Speaker Roster 2012

2012 Bay Area Event – Speaker Roster

Kai Backman, Co-Founder & CEO of Tinkercad

Kai Backman

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Kai is a founder and CEO of Tinkercad, the world’s first browser based solid CAD and the best way to get started with 3D printing. Since its launch in 2011 the site has grown into a large community of non-professional users collaborating and sharing designs. Before founding Tinkercad Kai worked at Google as a systems engineer and has previously founded two companies among them an indie game studio. His favorite pastimes includes writing ARM machine language, building yet another robotic rover and designing asynchronous distributed systems.

Massimo Banzi, Co-Founder of Arduino

Massimo Banzi

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Massimo Banzi is the co-founder of the Arduino project He has worked as a consultant for clients such as: Prada, Artemide, Persol, Whirlpool, V&A Museum and Adidas.He spent 4 years at the Interaction Design Institue Ivrea as Associate Professor. Massimo has taught workshops and has been a guest speaker at institutions like: Architectural Association — London, Hochschule fr Gestaltung und Kunst Basel, Hochschule für Gestaltung Schwäbisch Gmünd, FH Potsdam, Domus Academy, Medialab Madrid, Escola Superior de Disseny Barcelona, ARS Electronica Linz, Mediamatic Amsterdam, Doors of Perception Amsterdam. Before joining IDII he was CTO for the Seat Ventures incubator. He spent many years working as a software architect,both in Milan and London, on projects for clients like Italia Online, Sapient, Labour Party, BT, MCI WorldCom, SmithKlineBeecham, Storagetek, BSkyB and boo.com.

Carl Bass, President & CEO of Autodesk

Carl Bass

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Carl Bass is president and chief executive officer of Autodesk, Inc. Autodesk is the leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software.

Formerly he was Autodesk’s chief operating officer, responsible for worldwide sales, marketing, and product development. Earlier roles included CTO and EVP of product development. Bass co-founded Ithaca Software, the developers of HOOPS, which was acquired by Autodesk in 1993. Bass serves on the Board of Directors of Autodesk, E2open, the Art Center College of Design, and the Rocky Mountain Institute. He is also a member of the Executive Advisory Boards of Cornell Computing and Information Science and UC Berkeley School of Information. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Cornell University.

Ayah Bdeir, Founder of littleBits

Ayah Bdeir

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Ayah bdeir is an engineer and an interactive artist, and the founder of littleBits.cc, an open source kit of electronic modules that snap together with magnets. Only 6 months after its creation, litteBits has been acquired by MoMA for the museum’s permanent collection, won best of ToyFair, been featured on TED, BBC, Forbes and Popular Science, and called by Bloomberg TV LEGO’s for the iPad generation.

Bdeir graduated with a Masters from the MIT Media Lab where she was a student in the Computing Culture Group. Prior to that, Bdeir studied Computer Engineering and Sociology in the American ­niversity of Beirut. After the Media Lab (and a brief stint in Finance), Ayah got a fellowship and senior fellowship at Eyebeam Art+Technology center. She taught graduate classes at NY­ and Parsons and taught numerous workshops to get non-engineers, and particularly young girls, interested in science and technology. Bdeir was a mentor in the regional reality tv-show Stars of Science (initiated by Qatar Foundation) promoting science and technology innovation in the Middle East. In 2010, Bdeir was granted a fellowship with Creative Commons in recognition of her work, including spearheading the first Open Hardware definition and co-chairing the Open Hardware Summit at the New York Hall of Science in September of 2010 and 2011. Just recently, Bdeir was awarded the highly prestigious TED fellowship, as one of 25 innovators in 2012 from around the world. Bdeir is also the founder of Karaj, Beirut’s lab for experimental art, architecture and technology. Ayah lives and works between Beirut and New York.

Greg Borenstein, author of Making Things See: 3D vision with Kinect, Processing, Arduino, and MakerBot

Greg Borenstein

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Greg Borenstein is an artist and researcher in New York. His work explores the use of special effects as an artistic medium. He is fascinated by how special effects techniques cross the boundary between images and the physical objects that make them: miniatures, motion capture, 3D animation, animatronics, and digital fabrication.

