SPEAKERS

We are pleased to share more information about this year's exciting speakers:

Dan Heath: NY Times, BusinessWeek, and Wall Street Journal Best-Selling Author of Made to Stick

Dan Heath is the co-author, along with his brother Chip, of the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. Made to Stick is a Business Week and New York Times bestseller, and it has been translated into 23 languages, including Thai, Arabic, and Lithuanian. Amazon readers voted it one of the top 100 books of 2007, and Amazon editors named it the #2 business book of the year.

Dan co-authors a monthly column for Fast Company magazine and serves as a Consultant to the Policy Programs at the Aspen Institute. He has taught and consulted on the topic of "making ideas stick" with organizations such as Microsoft, Macy's, Nestle, and the American Heart Association.

Prior to joining the Aspen Institute, Dan conducted research and wrote case studies for Harvard Business School, and more recently, he worked and taught in the executive education division of Duke University. Dan is also the co-founder of a startup textbook publishing company in Austin, TX, called Thinkwell—Thinkwell will celebrate its 10th anniversary this fall.

Dan received a B.A. from the University of Texas and an MBA from Harvard Business School, and he now lives in Raleigh, NC. A proud geeky moment for Dan was his victory in the 2005 New Yorker Cartoon Caption context, beating out 13,000 other entrants.

Jeff Howe: Author, Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business

Jeff Howe is a contributing editor at Wired Magazine, where he covers the media and entertainment industry, among other subjects. In June of 2006 he published "The Rise of Crowdsourcing" in Wired. He has continued to cover the phenomenon in his blog, crowdsourcing.com, and is currently writing a book on the subject for Crown Books to be published in July 2008.

Before coming to Wired he was a senior editor at Inside.com and a writer at the Village Voice. In his fifteen years as a journalist he has traveled around the world working on stories ranging from the impending water crisis in Central Asia to the implications of gene patenting.

He has written for U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Post, Mother Jones and numerous other publications. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Alysia Abbott, their daughter Annabel Rose and son Phineas and a miniature black lab named Clementine.

Peter Sagal: Host of NPR's "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!"

As the host of National Public Radio's "Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!," Peter Sagal is heard by more than 2.5 million people every week, on 450 public radio stations nationwide and via a popular podcast. Approaching its tenth anniversary, the hour long show has captivated news junkies across the country with its lighthearted approach to current events, and has become the biggest and most beloved weekend radio phenomenon since "A Prairie Home Companion."

A native of Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, Sagal attended Harvard University, and has worked in theater as a literary manager for a regional theater, a stage director, an actor, an extra in a Michael Jackson video ("Remember the Time"), travel writer, an essayist, a ghostwriter for a former adult film impresario and a staff writer for a motorcycle magazine. He is the author of numerous plays that have been performed in large and small theaters around the country and abroad. He has also written a number of screenplays, including an original screenplay that became, without his knowledge, the basis for "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights."

What attendees said about last year’s speakers:

Dr. Steven Leavitt, author of Freakonomics
“Great speaker! A lot of fun and valuable information too!”

Lisa Fortini-Campbell
“Interesting topics!”

Natural Search Live Panel
“Extremely useful information presented in a very entertaining way!”