Speakers

James Bower
James Bower is is one of the founders of Whyville and a professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center and the University of Texas, San Antonio. There he is responsible for organizing a new graduate and research program in computational neurobiology for the UT System. Previously he was a professor of biology at the California Institute of Technology for 17 years.

In addition to his interest in the functional organization of the brain, he also has had a long term interest and involvement in the brain's ability to learn as manifest in the education of children. While a professor at Caltech he founded and co-directed the Caltech Precollege Science Initiative, a multi-million dollar effort to improve the quality of K-12 science education. He has also been an innovator in the use of computer and network technology to support inquiry-based learning, as well as collaborative modeling based efforts to understand brain function.

As Chairman of the Board of Numedeon Inc., he has guided the design and development of the children's Internet site, www.whyville.net. Whyville is increasingly recognized as a highly innovative and effective mechanism for engaging children in online educational communities. He is a graduate of Montana State University (B.S., zoology) and the University of Wisconsin, Madison (Ph.D., neurophysiology). He was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at New York University Medical Center. He is founding editor of the Journal of Computational Neuroscience.

John Seely Brown
John Seely Brown was the chief scientist of Xerox Corporation until April 2002 and was also the director of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) until June 2000 — a position he held for twelve years. While head of PARC, Brown expanded the role of corporate research to include such topics as organizational learning, complex adaptive systems, micro electrical mechanical system (MEMS) and NANO technology. His personal research interests include digital culture, rich media, ubiquitous computing, Web service architectures and organizational and individual learning.

JSB, as he is often called, is a member of the National Academy of Education, a fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and of AAAS, and a trustee of Brown University and the MacArthur Foundation. He serves on numerous boards of directors and advisory boards. He has published over 100 papers in scientific journals and was awarded the Harvard Business Review's 1991 McKinsey Award for his article, "Research that Reinvents the Corporation" and again in 2002 for his article (with John Hagel) “Your next IT strategy.” In 1997 he published the book "Seeing Differently: Insights on Innovation" (Harvard Business Review Books). He was an executive producer for the award winning film "Art · Lunch · Internet · Dinner," which won a bronze medal at Worldfest 1994, the Charleston International Film Festival. He received the 1998 Industrial Research Institute Medal for outstanding accomplishments in technological innovation and the 1999 Holland Award in recognition of the best paper published in Research Technology Management in 1998. With Paul Duguid he co-authored the acclaimed book "The Social Life of Information" (HBS Press, 2000) that has been translated into nine languages, with a second addition in April 2002.

He received a B.A. from Brown University in 1962 in mathematics and physics and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1970 in computer and communication sciences. In May of 2000 Brown University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science degree. It was followed by an honorary Doctor of Science in Economics conferred by the London Business School in July 2001. He is an avid reader, traveler and motorcyclist. Part scientist, part artist and part strategist, his views are unique and distinguished by a broad view of the human contexts in which technologies operate and a healthy skepticism about whether or not change always represents genuine progress.

Stephanie Yost Cameron
Stephanie Yost Cameron is the general counsel and senior vice president, business & legal affairs, at NeoPets Inc., the top-rated “Gen Y” entertainment and media Internet website. Before coming to NeoPets, she was a senior associate at the law firm of Troy & Gould, specializing in the areas of entertainment, intellectual property and new media, with a focus on rights distribution, purchase, clearance, and licensing, as well as talent and other employment transactions, in interactive media, motion pictures, music, copyright and trademark. Prior to joining Troy & Gould in early 1998, she was an entertainment and media litigator with the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.

She presently is a member of the Advisory Board of CARU (the Children’s Advertising Review Unit, a division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus that acts as the children’s advertising industry’s self-regulatory forum), a member of the Planning Committee for the USC Entertainment Law Institute, a trustee of the Mexican American Bar Foundation Board, as well as a member of the National Association of Recording Arts & Sciences, the Screen Actors Guild, and the American Federation of Television and Recording Artists. She is a former chair of the Entertainment Law Section Executive Committee of the Beverly Hills Bar Association (2001-2002), an adjunct associate professor of Law at Southwestern University School of Law, where she has specialized in legal writing, and has guest lectured at the university's National Institute of Entertainment and Media Law on developments in the entertainment and new media areas of the law.

