Android Open Keynotes

Dion Almaer is a technologist who loves to code and build. He and his long time partner-in-crime Ben Galbraith recently brought their team to Walmart to power the mobile engineering efforts. He enjoys sharing his passion for software production across various communities, including a new property called FunctionSource.com.

Dion has been writing Web applications since it took over from Gopher. He has been fortunate enough to speak around the world, has published many articles, a book, and of course covers life the universe and everything on his blog.

He has been called a human aggregator, and you can see that in full force if you follow him on Twitter.

Massimo Banzi is the co-founder of the Arduino project and has worked for clients such as: Prada, Artemide, Persol, Whirlpool, V&A Museum and Adidas. He spent 4 years at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea as Associate Professor. Massimo has taught workshops and has been a guest speaker at institutions like: Architectural Association – London, Hochschule f r Gestaltung und Kunst Basel, Hochschule f r Gestaltung Schw bisch Gm nd, 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.

• Photo by: David Cuartielles

Brady Forrest is Program Chair for O’Reilly’s Where and co-chair for Android Open . Additionally, he co-chaired the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and NYC. Brady writes for O’Reilly Radar tracking changes in technology. He previously worked at Microsoft on Live Search (he came to Microsoft when it acquired MongoMusic). Brady lives in Seattle, where he builds cars for Burning Man and runs Ignite. You can track his web travels at Truffle Honey.

Jay Freeman (saurik), a contributor to the Android Open-Source Project, has been involved with rooted Android devices since he first wrote instructions for the installation of Debian armel onto the G1. Many Android developers are familiar with his work on Cyrket, an off-device browser for the Android Market. However, he is most well known for Cydia, an alternative to the App Store for “jailbroken” iPhones/iPads that specializes in “anything that is not an app”: in particular, distributing software based on MobileSubstrate, an open-source framework he developed to allow for the relatively sane modification of other applications. Cydia is installed on roughly 10% of iPhones worldwide and contains tens of thousands of packages.

Ben Galbraith, together with his long-time friend Dion Almaer, forms one-half of the dynamic “Ben and Dion” duo that founded Ajaxian.com, headed Developer Tools at Mozilla, ran Developer Relations at Palm and is now running mobile architecture and engineering at Walmart.com after being acquired along with their start-up team in early 2011. Ben’s been writing code since he was six and starting businesses since he was ten; he’s written books, given hundreds of award-winning presentations world-wide, produced a few technical conferences, sold three companies, and has held CEO, CIO, CTO, and Software Architect positions in the medical, publishing, media, consumer electronics, advertising, software and internet industries. He lives in Palo Alto with his wife and six children.

Marko Gargenta founded Marakana in 2001 to help underprivileged youth, minorities, and inner-city kids learn web technologies and get ahead in life. So Marakana emerged with goal of helping people get better at what they do professionally, focused on open source software training.

Marko is creator of Marakana Android Training series series. He has taught Android to over 1,000 developers at companies such as Cisco, Motorola, Qualcomm, DoD and many others. Marko is a co-founder of San Francisco Android Users Group and regularly teaches Android Bootcamp at Marakana.

Marko is author of Learning Android book published by O’Reilly Media. This book is based on Android Bootcamp and incorporates best learning practices for new developers to start creating applications for this exciting open source mobile platform.

Marko is also co-author of “PHP and MySQL By Example”, a collection of PHP examples. The book was published by Prentice Hall in 2006, and has been translated to Spanish and Polish.

Marko Gargenta obtained his Bachelor of Mathematics Degree from University of Waterloo (Canada’s MIT) and has been developing in Java since 1996. He lives in San Francisco, California.

As an evangelist for design ethnography, Kelly Goto is dedicated to understanding how real people integrate products and services into their daily lives.Goto is a sought-after international keynote lecturer and author on the topics of web and mobile strategies, usability, and design ethnography. Her book, Web Redesign 2.0: Workflow that Works has been translated into 14 languages and is an established standard for workflow methodologies and user-centered design principles worldwide.

Kelly is principal of gotomedia, LLC, a global leader in research-driven, people-friendly interface design for web, mobile and product solutions for clients including Seiko Epson Japan, Adobe, VeriSign, Nokia, WebEx and CNET. For the past 20 years, she has worked in the digital media industry launching brands and initiatives for Toyota, Paramount, Infiniti, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros. Online, and Wells Fargo Online. Kelly’s focus on cross cultural studies, mobile devices and interfaces have cumulated in the formation of a global research network with partnerships based on Finland, Spain, New Zealand and China.

Kelly is a former President of the AIGA Center for Brand and is a member of San Francisco’s Bay CHI Usability Organization. She is also the editor of gotomobile.com, a highly regarded online publication focusing on mobile user experience. When not tethered to her laptop, Kelly enjoys spending time with husband Skip and new daughter Kirin, working virtually and living free.

Claire works at Samasource, a San Francisco-based social enterprise that connects people living in poverty with internet-based work through a proprietary platform. At Samasource, her hats have included leading product, strategy and field expansion, but these days she helps clients connect with Samasource data and content solutions as the head of Sales and Marketing. Her prior gigs have included LiveOps, social enterprise in rural Vietnam, and management consulting with Katzenbach Partners, where she led client teams at large technology companies and helped several non-profits with large-scale operational growth.

Claire holds a BA from Columbia, an MA from the University of London, and an MBA from Stanford.

In her spare time, she knits, plays with Drupal, and sets small fires in her kitchen.

Bob Lee is the CTO of Square Inc. Prior to Square, Bob led Android’s core library development, created the Jolt award-winning Guice framework, and led JSR 330 Dependency Injection for Java.

