I am a VC. I have been for 19 years. I help people start and build technology companies. I do it in NYC, which isn’t the easiest place to build technology companies, but its getting better.

I love my work. I am the Managing Partner of two venture capital firms, Flatiron Partners and Union Square Ventures.

I also am a husband and a father of 3 kids. I do that in NYC too. And it isn’t the easiest place to raise a family either. But it’s getting better too. I love my family more than my work.

I also love music, art, yoga, biking, skiing, and golf. That’s a lot of interests for a guy who works 70 hours a week and loves his family. But I manage to make it work. (Back)

Lior Ron is the lead for Google’s products in the local space including Place Page, Google Map Maker, My Maps and others. He has spent the last 12 years innovating in the geo industry where he was the CTO of the Israeli Intelligence mapping and search efforts, product manager at Yahoo, founder of a local search startup and in the last 4 years part of the Google geo leadership team. He holds an MBA from Stanford GSB, BSc and MS from the Technion – the Israeli institute for technology. He’s also an amateur space traveler (in the future) and launched Google Sky and other space related efforts while in Google. (Back)

Sr. Vice President of Marketing

David Staas brings to JiWire more than 13 years of marketing and product management experience in the mobile and advertising industries. David comes to JiWire from Ad Infuse, a leading pioneer in mobile advertising, where he was vice president of marketing. At Ad Infuse, David helped build a premium network and platform business with leading mobile operators.

Prior to Ad Infuse, David led the global product marketing team at Openwave Systems, responsible for a product portfolio with established mobile and broadband telecommunications providers in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. David has a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in business administration from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. (Back)

Marie Alexander is president and Chief Executive Officer of Quova Inc. Since joining in November of 2000, she has followed through on her vision of building a company and creating a “geolocation marketplace”. Together, Quova and Alexander are leading the industry to greater innovation and adoption of IP geolocation data.

She is considered an expert in Internet geolocation and has been quoted in such publications as the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. She has spoken at venues such as eTail, ETRE (European Technology Roundtable Exhibition) and the USA Today CEO Technology Forum, and her articles on geolocation have appeared in Bank Technology News, Retail Merchandiser, Online Banking Report, Card News and Electronic Commerce News. She has been called as an expert witness by the Department of Justice in support of the Child On-line Protection Act as well as The Family Medical Leave Act.

Marie earned a Master of Business Information Systems from Georgia State University and a Bachelor of Music Therapy from Georgia College. (Back)

Stewart Alsop is a Partner of Alsop Louie Partners,which was one of the founding investors in Gowalla. Previously, he was a general partner with New Enterprise Associates and led that firm’s investments in companies such as TiVo, Portola Communications (sold to Netscape), Netcentives, Glu Mobile, and Xfire. During that time, he also wrote a column for Fortune. Before he became an investor, Stewart was a business editor and pundit. He was Editor in Chief of InfoWorld, a weekly newspaper for information-technology professionals. He also published PC Letter, a fortnightly newsletter for computer industry insiders, and produced the Agenda and Demo conferences for executives of companies in the computer industry. Way back when he was young(er), he learned to be an editor at Inc. magazine, where he was executive editor. (Back)

Chris is Partner, Head of Services for Catalyst:SF, a marketing capital firm in San Francisco. He has been in the Sales, Marketing & Advertising industry for 13 years and is the Author of a leading College-level textbook, Contemporary Advertising. He has been a thought-leader in the digital advertising community since 1999 and has worked on such brands as: Motorola, EarthLink, Amazon.com, RadioShack, Western Union & Electronic Arts. He has experience with venture backed startups, board of directors, funding, etc. Strong operations background including staff management, service & support and sales & marketing. (Back)

Rick Bakas is the Director of Social Media Marketing at St. Supéry winery in Napa Valley. In his role, Rick is responsible for creating and executing all the digital strategy for the Skalli Family wineries, including St. Supéry in Napa valley and sister wineries in France.

Rick is the author of Quick Bites: 75 Savory Tips for Social Media Success.

Rick previously worked at NIKE, Inc. in Beaverton, Oregon where he was responsible for creating and managing brands for different NIKE silos as well as professional teams.

He was one of the key members of the NFL’s Denver Broncos rebrand effort in 1997 and led the team that rebranded the University of Oregon in 1999. Other brand projects include NIKE Basketball: Battlegrounds, Florida State Seminoles, Portland Trailblazers, Dallas Mavericks, Georgetown Hoyas, New York Giants and the Portland State Vikings.

Rick combines his branding knowledge with his 25 years of technology experience to maximize the capabilities of brand building in social media. (Back)

Founder/Chairman/CEO, Federated Media Publishing Inc.

