Jay Adelson is CEO of Digg, guiding all aspects of the company’s development, growth and management. Under his leadership, Digg has grown to 26 million visitors per month, and is now considered one of the top socially focused Web sites.

Adelson is also chairman of the board of the Internet Television Network Revision3, where he provides strategic direction to the company.

Prior to Digg, Adelson founded Equinix, Inc (Nasdaq: EQIX), a leader in the data center and Internet infrastructure space. Equinix operates Internet data centers where more than 200 network service providers and hundreds of enterprises and content companies, including nine of the top ten Web properties, locate their Internet operations.

Adelson was also a co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation’s highly regarded Palo Alto Internet Exchange (PAIX) and a founding employee of Netcom On-Line Communications, Inc., one of the nation’s first Internet Service Providers.

A well-recognized expert on technology and the Internet, Adelson has spoken at a variety of industry events and investor conferences, including Future of Online Advertising, Tech Crunch 40, Supernova, Web 2.0 Summit, Tech Policy Summit,, ISPCON, the Colocation & Hosting Summit, Next Generation Networks (NGN), NANOG, and Gilder’s Telecosm. In May 2008, Adelson was recognized in Time Magazine’s Time 100 – The Most Influential People in the World.

An internationally recognized ethnographer, Genevieve Bell has developed product shaping insights into consumers world-wide and is bringing a research driven, end-user focus to Intel. Her influence has been recognized with the award of Intel’s highest honor: an individual Intel Achievement Award. She is a Senior Principal Engineer and the Director of User Experience within Intel’s Digital Home Group and manages an inter-disciplinary team of social scientists, designers and human factors engineers. She and her team strive to stay ahead of Intel’s technology roadmap, using insights gained for in-depth ethnographic and design research to help drive innovations in and around Intel platforms, creating technology that responds to human needs, desires and aspirations. Bell is particularly interested in issues of cultural difference as they are expressed around technology adoption and use; she has conducted fieldwork around the world and is currently working on a book based on her recent ethnographic research in Asia. Her work has been widely published and cited and she is active in the fields of anthropology, computer-human interaction and ubiquitous computing. Raised in Australia, Bell received the bulk of her education in the United States. Prior to joining Intel in 1998, Bell taught anthropology and Native American Studies at Stanford University in California. Bell received her BA/MA in anthropology from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania in 1991. She earned a PhD in cultural anthropology from Stanford University in 1998.

Shana Fisher is the Senior Vice President of Mergers & Acquisitions and Strategy at IAC. Ms. Fisher oversees all aspects of strategy and certain specific areas of M&A activity. She also oversees IAC’s effects with Instant Action, the company’s soon-to-be launched online gaming site. From December 2003 to January 2005 Ms. Fisher served as IAC’s Senior Vice President, Strategic Planning, and prior to that as the Senior Vice President of Business Operations for IAC.

Previously, Ms. Fisher served as Vice President and Director, Media and Technology Mergers and Acquisitions and Corporate Finance for Allen & Company, LLC. In this capacity she led principle investments and advised publicly traded technology firms, private telecommunications firms and media companies. Prior to Allen & Company, LLC., Ms. Fisher was a program manager for the Microsoft Corporation and prior to that she was a software developer for I | O 360 Consulting.

Ms. Fisher received her B.A. from Hampshire College with a triple major in Sculpture, Philosophy and Linguistics and attended the Master of Arts and Sciences program at New York University.

Brady Forrest is Chair for O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 and Emerging Technology conferences. Additionally, he co-Chairs Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Berlin and NYC. Brady writes for O’Reilly Radar tracking changes in technology. He previously worked at Microsoft on Live Search (he came to Microsoft when it acquired MongoMusic). Brady lives in Seattle, where he builds cars for Burning Man and runs Ignite. You can track his web travels at Truffle Honey.

