Each year, producers Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher invite an eclectic mix of the most creative, forward-thinking, insightful people in the digital world to be speakers at D. From founders to CEOs, from industry legends to brash young innovators, D brings together the people who are shaping the way we work, play, communicate and live.
D9 took place May 31-June 2, 2011. Here was the line-up of speakers:
Marc Andreessen
Co-Founder and General Partner
Andreessen Horowitz
Andreessen is one of the few to achieve the trifecta: pioneer a software category used by more than a billion people, establish multiple billion-dollar companies, and launch an influential venture capital company. He co-created the Mosaic Internet browser and co-founded Netscape, which later sold to AOL for $4.2 billion. He co-founded Loudcloud, which sold to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion. He is now a co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm with $1.2 billion to give away to technology companies. His Bachelor of Science degree in computer science is from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where there is a plaque in his honor.
Léo Apotheker
President and CEO
Hewlett-Packard Company
Apotheker is an international tech figure who is aiming to turn giant HP into a company that marries its hardware to its own operating system, webOS, which it acquired in buying Palm. This could make the company look more like Apple and less like Dell, at least in the consumer space. Prior to joining HP, Apotheker spent 20 years at SAP, where he was integral in helping build the company into one of the world's leading providers of enterprise software. He was also the founding president and COO of ECsoft BV, one of the largest European venture capital start-ups. Apotheker was born in Aachen, Germany and graduated with a B.A. in economics and international relations from Hebrew University, Jerusalem. He is fluent in English, Dutch, French, German and Hebrew and has been awarded the French Légion d'honneur.
Dick Costolo
CEO
Twitter, Inc
Before joining Twitter as its COO, Costolo was already knee-deep in start-up mulch. He was the co-founder and CEO of FeedBurner, a digital content syndication platform that was acquired by Google in 2007. At Google, he was Group Product Manager responsible for social media ads. Costolo spent most of the 90s in Chicago founding and running: SpyOnIt, a web page monitoring service, and Burning Door Networked Media, a web design and development consulting company. He graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.S. in Computer Science, but if he seems more comfortable on stage than your average comp sci guy, it's probably because he performed in multiple shows with Chicago's acclaimed Annoyance Theatre.
Ralph de la Vega
President and CEO, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets
AT&T
De la Vega has led AT&T's wireless arm through years of exclusivity on the iPhone, accompanied by years of bad publicity about network performance. Now, he is the potential leader of a controversial merged carrier made up of AT&T and T-Mobile. A native of Cuba, he was formerly president of BellSouth Latin America, where he oversaw telecom for most of South and Central America. A stint at Cingular followed. Today, he leads all consumer marketing, sales, content, converged services and customer care for the company's wireless and wired businesses. He received his bachelor's in mechanical engineering from Florida Atlantic University and his MBA from Northern Illinois University; he has also completed the Executive Program at the University of Virginia.
Jack Dorsey
Creator, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, Twitter
CEO, Square
Expect a deep dive into what makes the future Web work with Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey, who is someone breaking new ground as he tears down old digital paradigms. With Twitter, Dorsey redefined the real-time world and how the virtual one communicates; with Square, he is upending the payments arena, even as others try to upend him.
Regina E. Dugan
Director
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
On July 20, 2009, Dugan became the first woman appointed Director of DARPA. DARPA's ongoing mission: to research, develop and demonstrate high-risk, high-payoff projects for the current and future combat force, prevent strategic surprises for the U.S., and create strategic surprises for its adversaries. Sounds pretty cool. Before taking over as Director, Dugan managed a diverse $100 million portfolio of programs for DARPA including an effort focused on the development of an advanced, field-portable system for detecting the explosive content of land mines. She also led a counterterrorism taskforce for the Deputy Secretary of Defense in 1999 (back before it was popular). When not working directly for the military, Dr. Dugan co-founded Dugan Ventures, a niche investment firm, which in turn founded RedXDefense, LLC, a company devoted to innovating solutions for combating explosive threats. She has received numerous awards for her accomplishments, including the prestigious Bronze deFleury medal by the Army Engineer Regiment. She was awarded her master's and bachelor's degrees from Virginia Tech and her doctorate degree in mechanical engineering from Cal Tech.
Stephen Elop
President and CEO
Nokia
Elop joined Nokia as president and chief executive officer in 2010, and has now signed a historic pact with this former employer, Microsoft, to use the latter's new smartphone operating system on Nokia's handsets, which have been severely challenged by those from Apple and Google. Prior to throwing in his lot with the Finns, he served as president of Microsoft's Business Division and was a member of Microsoft's senior leadership team responsible for the company's overall strategy. Macromedia, Adobe, and Juniper Networks all played a role in shaping his current thinking on communications tools, corporate development and manufacturing. Elop earned a bachelor's degree in computer engineering and management from McMaster University in his home country of Canada, and was subsequently awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. Good going, eh?