John Battelle, 44, is an entrepreneur, journalist, professor, and author who has founded or co-founded scores of online, conference, magazine, and other media businesses.
In addition to his work at Federated Media, Battelle continues to serve as the Executive Producer and Program Chair of the Web 2 Summit, as well as “band manager” with BoingBoing.net. Battelle maintains Searchblog, an ongoing daily site which covers the intersection of media, technology, and culture at www.battellemedia.com.

Previously, Battelle occupied the Bloomberg chair in Business Journalism for the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He was Chairman and CEO of Standard Media International (SMI), publisher of The Industry Standard and TheStandard.com. Prior to that, he was a co-founding editor of Wired magazine and Wired Ventures.

In 2005 Battelle authored The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture (Penguin/Portfolio), an international bestseller published in more than 25 languages. He is an expert in the field of media and technology, and has appeared on many national and international news channels such as CBS, BBC, CNN, PBS, Discovery, and CNBC.
Battelle was a founding Board member of the Online Publishers Association and currently sits on the board of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, and the Board of his children’s school.

Honors and awards include: “Global Leader for Tomorrow” and “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland; finalist rank in the “Entrepreneur of the Year” competition by Ernst & Young; “Innovator – One of Ten Best Marketers in the Business”by Advertising Age; and one of the “Most Important People on The Web” by PCWorld. Battelle holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley. (Back)

Michael Boland is Senior Analyst and Program Director for BIA/Kelsey, covering online and mobile media.

Mike is a frequent speaker at top industry conferences such as BIA/Kelsey events, Search Engine Strategies, ad:tech, and Digital Hollywood. He has authored in-depth reports on the changing local media landscape including online video, social networking and mobile. He contributes regularly to highly read online news sources such as Search Engine Watch and the Huffington Post. A trusted source for reporters covering the interactive media space, his comments have appeared in major news and trade media, including the Wall Street Journal, Fortune and Forbes.

Before joining BIA/Kelsey, Mike was editor of Innovation World’s TechAlert, a monthly journal of emerging technology companies. Previously he was a San Francisco-based freelance writer for business and technology magazines, such as Red Herring, Business 2.0, Mobile Magazine and Digitalife. Mike began his career in business analysis and journalism as a staff reporter for Forbes magazine, where he covered technology, online media and telecommunications. (Back)

Wow. I’m supposed to write something witty or something to tell you all about myself, I guess. My name is Tom. I’m in my early thirties. I’m gay. I am passionate about the internet and care a lot about social software, the coming trends towards mass amateurisation and democratisation, media distribution and network-enabled appliances. I currently work for a small US start-up called Yahoo, promoting social media and social software and trying to come up with innovative new applications and products. Before that, I ran a small R&D team at BBC Radio & Music Interactive, working to make BBC media navigable, addressableand explorable, and finding new models for engagement and annotation.

Before that, I worked with UpMyStreet.com developing the geo-coded online community called UpMyStreet Conversations. It’s changed dramatically since we launched it originally, but you can read about its launch and see the PowerPoint presentation here: UpMyStreet Conversations – Mapping Cyber to Space.

I’ve also worked as Production Editor of TimeOut.com, developed online communities with the crew behind b3ta while working at emap, contributed film reviews to the BBC’s films site and written for The Guardian. All kinds of stuff. Back in the mists of time I failed to complete a doctorate, which I think as more useful and important to me than I tend to let on. If you want to get in touch with me, you can e-mail tom@ the name of this website. (Back)

David is a seasoned executive with a track record of success in mobile, media, and online search/advertising at venture-backed startups. Prior to Where, Inc., David was Vice President of Marketing and Co-founder of Mobicious, where he led product and marketing efforts. Before founding Mobicious, David was Director of Product Marketing at m-Qube, a pioneer in the mobile content space, which was acquired by VeriSign. Prior to m-Qube, David was Director of New Products at TripAdvisor, where he launched new features to meet end-consumers’ needs. Prior to TripAdvisor, he held senior product roles at edocs and Goldman Sachs. David holds a BS with Distinction in Computer Science from Cornell University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with his family and taking advantage of the unique culture of Boston and New England. (Back)

Follow David on Twitter @changds

Doug Chavez leads Digital Marketing at Del Monte Foods. Under Doug’s leadership Del Monte has created a comprehensive consumer engagement strategy for Del Monte brands, such as Del Monte®, Contadina®, College Inn®, Meow Mix®, Kibbles ‘n Bits®, 9Lives®, Milk-Bone® and Pup-Peroni® .

