A Speaker Committee made up of members of the MCDM community is currently hard at work drawing up an exciting roster of presenters for TEDx Seattle. What follows is an initial (alphabetical) list of confirmed speakers. TED Talks will also be screened as part of the event. Schedule and more information to follow.  Greg Bear – Hugo and Nebula award winning author
"LitLib - Eliminating the Middleman in Entertainment, While Still Keeping the Entertainment"
Greg Bear is the author of more than thirty books of science fiction and fantasy, including BLOOD MUSIC, THE FORGE OF GOD, DARWIN'S RADIO, and QUANTICO. He is married to Astrid Anderson Bear and is the father of Erik and Alexandra. His most recent novel is QUANTICO, a near-future examination of law enforcement, politics, and terror both domestic and religious. DARWIN'S RADIO and DARWIN'S CHILDREN (1999, 2003) form a sequence about viruses and human evolution and are published by Del Rey and HarperCollins UK. Bear has served on political and scientific action committees and has advised Microsoft Corporation, the U.S. Army, the CIA, Sandia National Laboratories, Callison Architecture, Inc., Homeland Security, and other groups and agencies.
 Gaetano Borriello - Personalizing Public Health
Gaetano Borriello is the Noe Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. He is adjunct faculty in the Information School and the Department of Human-Centered Design and Engineering. He is an expert in mobile systems and ubiquitous computing and founded Intel Research Seattle, a premier research laboratory in that space. His research has focused on the application of technology to problems in personal health management, navigation for the cognitively impaired, and more recently, to public health in the developing world. He currently leads the Open Data Kit project (http://opendatakit.org) that seeks to develop a suite of mobile tools for community health workers in East Africa to use in both clinic and home-visit settings. His students work with several NGOs in the area to get their tools into practical use. The objective is to develop a open-source toolkit of software and hardware platforms that can be easily customized for the different contexts faced by these organizations and be simple enough that they can make these adaptations themselves. http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/gaetano/  Sapna Cheryan - Assistant Professor of Psychology - University of Washington Sapna Cheryan's research broadly examines how cultural stereotypes impact people's choices and behaviors. She is particularly interested in the role that stereotypes play in determining people's sense of belonging to important social groups. One of Cheryan's areas of research interest is: Distancing from an alienating stereotype Why do women consider a future in computer science to a lesser extent than men? Might this be because the powerful image of the male “computer geek” makes women feel like they do not belong in the field?
Attracting more women into computer science may therefore depend on broadening the image of who belongs in computer science. 
Eugene Cho - Founder/Executive Director - One Day's Wages
Eugene and his wife, Minhee, are the founders of One Day’s Wages - an international grassroots movement (birthed in 2009) dedicated to ending extreme global poverty in "our" lifetime. The strategy of ODW is to create a collaborative movement via integrating Human Relationships, Social Media/Technology, and the Power of Story. ODW promotes awareness, invites simple giving (one day's wages), and supports sustainable relief through partnerships, especially with smaller organizations in developing regions. Eugene is also the founder/executive director of Q Cafe - an innovative non-profit community cafe & music venue and the founder/lead pastor of a Quest Church in Seattle, Washington.
 Morgan Dusatko, Sarah Stuteville - The Common Language Project
We are living in a time of tremendous upheaval. The Common Language project will be presenting America In 5, which seeks to document this remarkable moment in our nation’s history by asking: Who is America in these first years of a new millennium? Today we have the tools to explore that question like never before. AI5 pushes the boundaries of online storytelling, exploring what Americans are thinking, feeling and fearing. It will create an interactive first draft of history for today and generations to come.
Martha Gonzalez will speak about another technology for building cross cultural community through her with with the Fandango Without Borders. The Seattle Fandango Project is dedicated to building relationships through participatory music. Its supporters include the American Music Partnership of Seattle (AMPS--a collaboration between EMP, KEXP, and the University of Washington), the UW School of Music, UW Department of Women Studies, UW School of Social Work, UW Dance Program, UW Diversity Research Institute, Youngstown Cultural Arts Center, El Centro de La Raza, Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, and The Vera Project.
Ben Huh – icanhascheezburger.com
Ben is the CEO of the Cheezburger Network, the company behind the hugely popular blogs I Can Has Cheezburger?, FAIL Blog, There, I Fixed It, and more than 25 others. His job is to make the Internet laugh for 5-minutes a day. In addition to making people laugh, Ben is a a true innovator in business models for user generated content websites.