Reed Hastings
Co-Founder and CEO
Netflix, Inc.
Hastings co-founded Netflix as a DVD rental-by-mail company in 1997. In 2002, Netflix went public, and in 2003, Netflix reached 1 million subscribers. Thanks to streaming content over the Internet, Netflix now has over 20 million subscribers. Earlier in his career, in 1991, he founded Pure Software, which made tools for Unix software developers. He built Pure into one of the world's 50 largest public software companies before selling it to Rational Software in 1997. Reed received a BA from Bowdoin College and an MSCS in AI degree from Stanford University. Between Bowdoin and Stanford, Reed served in the Peace Corps as a high school math teacher in Swaziland. That may have been an easier task than his current one: dealing with media and cable companies who fear disruptive change.
Robert A. Iger
President and CEO
The Walt Disney Company
Iger has served as president and chief executive officer at Disney for several years, having previously served as president and chief operating officer, president of Walt Disney International, and Chairman of ABC. Prior to putting on the mouse ears, Iger held a series of increasingly responsible positions at ABC, Inc. and its predecessor Capital Cities/ABC, Inc., culminating in service as president of the ABC Network Television Group and then president and chief operating officer of ABC, Inc. He keeps a hand in the non-mickey mouse arena by sitting on the Board of Directors of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York.
Jack Ma
Chairman and CEO
Alibaba Group
We are asking Alibaba Group’s Jack Ma onstage to talk more about his efforts to make the company a powerhouse in China and elsewhere. His recent bare-knuckled fight with Yahoo over Alipay, as he has built a wide-ranging Internet giant, should make for an interesting interview.
Andrew Mason
Founder and CEO
Groupon, Inc.
Andrew Mason is the founder and CEO of Groupon, which has been called "America's Best Website" by one of their own television commercials. Andrew has been using his fingers since an early age, most recently to type this biography. A Northwestern University graduate in music, Mason's achievements date back to his 8th grade wrestling Rookie of the Year trophy at Mt. Lebanon High School in Pittsburgh. Andrew considers himself an online enthusiast and man.
Shantanu Narayen
President and CEO
Adobe Systems Incorporated
Narayen has shepherded several large projects for Adobe, including the $1.8 billion acquisition of Omniture and the $3.4 billion acquisition of Macromedia. When he isn't buying other companies, and otherwise running Adobe, he works on integrating the company's trademark Flash technology into mobile platforms and dealing with the rise of the HTML5 standard. Before joining Adobe in 1998, Narayen was co-founder of Pictra, Inc., an early pioneer of digital photo sharing over the Internet. Prior to that, he served as director of desktop and collaboration products at Silicon Graphics, Inc. and held various senior management positions at Apple Computer, Inc., which is kind of ironic, given the ugly public feuding between the two companies of late. He holds a bachelor's degree in electronics engineering from Osmania University in India, a master's degree in computer science from Bowling Green State University and an MBA from the Haas School of Business.
Eric Schmidt
Executive Chairman
Google
Schmidt's decade at Google has been a busy one. Since joining in 2001, the company has grown from a Silicon Valley start-up to a household name across the globe. As executive chairman, he is responsible for the external matters of Google: building partnerships and broader business relationships, government outreach and technology thought leadership, as well as advising the CEO and senior leadership on business and policy issues. He has long been viewed as "the adult supervision" at the company, a role that – thank goodness – apparently includes speaking at conferences. Prior to joining Google, Eric was the chairman and CEO of Novell, chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems, and served on the research staff at Xerox PARC, Bell Labs and Zilog. He holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Princeton as well as a master's and Ph.D. in computer science from UC Berkeley.
Steven Sinofsky
President, Windows and Windows Live Division
Microsoft Corporation
Sinofsky, who has been at Microsoft since 1989 and had run the development of Office, was brought in to create a new version of Windows after the Vista calamity, and succeeded with Windows 7. Now, he is working on a new version that will not only power PCs, but adapt Windows for tablets, where Microsoft is already behind. But, hey, no pressure. As president of the Windows and Windows Live Division, Sinofsky has accountability for the overall Windows business, from development to business strategy and marketing for Windows, Windows Live and Internet Explorer. So now you know who to call when your Windows system freezes up. Sinofsky holds an undergraduate degree with honors from Cornell University and a master's degree in computer science from UMass Amherst. If you get the chance, ask him about his stint in Beijing, China, where he worked on projects in sales, marketing, and research and development.