Jason Fried is the co-founder and President of 37signals, a privately-held Chicago-based company committed to building the best web-based tools possible with the least number of features necessary. 37signals’ products do less than the competition – intentionally. Jason believes there’s real value and beauty in the basics. Elegance, respect for people’s desire to simply get stuff done, and honest ease of use are the hallmarks of 37signals products. 37signals products, used by over 2,000,000 world wide, include Basecamp, Backpack, Highrise, Campfire, Ta-da List, and Writeboard. Their latest book, Getting Real, has been called the Bible of Web 2.0. Ruby on Rails, another 37signals creation, is the underlying technology driving thousands web apps.

Irene Greif heads the Collaborative User Experience Group (CUE), a team of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) researchers located in Cambridge, MA. The group has historically worked most closely with Lotus product teams on collaboration software. Irene also directs the Lotus Product Design Group (PDG) at Lotus and has developed a strategic design practice that spans both CUE and PDG.

Irene is a former faculty member of Computer Science at University of Washington and of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. She headed a research group in the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science which developed shared calendar, coauthoring, and real-time collaboration systems. She is a fellow of both the Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Association of Computing Machinery (ACM.) Irene was inducted into the Women In Technology International (WITI) Hall of Fame in 2000.

Irene joined Lotus in 1987 and formed Lotus Research in 1992. Product innovations from her group include Version Manager for 1-2-3, InterNotes Web Publisher (precursor to Domino); the first Palm Pilot conduit for Notes mail; the Sametime strategy for integrating awareness, conversation, and shared objects; and most recently, the design vision for Reinventing Email.

Irene received her S.B. in Mathematics, her S.M. and her PhD. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, all from MIT.

Arianna Huffington is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, a nationally syndicated columnist, and author of eleven books. She is also co-host of “Left, Right & Center,” public radio’s popular political roundtable program.

In May 2005, she launched The Huffington Post, a news and blog site that has quickly become one of the most widely-read, linked to, and frequently-cited media brands on the Internet.

In 2006, she was named to the Time 100, Time Magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Originally from Greece, she moved to England when she was 16 and graduated from Cambridge University with an M.A. in economics. At 21, she became president of the famed debating society, the Cambridge Union.

Ben is a former journalist turned dot com entrepreneur who has a knack for nailing the zeitgeist. He has been credited with bringing Internet memes to the mainstream and popularizing Internet culture. The success of his business is attributed to his knowledge of memes, viral content, and crowd sourcing. Ben graduated with a BSJ from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

For over a year, the true identity of Fake Steve Jobs was the Internet’s best-kept secret. The business world and Silicon Valley were buzzing with speculation and rumour, even parlour games: who, exactly, was behind “The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs,” the scathingly hilarious, deceptively insightful, and wildly popular blog “written” by Apple’s genius CEO?

In grand style, The New York Times finally outed Fake Steve Jobs: it’s Daniel Lyons, who was then a popular tech columnist at Forbes who has since moved up to Newsweek. At his blog, fakesteve.blogspot.com, Lyons has captured the Zeitgeist, from perhaps the one place it is clearest—the point of view of Steve Jobs. In the tradition of Jonathan Swift and The Onion, he uses a pitch-perfect satirical style to deliver trenchant social commentary, reflecting on everything from the Cult of Steve and the rise of Apple (“Dude, I invented the friggin’ iPhone. Have you heard of it?”) to the ubiquitous influence of the tech industry on our everyday lives.

In his new book, Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, Lyons writes an epic takedown of Silicon Valley, Hollywood and Washington, D.C., as viewed by a central character, Steve Jobs, who exists, to his immense self-satisfaction, at the crossroads of all three worlds. “Just as Tom Wolfe skewered Wall Street in the ‘80s, Fake Steve Jobs lights a mini-Bonfire in Silicon Valley with Options,” Entertainment Weekly writes in an A- review. “The narrator of this dead-tree account is so textured and real that even his most idle thoughts amuse.”

Daniel Lyons is a columnist at Newsweek. His articles have also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, and The Boston Globe, and he is the author of two previous novels, The Last Good Man and Dog Days. Lyons also taught at the University of Michigan and the University of Toledo.