After completing her undergraduate degree in communication studies at UCLA in 1984, she supervised business affairs and production for an independent entertainment company specializing in film and television source music and record album production. In 1993 she graduated from the Southwestern University School of Law.

Neil Chase
Neil Chase is managing editor at CBS MarketWatch.com in San Francisco. MarketWatch's 75 journalists in 9 bureaus worldwide produce breaking financial news around the clock on the Web, on television and radio, and in print. He is a member of the board of directors of the Online News Association.

He spent five years as a professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, where he launched the graduate and undergraduate new media journalism programs and was the school's director of technology. He also served as executive director of the Computer Press Association and directed its annual Computer Press Awards contest.

Before joining the Northwestern faculty he worked as an editor at The San Francisco Examiner and The Arizona Republic and helped to launch a Russian-American newspaper that was a joint effort of Hearst and Izvestia. He has consulted for dozens of news and technology companies and written for magazines ranging from Time and Digital Chicago to Nightclub and Bar Journal. He received his B.A. degree from the University of Michigan, where he was editor of The Michigan Daily.

Jean Chen
Jean Chen is the online editor for Youth Radio (www.youthradio.org), an award winning independent producer of youth voices whose mission is to promote young people¹s intellectual, creative, and professional growth through training and access to media. She oversees the editorial content of the website and works with a team of youth who have been trained in Web editorial and design.

In 2002 Youth Radio won the prestigious Peabody Award. The website was nominated for a Webby Award in 2001 and 2002 and was a USAToday.com site of the day in 2002.

Before coming to Youth Radio, she was an editor at Snowball.com, the most
heavily trafficked group of teen websites on the Internet in 1999 and 2000. She has been producing 'zines (both print and online) for ten years. She produced her first Ezine at age 19 and it was named the "Best Sign of Intelligent Life in the Suburbs" by the Baltimore City Paper. She is currently a board member of Kearny Street Workshop, a 30-year-old Asian American arts organization in San Francisco. She graduated from Swarthmore College with a B.A. in biology.

Rob Curley
Rob Curley is the general manager of World Online, the Internet division of The Lawrence Journal-World. He came to the Lawrence newspaper after a two-year stint as the director of new media at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He previously was the manager of content development for Morris Digital Works, and had been with Morris Communications since 1996.

His team has developed the national newspaper Web site of the year as named by either the Newspaper Association of America or Editor & Publisher magazine every year since 1998. In 2001, the NAA named Curley as the newspaper industry's "Internet Pioneer of the Year," making him the youngest person to ever win the award. This past February, E&P named The Capital-Journal's site as the best online newspaper in the country, as well as the best specialized news site in the nation. In July of 2002 his Topeka team won four national Digital Edge awards from the NAA, and became the first newspaper in the association's history to be a finalist in every category it was eligible to enter.

In January of 2003, his team repeated the feat, this time when the Lawrence Journal-World was the only newspaper in the country to be a national finalist in every category at the NAA's online awards, with the operation's KUsports.com site being named best sports site in the nation. He is a frequent speaker at many Internet-based conventions around the world, and looks a little like Barry Manilow.

Stephanie Danner
Stephanie Danner, 10, is a fifth-grader who participates in the gifted and talented program at a Bay Area elementary school. She has had an AOL e-mail address for five years. At school, she uses the computers with networked Internet access in her classroom to access search engines for research (and to play with during recess). At home, she competes with her two siblings (and parents) for use of the family's one DSL Internet connection, which she strongly prefers to dial-up access from the computer in her room. Her favorite Internet activities are instant messaging, e-mailing, funny websites such as FlowGo.com and JustSayWow.com, and games such as NeoPets. Her other activities include horseback riding, dance, Girl Scouts, softball, skiing, and participating in Math Olympiads, a math enrichment program for 5th graders.

Pete Deemer
Pete Deemer is former senior vice president at CNET Networks and co-founder of SpotMedia, whose flagship publication, GameSpot, grew to become one of the largest entertainment information sites online.

