Ushahidi

Ethan Zuckerman

Ethan Zuckerman is director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, and a principal research scientist at the MIT Media Lab. His research focuses on the distribution of attention in mainstream and new media, the use of technology for international development, and the use of new media technologies by activists.

With Rebecca MacKinnon, Zuckerman co-founded international blogging community Global Voices. Global Voices showcases news and opinions from citizen media in over 150 nations and thirty languages, publishing editions in twenty languages. Through Global Voices and through the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, where he served as a researcher and fellow for eight years, Zuckerman is active in efforts to promote freedom of expression and fight censorship in online spaces.

In 2000, Zuckerman founded Geekcorps, a technology volunteer corps that sends IT specialists to work on projects in developing nations, with a focus on West Africa. Previously he helped found Tripod.com, one of the web's first "personal publishing" sites. He blogs at http://ethanzuckerman.com/blog. He received his bachelor's degree from Williams College, and, as a Fulbright scholar, studied at the University of Ghana at Legon.

Erik Hersman

Erik Hersman is an international technology influencer with a keen eye on the impact of web and mobile technology innovation across Africa. Raised in Sudan and Kenya, Erik brings unique energy and insight to the world of technology and innovation – bridging the gap between Africa and Silicon Valley. He has a B.S. in Business Management from Florida State University.  As part of the Ushahidi strategy he has been building the iHub (Nairobi's innovation hub) since early 2010, a place that has grown to 3000+ Kenyan developers, designers, and entrepreneurs with connections in the corporate, academic and investor sectors.

An avid blogger, Erik writes two different technology-related blogs - AfriGadget and WhiteAfrican. He is frequently a speaker at meetings and conferences dealing with technology in Africa, mapping, blogging and web application development, including; TED, PopTech, DEMO, Picnic, SXSW, Where 2.0 and Web 2.0.  He is a TED Senior Fellow, a PopTech Faculty Fellow, sits on the Safaricom Innovation Board and is a founding organizer of Maker Faire Africa.

Dorcas Muthoni

Ms. Dorcas Muthoni, an entrepreneur and computer scientist, is the Chief Executive Officer and founder of OPENWORLD LTD (www.openworld.co.ke), a leading e-Government and Business Technology Solutions firm in the Eastern Africa region.

Muthoni is also a member of the council of the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa – FOSSFA. Muthoni's trusteeship shall be a driving force behind the vision and the policies of the Foundation till 2010. She is also a co-founder of the regional organization LinuxChix Africa, a technical capacity building initiative for women in the region. For over five years, in Kenya and across other countries, LinuxChix activities have included organizing annual Computing Career Conferences with a special emphasis on encouraging the uptake of computing careers amongst young women and high school girls. This passion and involvement has christened her as a role model for the women and girl folk in the African community.Through her day to day work as an entrepreneur and computer scientist, Muthoni seeks to see technology positively transforming the lives of the African society, governments and enterprises.

Sally Chin

Sally Chin heads up Oxfam International's office in NY. Oxfam International is a confederation of 17 affiliates working on humanitarian and development programming in over 90 countries. In NY, Sally oversees Oxfam's work with the United Nations and the UN Security Council.

Prior to joining Oxfam, Sally was the Director of the Mass Atrocity Response Operations Project, an initiative run out of the Carr Center at the Harvard Kennedy School, in partnership with the US Army’s Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI), that seeks to equip the US, other states, as well as regional and international actors, with credible military planning tools to prevent and halt genocide or mass atrocities.

Sally has over a decade of experience working in the field of conflict prevention and resolution, with half of that time spent in Africa. She has worked for Search for Common Ground, the Fondation Hirondelle, Refugees International, International Crisis Group, and Oxfam GB. She has extensive field experience as a program manager, policy adviser, analyst and advocate, particularly with regards to the conflicts in the DRC, Sudan, Chad and the Horn of Africa. Sally's research and publications have focused on conflict-related displacement and humanitarian responses, regional and international peacekeeping capacities, small arms and light weapons, protection of civilians, and drivers of conflict. Sally is a graduate of Swarthmore College and has an MSc in Comparative Politics, with a focus on conflict and genocide early warning, from the London School of Economics.

