Sessions

The Art of the Interview (or How to Grill a Star) - Warren Etheredge

We've all seen them, documentaries built on boring, lifeless interviews. We've all read them, profiles that don't even hint at the motives of the person behind the story. Warren Etheredge has spent a career interviewing filmmakers, authors and ordinary people both on screen and in print and has an uncanny ability bring out insights his subjects never imagined they'd share. During this program Warren offers structures, tips and strategies to turn mundane questioning into the art of interviewing. It is an art that Warren has honed in more than 1,000 professional interviews. He is currently producing The Warren Report television series in which he conducts in depth interviews with documentary filmmakers and experts on the issues brought up in their films. The show gives audiences both vital information about the issues as well as film, book and research resources for learning more.

Rise of the Trust Agents: Chris Brogan

How did Scoble do it? What made Perez Hilton so much more successful than People magazine? How do emoticons change the way we do business on the web? Join Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, authors of the book Trust Agents, for an exploration of how the human circuitry goals of Chris Pirillo might possibly be accomplished in the coming months.

Active Skepticism Online - Phil Plait

Phil will talk about science communication online, and how the "new" (now teenaged, in more ways than one) media has affected it. Specifically how instant info -- passed on Twitter -- can actually make misinformation spread faster than good info, and how freaking hard it is to clean up once that happens.

Life Extension for Geeks - Christine Peterson

Compared to our computers, our bodies are mind-bogglingly complex systems. There's no "life extension pill" available today, and none is likely to arrive soon. Fortunately for us, we can use our technical skills to evaluate and implement today's life extension techniques, some of which can be fun — at least from a geek perspective.

Personal Manufacturing: The Robots that Sharing Built - Bre Pettis

We're living through a radical shift in how innovation happens. Today, a culture of sharing and collaboration is changing the face of technology--enabling the development of things like affordable 3d printing that put the tools of personal manufacturing on your desktop. In the future when you reminisce, your kids won't believe that there was a time when you had to leave home to get things instead of downloading objects.

FoldIt - Firas Khatib

We at the University of Washington are investigating whether the brainpower of humans worldwide can be brought to bear on critical problems posed in computational biology. The long term goal of this project is to utilize the combined power of humans and computers in order to build accurate models of disease-related proteins by introducing a new approach: distributed computing driven by human intuition.

The problem of accurate prediction of protein structures remains one of the most important unsolved dilemmas in biology. Determining the correct structure of a protein helps researchers successfully target them with drugs. Currently, experimental methods for solving protein structures result in accurate, high-resolution solutions, but cannot keep pace with the quantity of information. Developing new computational techniques to produce experimental-quality models is one of the most important problems in computational structural biology.

While progress in high-resolution protein structure prediction is being made, particularly here in David Baker's research group using our Rosetta prediction algorithm, consistent computerized production of models with atomic level resolution are still out of reach. Even with the current supercomputing and distributed computing power available, the protein structure prediction field is still years away from being able to predict the 3D structure of any protein whose genome has been solved. A novel approach to this problem is the use of human puzzle-solving intuition and pattern recognition skills in conjunction with computers running the Rosetta algorithm.

Foldit is an interactive Rosetta-based program that was recently developed by the Baker Lab and University of Washington's department of Computer Science and Engineering. This program allows users around the world to directly manipulate protein structure models on their home computers in real-time using Rosetta's energy function. The ultimate goal of Foldit is to use results from the computer program to improve protein structure prediction algorithms by capitalizing on human 3D problem-solving skills. Human users can recognize that certain moves they make might temporarily result in a worse Rosetta energy score, but lead to a better overall energy score. Humans have the advantage of awareness that often the only way to get to the correct low energy state is to go through many high energy conformations. Foldit users are also able to share their solutions with others around the world, taking advantage of the strengths that different people have.

The more knowledge we have on how proteins fold, the better equipped we will be in the fight against protein-related diseases, such as cancer and HIV. Foldit can contribute to this global fight by giving worldwide participants an immediate and relevant application for scientific knowledge, and hopefully reinforcing motivation to understand the underlying science.

My Cancer is Social - Drew Olanoff

Drew will discuss foundational usage of social media, tools, and platforms to spread the word TO PEOPLE about what they're passionate about and what they're doing. LIVESTRONG, Stand up for Cancer, Planet Cancer and more. Widgets, Facebook Cause pages, and original ideas such as #BlameDrewsCancer utilizing the powerful Twitter platform.