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.

Jennifer Pahlka runs the Web 2.0 events for TechWeb, formerly CMP and formerly MediaLive Intl. Previously she chaired Enterprise 2.0 for MediaLive, and before that was the director of the Game Group at CMP. During her tenure in the games business, she oversaw the dramatic growth of the Game Developers Conference (GDC) from 1995 to 2003 and launched a number of notable programs, including the Independent Games Festival, known as the Sundance of the game industry, and the Game Developers Choice Awards. Her roles included publisher of Game Developer magazine and Gamasutra.com, the premiere web site for game developers, and executive director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), an independent non-profit association serving game developers around the world. She has served on the advisory boards of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) and the GDC and held a board of directors position on the IGDA for three years. She is a graduate of Yale University.

An Internet-industry veteran and innovator, Deborah passionately believes in the power of technology to connect people, communities and business. She currently advises both start-ups and the Fortune 50 on the impact of social software on business strategy & customer relationships. She is also currently Procter & Gamble’s Strategic Adviser for Social Media and is developing a P&G Social Media Innovation Lab designed to actively explore and gain insights on the impact of the social web on business.

Previously, Deborah was Marketing Director at Six Apart, ran her own marketing consultancy firm, was a management consultant at AnswerThink 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. Deborah is a graduate of Barnard College, Columbia University.

The former Manhattanite is now a tireless road warrior and can be found in SF, NYC, or Tel Aviv. But wherever she is, she’s always ‘connected’.

Mr. Shirky divides his time between consulting, teaching, and writing on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. His consulting practice is focused on the rise of decentralized technologies such as peer-to-peer, web services, and wireless networks that provide alternatives to the wired client/server infrastructure that characterizes the Web. Current clients include Nokia, GBN, the Library of Congress, the Highlands Forum, the Markle Foundation, and the BBC.

In addition to his consulting work, Mr. Shirky is an adjunct professor in NYU’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), where he teaches courses on the interrelated effects of social and technological network topology—how our networks shape culture and vice-versa. His current course, Social Weather, examines the cues we use to understand group dynamics in online spaces and the possible ways of improving user interaction by redesigning our social software to better reflect the emergent properties of groups.

Mr. Shirky has written extensively about the internet since 1996. Over the years, he has had regular columns in Business 2.0, FEED, OpenP2P.com and ACM Net_Worker, and his writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, Wired, Release 1.0, Computerworld, and IEEE Computer. He has been interviewed by Slashdot, Red Herring, Media Life, and the Economist’s Ebusiness Forum. He has written about biotechnology in his “After Darwin” column in FEED magazine, and serves as a technical reviewer for O’Reilly’s bioinformatics series. He helps program the “Biological Models of Computation” track for O’Reilly’s Emerging Technology conferences.

Mr. Shirky frequently speaks on emerging technologies at a variety of forums and organizations, including PC Forum, the Internet Society, the Department of Defense, the BBC, the American Museum of the Moving Image, the Highlands Forum, the Economist Group, Storewidth, the World Technology Network, and several O’Reilly conferences on Peer-to-Peer, Open Source, and Emerging Technology.

Prior to his appointment at NYU, Mr. Shirky was a Partner at the investment firm The Accelerator Group in 1999-2001, an international investment group with offices in New York, Los Angeles, and London. The Accelerator Group was focused on early stage firms, and Mr. Shirky’s role was technological due diligence and product strategy.

Mr. Shirky was the original Professor of New Media in the Media Studies department at Hunter College, where he created the department’s first undergraduate and graduate offerings in new media, and helped design the current MFA in Integrated Media Arts program.

Prior to his appointment at Hunter, he was the Chief Technology Officer of the NYC-based Web media and design firm Site Specific, where he created the company’s media tracking database and server log analysis software. Site Specific was later acquired by CKS Group, where he was promoted to VP Technology, Eastern Region.