Prior to Del Monte, Doug was Director of Ad Solutions at Yahoo! leading monetization strategy for Yahoo!’s Communications properties – Mail, Messenger, Flickr and Groups. Prior to Yahoo!, Doug was Senior Director at Tribal DDB –Chicago. Under Doug’s leadership the business achieved double digit growth and guided the team to win a Cyber Lion at Cannes — a first for the agency — for the “Lincoln Fry” campaign. Doug has received a number of industry awards including a Cannes Cyber Lion, Yahoo!’s Big Idea Chair, and a London International Award. (Back)

Brian is USATODAY.com’s Manager of Social Media & Digital Partnerships. Brian has been with USATODAY.com for nearly 5 years. In this time he has formed partnerships with leading brands such as Yahoo, Forbes and social media sites such as Fark and Gowalla. Brian has created opportunities for distribution of USA TODAY content via RSS, widgets, podcasts and YouTube. He also trains internal staff on productive and effective use of social media platforms such as Twitter and utilizes various analytic tools to understand the impact of these efforts.

Brian has spoken at several events on USA TODAY’s social media efforts including SXSW, Social Fresh, TWTRCON, and 140conf, and contributes to various online publications on behalf of USA TODAY. You can keep up with Brian’s regular updates about USA TODAY, social media, running, the DC-area, and travel, by following him on Twitter, @bdresher or on his SocialMedia Blog, http://social.usatoday.com. (Back)

Di-Ann lives in Palo Alto, by way of Portland, OR, Boston, New York City and Amsterdam. Di-Ann is a neogeography pioneer and serial entrepreneur employing all means to increase the world’s citizen mappers. Di-Ann functions as both Chairman of Platial, The People’s Atlas, and as VP Community Geographer at Waze. Platial is a widely adopted mobile and online social mapping service funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Ram Shriram and others with approximately 15MM unique users. Waze is free crowd-sourced navigation and real-time traffic. Started in Israel and well past critical mass, Waze now has top quality map, navigation and traffic data in the country. Di-Ann is setting up US operations and crafting the cartography of “live mapping”. (Back)

Born with the gift of gab, raised with an overdeveloped self esteem, Andy Ellwood consistently finds himself on the road less traveled. With his outside the box background, training, and top-notch global network, Andy works hard to connect Good People with Great Opportunities. Andy Ellwood has been privileged to work with high caliber individuals throughout his career and most recently has brought his broad skill set and unbridled determination to Gowalla as Director of Business Development.

Gowalla is a social service that gives people around the world a new way to express themselves and communicate about the everyday places and the extraordinary settings they enjoy with family and friends. Gowalla creates an easy way for people to record and share their spot in the world, and to build new relationships around common interests.

For businesses, campaigns and organizations, Gowalla offers a unique opportunity to reward loyal customers, reach new customers, constituents or fans, to promote important causes, and drive attendance to fun events. From mid-March 2010?–?mid-April 2010 Gowalla saw a 65 percent increase in usage, the company now has over 250,000 passport holders on it’s service and more than 10,000 individual spots indexed, worldwide.

A native of Dallas, TX, Andy attended Texas A&M University and received his degree in Corporate Finance. He lives in New York and thrives on the city that doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t slow down much, but when he does he enjoys mastering social media, black coffee, filling his passport, doting on his girlfriend Annie, and blogging at www.andyellwood.com. (Back)

Perry Evans is the founder and CEO of Closely, Inc., a new start-up aimed at the live local marketing space. Perry’s entrepreneurial background seems to have been hand-crafted for the development of Closely Inc.! Having led the formation and development of MapQuest, Jabber and Local Matters over the past 15 years, Perry has been at the forefront of location-based publishing, real-time messaging and local search. Closely, Inc has created a new platform designed for scaled small business participation in live local promotions across social media, real-time search and LBS services. (Back)

A self professed “geek with a life”, Gary’s had a lifelong love affair with maps since discovering the Harry Beck map of the London Underground on the back of the London A-Z street atlas at an early age. After “growing up and getting a proper job” he lives in Teddington in South West London with his family and works in London and Berlin as the Director of Ovi Places for Nokia; he’s also the co-founder of WhereCamp EU, the chair of w3gconf and sits on the UK Location User Group.

Prior to Nokia, Gary was at Yahoo!, leading their Geo Technologies group in the UK, releasing GeoPlanet and Placemaker and providing the geo heavy lifting for Flickr and Fire Eagle; he’s also been at Digicon, developing geophysical technologies to aid in the search for natural resources and at the European Space Agency Research Institute in Rome, Italy, participating in the development and launch of ERS-1, Europe’s first remote sensing satellite. Outside of the location and geo field, he’s been at companies including the BBC World Service, Reuters, Factiva.com and Network Associates. Fascinated by technology, he first started hacking on a Commodore PET, built his own Sinclair ZX-80, spent too many years behind the console of a VAX, and even more years coding in Assembler, FORTRAN, C and C++.