He launched his publishing career as a reporter for the best-selling "Let's Go: Europe" travel guide. He went on to become editor-in-chief and then publishing director of the 17-title Let's Go series of travel guides. After graduating from Harvard College in 1993, he joined San Francisco-based PC World Communications. In 1994 he directed the launch of Multimedia World Online, an early International Data Group online publication, and then in 1995 became PC World Online's first director of advertising sales.

In 1996, Deemer left IDG with two colleagues to launch SpotMedia Communications, where he served as a principal and senior vice president of technology and operations. In the spring of 1999, SpotMedia merged with ZDNet, Ziff-Davis' technology information portal. The combined entity went public and Deemer became vice president of business and product management at ZDNet. ZDNet merged with CNET, and Deemer became vice president of the Outbound Media Group at CNET. Since 1995, Deemer also has been a lecturer at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, teaching courses in Web-based publishing and new media.

Will Harvey
Will Harvey is founder and executive vice president of There, the first online getaway that gives you the freedom to play and talk naturally while having fun and making friends. He is a seasoned entrepreneur with a strong background in computer science, software, and video game development. He founded There in 1998 out of a small room in his parent's house, where he recruited the technology team and built an end-to-end prototype before raising capital to grow the company and hire the management team.

Before founding There, he ran the dynamic media products at Adobe Systems, including AfterEffects and Adobe Premier, the world's leading video editing program. He came to Adobe when Adobe acquired his previous company, Sandcastle, which he had founded to develop network technology to enable low latency interaction over the internet. Prior to Sandcastle, he served as Vice President of Engineering at Rocket Science Games in San Francisco, where he led the company's transition from full motion video based games to games focused on interactivity.

Prior to Rocket Science, he founded and ran several successful game development companies while simultaneously earning his Bachelor's, Master's and Doctorate degrees in computer science from Stanford. His doctoral thesis introduced several important search algorithms which are now used commercially in manufacturing scheduling. His game companies produced Platinum and Gold game titles including Zany Golf, Immortal, and Music Construction Set, with combined sales of over a million units. He has filed 5 patents related to networking, graphics, and automated scheduling. He wrote his first commercial video game at the age of 15.

Mizuko Ito
Mizuko Ito is a cultural anthropologist of technology use, focusing on children and youth's changing relationships to media and communications. She is currently a visiting scholar at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.

In her drive to understand how digital media are changing relationships, identities and communities, she has conducted fieldwork at a variety of sites, including after-school computer clubs, an online community of senior citizens, an Internet gaming site, a number of corporate contexts, and among Tokyo children and youth. Her current research focuses on two areas. The first is ethnographic research on media mixes in Japanese animation and games, and the second is in the use of mobile phones by youth and children.

After completing a degree in East Asian Studies at Harvard University, she attended graduate school at Stanford University, where she received an M.A. in anthropology, a Ph.D. in education, and a Ph.D. in anthropology. She has worked at Tokyo University, Stanford University, The Institute for Research on Learning, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Apple Computer, the National Institute for Educational Policy Research of Japan, and Keio University.

Mia Kabasakalis
Mia Kabasakalis, 14, writes for TIME for Kids "Kid Scoops." She loves to read books in her spare time, but also can't live without the Internet - "It's my way of communication." She's a 4-handicap golfer and her dream assignment was to interview Tiger Woods - which she finally got to do for Kid Scoop. Her favorite musicians are Avril Lavigne and Celine Dion and her favorite movie is "Ever After" with Drew Barrymore. She's a competitive Greek Folk Dancer and wants to be a sports agent/attorney. She's been in home schooling for the past four years, but next year plans to attend a traditional high school. Here's her home page at TIME for Kids.

Yasmin Kafai
Yasmin Kafai is associate professor of learning and instruction at the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she also directs the KIDS research project. Born in Germany, she undertook her studies on learning theories and technologies in France, Germany and the United States. She received her doctorate from Harvard University in 1993 while working with Seymour Papert and Idit Harel at The Media Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

She has written numerous articles on learning technologies and environments for young children in the fields of education, developmental psychology, and computer and information studies. Her research on video games and learning has been published in the monograph "Minds in Play: Computer Game Design as a Context for Children's Learning" (Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers, 1995). She co-edited with Mitchel Resnick "Constructionism in Practice: Designing, Thinking and Learning in a Digital World" (Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers, 1996). Her research on the design of learning cultures and technologies has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the Spencer Foundation. In 1996, she was one of two educators to receive an Early Career Award from the National Science Foundation, and in 1997 she was among the 30 postdoctoral fellows of the National Academy of Education. Her current research focuses on young children as designers of simulations and builders of digital archives for science learning. She studies in young students' digital apprenticeships how they share their technological expertise, develop collaborative planning tools, and integrate science learning.

