Heidi Schultz Adams is a 14-year survivor of Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare type of bone cancer. She is the founder and executive director of Planet Cancer, a non-profit organization dedicated to creating a community of young adults with cancer in their 20s and 30s, and to raising awareness about their unique medical and psychosocial needs.

David Armistead is a strategist, futurist and business consultant who began involvement with futures studies and the roots of the social web in the late 1970s and continues today in his role as a Founder and Partner at Social Web Strategies LLC, an Austin consulting firm helping business strategize and implement the use of social web technologies (www.socialwebstrategies.com).

Cynthia A. Baker is the Founder and President of Accolades Public Relations, a results-oriented communications firm committed to progressive strategies in public relations and marketing. It is a new breed of PR firm where the clients' needs drive solutions - whether in media exposure or news online.

Mike Chapman is proof that professionals from non-tech sectors can adapt and even thrive in the new media landscape. The principles of being open and genuine, considering customers as humans, welcoming feedback and criticism, and being willing to trade old ways of thinking for new ones, have made Mike an enthusiast for social media. It may sound ironic that a former Washington lobbyist and Congressional staffer would be eager to specialize in communications based on honesty and authenticity rather than promotion, but those are the exact qualities that drew him into the field of new media and communications.

Alora C. Chistiakoff first got online as a journalism student in 1993; she got her first tech industry job in 1996. Since then, she has spent her career as a change agent, implementing technical and BPI initiatives for both external and internal clients. Between the Bay Area and New York, Alora’s worked in ecommerce, advertising and the travel industries where she specialized in implementing Web 2.0 solutions. Though she has worked in different types of environments, her real passion is small companies and technology startups that allow her the opportunity to ‘wear many different hats.’ A project manager by discipline, Alora’s strength is in bridging the gap between business and technology to right-size solutions to the needs of an organization.

Christi Day serves as an online Spokesperson for Southwest Airlines, the nation's largest airline in terms of domestic Customers boarded. Christi specializes in Emerging Media and web 2.0. Christi consistently works to keep Southwest Airlines in the forefront of the new media world when it comes to messaging and trends.

Sara Dornsife has been at the center of several open source transformations and communities. She helped Sun open source Solaris and then worked with the resulting OpenSolaris community while it adjusted to its growing pains. While her card read "marketing," Sara acted more as general fixer for both Sun and the community to keep OpenSolaris and other open source communities alive and happy. As you'd expect with one foot in the corporation and another in the community, Sara used whatever tools were available to her from the 1.0 and 2.0 toobox to get the job done.

"If I couldn't interrupt you, how would I reach you?" That's the question Dave starts with as a social media strategist focused on marketing and the impact of the Social Web on businesses.

Jason Fellman is a co-founder of FG SQUARED Interactive Marketing and served as the firm’s CEO from 1994-2004.  He currently serves as a Strategic Consultant to FG SQUARED and its clients.  Jason has worked with some of the world’s most respected international organizations including Shell, Hitachi, Canon, Cardinal Health, Dell, Tokyo Electron, and Motorola. Fellman, also a part time professional musician, is a graduate of Musician's Institute in Hollywood, CA.  Jason currently resides in Portland, Oregon with his wife and daughter.

Rick Foote is a member of the team at Public Strategies Digital, the firm's creative group. He provides online strategy for a variety of clients, including companies in the telecommunications, financial, healthcare and home-building industries. He manages the development and production of client Web sites, online e-mail outreach, and online marketing.

Matt Genovese is the founder of door64.com, a grass-roots community of high-technology professionals in Austin, Texas. With over 4000 members registered in the first 18 months and with no marketing budget, the community has become a viral success in enabling professionals to engage both online and in person. The door64 community has attracted regional attention for empowering technology workers to expand their peer networks, which include face-to-face networking events that draw several hundred people. Matt's vision is to positively impact the local economy by connecting and informing our technology professionals, companies, and entrepreneurs through mutually-beneficial community interactions.

Matt Glazer has worked for over 50 campaigns for candidates and non-profits in his first five years in politics, focusing most of his attention on environmental issues and internet strategies.

Lisa joined CAFB in September 2006 and serves as the Advocacy and Online Marketing Director. Lisa focuses on engaging the community online and mobilizing Central Texans to act in support of the Food Bank’s legislative goals. Since 1996, Lisa has been providing online marketing expertise to internet companies and was a founding member of HotJobs.com. Prior to joining the Food Bank, Lisa volunteered as an AmeriCorps*VISTA. In 2009, Lisa was one of twenty-five recipients of the Austin American-Statesman Texas Social Media Awards.

Steve Golab began his interactive communications career while still an undergraduate in mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Steve piloted the university’s College of Engineering Multimedia Lab, developing interactive educational materials while demonstrating the powerful impact of multimedia and the Internet on learning complex technical subject matter.

