairman of media reform organization Free Press.

Wu was recognized in 2006 as one of 50 leaders in science and technology by Scientific American magazine, and in 2007 Wu was listed as one of Harvard's 100 most influential graduates.

Tim Wu's best known work is the development of Net Neutrality theory, but he has also written about copyright, international trade, and the study of law-breaking. He previously worked for Riverstone Networks in the telecommunications industry, and was a law clerk for Judge Richard Posner and Justice Stephen Breyer. He graduated from McGill University (B.Sc.), and Harvard Law School.

Tim has written for the New Yorker, the Washington Post, Forbes, Slate magazine, and others.

Robert Tercek is one of the world's most prolific creators of interactive content.

He has created breakthrough entertainment experiences on every digital platform, including satellite television, game consoles, broadband Internet, interactive television and mobile networks. His expertise spans television,
telecommunications and software.

To design interactive multimedia products, Mr Tercek draws upon a broad range of experience as a television director, game designer, artist, and educator.

Tercek has served in executive leadership roles at major media companies, most recently as President of Digital Media at OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, and previously as Senior Vice President of Digital Media at Sony Pictures Entertainment and earlier as Creative Director at MTV: Music Television. He also co-founded five startup ventures, including 7th Level, Inc., which went public in 1993.

In 2008, Robert Tercek was named a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts in recognition of his effort to advance social progress through media.

Baratunde Thurston is a politically-active, technology-loving comedian from the future. 

He co-founded the black political blog, Jack and Jill Politics and serves as Director of Digital for The Onion. He has written for Vanity Fair and the UK Independent, hosted Popular Science’s Future Of on Discovery Science and appears on cable news regularly to say smart things in funny ways. Then-candidate Barack Obama called him "someone I need to know." Baratunde travels the world speaking and advising and performs standup regularly in NYC. He resides in Brooklyn, lives on Twitter and has over 30 years experience being black. His first book, How To Be Black, was published in February 2012 by Harper Collins.

Gigi is the Chair Emeritus of the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab (where she remains on the Board) and is Managing Partner at MG-Team, an international strategic marketing and business development firm for mobile, web services and telecom companies.

Previously, she was the SVP of Marketing and Alliances for July Systems, a mobile Internet company providing mobile retailing and marketing solutions to carriers and media brands including AT&T and MTV. Prior to July, she was CEO & Co-founder of AsiaQuest, a company providing market entry services for companies entering Asian markets. Her team developed relationships with Asian operators including LGTel and Telstra for its clients. She had also started up the International Carrier Marketing group and lead VOIP Product Marketing for Ascend Communications (acquired by Alcatel-Lucent).

As an Internet pioneer, she launched the TRUSTe Internet privacy program in 1996 and also started up Pacific Internet in Singapore (IPO on NASDAQ in 1999), along with holding sales and business development positions at Pacific Bell (acquired by SBC/AT&T). Gigi holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University where she was President of the Engineering Honour Society, and a Masters in Business Administration from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.

Gigi is also Co-Chair, Location Based Services SIG - Wireless Communications Alliance and Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at National University of Singapore. 

Anthony Rose is a technical and product visionary, now planning his next online venture.

Until Dec 2010 Anthony was Chief Technology Officer for YouView, the venture creating an open IPTV platform that brings internet connectivity to the UK’s free to air platforms.

Anthony joined the YouView team from the BBC where he was Future Media Controller, Vision & Online Media Group, responsible for the BBC iPlayer as well as realising the BBC’s plans to create a unified embedded media experience across its online properties.

Anthony joined the BBC from Kazaa/Altnet where he was Chief Technology Officer, responsible for their end-to-end services. During his six years with the organisation Anthony gained credit for his work on a host of impressive projects and patents, including P2P networks, DRM based content publishing and social networking services.

Prior to joining Kazaa/Altnet Anthony was Vice President for Technology at Sega Australia New Developments, developing real-time 3D animation and 3D graphics engines.

Vanessa Fox, called a “cyberspace visionary” by Seattle Business Monthly, is an expert in understanding customer acquisition from organic search.

She shares her perspective on how this impacts marketing and user experience at ninebyblue.com and provides authoritative search-friendly design patterns for developers at janeandrobot.com. She’s also an entrepreneur-in-residence with Ignition Partners, Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land, and host of the weekly podcast Office Hours. She previously created Google’s Webmaster Central, which provides both tools and community to help website owners improve their sites to gain more customers from search and was instrumental in the sitemaps.org alliance of Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft Live Search. She was named one of Seattle’s 2008 top 25 innovators and entrepreneurs. Her book, Marketing in the Age of Google, provides a blueprint for incorporating search strategy into organizations of all levels.

Follow Vanessa on Twitter: @vanessafox

Rajat Paharia is the founder and Chief Product Officer of Bunchball.  Bunchball's Nitro platform incents and motivates user behavior online.

Nitro distills concepts from behavioural economics and game design into a web service that major media companies, social networks, ISPs, and others are using to drive user behaviour and increase engagement on their web sites.

Rajat's skill set combines a unique understanding of technology and design that stems from a four year career at design firm IDEO where he was co-director of the Software Experiences Practice. While there he worked with clients including AT&T Wireless, Avaya, Microsoft, McDonald's, HP and Philips. Prior to IDEO, Rajat worked at Philips Consumer Electronics, IBM Research and ViewStar. He has a Masters degree in Computer Science from Stanford University, with a focus on Human Computer Interaction, and an undergraduate degree from the University of California Berkeley.

Kevin Anderson is a freelance journalist and digital strategist with more than a decade of experience with the BBC and the Guardian.

Last year, he teamed up with British social media pioneer, Suw Charman-Anderson, and he now works with international and national news organisations around the world to develop and execute digital journalism strategies and prepare their staffs for the future. He is a frequent speaker at conferences and events around the world.

