Here are the confirmed speakers.
Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, managing editor-digital, The Washington Times
Jeffrey H. Birnbaum is managing editor-digital of The Washington Times, overseeing its Web, TV and radio products. A veteran Washington journalist and TV commentator, Birnbaum previously wrote the "On K Street" column for The Washington Post, covered the White House for the Wall Street Journal and spent nine years writing for Time and Fortune magazines. Birnbaum also wrote four books on money, politics and policy. Since taking over the digital operations of the Washington Times in August 2008, he has continued to appear as a political analyst for Fox News Channel and Fox News Radio.
Patrick Cooper, USA TODAY
Patrick Cooper is part of the Product Innovation team at USA TODAY, managing digital development projects. He was previously the newsroom's network editor, coordinating "network journalism" strategies for reader engagement and community building.
Since joining the organization in 2003, Cooper has served as an online breaking-news editor, cofounded the On Deadline news blog, and developed storytelling-friendly workflows, CMS design and newsroom training. He has also been active in Gannett's innovation programs and USA TODAY's strategic development groups. Cooper is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and a native of Washington, D.C.
Robert Cox, President, Media Bloggers Association
Robert Cox is the Founder and President of the Media Bloggers Association. Cox blogs and twitters regularly and currently manages several group blogs including The Ruckus, a group blog of more than three dozen MBA members produced in partnership with Washington Post Newsweek Interactive and published on Newsweek.com. Cox has written for traditional news outlets including Newsweek, The San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Daily News, Congressional Quarterly, The Washington Examiner, and The Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Lou Ferrara, Managing editor for sports, entertainment and multimedia for the Associated Press
Lou Ferrara is the managing editor for sports, entertainment and multimedia at The Associated Press, the largest and oldest news organization in the world. He joined the AP in July 2005 as the online editor and has helped to transform the agency into a digital enterprise that is focused more on the Web and mobile. Prior to joining the AP, Lou oversaw the TV and Web operations in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune’s converged newsroom in Florida. He also is a former city editor and police and courts reporter. In his current role, Lou helping to lead AP’s efforts to create new business models for certain content areas.
Gena Fitzgerald, Executive Director, Journalism Center on Children & Families
Gena Fitzgerald is executive director for the Journalism Center on Children & Families. Devoted exclusively to the issues affecting coverage of children, youth, and families, the Journalism Center specializes in critical and complex social issues that directly affect at-risk and vulnerable populations.
Fitzgerald previously worked at NBC News where she served for 10 years as senior Washington producer for NBC Nightly News with both Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams. She managed coverage of politics, federal agencies and breaking news for the nation's premier network evening newscast. Fitzgerald, with her Nightly News colleagues, won many of the most prestigious honors in broadcast journalism, including DuPont, Peabody and Murrow awards, as well as two national Emmy awards. Before joining NBC News, she was an investigative producer for WJLA-TV in Washington D.C., where she earned five local Emmys for investigative reporting.
Jennifer Golbeck, assistant professor, University of Maryland, College Park
Jennifer Golbeck does research on social networks, how people use them, and how they can be used to improve the way people interact with information. Her work has included developing methods to estimate how much strangers would trust one another, a movie recommendation service that uses social connections to rate movies, and an e-mail program that finds messages from trustworthy people.
She is a member of the Human Computer Interaction Lab, Assistant Director of the Center for Information Policy and E-Government, and director of MINDSWAP, the Semantic Web Lab at the University of Maryland.
Jennifer Golbeck has worked professionally as a web designer and authored two books, Computing with Social Trust and Art Theory for Web Design.
John Harris, Editor-in-Chief, POLITICO
John Harris is the editor-in-chief of The Politico and Politico.com. He launched this endeavor after 21 years on the staff of The Washington Post, where he served most recently as the national political editor. He is the best-selling author of The Survivor, an acclaimed biography about former President Bill Clinton, and co-wrote The Way to Win, a behind-the-scenes guide to presidential campaigns that The New York Times called "smart, savvy … revealing." A native of Rochester, N.Y., Harris is a graduate of Carleton College and lives with his wife, Ann O'Hanlon, and their three children in Alexandria, Va.
Eduardo Hauser, CEO of DailyMe, Inc.
Hauser has 18 years of online and offline media experience in his prior roles including: Founder & Executive Vice President, AOL Latin America; Vice President of News and Information, Venevision (the 2nd largest producer of Spanish language programming in the world) and Managing Director, Cisneros Group of Companies. Hauser is active in supporting the development of media, journalism and free speech; he is a member of the Board of Directors of NPR (National Public Radio), the Journalism Advisory Board of the Knight Foundation and the Board of Visitors of Duke University's School of Law.
