Julie R. Blitzer

Location: USA | New York | NY
Speaking Topics: drupal | grassroots organizing | nonprofit tech | online campaign strategy | politics | social media
Spoken Languages: English

I work at Advomatic, a web development firm based in New York. I specialize in online communications strategy for non-profits, advocacy organizations and political campaigns.

Lucretia M. Pruitt

Location: USA | Colorado | Denver
Speaking Topics: Process Flow based Architecture | Data Architecture | Metadata Repositories | Code Development from User Specs | microblogging | social media | social networking | Training | Translating Corporate-speak into Geek-speak | User Interface
Spoken Languages: English

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An ex-college professor, Lucretia used to teach Computer Information Systems (CIS) to hapless undergraduate students who were planning to use the degree to advance in the computing and IT fields. As such, she is quite comfortable standing up in front of geeks and presenting to audiences of varying skill levels from novice to advanced, hard-core coder to business executive in charge of leading a company into its technological future.

Previous Presentations: 
BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2008 - Twitter: building the connections that drive traffic
Thin Air Summit 2008 - Pre-conference training on new media tools

CAT Susch

Location: USA | New York
Speaking Topics: blogging | Enterprise Architecture | Enterprise Technology | Web 2.0 | information architecture | podcasting | Program Management | social networking
Spoken Languages: English

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I am currently in the role as Chief Architect of The McGraw-Hill companies where I am responsible for developing, setting and enforcing the technology direction for our key businesses Standard & Poors, McGraw-Hill Education and our Magazine/Media businesses like JD Power & Assoc and Business Week. Some key technologies I specialize in are Enterprise Content Management, Service Oriented Architecture, Business Intelligence and Analytics, and Social Networking.

Previous Presentations: 
2008 New Media Expo "How to Craft Your Passion into a Professional ‘How To’ Podcast" http://letsknit2gether.com/expo
2007 Portable & New Media Expo “Striving for Excellence:The Passion and Pain of Producing a Professional How-to Video Podcast” with Eric Susch
Presented at CeBit America June 2003 on the topic "Enterprise Portals"

Neha Tiwari

Location: San Francisco Bay Area | USA | CA
Speaking Topics: Bollywood | internet culture | Minority womens issues | new media | online communities | social networking | South Asian media | Web 2.0 | women in technology | Women representations in media
Spoken Languages: | English | Hindi |

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Neha Tiwari discovered her passion for tech journalism in her junior year of college as an intern at TechTv. After graduating from UC Berkeley (and living in India for a quarter of the year), she gained a dream job working for News.com at CNET San Francisco. While there, she sharpened her producing skills and made videos centered around tech products,websites and culture. After CNET, Neha moved on to Revision 3.com,where she produced a number of geek-centric segments, shows, and also appeared on camera as the network "Nerd Bird."

Casey McKinnon

Location: USA | Canada | California | United States | Los Angeles | Montreal | Quebec
Speaking Topics: social networking | Internet | social media | new media | internet culture | Internet Marketing | Online video | Video production and post production | Internet Fame | Copyright Issues | Web Video
Spoken Languages: French | English

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Casey McKinnon is an actress, producer and pioneer in the new media field who was born and raised in Montreal, Canada. She has created and appeared on three popular internet TV shows: Galacticast; A Comicbook Orange and Kitkast.

Previous Presentations: 
"Online Adulation: Use Don't Abuse Your Fans" - SXSW Interactive 2008
"Achieving Geekgasm" - SXSW Interactive 2008
"Online Speech and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act" - 17th Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy
"The Rise of the Blogebrity" - SXSW Interactive 2007

Kirrily Robert

Location: USA | San Francisco | California
Speaking Topics: open source | open data | Creative Commons | wikis | web2.0 | geek culture | perl
Spoken Languages: English

Previous Presentations: 
O'Reilly Open Source Convention 2008 - "People for Geeks" (Tutorial)
OSDC 2007 - Test Driven Development (Tutorial)

Lorelei Brown

Location: USA | Washington | DC
Speaking Topics: information architecture | Internet Strategy | content management | Content Strategy | usability | Associations
Spoken Languages: English

Cindy Palmer

Location: USA | CA | Irvine
Speaking Topics: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
Spoken Languages: English

Mel Chua

Location: USA | Boston
Speaking Topics: accessibility | bahasa geek to english translation | documentation without tears | electrical engineering | engineering education | hacker culture | olpc | open source | unconferences | universal design | user groups | wrangling volunteers (cat-herding)
Spoken Languages: English

My name is Mel. I've been called a hacker by other hackers. I have a large piece of paper saying "Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering Bachelors of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering" and a small piece of paper saying "One Laptop Per Child QA/Support Engineer," but my favorite tags are from teammates: "Swiss Army Person" and "hack of all trades."

Previous Presentations: 
Linuxfest Northwest 2008, Bellingham WA, USA - One Laptop Per Child track (multiple presentations on software development for the XO stack)
OLPC Chicago meetup, Google Chicago January 2008 - organizer and facilitator
OLPC Game Jam, Boston MA 2007 - coordinator and open space facilitator

Christa Casebeer

Location: USA | Missouri
Speaking Topics: linux | VMware | LAMP | systems administration | podcasting | WordPress | blogging
Spoken Languages: English

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I enjoy sharing my knowledge and empowering people with technology. I have been a systems administrator for 12 years, worked in web design for 10 years, and have presented technical courses for a wide variety of topics to age groups from children to seniors.
In 2007, I branched off the 8 year old http://linuxchic.net website by starting the weekly tech show, http://alternageek.com which focuses on a broad range of technology subjects.
Topics I prefer include WordPress, LAMP, Linux, systems administration, VMware virtualization, podcasting, and blogging.

Previous Presentations: 
Podcamp MidWest 2008: Introductory and Advanced WordPress
Ongoing courses at local Community Colleges