 Ron Krabill - Associate Professor in Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences - University of Washington
Ron teaches in the fields of media and cultural studies, particularly as they relate to politics and social change. He is also affiliated with the Department of Communication and the African Studies Program on the Seattle campus of the University of Washington, and is the Project Director of "My World Cup," a transnational community media project aimed at producing and disseminating short media pieces made by South African youth during the hosting of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. He is the author of Starring Mandela and Cosby: Media and the End(s) of Apartheid (2010) and is the recipient of the 2006 Distinguished Teaching Award.
She is the founder of SalaamGarage and organization which connects citizen journalists with international NGOs and local non-profits. She created SalaamGarage for a few reasons 1) many asked “Can I Come With You” [on her international projects] 2) wondered what would happen if tourists visited an NGO and added that to their photo album 3) wondered what would happen if people plugged intentional, powerful content into their social media sites.
Her book "/Can I Come with You? <http://www.amazon.com/Can-Come-You-Amanda-Koster/dp/1934733326>"/ (Bennett & Hastings, 2008) is a collection of over a decade of international social documentary projects, including excerpts from her personal journals. Currently Amanda is working with the NYU Dept. of Global Health creating a multi-media project related to HIV/AIDS research and tech in Kenya and also with the International YWCA creating a multi-media project, "African Women of Empowerment," which begins in South Africa.
 Elan Lee, Founder/Chief Designer at Fourth Wall Studios
One of the inventors of the Alternate Reality Game genre, Elan has spent his career finding and sharing ways to extract adventure from the world around us. From designing storylines and characters for Halo, to broadcasting a radio drama over thousands of ringing payphones, Elan has pioneered breakthroughs in the area of entertainment and immersive gaming. Elan started his career at the Microsoft Games Studio where he was a Lead Designer for the X-Box launch portfolio. Next, he co-founded and served as the Vice President of 42 Entertainment (the company behind I Love Bees, Nine Inch Nails: Year Zero, and The Dark Knight.) Elan was also the Co-Founder of EDOC Laundry, a company that embeds secret narratives in clothing.
Elan has spoken all over the world on the future of gaming. He has been featured in WIRED magazine, The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, and the Wall Street Journal. He has won awards for best web game of the year, best advertising campaign of the year, and best idea of the year. Also, his mom claims he’s a very nice boy.
 Fiona Lee – Google Fiona Lee is the Africa Project Manager for Google. Under her leadership, Google embarked on a multi-player partnership with the Grameen Foundation and MTN Uganda to launch Google SMS in June 2009. Google SMS is a suite of mobile applications that allows a user to find information on topics as diverse as sexual & reproductive health, and agriculture to sports scores and weather. It also includes a new marketplace application, Google Trader, that has help buyers and sellers find each other. In February 2010, the Google SMS initiative won a Global Mobile Award the for "Best Use of Mobile for Social & Economic Development."
 Scott Macklin – Bridging Community and Education (South Africa and Seattle)
Scott serves on the advisory board of the Head Start Center for Inclusion and on board of the South African NGO Saving our Schools and Community (SOSAC). Scott – along with his wife, Angelica and two children, Case (11) and Nikko (6) – makes award-winning documentary films, raises chickens and brews up bio-fuel. Scott uses social media as a powerful tool for learning and building meaningful relationships that create opportunities to engage in acts of social justice. You can get a glimpse of some of his work at: http://www.vimeo.com/openhandreel/videos
Deputy Director, Financial Services for the Poor - Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Ignacio Mas is a Deputy Director in Financial Services for the Poor at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Most recently, he served as a Senior Adviser in the Technology Program at CGAP. Prior to joining CGAP in September 2007, Ignacio was Executive VP of Marketing and Account Management at interTouch (an NTT-DoCoMo Group Company), Director of Global Business Strategy at Vodafone Group, and Senior Manager responsible for telecoms investments in Europe at Intel Capital (Intel Corp's venture capital arm). He has also been a consultant, and was at the World Bank in the early part of his career, where he worked on financial sector reforms in Latin America as well as in the Treasury department. Ignacio has been a Visiting Professor of International Business at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago. He holds undergraduate degrees in mathematics and economics from MIT and a PhD in economics from Harvard University.
Hanson Hosein, Director of MCDM, will be the onstage host for TEDx Seattle.
Hanson Hosein specializes in storytelling, social media strategies and business models of communication. He has spent his professional life seeking out the technological changes that are now upending traditional media. His film, Independent America: The Two-Lane Search for Mom & Pop was an early exercise in the use of digital technology in storytelling and an ongoing interaction with an audience. Self-produced and self-financed, the award-winning documentary has been broadcast internationally, and airs regularly on the Sundance Channel in the United States. Perhaps more importantly, grassroots groups across America continue to screen the film as a tool to promote local economies. Hanson’s latest film, Independent America: Rising from Ruins focuses on how small business helped resurrect New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, despite ruinous city policies favoring big box stores.
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