Etan Horowitz, Tech Columnist - The Orlando Sentinel
Etan Horowitz is the technology reporter, columnist and blogger at the Orlando Sentinel in Florida. He also shoots, edits and appears in videos for OrlandoSentinel.com. His personal technology columns and weekly “How 2” items appear in newspapers all over the country. Horowitz has been a leader in using social networking tools such as Twitter to find sources and stories, reach new audiences and promote his work. A frequent speaker at journalism and social media conferences, Horowitz organized a Twitter citizen journalism project in July 2008 to cover the release of the iPhone 3G in Orlando.
Scott Karp, CEO of Publish2
Scott Karp is the co-founder and CEO of Publish2, Inc. He is also Editor & Publisher of Publishing 2.0, a widely-read and respected blog that takes an incisive look at how technology is transforming media. Folio: magazine named Scott one of the 40 most influential people in publishing for 2007. Scott was previously the Director of Digital Strategy for Atlantic Media, publisher of The Atlantic, one of the oldest and most respected media brands in the world (2007 was The Atlantic's 150th anniversary). Before joining Atlantic Media, he was with the D.C. strategic research firm, The Advisory Board, and prior to that, The Princeton Review.
Tom Kennedy, former managing editor for multimedia, washingtonpost.com
Tom Kennedy is the former managing editor for multimedia at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, where he directged the photography and multimedia departments, and oversaw creation of visual content on the site. His previous appointments include director of photography at the National Geographic Society from 1987 to 1997, with a primary focus on National Geographic Magazine. Tom also serves on the board of visitors for the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Journalism, the board of directors for the Eddie Adams Workshop and on the boards of advisors to several photojournalism programs including the University of Florida and the Brooks Institute. He has won many awards, including 2006 local and national EMMY awards and three consecutive Edward R. Murrow awards for video journalism.
Jim Long, NBC News Videographer
Jim Long (@newmediajim on Twitter) has more than 18 years of award-winning television production experience and has become an expert on social media in the broadcast world. He currently works as an NBC cameraman in NBC's Washington bureau and blogs from VergeNewMedia.com.
Liddy Manson, CEO of DigitalSports
Liddy is a seasoned interactive media executive with over 15 years of experience working with premier media and interactive brands. Before joining DigitalSports in November of '08, she served as the Chief Operating Officer of Freewebs, Inc. a venture backed, early-stage internet company focused on user-generated content and social publishing. Prior to joining Freewebs in January of '07, Liddy spent nine years in various senior management roles at the interactive subsidiary of The Washington Post Company. In those years she served in both functional roles (sales, marketing, business development) and ran the largest P&L at the company, Local Commercial Products and Online Classifieds.
Jane McDonnell, Executive Director, Online News Association
Jane McDonnell is the Executive Director of the Online News Association. She has a long history of creating and promoting digital journalism in commercial, independent and nonprofit venues and is devoted to transferring the core values of journalism to the digital world. She most recently served as consulting senior editor for the Project for Excellence in Journalism's State of the News Media Report.
Amy Mitchell, Deputy Director, Project for Excellence in Journalism
Amy S. Mitchell is deputy director for the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. She is involved in all aspects of the PEJ, with a primary focus on designing, managing, and writing the Project's in-depth research projects. This includes the annual report on the State of the News Media, more specific studies such as coverage of various election cycles and of major news stories like the war in Iraq, and the development of the New Media Index and earlier the News Coverage Index.
John W. Poole, video producer, NPR
John W. Poole has covered stories of local, national and international importance in his eight years as a video journalist and online video producer. He has covered elections in South Africa and the United States, the first same-sex marriages in Massachusetts, the opening of the Museum of the American Indian and the unlikely success of a local high school’s marching band. He has received more than 20 awards for videography and editing from the White House News Photographers Association and in 2005 was named Television Editor of the Year.
Adam Riggs, President of Shutterstock
As president of online stock-image provider, Shutterstock, Adam has overseen every phase of Shutterstock's growth from its inception through its rise to become the world's leading provider of high quality, affordable, royalty-free imagery. Before joining Shutterstock, he was a derivatives trader specializing in US equity index arbitrage. Prior to that, Adam worked at National Economic Research Associates, a consulting arm of Marsh & McLennan, where he did econometric research.
