Wiki Technology & Trend: Past, Now, and Future

How wiki can improve your life, work and business by sharing and contributing

Moderator:
Peter Thoeny, Founder at twiki.org & Co-founder at structuredwikis LLC

Speakers:
Ben Elowitz, CEO at Wetpaint.com
Jon Silvers, Director of Online Marketing at Atlassian Software Systems
Dr. Jonas M Luster, Community Manager and Open Source Team Lead at Socialtext
Scott Johnston, Vice President of Products at JotSpot

Each Speaker - Maximum 10 Min Presentation
30 min discussion panel

Ben Elowitz

Chief Executive Officer at Wetpaint
Ben is perhaps best known for his success as co-founder and vice-president of Blue Nile Inc, the leading on-line retailer of certified diamonds and fine jewelry. He oversaw the company’s front-end operations, which included product management, technology, and creative services from 1999 to 2001. Blue Nile is widely recognized as the first and most successful on line luxury goods retail site. In May of 2004, the company completed its initial public offering.

Ben is also well known for his role at the on-line professional, technical, and business bookstore Fatbrain.com, which was acquired by Barnes & Noble. As the Director of Business Development, Ben looked after product management, marketing programs, and business development from 1996 to 1999. He is credited with creating the company’s strategic partners and corporate bookstore programs, which together drove a substantial portion of the company’s revenue.

Prior to his roles at Fatbrain.com and Blue Nile, Ben worked at the global business consulting firm Bain & Company. As a management consultant, he specialized in providing business strategies to the high-tech industry.

In 2002, Ben consulted for eHarmony.com, a web service that matches marriage-minded singles. While there, he re-engineered the company’s positioning and website to improve branding, messaging, and conversion.

Most recently, Ben worked at Precor Incorporated, one of the country’s most successful fitness equipment brands. From 2002 to 2005, he helped Precor transition to a customer-driven, growth-oriented company. At Precor, Ben led product management, marketing, and new product development efforts for commercial equipment lines at Precor.

Ben attended University of California, Berkeley as a UC Regents Scholar. In 1994, he graduated after completing two degrees in four years. He received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science cum laude and a B.A. in Applied Mathematics.

Jon Silvers

Director of Online Marketing at Atlassian Software Systems
Jon Silvers directs marketing at Atlassian Software Systems, which was selected in BRW Magazine in 2005 and again by Deloitte in 2006 as the fastest growing software company in Australia. Atlassian Confluence, an enterprise wiki for knowledge sharing and collaboration, is used by over 1,800 organizations across every industry and has won numerous awards for its engineering and ease of use. Prior to Atlassian, Jon oversaw all aspects of marketing at Virage, a pioneer start up in video indexing and metadata management software for digital media management and delivery. At ClearStory Systems (formerly WebWare Corp.), a leader in enterprise content management, Jon led marketing and PR to bring ActiveMedia to market, the industry's first pure J2EE digital asset management system. Jon is based in Atlassian's San Francisco office and currently resides in Berkeley, California.

Dr. Jonas M Luster

Community Manager and Open Source Team Lead at Social Text
"Dr. Jonas M Luster designs, evaluates, and lives in virtual ecosystems. A frequent speaker on issues surrounding the intersection of social and technical designs, Luster - a Social Psychologist by trade - today works as the Community Manager and Open Source team lead at Socialtext, Inc, the first Enterprise wiki company."

Scott Johnston

Vice President of Products at JotSpot
As Vice President of Products, Scott leads product strategy and product development.
Before joining JotSpot, Scott spent two years as the Director of R&D at Mercury Interactive. Scott joined Mercury with the acquisition of Kintana, a start-up that delivered IT process and systems automation to over 400 of the Fortune 500 companies. At Kintana, Scott played several roles from software engineer and product manager, to general purpose trouble maker. Previous to Kintana, Scott worked for SGI as a graphics hardware engineer. Scott holds a ScB in Electrical Engineering from Brown University.

Peter Thoeny

Founder at twiki.org and Co-founder at structuredwikis LLC
Peter Thoeny is the founder of twiki <http://twiki.org/>, the leading
wiki for corporate collaboration and knowledge management. Managing
the open-sourced project for the last eight years, Peter invented the
concept of structured wikis - where free form wiki content can be
structured with tailored wiki applications.

He is a recognized thought-leader in wikis and social software,
featured in numerous articles and technology conferences including
LinuxWorld, Business Week, Wall Street Journal and more. A software
developer with over 15 years experience, Peter specializes in software
architecture, user interface design and web technology.

He graduated from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich,
lived in Japan for 8 years working as an engineering manager for Denso
building CASE tools, and managed the Knowledge Engineering group at
Wind River for several years. He is currently working on a book on
wikis for the workplace.

Peter recently co-founded <http://www.structuredwikis.com/>, structuredwikis LLC, a company offering services that allows teams to use wikis to improve productivity and communication through basic and advanced application of wikis.