Writing as regularly as possible on location, place, maps and other facets of geography, he blogs at www.vicchi.org and tweets as @vicchi.

Despite living in London for most of his life Gary still hasn’t managed to visit every station on the London Underground network and now faces the additional challenge posed by using the Berlin U-Bahn network every week. (Back)

Matt Galligan, 25, is the CEO and Co-Founder of SimpleGeo, based out of Boulder, COthat provides a ready-to-use location infrastructure for app developers. He previously founded Socialthing, a company that was chosen to be part of the inaugural year ofTechStars. Socialthing.com went into private beta in March, 2008 at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. The company was acquired five months later by AOL. Socialthing was later rebranded as AOL Lifestream.

His background is in graphic design and user experience, working for Network Solutions, based out of St. Louis, MO. He got his start in the internet and design while working for a disaster restoration company out of Illinois before he turned 16.

Matt currently resides in Boulder, CO and is an active member of the startup community there. (Back)

Liz Gannes has been a Silicon Valley-based business technology reporter since 2004. She currently covers the web for GigaOM. In 2006, she founded NewTeeVee, a GigaOM Network site that is now the preeminent source for news and analysis about the intersection of entertainment and technology. She graduated from Dartmouth with a degree in linguistics and started her career as a reporter at Red Herring. (Back)

Before joining Location Labs, Akash led Business Development and Sales at PlusMo, the leading mobile widgets company that was recently acquired by AT&T.

Prior to PlusMo, Akash founded and served as CEO of Green Note, a leading social networking based lending service for college students. The company was backed by Menlo Ventures and Glenbrook Partners prior to its acquisition by Cology, Inc.

In addition to his entrepreneurial experiences Akash has also held executive management roles at both Oracle and Mercury Interactive (acquired by HP for $4.6B).

Akash has an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School and a B.S. in Computer Science (with honors) from the University of Kent at Canterbury, England. (Back)

Akash lives in the San Francisco peninsula with his wife and kids.

Greg Gerber is Co-Founder at SplitP, a Real World Gaming company based in San Francisco and Los Angeles. SplitP’s mission is to use new mobile technology to inspire memorable life experiences by introducing you to new people, places, and things in the real world.

SplitP’s first game, iSpy, is a mobile location-based twist on the popular game “I Spy With My Little Eye…” It’s is a global, crowdsourced, never ending scavenger hunt game where players are rewarded for creating and accomplishing real world missions using their gps location and photography. (Back)

Louis Gray is the managing director of new media for Paladin Advisors Group. Louis is an early adopter technology geek blogger based in Silicon Valley with twelve years experience in marketing, public relations and product development for hardware, software, networking and Web companies. He is also an advisor to five small Web startups, and father to 2-year-old twins. (Back)

Dr. Phil Hendrix is the Director of immr (www.immr.org), a research and consulting firm he founded to help clients bring innovative new products and services to market. Phil works with clients to uncover customer needs, optimize product/service features, achieve competitive differentiation and accelerate market acceptance. He is also an analyst in GigaOm’s analyst network, focusing on mobile and location-based services, in particular. Before founding immr, Phil was a partner with DiamondCluster and a principal with Mercer Management Consulting (now Oliver Wyman). Previously, he was a professor at Emory University and the University of Michigan, where he taught courses in research, buyer behavior and marketing strategy. Phil received his PhD in Marketing from the Graduate School of Business, University of Michigan. (Back)

Dev Khare is Vice President at Venrock, a premier venture capital firm with offices in Palo Alto, New York, Cambridge, MA, and Israel. Dev focuses on software, media and mobile investments and sits on the board at Aha Mobile, Lavante and SlideShare. Dev previously co-founded Covigo, a mobile application server company, acquired by Symbol Technologies. He blogs at http://www.NextWala.com and is on Twitter @dkhare. (Back)

Othman is Director of Geo at Twitter (@othman). Prior to Twitter, he was the co-founder & President of Mixer Labs (GeoAPI.com/TownMe), which Twitter acquired.