More recently she has been active in national policy efforts. She has been appointed to the National Commission on Gender, Technology and Teaching that produced the report "Tech-Savvy Girls: Educating Girls in the Computer Age" (American Association of University Women, 2000). She has briefed the Telecommunication and Computer Science Board for the report "Being Fluent with Information Technology" (National Academy of Sciences, 1999) and has helped define a national research agenda with "Ensuring a Quality Media Culture for Children's in the Digital Age" (Center for Media Education, 1998) and a related effort from the Markle Foundation.

Arie Knyazev
Arie Knyazev, 9 1/2 , was born on June 15, 1993, in Europe, lived for sometime in Israel, and for the last 7 years has lived in California. He travels with his family a lot, has been in Europe, Israel and Canada, and has visited many states and cities in the USA. "From all these spectacular places I collect unique memories, pictures and souvenirs." He lives with his parents and his little brother Elijah in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has grandparents in the Ukraine and Israel. He is a great fan and expert in Neopets, Pokemon, Dragon Ball Z, and electronics. He is studying HTML and making his own Web page. He takes piano lessons, plays in the school band (flute), and has a green belt in Karate. He's a GATE (Gifted And Talented Education) student at his elementary school. "In the future, I would like to create exciting computer games."

Tim Levell
Tim Levell, 34, is editor of the BBC's CBBC Newsround. He edits the website at www.bbc.co.uk/newsround, which is the world's only daily updated news site for children and young people aged 8 to 14. He has a team of 15 journalists working on the site and alongside the BBC's daily Newsround TV show, which has a team of about 30.

Previously he worked for the Newsround TV show from 1995-2000 as a reporter, producer and director. Before that he worked for BBC TV News, BBC regional radio and independent radio.

The CBBC Newsround website was launched in its current incarnation in October 2001, and has grown from around 600,000 page impressions weekly to its current average of slightly more than 2 million page impressions a week. About 10 percent of all 8- to 14-year-olds in the United Kingdom visit the CBBC Newsround site at least once a month, making it one of the most successful children's sites in the UK.

Mindy McAdams
Mindy McAdams is professor of journalism and the Knight Chair for Journalism Technologies and the Democratic Process at the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida, a position she has held since August 1999. Previously she was the Web strategist at the American Press Institute and lived in Washington, D.C.

In 1994, she was the first content developer at Digital Ink, The Washington Post's first online newspaper. Prior to that, she was a copy editor for 11 years. She worked on the metro desk at The Washington Post and at Time magazine in New York. She also worked as a technology editor for a weekly business newspaper and in book publishing.

Her consulting work since 1995 has taken her to Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Britain and Canada. She gives seminars and workshops on writing for the Web, online journalism, and hypertext in journalism. She has an M.A. in media studies and a B.A. in print journalism.

Jarl Mohn
Jarl Mohn, who has been known as Lee Masters since his days in radio, divides his time between being a corporate director and advisor to various media companies, making private equity investments in venture capital and buyout opportunities and managing The Mohn Family Foundation, the philanthropic entity he and his wife created in 2000. Previously he was the founding president and CEO of Liberty Digital, a public company that invested in mid-stage interactive television, cable networks and internet enterprises.

Prior to Liberty Digital, he created E! Entertainment Television, serving as president and CEO from January 1990 to December 1998. Under his leadership E! grew in value to over $1 billion, launched E! Online and its related Web sites and a new 24-hour network called style. He was formerly executive vice President and general manager of MTV, where he led the team responsible for developing the strategy of the network’s highly successful transition away from music videos to longer-form programming. He also oversaw the network’s worldwide international expansion. He currently is chair of the USC Annenberg Online Journalism and Communication Program Advisory Council and a director of E.W. Scripps Company, The Game Show Network, LodgeNet, KPCC public radio, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the ACLU of Southern California.