Bijoy Goswami is deeply interested in how we create extraordinary, meaningful and joyful lives. He sees our unique human capability of building mental models as a vital part of this endeavor. He loves building and sharing simple, yet powerful models, including MRE, youPlusU and Bootstrap.

Alan Grahamis the president and founder of Mobile Loaves and Fishes, a social profit enterprise that delivers meals to homeless and working poor people on the streets of Austin and San Antonio, Texas, New Orleans, Louisiana and Nashville, Tennessee, Providence, Rhode Island and soon in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Additionally, Mobile Loaves & Fishes is involved in providing housing to the homeless through its Habitat on Wheels program by purchasing gently used recreational vehicles and placing them in RV parks around town and most recently engaged in first responder disaster relief. Founded in 1998 by Graham and five friends, MLF has served over 1,500,000 meals; more than 430,000 in 2008 alone. With more than 12,000 volunteers, MLF is the largest prepared feeding program to the homeless and working poor in Austin.

Joel Greenberg writes about the future of energy on The Energy Roadmap <dot> com.  He combines a people based approach with good science to tell stories about the changes that are happening in energy and therefore, our lives. From inteviews with energy pioneers like Stanford Ovshinsky, to fusion scientists who have designed a fusion-fission hybrid nuclear reactor that burns nuclear waste, to a researcher that's invented a paper battery, Joel seeks out stories that have the potential to touch our lives in surprising and meaningful ways.

Craig Heartwell was appointed Chief Technology Officer of OnDialog, Inc. on 1 February 2008. Heartwell leads an agile product development team that is aggressively expanding OnDialog’s on-demand products and services. Between February 2008 and June 2008, Heartwell’s team completely redesigned and rebuilt the predecessor application, Plurapage, to provide a platform for continued growth through development and integration. Heartwell works closely with customers and partners to ensure that OnDialog is addressing key market needs whether through technology, information or relationships, and he uses this knowledge to establish product vision, manage partner integration opportunities and to educate both marketers and consumers on what is possible with technology now and in the future.

Mrs. Hice is a founding partner at Text4ROI and the parent company Red Leaf ROI Group and has been a serial entrepreneur in many ventures in the sales and marketing arena. Carrie brings the pragmatic experience of working for Big 5 Consulting firms and the vision of a forward thinking “out of the box” entrepreneurism. For over a decade she has built and redesigned sales and marketing strategies for Fortune 100 companies in the US and Internationally. Carrie is recognized by her peers as a Customer Relationship Management strategy innovator and thought leader. She has had a distinguished career selling professional and relationship management solutions to large corporations and small businesses alike.

Intent on making her living as a girl geek, CJ worked at the Iowa State University Computation Center to pay her way through school, earning a degree from ISU in Communications, with minors in Computer Science and English. In the mid-80s a hybrid study combining these fields was unique. Thus, the day after graduation, CJ threw her children and cat in the car and moved across the country to do marketing and PR for a technology company.

Alex is a passionate community catalyst, technologist and user advocate. He is the User Experience Manager at Pluck, a leader in social media software solutions, coordinates Refresh Austin, a local group of Web professionals with national ties and serves on the AIR Interactive Advisory Board in order to make the Web more accessible to people with disabilities. On occasion, he lends his expertise to the Austin technology groups and has organized countless interest-based communities both online and off. When time allows, Alex writes about a range of topics on SilverSpider.com, and when time is short he spouts off on Twitter (@BaldMan). He has a driving curiosity, likes to barbecue, and has far more interests than time to explore them.

Chris is a featured speaker and master of interactive and online video campaigns. Chris has developed local, national and international marketing programs and events that capture the imagination and generate an undeniable sense of opportunity from attendees.

Karl J. Krumm, Ph.D. has been consulting with individuals, teams and organizations for 25 years. He started his consulting career during graduate school at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge working with a consulting team that dealt with intercultural conflict in the community’s diverse interest groups and associations and agencies. During this time he began consulting with private industries throughout the nation in organizational development.

Jon Lebkowsky is a social media expert and strategist, cultural strategist, and social commentator. A web strategy consultant, he also writes about culture, technology, media, sustainability and other topics for various publications, has been blogging regularly since blogs first appeared, and has been involved in web strategy and development since 1992. He was involved in the early 2000s social technology conversations that led to the concept of "web 2.0." He is cofounder of Social Web Strategies, where he does strategic consulting and coordinates social media planning and web development.

Amy Lemen is an Austin-based freelance writer and journalist and the founder of Writeous Words, a marketing communications consultancy for online and print writing projects launched in 1999.

Ynema Mangum is a product line manager for cloud computing at Sun Microsystems. Her role is to help shape the confluence of people and cloud computing.