Greg is a graduate of the NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program where he is currently a resident researcher. He recently finished writing a book for O’Reilly about the Microsoft Kinect, titled: Making Things See: 3D vision with Kinect, Processing, Arduino, and MakerBot

Liam Casey, Founder & CEO PCH International

Liam Casey

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Liam Casey is the founder and CEO of PCH International, a venture-backed supply chain management company focused on the consumer electronics, personal computer, medical device, and telecommunication industries. PCHs clients include industry-leading multinationals based in Silicon Valley and across North America. Liam founded PCH in 1996 and has grown the business to well over $100 million in revenue and over 800 employees in PCHs operations in China, Ireland, UK, US, and South Africa. Liam is widely recognized as a business thought leader on international trade and business in China, earning him the nickname Mr. China. In 2007, he was awarded Ernst & Young™s Entrepreneur of the Year in Ireland. He is a frequent guest speaker at corporate leadership events, trade shows, and Asia and Ireland-focused business forums. Liam is currently the Mayor of the People’s Republic of China on FourSquare.

Allan Chochinov, Partner & Editor-in-Chief of Core77

Allan Chochinov

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Allan Chochinov is a partner of Core77, a New York-based design network serving a global community of designers and design enthusiasts, and Chair of the new MFA in Products of Design graduate program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Allan lectures around the world and at professional conferences including IDSA, AIGA and IxDA, has been a guest critic at various design schools in including Yale University, NYU, IIT, Carnegie Mellon, Ravensbourne, RMIT, University of Minnesota, RIT, Emily Carr, and RISD. He has moderated and led workshops and symposia at the Aspen Design Conference, the Rockefeller Center at Bellagio, Compost Modern, and Winterhouse, and is a frequent design competition juror. Prior to Core77, his work in product design focused on the medical, surgical, and diagnostic fields, as well as on consumer products and workplace systems. (Projects included work for Herman Miller, Johnson & Johnson, Federal Express, Kodak, A.C. Nielsen, Oral-B, Crunch Fitness and others.) He has been named on numerous design and utility patents and has received awards from I.D. Magazine, Communication Arts, The Art Directors Club and The One Club. He serves on the boards of the Designers Accord, Design Ignites Change, and DesigNYC.

Jeremy Conrad, Co-Founder of Lemnos Lab

Jeremy Conrad

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Jeremy Conrad is a co founder and managing partner at Lemnos Labs, a hardware incubator based in San Francisco. Previously he was an officer in the Air Force, working on the Airborne Laser Program. While there his roles included being the Lead Engineer for the Battle Management Integrated Product Team and the Branch Chief for the Adjunct Missions Test and Targets group. This may have been the coolest job a young engineer could ask for (lasers and missiles!) He has a B.S. in mechanical engineering from MIT.

Robert Cook, Co-Founder of MetaWeb Technologies

Robert Cook

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Robert Cook cofounded Metaweb, Inc. and Freebase, a massive, open-license database, both of which were acquired by Google in 2010. Robert built his first computer in 1979 and published his first video game three years later through Broderbund Software. He ran the San Francisco division of Applied Minds, an R&D consultancy and has founded several companies, including one most recently to produce software-controlled environmental lighting.

John Dimatos, Director of Applications Development, MakerBot Industries

John Dimatos

John works at MakerBot Industries where he heads the Applications division, a group of designers and thinkers creating projects and experiences for MakerBot owners. The Applications division designs products and experiences that embed long term thinking into the relationships between people and their things, pushing towards the eventual transformation of mass consumers into casual makers. Prior to MakerBot, he developed a series of disaster response live action games for UNICEF, first created for his students in the ‘Design For UNICEF’ class at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. John is himself a proud alumnus and a former resident researcher from ITP. During his residency he co-founded Water Canary, a social tech venture developing a fast, networked, water‐testing device that reduces the amount of time, expense, and skill required to test water for pathogens. He has a B.S. from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

Ben Einstein, Managing Director of Bolt

Ben Einstein

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Ben has worked on many aspects of product development from concept initiation and refinement to prototyping and small-scale production to full-scale manufacturing for a variety of products at various product development firms around the country. At Brainstream, Ben focuses on projects that fuse technology & user interaction and is responsible for daily operations. His work has been discussed in numerous publications including CNBC, The Robb Report, Maxim, CNET, Stuff.tv, This Old House, The Telegraph, Gizmodo, Cult Of Mac, Car & Driver Magazine, Playboy Magazine and on NPR. Ben specializes in solid modeling, prototyping, DFA, DFM, and interaction design. His extensive work in assembly and CNC machining optimizes design for production-oriented product development. He holds a Bachelors degree from Hampshire College focusing on Product Design and Development.