Before Mixer Labs, Othman was at Google, where he managed a number of products including the Google Toolbar, Google Gears, early Firefox extensions, as well FastNet (real-time fetching and caching infrastructure). Prior to Google, Othman was at ACCESS Systems, where he ran server-side engineering. Othman currently serves on the board of directors of ESI Group, a publicly traded French software company. Othman has an MBA from MIT and a BS + MS in Computer Science & Industrial Engineering from Stanford. (Back)

Rob is one of the founders of Brightkite, and is responsible for marketing, business development and sales. Before Brightkite, Rob was a co-founder of Enpocket, a global mobile advertising firm that was acquired by Nokia. (Back)

Keith co-founded Booyah to revolutionize the consumer experience. Booyah is defining an exploding new market called Real-World Gaming — blending new forms of interactive entertainment by bringing together elements of the real world and the digital world. As featured by the New York Times and played by over 2 million people, MyTown is the most popular location-based mobile social game. Keith is a veteran of the interactive entertainment industry with a proven track record of helping create best-selling video games, developing compelling experiences, and attracting broad audiences into the gaming space. Prior to founding Booyah, Keith was the Lead Producer for Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo III franchise (creator of World of Warcraft). The Diablo series has sold over 20 million copies worldwide. Before Blizzard, Keith’s time at Insomniac Games helped propel the Ratchet & Clank series to surpass 10 million units sold. Leading up to the games industry, Keith worked at several investment banks, including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Keith graduated from Stanford University with a BS in Computer Science and a BA in International Relations and Economics. (Back)

Follow on Twitter: @keithlee0

Mike Liebhold is a Distinguished Fellow focusing on the mobile web, abundant computation, immersive media and geospatial foundations for context-aware and ubiquitous computing. Previously, Mike was a Visiting Researcher, Intel Labs, working on a pattern language based on semantic web frameworks for ubiquitous computing.

Before that, during the late 1990s Mike worked on startups building large scale international public IT services and IP networks for rural and remote regions, and for GPS enhanced precision agriculture, a complete IT architecture for schools in Shandong Province China, satellite networks in India, Europe, and Latin America, and was a Principal Investigator for a National Science Foundation project to bring Internet2 broadband IP networks to seventy rural low income communities in the United States.

In the 1990s, Mike was a senior consulting architect at Netscape Communications and a founding member of Netscape’s Strategic Investors board. Previously, Mike was Vice President, Chief Technology Officer for Times Mirror Publishing. For ten years prior, he was Senior Scientist for Apple Computer researching and developing media technologies, geospatial information systems, and high-speed communications. Mike served as principal technology policy adviser for Apple Chairman John Sculley and drafted core recommendations on the National Information Infrastructure which were later incorporated directly in the Clinton-Gore Technology Initiative.

Mike is a frequent speaker on the topic of the geospatial web and has authored a number of papers, including one recently published in a special edition of the IEEE Journal on Pervasive Computing, “Data Management in the World-Wide Sensor Web.” (Back)

Kent is founder and CEO of PlacePop, a place-based social networking application backed by Ooga Labs. PlacePop provides a simple location-based social app for consumers, combined with a mobile, web-based affinity marketing platform for brands and businesses. Previously Kent served as CEO of Friendster, Inc, a role he assumed after running Friendster’s finance and business operations for several years. During his time leading Friendster, the company grew to become the 7th largest website in the world, generating over a billion page-views per day.

Prior to joining Friendster Kent co-founded NetRead Inc. and served as CFO for Caststream (acquired by Sun Microsystems).

Kent holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and a BA in economics from Northwestern University. (Back)

JP is a Finnish tech journalist working on a series of stories on location-based services for VentureBeat. Back home, JP works for the Finnish newspaper Kaleva and, specifically, their technology-related news service called HighTech Forum, a position he has held for the past seven years. He is currently taking part in the InJo Fellowship Program at Stanford University. JP lives in San Francisco and likes to ride bikes. (Back)

Over the past seventeen years, Ryan McIntyre has been an software engineer, entrepreneur, angel investor and venture capitalist. He is a Managing Director at Foundry Group, a venture firm he co-founded in 2007. He has led Foundry Group’s investment in EmSense, Cloud Engines, Memeo, SendGrid, SimpleGeo, Smith & Tinker and Topspin Media.

Prior to Foundry Group, Ryan started his career in venture capital at Mobius Venture Capital in January 2000.

Before joining Mobius Venture Capital, Ryan co-founded the internet search engine Excite in 1993, which went public in 1996 and later became Excite@Home, following the $6.7 billion merger of Excite and @Home in 1999.

Notable companies that Ryan has invested in and/or sat on the boards of include Postini (acq. GOOG), Sling Media (acq. DISH), and StubHub (acq. EBAY).