Prior to his career in television, he enjoyed a successful 19 year career in radio. He began as a disc jockey and moved through the ranks as a programmer, station manager and then owner of a group of radio stations. Originally from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, he attended Philadelphia’s Temple University where he studied mathematics and philosophy. He currently lives in Brentwood, CA, with his wife and two children.

Nzinga Moore
Nzinga Moore, 21, is a producer/reporter for Youth Radio in Berkeley and a radio and television major at San Francisco State University. She has been an intern for National Public Radio's Morning Edition in Washington, D.C. and an assignment desk intern for KTVU-TV in Oakland, California. She also studied documentary production at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia through San Francisco State's student exchange program. She has received awards from the Golden Key International Honour Society and the Black Engineers Association and was a UNITY Founders Scholar in 2002.

Elizabeth Osder
Elizabeth Osder is a visiting professor of journalism at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California and has been an editor, producer, and consultant for publications, broadcasters, and online services including The New York Times, NPR, Nexis, New York Daily News, Sunday Times (UK), The Times (UK), Financial Times (UK), Time Warner, The Poynter Institute, The Plain Dealer, New Jersey Online, Lamaze, iVillage, and others. She began her journalism career as a freelance photojournalist and later became a photo editor for the Associated Press; executive producer for Advance Internet; development editor and director of product development for The New York Times on the Web and director of new media for The New York Times News Services. In 2001-2002 She was awarded a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University to study communications, management and change in news organizations.

As an educator, Osder taught professional seminars at The American Press Institute, Poynter Institute, Norwegian Press Institute, and MIT Media Lab. She has been an adjunct professor of journalism at Columbia University, New York University and the University of Navarro in Pamplona, Spain. She is a founder and board member of the Online News Association; board member of The Florence Fund and advisor to the American Press Institute, NYU’s Center for Publishing and The American Cancer Society. Her creative and leadership awards include Top 10 Women in New York New Media; Silicon Alley's Top 100 and OJR’s top 100 in Interactive Media; Four "Cool Sites of the Day" awards; and numerous Eppy and Edgie awards from the newspaper industry. She is currently deputy editor of the Online Journalism Review. She has a B.A. in history from Mount Holyoke College and an M.A. in journalism from the University of Missouri.

Nora Paul
Nora Paul is the inaugural director of the Institute for New Media Studies at the University of Minnesota. She came to the University of Minnesota in July 2000 after nine years at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Florida. At Poynter she led the programming efforts in the areas of news library management, computer-assisted research, and new media leadership. Prior to the Poynter Institute, she was the editor, information services at the Miami Herald from 1979-1991 where she developed one of the early full-text electronic archives for news, brought in computer-assisted research, and created a fee-based news research service for the public.

She is the author of "Computer Assisted Research: A Guide to Tapping Online Information;" co-author with Margot Williams of "Great Scouts: Cyberguides for Subject Searching on the Web;" editor of "When Nerds and Words Collide: Reflections on the Development of Computer Assisted Reporting," and co-author with Kathleen Hansen of the upcoming text "Behind the Message: Information Strategies for Communicators."

She was instrumental in bringing the journalism think tank New Directions for News to the University of Minnesota and served as its interim director. She is on the board of the Online News Association, the Institute for Cyberinformation at Kent State University, and the American Press Institute's New Media Initiative, and she is spiritual leader of the New Media Dons. She has an MLS degree from Texas Women's University and, after college, founded one of the first information brokerage services. She got her first modem in 1978 and has been accessing, studying, and explaining the electronic delivery of information ever since.

Christopher L. Pitzak
Christopher Pitzak is the vice president of strategy and business development for Jippii USA, Inc., a global leader in mobile entertainment solutions for business and consumer markets. Based in Irvine, Calif., he is responsible for Jippii's growth strategy, strategic alliances, partnership development and marketing strategy.

