TOC 2012 Keynotes
Below are the confirmed keynote speakers for TOC New York 2012. We will add more specific schedule details soon.
LeVar Burton, RRKidzActor, director, producer and author
LeVar Burton has been capturing the admiring attention of both audiences and his industry peers for three decades, and continues to enjoy longevity truly rare within the industry. His deftness in avoiding stereotype continues to be a hallmark of an incredibly diverse career. Whether acting, directing, producing or writing, LeVar has demonstrated, over time that he can do it all. No greater proof of his enduring appeal and deep personal connection with his audience is the fact that LeVar is one of the most followed people in the world in TWITTER, with over 1.7M followers.
As if following some implausible Hollywood scenario, LeVar’s first professional audition, while pursuing his undergraduate studies at USC, led to his being cast as Kunta Kinte in the... Read More.
Tim Carmody, The VergeSenior Writer
Tim Carmody writes about media, technology, art, and culture at Wired.com, Wired Magazine, Snarkmarket, HiLobrow, The Idler, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Journal of Modern Literature, and other outlets. Together with the community at Snarkmarket, he helped write and edit a 2009 book titled New Liberal Arts. He studied mathematics and philosophy at Michigan State University and received a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from UPenn in 2009. He founded Bookfuturism.com, a community website devoted to the future of reading.
Kent Freeman, Vital Source Technologies Inc., an Ingram Content Group CompanyChief Operating Officer
A 28-year Ingram veteran, Mr. Freeman is well known in the industry for his supply chain and e-textbook and e-book expertise. Kent has served as Senior Vice President of Business Development, and Chief Technology Officer, for Ingram Book Group and Chief Technology Officer and Chief Operating Officer for Ingram Digital, in addition to his current role of Chief Operating Officer, Vital Source Technologies. As a thought leader, Kent has been requested to speak at numerous global industry events. Past events Kent has spoken at include Book Expo America (BEA), the American Library Association (ALA), the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) events, London Book Fair, Frankfurt Book Fair and the London Booksellers Association. Mr. Freeman has served as the Chair of the Book Industry Study... Read More.
Barbara A Genco, Library Journal/School Library JournalEditor, Collection Management
After a long career in collection management at Brooklyn Public Library, and a decade as their Director of Collection Development, Barbara Genco joined Library Journal in fall 2009. Now LJ’s Manager of Special Projects, she is the editorial lead for the LJ/SLJ Ebook Summits and project manager for LJ’s new library user research partnership with Bowker PubTrack Consumer—Patron Profiles. A visiting Associate Professor at Pratt Institute (teaching library collection management), Genco has served on American Library Association’s governing Council, as President of the Association for Library Service to Children, and (currently) the Board of NYC’s historic Salmagundi Arts Club in Greenwich Village.
- Photo illustration by C.S. Jennings.
Theodore Gray, Wolfram Research, Touch PressCo-founder, Founder
Theodore Gray is an award-winning software developer, author, and popularizer of science. Having started out in chemistry, he joined Stephen Wolfram in 1987 in the creation of Mathematica. Gray pioneered the concept of Mathematica notebooks—which serve as the main interface to Mathematica, and have made possible the creation of millions of interactive computable documents. Ever since the founding of Wolfram Research, Gray has guided its user interface strategy, and has been responsible for a sequence of major innovations.
Over the years Gray has developed an independent interest in science writing and in communicating the excitement and importance of science to a wide audience. He is a Contributing Editor at Popular Science magazine, and has authored its Gray Matter column since 2003. The How 2.0 section... Read More.
Linda Holliday, Semi-Linear, New York AngelsCEO, Director, Angel Investor, Serial Entrepreneur
Linda Holliday is a media, internet and marketing veteran, serial-entrepreneur and active angel investor in digital media companies including Comixology, ScrollMotion and Organized Wisdom. She recently formed a start-up to publish serious non-fiction mobile apps. Founder and former president of Medical Broadcasting Company, now Digitas Health, a Publicis Company.
The company, a digital pioneer, built more than 1000 web sites, ran complex relationship programs on and off-line, designed robust educational programs and led industry efforts with major media and search companies. In addition to general executive responsibilities as President of MBC, Linda also led marketing, media, innovation, and business development. Digitas Health now operates with more that 500 employees out of 4 cities.
Linda’s digital communications passions include search, user experience and information architecture.... Read More.
Clay Johnson, InformationDiet.comAuthor
Clay Johnson is the author of The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption, and director of engagement for Expert Labs. He was the co-founder of Blue State Digital, the firm that built and managed Barack Obama’s online campaign for the presidency in 2008. After leaving Blue State, Johnson was the director of Sunlight Labs at the Sunlight Foundation, where he built an army of 2000 developers and designers to build open source tools to give people greater access to government data. He was awarded the Google/O’Reilly Open Source Organizer of the year in 2009, was one of Federal Computing Week’s Fed 100 in 2010, and won the CampaignTech Innovator award in 2011.
Johnson’s combination of experience as a developer, working in politics, entrepreneurism,... Read More.
