OIPS Photos and Bios

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Andy Baio

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  • Bio: Andy Baio is a writer and coder who loves making things. His latest project is XOXO, a four-day conference and festival in Portland, Oregon, which sold out in two days to become the largest event funded on Kickstarter. Earlier this year, he launched Playfic, a community for writing and sharing interactive fiction games. He's an advisor and the former CTO of Kickstarter, the largest crowdfunding site in the world, produced Kind of Bloop, the first and only chiptune jazz album, and created Upcoming, the collaborative events calendar acquired by Yahoo in 2005. He writes a weekly column for Wired.com, and original reporting on his blog Waxy.org has been featured in the New York Times, Wired, NPR, Newsweek, and MSNBC.

Muhammad Basheer

  • Bio: Recently transferred to Al Jazeera Turk in Istanbul as New Media planner after employing his extensive experience at the network in Doha, also leading on and contributing to open source projects and several online initiatives.

Basheer believes in the power of media and technology with focus on integrating the ecosystem in the Arab world by enhancing local content on the web leading to proactive communities. He works closely with various youth groups to train them build online media platforms including activists from the middle east with focus on empowering civil society initiatives for social reform in his home country Syria.


Donatella Della Ratta

  • Bio: After falling in love with the Arab world and its cultures more than 15 years ago, Donatella has specialized in Arab media issues; she has published several chapters in collective books on Arab TV industries and two monographs on Pan Arab satellite channels. She is a Ph.D. fellow at Copenhagen University (DK) and at the Danish Institute in Damascus (Syria). Her Ph.D. work revolves around the production and distribution of Syrian TV drama.

Donatella is an affiliate at Harvard University, Berkman Center for Internet and Society. She blogs on Arab media at http://mediaoriente.com and tweets avidly on the Arab world, tech and society at @donatelladr. Since 2008, she has been (happily and proudly) managing a fast growing Arabic world-based community at Creative Commons https://creativecommons.org/staff#donatella

  • Bio 2: Donatella Della Ratta is PHD fellow at Copenhagen University (DK) and at the Danish Institute in Damascus (Syria). Her PHD work revolves around the politics of Syrian media industry, particularly TV drama. Before getting into Arabic soap-operas, Donatella has looked at the political economy of the Arab media with a special focus on Pan Arab news channels, publishing several book chapters and two monographs on Arabic satellite networks . She is now shifting her research focus on remix practices, active citizenship and creative resistance in the Arab uprisings. Donatella has been managing the Creative Commons Arab world community for four years. She maintains a blog on Arab media at http://mediaoriente.com. and tweets avidly @donatelladr

Hilary Hoeber

Aleks Krotoski

Hannu Rajaniemi

  • Bio: Hannu Rajaniemi was born in Ylivieska, Finland, in 1978. He read his first science fiction novel at the age of six – Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. At the age of eight he approached the European Space Agency with a fusion-powered spaceship design, which was received with a polite “thank you” note. After studying mathematics and theoretical physics at Unviersity of Oulu and Cambridge and completing a PhD in string theory at University of Edinburgh. Until recently, he worked as a co-founder/director at ThinkTank Maths, a mathematics research company.

Hannu is a member of an Edinburgh-based writers’ group which includes Alan Campbell, Jack Deighton, Caroline Dunford and Charles Stross. His first fiction sale was the short story “Shibuya no Love” to Futurismic.com. Hannu’s first novel, The Quantum Thief, was published by Gollancz in 2010 and has been well received internationally. A sequel, The Fractal Prince, was published this September.

Ronaldo Lemos

  • Bio: Professor Ronaldo Lemos is an internationally respected Brazilian scholar and commentator on copyright, information technology policy, and culture. He directs the Center for Technology & Society at the Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) Law School, where he is also head professor of intellectual property law. He is also Project Lead of Creative Commons Brazil. Professor Lemos holds law degrees from University of Sao Paulo Law School and Harvard Law and has published four books and numerous articles. Lemos is a founder of the collaborative website Overmundo, for which he received the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica in the category of digital communities. In 2011, Lemos joined the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University as a fellow. From 2006 to 2009 he worked as a curator for Tim Festival, a large music event in Brazil. He wrote and presented 22 short documentaries for MTV Brasil focused on technology and society, called "Mod MTV". Lemos was one of the creators of the Marco Civil, a draft legislation for regulating the Internet in Brazil protecting civil rights, privacy and net neutrality. He is also a member of the National Council for Fighting Piracy, an Inter-Ministerial federal body, coordinated by the Ministry of Justice in Brazil, and of the Council for Social Communication, created by the Constitution of Brazil to support Congress regarding freedom of expression and media regulation.

Mohamed Nanabhay

Bio: Mohamed Nanabhay works at the intersection of media, technology and entrepreneurship.He is the co-founder of Signalnoi.se, a social analytics company for newsrooms, which won the Knight News Challenge in July 2012. Prior to this, he was the Head of Online at Al Jazeera English where he led the team that produced the award winning coverage of the Arab revolutions in 2011. During his tenure, the website has seen a colossal increase in traffic and has been recognised by the Online News Association for general exellence in online journalism.

In 2006, he founded the New Media division at Al Jazeera which focused on engaging audiences through social media and emerging media technologies. During this period he pioneered and launched the Al Jazeera Creative Commons Repository. As an Internet entrepreneur, Mohamed has been involved with developing online properties since 1995 and is an angel investor, providing seed funding and mentorship to early stage internet companies.

Mohamed was named a Creative Commons Pioneer by BusinessWeek, serves on the Board of Advisers of Qatar University's Mass Communication Programme and is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Informed Societies.

He received his undergraduate degree in Computer Science and History at the University of the Witwatersrand where he served as the Vice-President of the Student Union, and a masters degree in International Relations (with distinction) from the University of Cambridge.

Photo: Link

Charlie Stross

  • Bio: Charles Stross, 48, is a full-time science fiction writer and resident of Edinburgh, Scotland. The author of six Hugo-nominated novels and winner of the 2005 and 2010 Hugo awards for best novella ("The Concrete Jungle" and "Palimpsest"), Stross's works have been translated into over twelve languages.

Like many writers, Stross has had a variety of careers, occupations, and job-shaped-catastrophes in the past, from pharmacist (he quit after the second police stake-out) to first code monkey on the team of a successful dot-com startup (with brilliant timing he tried to change employer just as the bubble burst). Along the way he collected degrees in Pharmacy and Computer Science, making him the world's first officially qualified cyberpunk writer (just as cyberpunk died).

He's currently working on a variety of novels, including the fifth volume of the Laundry Files, "The Rhesus Chart". In 2013 he will be Creative in Residence at the UK-wide Centre for Creativity, Regulation, Enterprise and Technology, researching the business models and regulation of industries such as music, film, TV, computer games and publishing.

Daniel Suarez

  • Bio: Daniel Suarez is a veteran systems analyst and bestselling novelist whose high-tech thrillers have been translated into eighteen languages. As an independent consultant to Fortune 1000 companies, he has designed mission critical production planning and logistics software for clients in industries ranging from defense, entertainment, finance, food, and pharmaceuticals. His fiction often focuses on the intersection of technology and democracy. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

Photo: Link

Beth Noveck

Derek Slater

Laura Welcher

  • Photo and Bio: Link

Jill York

  • Bio: Jillian C. York is a free speech activist and writer who currently serves as Director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She is also on the board of directors of Global Voices Online, writes a column on technology and policy for Al Jazeera, and serves on the advisory board of OnlineCensorship.org.
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