Kevin has been digital journalist since 1996 with experience in radio, television, print and the web. From 2009-2010, he was the digital research editor at The Guardian where he focused on evaluating and adapting digital innovations to support The Guardian’s world-class journalism. He joined The Guardian in September 2006 as their first blogs editor. Prior to that, he spent 8 years with the BBC working across the web, television and radio. He was the BBC's first online journalist outside of the UK, working as the Washington correspondent for BBCNews.com. As a freelance journalist, he has written for Reuters and The Guardian, and he is a frequent contributor on technology and media issues for the BBC and Al Jazeera.

Tan Le is a technology entrepreneur. She co-founded Emotiv in 2003 and serves as its President.

Emotiv is a neuroengineering company that has brought to market a breakthrough interface technology for digital media taking inputs directly from the brain. This technology utterly transforms the way human's interact with computers.  Emotiv's vision is to revolutionize human-computer input in the same way the graphic user interface did 20 years ago.

Ms. Le is a technology entrepreneur. Before she joined Emotiv, she cofounded and ran SASme, a pioneer in providing SMPP platforms to telecommunication carriers and content aggregators, and one of the companies responsible for the creation of Australia's SMS application market.

She helped grow SASme from its humble beginnings to a thriving company with thirty-five employees and multiple locations ... worldwide. She has also worked with one of Australia's leading law firms, Freehills.

She was a Special Visitor to the United Kingdom as a guest of the British High Commission and Foreign Commonwealth Office, a Goodwill Ambassador for Australia in Asia, and a Patron of the Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development Program. She has been an Ambassador for the Status of Women since 2001, and she's also been appointed to a number of prominent Boards, including Plan International Australia, Australian Citizenship Council, National Committee for Human Rights Education in Australia, and RMIT Business in Entrepreneurship. Tan has been featured in "Who's Who in Australia" List since 1999 and "Who's Who of Australian Women" List in 2007 & 2008.  Tan has been honored by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader since 2009.

In 1998, she was named Young Australian of the Year and voted one of Australia's 30 Most Successful Women Under 30. At the age of twenty-one, she graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Laws (with Honors) from Monash University.

Tony Chen is the Managing Director for GroupM Interaction, and he is responsible for the strategic growth and operation of the group's digital business in China.
Tony brings to GroupM his extensive experience, knowledge and market insights from his 16-year career in Greater China, mostly focused in digital media development and management. Prior to joining GroupM, he was General Manager for Dell consumer direct, business in Greater China. Before that Tony was the COO for RealNetwork, Marketing VP for eBay China and VP of Operations for Yahoo! China.
Tony has a master's degree in Communications from New York University and an EMBA degree from Fudan University.

Gregory Hywood was appointed to the Fairfax Media Board of Directors in October 2010. In February this year he was appointed Chief Executive and Managing Director, Fairfax Media. He has enjoyed a long career in the media and government.

A Walkley Award winning journalist, he has held a number of senior management positions at Fairfax including Publisher and Editor in Chief of each of The Australian Financial Review, The Sydney Morning Herald/Sun Herald and The Age. He also held the position of Group Publisher Fairfax magazines.

He was Executive Director Policy and Cabinet in the Victorian Premiers Department between 2004 and 2006, and from 2006 to 2010 was Chief Executive of Tourism Victoria.

Greg is also a Director of the Tourism and Transport Forum, The Heart Foundation, The Victorian Major Events Company, and a member of the Deakin University Council.
 

Mike van Niekerk began his career 30 years ago editing the local newspaper in a small South African mining town - a publication produced using 19th century hot metal technology for a hyper-local audience.

Later, he specialised in in arts and technology journalism, winning several awards for his writing. Since 2001 he has been Fairfax Digital Editor-in-Chief, overseeing the editorial development of the websites of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, as well as the launch of Business Day online and the online-only news sites brisbanetimes.com.au and watoday.com.au.

Riyaad Minty leads the Al Jazeera Network's social media initiatives. As part of the Network's New Media team, he ensures that Al Jazeera has a presence and is part of the conversation across Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms.

Riyaad was part of the team that produced Al Jazeera English's Emmy nominated coverage of the 2008 US Presidential Election (International Digital Emmy 2009).

Most recently his work has focused on the use of citizen media for crisis reporting, with a particular focus on Egypt (2011), the war on Gaza (2008/9) and the 2009 Iranian election. He has been interviewed by the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, National Public Radio and Al Jazeera English to discuss how the challenges and opportunities new technologies provide in enhancing news coverage.

Prior to joining Al Jazeera, Riyaad co-founded Future Technologies which focused on mobile content production, aggregation and distribution. His company brought the award winning cartoon strip, Madam and Eve, to mobile phones across South Africa.

Joshua Hatch is the online content manager for the Sunlight Foundation's live investigative reporting site, Sunlight Live. The Sunlight Foundation is a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to furthering and reporting on government accountability and transparency.

Before joining Sunlight, Josh was the interactives director for USA TODAY, where he led a small multidisciplinary team in creating innovative news apps and digital stories. Working with video, audio, photos, text, data and the occasional wild animal, Josh and his team produced award-winning packages on topics ranging from breaking news to the Olympics.

In his "spare" time, Josh serves as a senior training consultant for the Webb Media Group, having led training sessions around the world, including Thailand, eastern Russia, Canada and Indonesia, and teaches digital journalism at American University in Washington, D.C., where he earned his master's degree in news media studies.

Josh has a special place in his heart for Australia. He spent a semester in Melbourne in the early '90s, learning to surf and meeting his future wife. They now live in northern Virginia with their daughter, two Labs and an embarrassing array of Apple products.