Before there was a Web, he was Vice-President of the New York chapter of the EFF, and wrote technology guides for Ziff-Davis, including a guide to email-accessible internet resources, and a guide to the culture of the internet. He appeared as an expert witness on internet culture in Shea vs. Reno, a case cited in the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the Communications Decency Act in 1996.

Mr. Shirky graduated from Yale College with a degree in art, and prior to falling in love with the internet, he worked as a theater director and designer in New York. His company, Hard Place Theater, staged “non-fiction theater”, theatrical collages of found documents.

Mr. Shirky’s writings are archived at shirky.com, and he currently runs the N.E.C. mailing list for his writings on networks, economics, and culture.

Maria Thomas is Chief Operating Officer of Etsy, an online marketplace focusing on handmade items. Maria joined Etsy in May 2008 and is responsible for helping the company scale its operations and expand its presence globally. Prior to Etsy, Maria was for six and a half years Senior Vice President and General Manager of NPR Digital Media, where she built and managed NPR’s online, podcasting, and mobile operations. She was also instrumental in launching NPR Music, a music discovery destination.

Maria began managing Internet-based businesses at Amazon.com. She played a key role in the launch and management of Amazon.com’s camera and photo store, including helping to forge its partnership with Ofoto, a company engaged in the online photo services business.

From 1992-1999, Maria worked as an investment officer with the World Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC). Her career at the IFC culminated with an appointment to the position of special assistant to the CEO.

Maria began her career on Wall Street where she spent five years in corporate and project finance with Kidder, Peabody & Company, Incorporated.

Thomas holds a M.B.A. degree from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and a B.S. in accounting from Boston University.

Gary Vaynerchuk has captured national attention as a businessman and Internet celebrity. Gary’s fame can be attributed to his pioneering, multi-faceted approach to personal branding and business building.

At a very young age, Gary took over the family business, a liquor store in New Jersey. Over a period of 6 years Gary and his father Sasha rebranded the business as Wine Library and transformed it from a local store doing roughly $4 million in sales annually to a $50 million national industry leader. The development of the Wine Library juggernaut reached its zenith on August 25, 2006 when Gary was featured with a caricature in the top left corner of the Wall Street Journal, a lifelong goal of Gary’s that he achieved before the age of 30!

On February 21, 2006, Gary launched Wine Library TV (WLTV), a free daily video blog in which Gary tastes and reviews wines. Gary unleashed the same passion and gusto to building the WLTV brand (now affectionately known as “The Thunder Show”) that he had previously brought to his business, with even more far-reaching results. Gary made television appearances on Late Night with Conan O’Brien and The Ellen Degeneres Show, and he has garnered widespread media recognition including features by the LA Times and Washington Post.

In February and March of 2008, Gary became increasingly known throughout the Web 2.0 community. His remarks on branding within the social media landscape at FOWA, Strategic Profits, and South By Southwest occasioned praise from established web denizens including Kathy Sierra and earned the admiration of countless bloggers and aspiring entrepreneurs. Gary even made headlines with an impromptu free wine party during South by Southwest. Ever the lover of community and humanity, Gary proceeded to launch @santagaryvee, a free merchandise service using the Twitter platform.

Gary’s first book, 101 Wines Guaranteed to Inspire, Delight, and Bring Thunder to Your World, was released in May of 2008 and is currently available in bookstores nationwide.

Fred Wilson began his career in venture capital in 1987. He has focused exclusively on information technology investments for the past 17 years. From 1987 to 1996, Fred was first an Associate and then a General Partner at Euclid Partners, a New York based, early stage, venture capital firm founded in 1970. At Euclid Partners, Fred was responsible for a number of investments, including Freeloader, Multex, PowerCenter Systems and UCA&L. In 1996, Fred co-founded Flatiron Partners. While at Flatiron, Fred was responsible for 14 investments including, ITXC, Patagon, Starmedia, TheStreet.com and Yoyodyne. Fred currently serves on the boards of Alacra, Comscore, iBiquity, Return Path, Instant Information and Tacoda Systems. Fred has a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and an MBA from The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Fred is married with three kids and lives in New York City.