Brad Feld, Co-Founder of Foundry Group

Brad Feld

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Brad has been an early stage investor and entrepreneur for over twenty years. Prior to co-founding Foundry Group, he co-founded Mobius Venture Capital and, prior to that, founded Intensity Ventures, a company that helped launch and operate software companies. Brad is also a co-founder of TechStars. Brad currently serves on the board of directors of BigDoor Media, Cheezburger Networks, Fitbit, Gnip, MakerBot Oblong, Orbotix, and Standing Cloud for Foundry Group. Previously, Brad served as chief technology officer of AmeriData Technologies. AmeriData acquired Feld Technologies, a firm he founded in 1987 that specialized in custom software applications. Brad had grown Feld Technologies into one of Boston’s leading software consulting firms prior to the acquisition. He also directed the diversification into software consulting at AmeriData, a $1.5 billion publicly-traded company which was acquired by GE Capital in 1995.

Limor “Ladyada” Fried, Founder of Adafruit

Limor 'Ladyada' Fried

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Limor Fried, is a MIT trained engineer. She is the first female engineer on WIRED magazine’s cover, named one of the “Most influential Women in Technology” by Fast Company and the winner of an EFF pioneer award for teaching and sharing electronics. Adafruit was started in 2005, Limor’s goal is to create the best place online for learning electronics and making the best designed products for makers of all ages and skill levels. She has helped create dozens of open-source hardware businesses with fellow makers.

Travis Good, Co-Chair of Hardware Innovation Workshop

Travis Good

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Travis pursues projects of interest, currently focusing on innovation and start-up within the maker movement. In his travels he’s visited 28 incubators, 49 makerspaces, and three fab labs while also chairing a start-up incubator and co-founding a makerspace in Virginia. His efforts include collaborating with MAKE on events, contributing to the MAKEzine blog, and learning to be a better maker by getting hands-on experience for six weeks this past winter at TechShop. His broader agenda is available at www.GoodPursuits.com.

Previously, Travis was Vice President of Technology and Operations at America Online Latin America from 2000 to 2006. From 1995 to 1999, he held a variety of management positions at AOL, including Vice President AOL International, Director of Client Software Product Marketing, and Director of Global Network Navigator. From 1987 to 1995, Travis served in sales and management positions at GE Information Services, including General Manager of its distributorship in Mexico. Previous to that, he was with Citicorp for four years.

Travis earned an MBA with a concentration in International Management from Thunderbird School of Global Management, a BS in Industrial Engineering and a BS in Finance from Oregon State University.

Ted Hall, Founder & CEO of ShopBot

Ted Hall

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ShopBot Tools began in the workshop/barn of Ted Hall more than 15 years ago. A professor of neuroscience at Duke University, Ted’s hobby was building plywood boats, and he was becoming frustrated by the amount of time it was taking to cut the panels for curved hulls with hand power tools. He thought a computerized cutting tool called a CNC router would be helpful, but didn’t have the $40,000 that even a used, entry-level machine would cost. So he started thinking about a practical way to make one of the tools less expensively after all, they seemed to be just large plotters that moved a cutter instead of a pen.

Ted’s first model worked surprisingly well … and working out the details of the tool while growing excited over the possibilities of affordable CNC led him to begin spending more time designing tools than building boats.

Ted continues to lead the company from its headquarters in Durham, North Carolina, spearheading ShopBot’s ongoing innovation in software and hardware design.