Ryan holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Symbolic Systems with a concentration in Artificial Intelligence from Stanford University. (Back)

Ted Morgan founded Skyhook Wireless with Michael Shean in 2003 to capitalize on the explosive growth of Wi-Fi usage and the emerging demand for location-based services. Prior to founding Skyhook, Mr. Morgan was the Vice President of Marketing for edocs Inc., a provider of customer self-service solutions that was sold to Siebel Systems in January 2005. At edocs, he ran marketing communications, inside sales, product marketing, and product management. Prior to edocs, Mr. Morgan was Group Product Manager for Open Market, one of the early leaders of the e-commerce revolution. Prior to that, he was a product manager for Harbinger Net Services in Atlanta. Prior to the technology industry, Mr. Morgan spent four years in the financial services industry, as part of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, Alliance Capital, and Allen & Company. Mr. Morgan has an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Georgetown University and an MBA from the University of Chicago. (Back)

Cory is an advertising professional with a focus on online and social media marketing. Most recently he has made Swirl, an integrated marketing agency, his home because there he gets to impact a wide range of clients, from Google to the SF Giants.

In 2008, Cory helped launch the Bamboo product line for Wacom, and was awarded the Limelight Award for Best Social Media Marketing Campaign by ad:tech.

As an active blogger, thought leader and early adopter, Cory writes about trends in the world of marketing and advertising for TheFutureOfAds.com. He graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara with degrees in Business Economics and Philosophy, and spends his free time shooting photos, drinking tea and managing an online t-shirt community.

He lifestreams at coryobrien.com, and is on Twitter @CoryOBrien. (Back)

Seth was born in Boston, MA at the age of 7. At the age of 12, he founded his first web start-up. It failed gloriously, achieving profits several times those of Twitter. After completing his freshman year at Princeton (the official requirement to achieve the term dropout), Seth took a “leave-of-absence” to build SCVNGR.

SCVNGR is the game layer on top of the world. It’s part awesome casual mobile game, part powerful mobile gaming engine.

Playing SCVNGR is simple. It’s a game all about going places, doing challenges and earning points! Challenges are quick, casual, fun things to do at places. Things like checking-in, snapping a picture, scanning a QR code or completing some activity. Tons of individuals all across the world play SCVNGR casually as they go through their daily lives.

Building on SCVNGR is just as simple. Everyone who plays SCVNGR can also build SCVNGR by adding challenges to their favorite locations. Currently, over 600 major enterprises in 48 states and 20 countries are building on SCVNGR making the game layer bigger, better and more fun to play!

As Chief Ninja of SCVNGR, Seth is solely responsible for corporate acquisition of all Nerf-based technologies. An avid supporter of blood drives, Seth consistently donates plasma for use in large-screen televisions. (Back)

Universal provides it partners with comprehensive integration throughout all of Universal Studios’ assets including: Universal Pictures, Universal Studios Theme Parks, Universal Pictures Stage Productions, Consumer Products, Licensing and Digital Platforms.

Previous to his role at Universal, Jonathan was the Vice President of Development at the Walt Disney Motion Picture Group and has a comprehensive background as a Producer of feature films including the Warner Bros. film, “Pay It Forward.”

Jonathan is a graduate of University of Colorado, Boulder and resides in Los Angeles.

(Back)

Deborah Schultz is a Partner with the Altimeter Group where she leads the Innovation and Design practice focused on bringing together the complete ecosystem of disruptive technologies for experimentation, active learning and real-world application. She is an Internet industry veteran and early open web advocate focused on the adoption and impact of the social web on culture, society & business. She has worked with and advised startups, Fortune 50s and VC’s on technology adoption. Most recently, she consulted with Procter & Gamble where she architected the P&G Social Media Lab to study the impact of the social web on customer relationships and the business benefits of “open innovation.” She continues as a member of P&G’s Digital Advisory Board. Previously, Deborah was a Director at Six Apart, ran her own technology consultancy firm, was a management consultant, and spent five years at Citibank where she developed many of the global bank’s first internet initiatives. One of her proudest accomplishments was launching the Downtown Info Center, a lower Manhattan community center & online hub to revitalize lower Manhattan after the attacks of September 11th. (Back)

I’m a geek who grew up in Silicon Valley (my dad was an engineer at Lockheed) and since 1985 I’ve been building online communities. In 2000 I started my technology blog, http://scobleizer.com, and my life has been on a rocketship ever since. In 2003-2006 I worked at Microsoft as an evangelist and one of the five guys who started Microsoft’s famous Channel9 video community.

I’m now working at Rackspace to build a new community of people fanatical about tech startups called building43 at http://www.building43.com. You’ll also see my videos on http://youtube.com/scobleizer but the best place to watch me now is on Twitter or on my blog.

Other things you’ll see me spend a lot of time on? Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed. The real-time streaming web is changing my life faster than I can imagine, and lets me keep in touch with thousands of technology and business innovators all around the world.

I’m also the father of three sons, Patrick, 15, Milan, 2, and Ryan, newborn. Lots of fun and they are all geeks in training too.