Since joining Jippii Group (Finland) in early 2001, he has been involved in engagements in several countries and has added significant value to Jippii's international expansion efforts. He has performed market analysis by determining viable markets, recommending courses of action and developing entry strategies for key markets. He has also structured key strategic alliances in viable markets, built rational business models and defined the parameters of co-operation.

Prior to joining Jippii, he spent two years as a volunteer in the Republic of Panama where he directed organizational training and identified deficiencies to enhance productivity. A former NCAA volleyball champion, he has also competed internationally as professional volleyball player. He holds a bachelor's degree from Brigham Young University where he was a recipient of academic and athletic scholarships and is fluent in Spanish.

Lee Rainie
Harrison “Lee” Rainie is the director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a research center that examines the social impact of the Internet – how people’s Internet use is affecting families, communities, health care, education, civic/political life, and work places. The Project has issued 48 reports about the impact of the Internet. Previously he was managing editor of U.S. News & World Report. He is married and has four children.

Margarita Rossi
Margarita Rossi, 19, is an intern for the Youth Radio Web Team and writes stories for Youth Radio, including a recent piece on "Why I Don't Watch Mainstream News." She is a student at City College of San Francisco and plans to pursue a Ph.D. in psychology.

Joel Schwartzberg
Joel Schwartzberg is editor and programming director for Time Inc. Interactive, with specific oversight of Time Inc.’s online kids properties, including TIME For Kids Online and Sports Illustrated for Kids Online. From 2000-2002, he was the founding editor and executive producer of TimeForKids.com, the online arm of TIME For Kids magazine (the classroom edition of TIME Magazine). The site creates original news, information, and entertainment content for kids on a daily schedule. He also oversees editorial production on TFK’s companion teacher site, TimeForTeachers.com.

TimeForKids.com, the winner of 2001 and 2002 Distinguished Achievement Awards from the Association of Educational Publishers, is the exclusive provider of daily news for America Online’s Kids Only channel and home to the country’s premier Kid Reporter program. TFK Kid Reporters have covered September 11, the Iraq Conflict, and the Grammy Awards, and interviewed everyone from President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld to Tiger Woods and Justin Timberlake.

Previously, he was the head writer and a senior producer for Nickelodeon’s website, Nick.com. He was also the editorial director of eSCORE.com, helping to conceive and oversee content for the launch of Kaplan’s educational site for parents. He has a B.S. degree in mass communication from Emerson College, and considers his twin 6-month-old girls and 3-year-old boy his greatest production accomplishments to date on any platform.

Amy Shatto
Amy Shatto, 14, last year learned HTML, DHTML, Java, Perl, and CSS. This year she's working on PHP, CGI, and SQL. She lives in Southern California and wants to go to UCLA because of the "awesome computer department and the technology" there. Also because Westwood Village is close to the offices of Whyville and NeoPets, two of her favorite web sites. "I know at least 800 people NOT in r/l (real life) - about 625 from Neo, 75 from Whyville, and 100 from...just, anywhere." She wants to be a web designer, and her dream job would be site monitor at NeoPets. For her 8th grade graduation her parents gave her her own domain, where she built a web site.

Duane Sweep
Duane Sweep is director of media research at MORI Research. Before joining MORI, he taught journalism and public relations at Colorado State University and at the University of Northern Colorado. He earned a bachelor's degree in journalism at the University of North Dakota, a master's degree at the University of Georgia, and completed additional graduate work in policy analysis and statistics at the University of Northern Colorado.

He has worked in communications for nearly 20 years, serving as a news editor, a director of university relations, and a teacher and researcher. His work has been published in Journalism Quarterly, The Journal of Public Relations Research, and Public Relations Review.

Douglas Thomas
Douglas Thomas is associate professor in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in communication in 1992 and specializes in Critical Theory and Cultural Studies of Technology. He is author of "Hacker Culture" (University of Minnesota Press, 2002), a study of the cultural, social, and political dimensions of computer hacking, and
co-editor of "Cybercrime: Law Enforcement, Security and Surveillance in the Information Age" (with Brian D. Loader, Routledge, 2000) and "Re-Inventing Technology: Cultural Narratives of Technological Change" (with Marita Sturken and Sandra Ball-Rokeach).