Mark Hatch, Co-Founder & CEO of TechShop

Mark Hatch

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During Mark’s first two years on the management team, TechShop tripled revenue and memberships and became a leading brand in the emergent “Maker-Space” business. Before coming to TechShop in October of 2007, Mark was the president of GL. Services, a Business Process Outsourcing company, where he doubled the number of companies served by strategically launching new service offerings. Mark also served in management roles at Avery Dennison and Kinko’s. He has his BA in economics from UC Irvine, an MBA from the Drucker School at Claremont, and is a former Green Beret.

Alon Hillel-Tuch, Co-Founder of RocketHub

Alon Hillel-Tuch

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Alon Hillel-Tuch is the co-founder of RocketHub, one of the world’s largest crowdfunding platforms. Alon was born in the land of cheese and clogs, The Netherlands, and speaks English, Dutch, German, and Mandarin Chinese. Alon has been a tinkerer since childhood, his father was an electrical engineer at Bell Labs, and it seems to have rubbed off on him. Alon holds a B.A. from Hamilton College in Economics and Chinese Culture & Language, and received his M.Sc from Columbia University.

Andrew “Bunnie” Huang, Founder of Chumby

Andrew 'Bunnie' Huang

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Andrew is a nocturnal hacker and the hardware lead; his responsibilities include the architecture, design and production of chumby devices, as well as the strategic planning and ecosystem development of the broader chumby hardware platform. With a PhD in EE from MIT, he has completed several major projects, ranging from hacking the Xbox (and writing the eponymous book), to designing the world’s first fully-integrated photonic-silicon chips running at 10 Gbps with Luxtera, Inc., to building some of the first prototype hardware for silicon nanowire device research with Caltech. bunnie has also participated in the design of 802.11b/Bluetooth transceivers (with Mobilian), graphics chips (with SGI), digital cinema CODECs (with Qualcomm), and autonomous robotic submarines (with MIT ORCA/AUVSI). He is also responsible for the un-design of many security systems, with an appetite for the challenge of digesting silicon-based hardware security. bunnie is also a contributing writer for MAKE magazine and a member of their technical advisory board.

Zach Kaplan, CEO of Inventables

Zach Kaplan

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Zach is CEO of Inventables which provides physical Innovation Centers to the the big R&D, Marketing and Product Development departments around the world. He co-founded the firm with Keith Schacht -the two previously co-founded and sold Lever Works while at U of I. In few short years they have been features in BusinessWeek, Forbes, Business 2.0, Fortune, ESPN, Wired…and they presented at TED, twice.

Tod Kurt, Co-Founder of ThingM

Tod Kurt

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Tod E. Kurt is co-founder of ThingM, a ubiquitous computing device studio based in San Francisco and Pasadena and is creator of BlinkM, the popular Smart LED prototyping device. Tod is a contributor to MAKE magazine, the author of Hacking Roomba, an active member in the Arduino community, and co-founder of the Los Angeles hackerspace Crash Space. His past work includes being the original systems architect of GoTo.com, the first public pay-per-click search engine, and a researcher at Yahoo Research. Before the Web, Tod was a hardware, software, and firmware engineer working on robotic camera systems that went to Mars.

David Lang, Co-Founder of OpenROV

David Lang

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David Lang is a Co-Founder of OpenROV. He also writes the Zero to Maker column for the MAKE blog, where he chronicles his crash-course into the maker world. Prior to underwater robots, David managed OCSC Sailing in Berkeley where he helped hundreds of students learn to sail and led sailing adventures around the world.

Catarina Mota, Co-Founder of openMaterials

Catarina Mota

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Catarina is a maker of things, a research scholar, and an open source advocate. She co-founded openMaterials.org, a collaborative project dedicated to do-it-yourself experimentation with smart materials, and altLab, Lisbon’s hackerspace. She has taught numerous hands-on workshops on hi-tech materials and simple circuitry with the goal of encouraging people with little to no science background to take a proactive interest in science, technology and knowledge-sharing. Catarina is wrapping up her PhD dissertation on the social impact of open and collaborative practices for the development of technologies. She is a fellow of the National Science and Technology Foundation of Portugal, co-chair of the Open Hardware Summit, TEDGlobal 2012 fellow, and member of NYC Resistor.

