SPEAKERS

 

 

  Peter Leyden - Editor at Large, WIRED Ventures
     

 

 Don Tapscott - Chairman, Alliance for Converging Technologies
     
  Mark K Gaalswyk - Founder and President of Easy System Inc.

 

Peter Leyden - Editor at Large, WIRED Ventures

Peter Leyden is an Editor at Large for Wired Ventures, the parent company of Wired Magazine, one of the most authoritative voices covereing new technologies and the new economy, and arguable the hottest magazine of the 1990s. He has been managing editor of the magazine, overseeing the editorial staff and shaping the strategic coverage. Before that, Leyden had been a senior editor responsible for many of the key, feature length stories, including the July 1997 cover story on The Long Boom.

For much of the 1990s, Leyden wrote about the impact of technology on the economy and society and did computer assisted reporting for the Minneapolis Star Tribune in the city where he grew up. He spent his last year there writing a 50,000 word special project called On the Edge of the Digital Age, a precursor of The Long Boom.

In the late 1980s, Leyden worked in Asia as a special correspondent, primarily for Newsweek magazine. While based in South Korea, he also reported in Japan and China. He was among the first western journalists into Tibet under martial law after the Tianamen Square massacre and file stories. While in Asia, Leyden also contributed to the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and San Francisco Chronicle.

Leyden worked as a journalist for more than a dozen years. He has covered urban affairs and done investigative reporting in New England, the Deep South, and the Midwestern regions of the United States.

Leyden holds two masters degrees from Columbia University in New York. One is in comparative politics, with a particular focus on Europe, Latin America, and Africa, while the other is in journalism. In undergraduate work at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., he created a major in intellectual history, combining work in history, philosophy, literature, and the arts. He also studies for a year at the University of London. Leyden has traveled extensively throughout Africa, the Middle East, Central America, Northern and Southeast Asia, Eastern and Western Europe, all the continental United States and Canada. He now lives with his British wife and five-year old daughter in Berkeley, California.

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Don Tapscott - Chairman, Alliance for Converging Technologies

Don Tapscott's new book, Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the net Generation, chronicles the rise of the Net Generation, which is employing digital technology to change the way individuals and society interact. Released in October 1997, the book went into its 4th printing in less than three weeks. It was "recommended for all libraries" by the Library Journal, and Time magazine Senior Editor Joshua Cooper Ramo describes it as a "compellingly written look at the generation that will make it happen."

Author of five widely read books on the application of technology in business. The Digital Economy: Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence (1996) appeared on a number of best-seller lists, including The New York Times business book list. It had a run of seven months on the Business Week best-seller list. Business Week also named The Digital Economy as a Top-selling business book for 1996. It has been translated into seven languages.

Tapscott is also co-author of Paradigm Shift: The New Promise of Information Technology (1992). Now in its eleventh printing, it has been translated into seven languages. He also coauthored, with Ann Cavoukian Who Knows: Safeguarding Your Privacy in a Networked World (1995).

Tapscott is Chairman of the Alliance for Converging Technologies, a think tank currently conducting a multimillion dollar investigation into the impact of the information highway and the new media on business, government and society. The program is funded by some of the world's largest suppliers and users of emerging technologies.

President of New Paradigm Learning Corporation, Tapscott is described by Vice President Al Gore as one of the world's leading cyber-gurus and by the influential Washington Technology Report as one of the most influential media authorities since Marshall McLuhan. He is an internationally sought after consultant, speaker and authority on information technology in business and consults to the world's largest corporations. His clients include the top executives of many Fortune 100 companies and other leading enterprises around the world. In 1996 alone, Tapscott traveled to many parts of the world presenting to government and business leaders on information technology policy and strategy. In Canada in 1992, he chaired the first information highway advisory council ever established ­ setting a model emulated by many countries. He is currently Vice Chair of the Council for an Ontario Information Infrastructure.

Also highway acclaimed for thought leadership and his contribution to the community, Tapscott has received numerous awards. He was granted the 1996 Professional Achievement Award by the Canadian Information Processing Society, presented for his "integrity, expertise and outstanding achievements." In both 1997 and 1998, Tapscott was selected to be a judge for and presenter of the National Fellow at the 1997 and 1998 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Tapscott is co-editor of the recently published Blueprint to the Digital Economy, an anthology containing chapters written by a cross section of leaders of the digital revolution, including Vinton Cerf (MCI and founder of the Internet), John Seely Brown (Xerox PARC), and James Moore (author of The Death of Competition).

Tapscott has a B.Sc. in Psychology and Statistics and an M.Ed. specializing in Research Methodology.

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Mark K Gaalswyk - Founder and President of Easy System Inc.

Mark K Gaalswyk, Founder and President of Easy System Inc., has created an innovative technology and fostered the growth of the technology in rural Minnesota. Gaalswyk's company, located in Welcome, Minnesota, has developed and provided technologies the optimize animal feeding, especially for swine.

This technology has automated more than 300 feed mills and has been selected by the National Research Council to computerize a recommended swine feeding model. Gaalswyk's passion for technology, along with his ability to lead people and attract highly skilled people to a small rural community resulted in his receipt of the 1998 Minnesota Technology Leader Award.

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