He has written extensively for The Online Journalism Review and for Wired News covering issues of hackers, online culture, privacy and security. An expert on cyberculture, his commentary has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, New Scientist, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, as well as on local and national radio programs, Los Angeles news programs, National Public Radio and CNN. In the summer of 2002, he testified before Congress on the topic of cyberterrorism and national security.

Glenn Thomas
Glenn Thomas is co-founder of Smashing Ideas Inc. in Seattle, Washington, where he co-developed an interactive mapping application for the Everett Herald entitled "Waterfront Renaissance." He focuses on business development and technology trends within the digital industry, and has been deeply involved in the development of Flash for use across all digital platforms.

He began working in the Internet industry in 1994 with Online Interactive. He wrote "Flash Studio Secrets" for Hungry Minds Publishing (formerly IDG) and has more recently published chapters in the books "Flash Enabled" and "Flash MX Magic for New Riders." He graduated summa cum laude with an honors degree from Pomona College in Claremont, CA.

Joseph Turow
Joseph Turow is the Robert Lewis Shayon Professor of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School For Communication and the editor (with Andrea Kavanaugh) of a forthcoming book from MIT Press about families and the Internet.

His continuing work on Annenberg's Internet and the Family Project has received a great deal of attention in the popular press as well as in the research community. He is the author of more than 50 articles and seven books on mass media industries, including "Media Today: An Introduction to Mass Communication," (second edition, Houghton Mifflin, 2002); "Breaking Up America: Advertisers and the New Media World" (University of Chicago Press, 1997; paperback, 1999); and "Playing Doctor: Television, Storytelling and Medical Power" (Oxford, 1989). In addition, he has written about media for such publications as American Demographics magazine and the Los Angeles Times. His research has received financial support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Federal Communications Commission and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among others.

The winner of a number of conference-paper and book awards, he has been invited to be a Chancellor's Distinguished Lecturer at Louisiana State University and has served as the elected chair of the Mass Communication Division of the International Communication Association. He currently serves on the editorial boards of The Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media; Critical Studies in Mass Communications; Journalism; Poetics, and the Sage Annual Review of Communication Research. He is also a member of the founding editorial advisory board of a new scholarly journal, New Media & Society: An International Journal.

Ashley Wells
Ashley Wells is senior producer of interactive content at MSNBC.com specializing in innovative and engaging new story forms and how people use them. He has worked in New York and Los Angeles in TV news and freelance graphic design. He holds a degree in broadcast journalism from Pepperdine University.

Vicki Whiting
Vicki Whiting is president, editor and founder of Kid Scoop, a weekly newspaper feature geared to children ages 7 to 12 that appears in nearly 200 newspapers with a combined circulation of more than 5 million. A former elementary school teacher, she also is a consultant to newspapers on the topic of developing youth readership and educational partnerships. She is the corporate educational services consultant to Freedom Communications Inc., and has been a consultant or writer for The New York Times, Hamtaro, Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey, and educational publishers.

At Kid Scoop the mission is to enable children to become informed about and active participants in their local communities. Kid Scoop promotes this by starting children reading a newspaper at a young age. Each week Kid Scoop offers entertaining and educational content, as well as scavenger hunts and other interactive games that lead young readers to other parts of the newspaper. Kid Scoop is currently developing its online strategy and presence.

Will Wright
Will Wright is chief designer and co-founder of Maxis game development studio and creator of SimCity and The Sims. He was a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001 from the International Game Developers Association and in 2002 was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame.

His first game, Raid on Bungeling Bay, published by Broderbund for the Commodore 64, was a helicopter action game. This gave him the idea for SimCity, which led him and Jeff Braun to found Maxis in 1987. SimCity was released in 1989, and since has won 24 domestic and international awards. With Fred Haslem, he co-designed SimEarth - The Living Planet in 1990, a simulation of a planet based on the Gaia theory of James Lovelock. In 1991, he designed with Justin McCormick SimAnt - The Electronic Ant Colony, a scientifically-accurate simulation of an ant colony.

In February 2000, The Sims was released, putting players in charge of the lives of simulated people. The Sims became a cultural phenomenon and was the best selling PC game of 2000. In 2002 The Sims Online was released, enabling players to take their Sims to an open-ended, online world.