Anyway, visit some of my links to see more about me, especially my Wikipedia profile (I didn’t edit any of it, that was done by people in the community) and feel free to drop me a line at scobleizer@gmail.com anytime you need something or want to talk about being on one of my video shows.

Oh, and, yes, I do answer my own cell phone and I do include that number on the Internet for you to use: +1-425-205-1921 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              +1-425-205-1921      end_of_the_skype_highlighting and have for several years. I live in Half Moon Bay near the Ritz and would love to meet up with geeks/entrepreneurs if you are in town and I’m available. (Back)

Principal, Founder and Managing Director of Real Branding, a leading digital marketing agency founded and delivering on the promise of Madison (advertising), Vine (entertainment) and Valley (technology). We work with some of the best, most beloved and biggest brands that value the digital channel.

Real Branding is a digital marketing agency of equal strength in all disciplines where talent and work are elevated to create relevance and positive change for our clients, consumers and our community. Involved as founder/entrepreneur in three different digital marketing companies since 1994. Since founding Real Branding, successfully fostered and developed winning strategies for marquee companies in Consumer Packaged Goods/Retail, Entertainment and Technology as well as Financial Services including: AOL, ABC/Disney, Anheuser-Busch, Barclays Global Investors, Coca-Cola, Corona, Darden Restaurants, Diageo, HBO, Logitech, New Line Cinema, Quicken Loans, Salesforce.Com, Scottish Courage, The North Face, Warner Home Video and Unilever. (Back)

Eric joined Yelp in November 2007 as a Product Manager and now is Yelp’s consumer product lead. During his two years with the company, most of his efforts have been focused on Yelp’s search and mobile products. Prior to Yelp, he worked as a product manager, UI designer and software engineer. Eric holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Northwestern University. (Back)

Rahul Sonnad, Geodelic CEO , founded Geodelic Systems in early 2008 after using a GPS enabled laptop with a 3G internet card everyday for 2 years. Prior to founding Geodelic, Rahul conceived of and founded thePlatform, a Seattle-based digital video web services company. thePlatform now services the majority of large video publishers on broadband and wireless platforms, including Hulu, Verizon Wireless, Helio, CNBC, CBS, ABC News, most Comcast properties, and dozens of other major brands. thePlatform now operates as a subsidiary of the Comcast Corporation, which acquired the company in 2006. Previously, Rahul worked at Microsoft, managing the R&D activities on the Asian versions of the Office suite, and at Adobe Systems in engineering management. Rahul has a masters in engineering from the University of Washington and attended the Harvard Business School MBA program. (Back)

Michael Stich is Group Director of Strategic Planning for Bridge Worldwide, a WPP interactive and relationship marketing agency. Michael and his team provide clients with distinctive interactive strategies for optimal business growth, including specialization within e-commerce, analytics/measurement, digital retail, and relationship marketing. Previously, Michael was Director of Strategic Marketing for Texas Instruments, where he provided strategic planning, service provider relationships, and market research. Before joining TI, Michael was at McKinsey & Company, where he developed growth strategies for executives in telecommunications, venture capital, and equipment manufacturing. Prior to McKinsey, Mr. Stich founded Dell Ventures Asia, where he led several investments in Asian technology companies for Dell. Mr. Stich holds a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Tufts University and an M.B.A. with Marketing focus from the MIT Sloan School of Management. (Back)

Vice President of Market Development, Placecast

Blair is responsible for 1020’s strategy and business development activities with wireless carriers, handset makers, mobile application providers and other distribution partners.

Prior to joining 1020, Blair founded Partenza Consulting, a strategy and business development consultancy advising leading players and investors in the Location-Based Services (LBS) industry. Previously, he had overall responsibility for the Internet/Wireless product line at NAVTEQ, the leading digital map content company, and launched the company’s mobile content product line. Before joining NAVTEQ, Blair was a Director and Quantitative Analyst at UBS Global Asset Management where he owned development and operations for the firm’s global equity valuation platform.

Blair has more than nine years of experience across product strategy, product management and business development in LBS, digital content, applications and analytics. He is a regularly featured speaker and columnist who also serves on the advisory board for the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs (SVASE).

Blair holds an MBA from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a Bachelor’s degree in Finance from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. (Back)

David joined Greylock in 2008. His areas of focus include consumer Internet and enterprise software. He played a key role in Greylock’s investments in Cloudera and Pandora and is closely working with several portfolio companies including Auditude, Oodle, Redfin and TellApart. David is currently on the board of directors at Gowalla, a location-based mobile social network.