Ju-Don Marshall Roberts, managing editor of washingtonpost.com
Ju-Don Roberts oversees the 24/7 newsdesk, live discussion programming, news video, and education, religion, regional and hyper-local coverage at washingtonpost.com. Roberts sits on the board of the Online News Association. In 2003, she was awarded the prestigious Nieman Fellowship, which allowed her to spend a year studying at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. Prior to joining washingtonpost.com in 1999, Roberts worked as a copy editor and freelance writer for The Washington Post. She also was a copy editor at the Washington Times and the Charlotte Observer.
Vivian Schiller, President and CEO, NPR
A media executive and journalist with more than 20 years experience in the industry, Vivian Schiller joined NPR as President and CEO on January 5, 2009. She comes to NPR from The New York Times Company where she served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of NYTimes.com.
As President and CEO, Schiller oversees all NPR operations and initiatives, including the organization's critical partnerships with our 800+ member stations, and their service to the more than 26 million people who listen to NPR programming every week.
Schiller is charged with assuring the fiscal and operational integrity of NPR, offering a clear and strong commitment to continuous strategic growth, and building the organization and its philanthropic base in ways that support the mission of NPR and stations.
During her tenure at The New York Times, she led the day-to-day operations of NYTimes.com, the largest newspaper website on the Internet, overseeing product, technology, marketing, classifieds, strategic planning, and business development.
Jason Seiken, Senior Vice President, Interactive at PBS
Jason Seiken oversees PBS’ award-winning new media content and services, including pbs.org, pbskids.org, pbskidsgo.org, pbsparents.org, as well as emerging broadband and mobile delivery platforms. He is responsible for implementation of both short and long-range strategies for new and existing digital media platforms in collaboration with member stations and a wide range of outside producers and contributors.
Prior to PBS, he was based in London, where he led content development for AOL’s businesses in the UK, France, and Germany as Vice President, Content and Programming for AOL Europe. In addition, Jason was the founding Executive Editor of washingtonpost.com, responsible for leading the creation of one of the premier newspaper Web sites in the world.
Craig Stoltz, Web2.0h Really? blogger and digital strategy consultant
Craig Stoltz is a digital communication strategist who recently directed the PBS social media initiative known as Engage.
He also is a recidivist blogger, former health editor for The Washington Post and former editorial director of Revolution Health.
Leslie Walker, Knight Visiting Professor in Digital Innovation, University of Maryland
Leslie Walker teaches online journalism at the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism. She joined the faculty in 2008 after 16 years at The Washington Post, where her most recent job was writing the weekly ".com" and "Web Watch" columns about the Internet. In the early days of Web news, Leslie served as the editor and vice presisdent for news at washingtonpost.com. She also is the author of Sudden Fury, a best-selling work of literary nonfiction.
Mark Walsh, CEO, GeniusRocket
Mark Walsh is CEO and chairman of GeniusRocket, a social network for creative artists launched in 2007 to provide user-generated advertising media for marketers. Previously, Walsh's diverse career in digital media included serving as chairman and CEO of VerticalNet; as senior vice president and corporate officer at America Online, where he founded and managed AOL Enterprise, the business-to-business division of AOL; as president of GEnie, General Electric's online service, and as director of new business development of HBO. Walsh also has been active in politics, serving as the first chief technology advisor to the Democratic National Committee during 2001 and 2002, and as head of Internet strategy for John Kerry for President. He was the founding CEO of Air America Radio, and in 2006, Walsh began serving as co-host of XM Satellite Radio's Left Jab, a weekly political show.
Kinsey Wilson, Senior VP & General Manager of Digital Media, National Public Radio
A veteran news executive, Kinsey has played a leadership role in online media for more than a decade. He began his journalism career at City News Bureau of Chicago and from 1988-1995 was a reporter at Newsday. For the past 13 years he has worked in digital media, first at Congressional Quarterly, where he helped spearhead that company's Web publishing strategy, and later at USA TODAY. He joined USA TODAY in early 2000 as Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of usatoday.com and in 2005 was named Executive Editor of USA TODAY upon the merger of the publication's print and online newsrooms. He had shared responsibility for strategic planning and day to-to-day editorial oversight of both print and online publications. Under his leadership the Web site won numerous online journalism awards.
In October 2008, he was hired by NPR to oversee the organization's digital strategy. He is a longtime board member and past president of the Online News Association (2007), chaired the national advisory board of the Poynter Institute from 2006-2008 and served as a juror for the 2008 Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism.