Why Your Brand Should be on Twitter - Frank Eliason

A humorous top ten list. Frank is the person responsible for bringing Comcast to Twitter - even though they didn't officially sanction the outreach.

Hacker Journalists - Mark Glaser & Jim Ray

Why did media companies miss the boat on the web? They haven't always valued the input from their own technology folks on staff. That's changing as the web is becoming an important source for news and information. So now local newspapers, radio stations and TV stations are hoping that a new breed of "hacker journalists" can help them out by having experience in coding and also understanding journalism issues. I'll discuss the rise of people such as Adrian Holovaty, who launched ChicagoCrime.org, worked for the Washington Post, and started the site EveryBlock.com, and talk about the culture clash that happens when programmers bring new ideas to newsrooms.

Nerd Craft: A Field Guide - Beth Goza

Emerging from the explosion of next-gen DIY movements, hand crafting revivals, and celebrating all thing geek comes a unique set of makers; the nerd crafter. Nothing is off-limits from the imagination and ingenuity of these crafters, who blend their passion for sci-fi, gaming, technology and all things geeky with their love of paints, fabrics, fibers and all things crafty. Goza presents a Field Guide to the various families, genus and species of Nerd Craft and shows how sites like craftzine; events like the Renegrade Craft Fair, and communities like Ravelry connect and galvanize crafters who share a passion for fibery-arty-geeky goodness.

Building Influence Online - Micah Baldwin

Micah will discuss tools and practices for increasing expertise and influence.

20,000,000 versus 20: Audience vs. Impact - Jay Grandin & Leah Nelson

How telling fart jokes to tweens on MySpace helped us start a charity and make a documentary in East Africa.

Amazon, Affiliates, and Taxes - Angel Djambazov

When the affiliate nexus tax, commonly known as the Amazon Tax, first appeared in New York last spring much of the marketing industry was caught off guard. Since then battles have been fought in eight states over similar legislation including a veto by Governator. We will go over how such legislation impacts you (whether or not you are affiliate or an Amazon associate); how big corporations like Amazon, Overstock and Google have reacted to such legislation; discuss similar types of legislation that may have an even more detrimental impact on ecommerce; and provide resources so you can stay informed.

A Conversation about Social Change through Social Media - Mark Horvath

Mark Horvath has broken the mold. He is not doing what makes sense - and he's not even doing something that pays the bills. With $45, a laptop, an iPhone and social media, Mark developed InvisiblePeople.tv in November 2008 to tell the stories of homelessness. His work is extremely innovative and his ingenious use of social media is giving a voice to the over 3 million people in our nation that have no home.

Beginning July 15 2009, Mark is taking the show on the road using social media and bringing us along for the ride as he visits the homeless throughout the nation. Formerly homeless himself, Mark brings personal experience and compassion as he aims to bring understanding and knowledge to the growing homeless crisis. He will visit 25 cities across the nation including rural areas, larger cities, shelters and youth facilities. You can follow Mark's adventures at invisiblepeople.tv and on Twitter @hardlynormal.

Prosthetic Culture - Amber Case

Amber Case will be talking about the strangeness of humans and our prosthetic culture. From the externalization of our brains to the machine, to human/machine interfaces, to the blurring boundaries of public and private spaces, to the quick progression of our relationship with humans and computers --- to the strange fact that we externalize our fashion with exchangeable clothing. How our prosthetic devices make us sexy or not (vehicles, cell phones) and determine the speed at which we can live/accomplish goals. From the traditional prosthetics like the fake legs which amputees wear, to the prosthetization of our own tasks with virtual assistants and the 4 hour work week, to the idea that cell phones make give us superpowers -- the ability to hear MEGA-distances by extending our ears across the ocean. And finally, omnipresence and omniscience through social networking sites.

Looking back at Gnomedex 9.0 - Kris Krüg

Gnomedex is always a flurry of activity, information and sessions with new/old friends. With everything being captured digitally in real time, sometimes it is hard to review the experience in its entirety. I will be capturing candids, portraits and documentation of the two days of Gnomedex 2009 to reviewed in a fun photo essay recap. Capturing the spirit, perspective and information of Gnomedex all in photos will be a fun way to revisit the weekend we will have just experienced.