Prior to Greylock, David was a group product manager at Google. During his five years at Google, he oversaw the development of key components of the AdWords advertising system and led a product management team focused on new products for advertising agencies and strategic partners. In addition, David relocated to Europe for two years where he built Google’s product development organization in the region and drove the expansion of Google’s products into international markets.

Earlier in his career, David held product development, technical consulting and sales roles at pcOrder, an enterprise software company that provided e-commerce solutions to the computer industry. During this time, pcOrder held an initial public offering (NASDAQ: PCOR) and was later acquired by Trilogy Software. David has also worked at Credit Suisse First Boston, IBM, and Electronic Arts.

David holds a BA in Computer Science and Economics from Duke University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. (Back)

Jeremy Toeman is an expert in consumer lifestyle technology, specifically including consumer electronics, web, and mobile applications. Over the past ten years he has designed, built, and marketed numerous award-winning products in the “convergence” space. Jeremy founded Stage Two in October ‘06, where he and his team advise companies on product design, go-to-market strategy, messaging/positioning, social media, and PR services. Stage Two clients have included Best Buy, Boxee.TV, NETGEAR, Pogoplug, Clicker.com, Bug Labs, DivX, Electronic Arts (EA), Vudu, and others. Jeremy was also a cofounder of Mediabolic (acquired by Macrovision in 2007), a VP at Sling Media (acquired by Echostar in 2007), founder of Legacy Locker, and on the advisory board of numerous startups and non-profits. (Back)

Ian White is CEO of Urban Mapping, a company that produces geospatial tools and services across the tactile and interactive domains. The company’s products include Mapfluence, a hosted mapping platform loaded with high-value data, the multiple award-winning Panamap print map and URBANWARE geospatial database products. White holds 15 years experience in marketing strategy and product development.
Prior to founding Urban Mapping in 2003, White worked as a business consultant at and held various roles in business development and marketing. He also served as Adjunct Professor of Design and Management at Parsons School of Design in New York, has coauthored academic research published in The Journal of Corporate Venturing and has spoken broadly at industry conferences covering local search, design, search engine marketing and navigation.

White received a BA from McGill University in Montreal, an MBA from Babson College and completed postgraduate studies in France.
Corporate Backgrounder
Urban Mapping’s Mapfluence platform is a hosted mapping service that provides on-demand access to 1000s variables rooted in place, allowing application developers to easily integrate location. Across real estate, local search, social/mobile and other verticals, Mapfluence allows for web-based analytics and content distribution. The company’s flagship URBANWARE product line includes a database of neighborhood and mass transit systems. Customers by all major portals, map platforms and Internet yellow page publishers, including Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft’s Bing Maps, SuperPages.com, MapQuest and AT&T’s YellowPages.com. Learn more about us at urbanmapping.com. (Back)

Marc has worked in the GPS and location market since 1995, and has probably shown more slides saying “This is the Year of Location!” than anyone in the room. Nonetheless he remains unrepentant and thinks he may finally be right.  Marc’s geospatial genealogy includes Trimble Navigation, SiRF Technology, VP of Marketing at deCarta and CEO of CloudMade.  He is currently CEO of Locomatix. He has a degree in Chemical Engineering (not relevant unless you want to talk Ideal Gas Law after the panel) and an MBA. (back)

Teresa Johns is a born gamer and was an early adopter of the current wave of geolocational services, As a side project, she assessed the relative merits of Foursquare, Gowalla and MyTown land consequently has chosen to focus on Foursquare, where she serves as mayor of 9 locations (as the time of this writing, though is also quick to call out that she has holds a Super Mayor badge for holding 10 simultaneously in the past). When she’s not checking in on her iPhone, Teresa can be seen making late-night runs in her pajamas to reclaim her mayorship at local bars, and creating new venues for her friends. Despite all of these accomplishments, Teresa’s ultimate claim to fame is holding the local arcade’s high score for centipede two summers a row in junior high. (Back)

David id VP, Mobile Product Management, AT&T Interactive. David has driven Internet and mobile product innovation and business growth for nearly 15 years. In his current role at AT&T Interactive, he is responsible for the development and performance of consumer mobile local search properties. He also guides the evolution of an application platform that empowers web developers to create powerful native mobile applications.

Prior to this role, David advised leading startups on mobile strategy and product development, most recently in security and personal productivity arenas.  As a key exec team member at startup Mozes, Inc., he led development of a text, voice, and web mobile marketing platform serving the entertainment and brand clients including Sony Music, Universal Music Group, Portland Trailblazers, Ubisoft, American Eagle Outfitters and others.

David has also served in key product and marketing roles at Palm, Handspring, Apple and PointCast. He began his career as a Naval officer aboard a fast attack submarine. He holds a BS in Aerospace Engineering from Boston University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
(Back)