Joe Karaganis, American AssemblyVice President
Joe Karaganis joined The American Assembly at Columbia University as Vice President in 2010. His work focuses on the relationship between digital convergence and cultural production, and has recently included research on broadband adoption, data policy, and media piracy. He is the editor of The Politics of Open Source Adoption (2005), Structures of Participation in Digital Culture (2007), and Media Piracy in Emerging Economies (2011), among other work. Prior to joining the American Assembly, he was a program director at the Social Science Research Council in New York.
Matt MacInnis, InklingChief Executive Officer
Raised in rural Nova Scotia, Matt attended Harvard University where he earned a degree in Computer Engineering and Chinese Language. He moved to California and pursued an eight-year career at Apple where he managed the company’s international expansion into international education markets. During that time, Matt saw a lot of misuse of technology in the classroom, and in 2009 his frustration drove him to start Inkling. His technical foundation, coupled with his experience with Apple, positioned him well to start and grow the company. With a vision for reinventing publishing, Matt has led Inkling into partnerships with the world’s largest publishers, building engaging, interactive learning content from the ground up for iPad. Both Matt and Inkling are based in San Francisco, CA.
Roger Magoulas, O'Reilly MediaResearch Director
Roger Magoulas is the director of market research at O’Reilly Media. Magoulas runs a team that is building an open source analysis infrastucture and provides analysis services, including technology trend analysis, to business decision-makers at O’Reilly and beyond. In previous incarnations, Magoulas designed and implemented data warehouse projects for organizations ranging from the San Francisco Opera to the Alberta Motor Club.
Kat Meyer, O'Reilly Media, Inc. Conference Chair, Tools of Change
Kat Meyer is a long time veteran of the book publishing industry whose background includes both editorial and marketing experience working at a diverse array of regional and national trade and academic publishers, including: Harcourt Brace, Communication Skill Builders, the University of Arizona Press, Rio Nuevo Publishers, and the RGU Group.
Prior to joining O’Reilly as co-chair for the Tools of Change conference, Kat was Chief Content Wrangler of Next Chapter Communications, where she reveled in two of her favorite past times: all things bookish and all things social media!
Eric Ries, Lessons LearnedVenture Advisor
Eric Ries is an entrepreneur and author of the New York Times bestseller “The Lean Startup” and the popular entrepreneurship blog Startup Lessons Learned.
He co-founded and served as CTO of IMVU, his third startup. In 2007, BusinessWeek named him one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech. In 2009, he was honored with a TechFellow award in the category of Engineering Leadership. He serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups, and has consulted to new and established companies as well as venture capital firms. He is currently serving as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Harvard Business School and a Fellow for IDEO, the design consulting firm.
His Lean Startup methodology has been written about in the New York Times,... Read More.
Steve Rubel, Edelman DigitalSVP, Director of Insights
Steve Rubel is EVP/Global Strategy and Insights for Edelman – the world’s largest independent public relations firm. In this role, Rubel studies the future of media and works across the firm’s practices and geographies to help clients unify their communications strategies across traditional, emerging, owned and social channels.
In addition, Rubel also acts as a highly visible Edelman thought leader and writer on media, technology and digital culture. He speaks dozens of times each year around the world and appears frequently in the press. In addition he actively shares his observations and insights through his blog, his monthly Advertising Age column, on Twitter where he is followed by more than 55,000 and Google+ where he is followed by more than 16,000.
Rubel has... Read More.
Andrew Savikas, Safari Books OnlineCEO
Andrew Savikas is the Chief Executive Officer at Safari Books Online. Prior to his appointment as CEO, he held the positions of VP of Digital Initiatives at O’Reilly Media, Program Chair for O’Reilly’s Tools of Change for Publishing conference, and interim Chief Executive Officer of Safari Books Online. Andrew blogs at safaribooksonline.com/blog and toc.oreilly.com, and is also a regular contributor to the O’Reilly Radar blog and to “Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto”, a collection of essays on the future of publishing, book.pressbooks.com. Andrew previously led the digital publishing and ebook program and strategy for O’Reilly Media, including both print and digital production of all O’Reilly books. He sits on several boards, including the Book Industry Study Group and... Read More.
Baratunde Thurston, The OnionDirector of Digital
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, will be published in February 2012 by Harper Collins.
- Photo attribution: Alexa Lee
Joe Wikert, O'Reilly Media, Inc.General Manager & Publisher
Joe Wikert is a publishing executive with 20+ years of industry experience. He is General Manager & Publisher at O’Reilly Media, Inc., where he manages the sales and editorial groups. Joe also serves as co-chair for O’Reilly’s Tools of Change (TOC) conference. Prior to joining O’Reilly he was a Vice President and Executive Publisher in the Professional/Trade division of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and had management responsibility for the WROX and Sybex imprints. Joe regularly shares his publishing industry thoughts and outlook on his Publishing 2020 blog. He is also the proud owner of an Amazon Kindle and blogs about that experience on his Kindleville blog.
Bob Young, Lulu.comFounder and CEO
Bob Young is the founder and CEO of Lulu.com, a premiere international marketplace for new digital content on the Internet, with more than 660,000 recently published titles and more than 15,000 new creators from 80 different countries joining each week. Founded in 2002, Lulu.com is Young’s most recent endeavour. The success of this company has earned Young notable recognition; he was named one of the “Top 50 Agenda-Setters in the Technology Industry in 2006” and was ranked as the fourth “Top Entrepreneur for 2006,” both by Silicon.com.
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