Brian Massey calls himself a Conversion Scientist and he has the lab coat to prove it. “Conversion” is the process of converting Web traffic to leads and sales, and his practice, Conversion Sciences, brings this discipline to businesses of all sizes. Since 2001, Brian has built the marketing strategy and infrastructure for a number of technology companies. In 2006 he began championing conversion as the key to online marketing success. He has crafted online strategies for dozens of small and medium-sized businesses that drive their most valuable visitors to take action.

Heather McKissick is an organizational development and communication specialist with specific expertise in leadership development, change management and workgroup facilitation.

Andy Meadows is CEO and founder of Live Oak 360 and a board member with the Austin Technology Council. Andy and Live Oak 360 specialize in custom web application development, interactive strategy consulting, content management systems, ecommerce solutions, and social networking applications to assist companies in managing their digital landscapes. Live Oak 360 is also the creator of BudURL.com the first application to provide real-time measurement of social media ROI.

Pete Monfre is a professional marketing analyst, interactive media expert and founder of Clarity Marketing Support, Inc. a full service marketing firm, and Enzoology Entertainment, a multi-media production company specializing in children's and family edutainment.

Ed Nicholson is currently director of corporate community and public relations for Tyson Foods, Inc. He has been with Tyson since 1995, previously serving as the company’s director of media relations, and primary media spokesperson.

Bob serves as President of The Blog Council, the leading forum for social media efforts at the largest corporations in the world and as Senior Vice President, Communities for GasPedal. He is also a founding partner of Common Sense Media Group. 

Master of Ceremonies for the Interactive Austin 09

RefreshWeb is a national B2B SEO agency with offices in Austin, Houston and Kansas City. Founded by John Rasco in 2006, RefreshWeb is differentiated by its marketing expertise and a hands-on approach to driving results through iterative improvement. Specializing in marketing technology-based companies since 1987, and active in internet marketing since 1992, Rasco's skills as a marketer, team leader and strategist are key to successful client engagements. Rasco is a member of the Austin Interactive Marketing Association, active in social media marketing, and a conference speaker on search marketing and effective optimization techniques.

Connie is Chief Community Officer for New Media Lab, an Austin-based startup that offers curriculum-based learning experiences designed for business professionals new to social media. She is a co-founding member and serves on the advisory board of the Social Media Club, an international association for new and emerging media professionals. She blogs at Every Dot Connects, along with other marketing and media practitioners who are passionate about using new technologies to build bridges between people, ideas and causes. When a friend was diagnosed with breast cancer in late 2007, Connie created the Frozen Pea Fund.

Alissa Ruehl is the Manager of Website Effectiveness Consulting at Apogee Search, recently announced as part of the 2008 INC 500 list & Austin Fast 50.

Susan Scrupsk is founder of SoCo Partners and VP Enterprise Content and Programs for ReadWriteWeb. Ms. Scrupski has been tracking Enterprise 2.0 since its inception in 2006. She brings a unique insight into the adoption curve for large enterprises and has firsthand knowledge of the myriad of barriers between desire and full-scale adoption.

Clay Spinuzzi is an associate professor of rhetoric at The University of Texas at Austin. Spinuzzi's interests include workplace communication and organization, technologically mediated work, and research methods and methodology. His book Tracing Genres through Organizations was published by MIT Press in 2003 and was named NCTE's 2004 Best Book in Technical or Scientific Communication. His second book, Network, was published in 2008 by Cambridge University Press.

Ian Strain-Seymour leads Apogee Search's product development team, working to deliver next generation tools for Apogee's teams. He espouses the credo that "he/she/it with the best data wins". With expertise in web analytics, online marketing, ecommerce, and user experience design, Ian assists Apogee’s client in defining their goals and then creating the strategic plan to achieve those goals.

Paul Walker has more than 25-years of experience in general management, brand development, market development, business development, venture investing and consulting. He has lived and worked extensively in Asia, Europe and all three U.S. coasts.

Alan Weinkrantz has more than 30 years of direct marketing, public relations, and social media experience.  He is a prolific writer, blogger and is considered the leading consumer facing blogger covering AT&T’s three-screen strategy.  Still deep in the trenches of pitching, Alan has worked with leading technology companies from inception to IPO or acquisition including AudioCodes, Mercom Systems, Spectrum Cellular Communications, Envara, Shopping.com, Answers.com, and many more. 

Michael L. Williams was initially appointed to the Texas Railroad Commission by former Governor George W. Bush in December 1998 to a vacant seat. Williams chaired the Commission from July 2007 to February 2009 and previously served as chair from September 1999 to September 2003. He was most recently elected statewide in November 2008, when Texas voters reaffirmed their support by electing him to an additional six-year term expiring in the year 2014. He is the first African American in Texas history to hold an executive statewide elected post.