As chief technology officer and senior vice president, Experience & Technology Organization, Kevin Lynch oversees Adobe’s experience design and core technology across business units. This role includes driving Adobe’s technology platform for designers and developers across desktops and devices, including Adobe® Flash® Player, Portable Document Format (PDF), Adobe Flex® and Adobe AIR™, the cross-operating system application runtime that bridges the computing power and data capabilities of the desktop with the real-time dynamic capabilities of the web. He also oversees Adobe’s developer relations program, including the integration of customers and partners in the development process through Adobe Labs and customer advisory councils.

Prior to being named CTO in 2008, Lynch served as senior vice president and chief software architect for Adobe’s Platform Business Unit. Lynch joined Adobe through the company’s 2005 acquisition of Macromedia, Inc., where he served as chief software architect and president of product development. He headed up the creation of the company’s mobile and devices group and served as general manager of the web publishing group. Lynch also oversaw the initial development of Macromedia® Dreamweaver®, a leading web development product.

Before joining Macromedia in 1996, Lynch worked for General Magic, where he pioneered a navigational user interface for handheld communicators. Previously, he designed the user interface and developed the first Macintosh release of FrameMaker® software for Frame Technology, later acquired by Adobe. While at the University of Illinois, Lynch developed early Macintosh applications, including a desktop publishing program that introduced user interface elements in common use today.

Lynch holds three patents with others currently pending, and he is involved in Adobe’s international standards efforts with organizations such as the W3C, ECMA and ISO. Lynch studied interactive computer graphics at the University of Illinois, working with artists and engineers in the Electronic Visualization Laboratory.

William Marshall is based in the Small Spacecraft Office at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California. His work at NASA centres on two areas, low cost satellites and orbital space debris. His two principle projects are: (1) PhoneSat – an ultra low cost satellite bus which leverages smartphone technology; and (2) LightForce – a scheme to remediate the orbital debris challenge using photon pressure to nudge debris to prevent debris-debris collisions. Prior to these projects he helped to develop other small sat missions including: on the science team of LCROSS mission which verified large quantities of water at the lunar south pole; a systems engineer on LADEE mission; and a system’s engineer on the Hover Test Vehicle. He has published over 30 scientific articles (including in Science, PRL, ASR); and has written several op-eds (including in the New York Times).

He holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Oxford, U.K., where his thesis centred on an experimental proposal to create macroscopic mass quantum superposition states. He conducted two years of his research at the University of California in Santa Barbara. He holds a degree in Physics with Space Science and Technology (MPhys) from the University of Leicester, UK. He has held placements at the European Space Agency, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Marshall Space Flight Center and the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) in London.

Will also serves on the Governance Group of the Space Security Index research project and also previously held positions of Postdoctoral Fellow at both the Space Policy Institute (SPI) of the George Washington University and the Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. In these capacities Will published on strategic benefits and costs of the deployment of space weapons and more broadly the increasingly important role that space is playing in global security issues. Will also served as the Global co-Chair of the Space Generation Advisory Council to the United Nations Programme on Space Applications (SGAC), which represents the views of students and young professionals interested in space to the UN and space agencies around the world.

David Merrill is President and co-founder of Sifteo. Dave is an expert in cutting-edge human-computer interaction, producing multiple award-winning interfaces and technologies that reinvent how people use computers. David and his work have been featured at TED, MOMA, the Discovery Channel and Wired.

David holds a BS in Symbolic Systems and an MS in Computer Science from Stanford, and an MS and PhD from MIT.

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, 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.

Wendy Seltzer is a Fellow with Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy, researching openness in intellectual property, innovation, privacy, and free expression online. As a Fellow with Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Wendy founded and leads the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, helping Internet users to understand their rights in response to cease-and-desist threats. She serves on the Board of Directors of The Tor Project, promoting privacy and anonymity research, education, and technology; and the World Wide Web Foundation, U.S., dedicated to advancing the web and empowering people by improving Web science, standards, and generative accessibility of Web. She seeks to improve technology policy in support of user-driven innovation and communication.

Last year, Wendy was a fellow with the University of Colorado’s Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship in Boulder. She has taught Intellectual Property, Internet Law, Antitrust, Copyright, and Information Privacy at American University Washington College of Law, Northeastern Law School, and Brooklyn Law School and was a Visiting Fellow with the Oxford Internet Institute, teaching a joint course with the Said Business School, Media Strategies for a Networked World. Previously, she was a staff attorney with online civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, specializing in intellectual property and First Amendment issues, and a litigator with Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel.

Wendy speaks and writes on copyright, trademark, patent, open source, privacy and the public interest online. She has an A.B. from Harvard College and J.D. from Harvard Law School, and occasionally takes a break from legal code to program (Perl and MythTV).

A native of Chicago, Robert left a scholarship at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1990 to pursue a degree in computer science at the University of Minnesota. While attending the University, he landed a job fixing computers for the Human Factors Research Laboratory . Over a three year period, he rose to become head engineer of the lab while earning scholarships from the U.S. Navy and the FAA building flight and driving simulators. It was also during this time he started a computer consulting business. In April 1994, after three years at the University, he formed The Geek Squad with $200. In 2002, The Geek Squad acquired Best Buy and opened Geek Squad precincts in all Best Buy US and Canadian stores. Now, with over 25,000 Agents, The Geek Squad is now the world’s largest technology support company offering phone, in-store, and in-home, and online support. In 2010, Robert was appointed as the Chief Technology Officer for Best Buy.