Tim O’Reilly, Founder & CEO of O’Reilly Media

Tim O'Reilly

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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 hosts conferences on technology topics, including the O’Reilly Open Source Convention, the Web 2.0 Summit, Strata: The Business of Data, and many others. O’Reilly’s Make: magazine and Maker Faire has been compared to the West Coast Computer Faire, which launched the personal computer revolution. 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 also a partner at O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, O’Reilly’s early stage venture firm, and is on the board of Safari Books Online.

Nick Pinkston, Founder of CloudFab & HackPittsburgh

Nick Pinkston

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Nick is the Founder of CloudFab the world’s first manufacturing-as-a-service API providing 3D printing, short-run injection molding, and mass customization interfaces. Previously, he founded HackPittsurgh, a collective workshop, as a hub for makers in Pittsburgh. Nick’s mission is to fully democratize the means of production so hardware products are as easy to bring to market as software. He also organizes the San Francisco Hardware Startup Meetup, Hardware Startup Unconference and is a mentor for the Thiel “20 Under 20” Fellowship.

Jay Rogers, Founder & CEO of Local Motors

Jay Rogers

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Jay is helping to build a game-changing American car company. Jay is relentlessly passionate about cars and the industry which surrounds them. His rides have included a 1991 BMW 535, 1971 Mercedes 300SL, a 1996 Dodge Viper R/T10, 1994 Chevrolet 1500 with hydraulic dump-bed, a 2002 Honda Element, and now he drives a 1971 Mercedes 280SL. Previously, John served for 6 years in the United States Marine Corps, where he was an Infantry Company Commander. He has worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Co., as an investment analyst at Ewing & Partners, and at a startup medical device company in the People’s Republic of China. Jay serves as the Chief Investment Officer and director of the RBR Foundation, a philanthropic foundation focused on education and healthcare. He is a graduate of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School (Baker Scholar). He lives in Arizona with his wife, Susannah, and three sons, John, Charles, and Houston.

Marcus Schappi, President of Ninja Blocks

Marcus Schappi

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Marcus Schappi is CEO of Ninja Blocks Inc and regularly hops between San Francisco, and Sydney, Australia. Ninja Blocks Inc is building the Internet of Things for the rest of us, allowing anyone to build apps that talk to devices. Marcus has a Masters of Design Science (Design Computing) from Sydney University and studied Mechatronics & Business at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Nathan Seidle, Owner & CEO of SparkFun Electronics

Nathan Seidle

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Nathan Seidle is CEO of SparkFun Inc. in Boulder, Colorado, a company he founded in 2003 as an undergraduate student in electrical engineering. The company has grown to over 130 employees in the past 9 years and is one of the leaders in Open Source Hardware. SparkFun provides tools, hardware, education and other resources for artists, engineers, prototypers, and hobbyists to “play with cool electronic gadgetry”. He is an accomplished engineer, innovator, and bootstrapping entrepreneur.

Eric Stackpole, Co-Founder of OpenROV

Eric Stackpole

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Eric Stackpole is a Co-Founder of OpenROV and the original designer of the robot. He currently works part-time for NASA at the Ames Research Center and is finishing his masters thesis in mechatronics at Santa Clara University. Eric has always been an enthusiast of exploration technology, from building a telerobots to attend classes in collage to lugging ham radios up mountains during backpacking trips.

Phillip Torrone, Creative Director at Adafruit Industries

Phillip Torrone

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Phillip Torrone is the editor at large of Makezine.com. He has authored and contributed to numerous books on programming, mobile devices, design, hardware hacking and is also a contributing editor for Popular Science. In addition to MAKE, Phillip is creative director at Adafruit Industries, a New York City based open source hardware and electronic kit company. Prior to MAKE, Phillip founded Hack-a-Day and was director of product development for creative firm Fallon Worldwide. He currently writes articles on MAKE detailing the open-source hardware and maker movement for businesses and culture.

Helen Zelman, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Lemnos Labs

Helen Zelman

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Helen Zelman is a co-founder and managing partner at Lemnos Labs, a hardware incubator based in San Francisco. She has a B.S. in mechanical engineering from MIT. After college, she detoured into the world of professional baseball and spent five seasons with the Arizona Diamondbacks. While there, she engineered and facilitated a data-driven approach to scouting for professional and amateur players.

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