Beth Kanter

Beth is the author of Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media (http://beth.typepad.com), one of the longest running and most popular blogs for nonprofits. Beth has authored chapters in several books, including "Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission: A Strategic Guide for Nonprofit Leaders," edited by NTEN both published in 2009. A much in demand speaker and trainer, she was the keynote speaker for the Cambodian Bloggers Conference in Phnom Penh, The Connecting Up Conference in Brisbane, Australia, Minnesota Council on Nonprofits, Making Media Conference in Chicago and others. She has presented about nonprofits and social media at some of the leading social media industry conferences including O'Reilly's Graphing Social Patterns, Gnomedex, SWSX, Blogher, and Podcamp.

She is curating NTEN's "We Are Media: Nonprofit Social Media Starter Kit," an online community of people from nonprofits who are interested in learning and teaching about how social media strategies and tools can enable nonprofit organizations to create, compile, and distribute their stories and change the world. In 2009, she was named by Fast Company Magazine as one of the most influential women in technology and one of Business Week's "Voices of Innovation for Social Media." She is the 2009 Visiting Scholar for Social Media and Nonprofits for the Packard Foundation. Her book, The Networked Nonprofit, co-authored with Allison Fine, will be published by Wiley in 2010.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky is an American writer, consultant and teacher on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. He has a joint appointment at New York University (NYU) as a Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and Assistant Arts Professor in the New Media focused graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). His courses address, among other things, the interrelated effects of the topology of social networks and technological networks, how our networks shape culture and vice-versa.

He has written and been interviewed extensively about the Internet since 1996. His columns and writings have appeared in Business 2.0, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review and Wired. Shirky divides his time between consulting, teaching, and writing on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. His consulting practice is focused on the rise of decentralized technologies such as peer-to-peer, web services, and wireless networks that provide alternatives to the wired client–server infrastructure that characterizes the World Wide Web. He is a member of the Wikimedia Foundation’s Advisory Board. In The Long Tail, Chris Anderson calls Shirky "a prominent thinker on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies." You can find him on Twitter at @cshirky.

David Kobia

David is a co-founder and technology lead at Ushahidi and brings more than 10 years of product development experience and a multidisciplinary background to his work, with a focus on social and emerging technologies. He works in a variety of roles, from designer and coder to strategist. After pursuing a BS in Computer Science at the University of Alabama, he has been a professional software developer and has worked with almost every web technology in use today. In 2010, he was a recipient of MIT Technology Review’s TR35 award (35 top innovators under 35) and the Humanitarian of the Year award.

Stephen King

Stephen brings Omidyar Network exceptional experience in applying media and technology to create positive social impact. Based in London, Stephen focuses on expanding the Omidyar Network's efforts outside the U.S. in the Social Media and Government Transparency investment areas. He also makes investments across all areas awithin the Media, Markets & Transparency initiative.

Prior to Omidyar Network, Stephen served as the Chief Executive of the BBC World Service Trust, where he led a period of sustained growth that included building programs in more than 40 countries in the developing world. Stephen helped establish the Trust’s international reputation as one of the largest and most successful organizations using media and communications to improve the lives of the world’s poor and promote better governance and transparency worldwide. Prior to the BBC, Stephen was the Executive Director of the International Council on Social Welfare, an international organization working to promote social development. Stephen has also held positions with nonprofit organizations HelpAge International, Help the Aged, and Voluntary Service Overseas.

Stephen is a board member of CARE International in the U.K. He holds an MA in Oriental and African Studies from the University of London.

Juliana Rotich

Juliana Rotich is originally from Kenya where she spent her early life and schooling. She later moved to the US where she majored in IT and has worked in the industry for over ten years.

She collaborated with the online community and co-founded Ushahidi which is the Swahili word for testimony. Ushahidi is a web based reporting system that utilizes crowdsourced data to formulate visual map information of a crisis on a real-time basis. As a Program Director for Ushahidi she manages projects and aids in the development and testing of the Ushahidi platform.

She also blogs at 'Afromusing' blog, typically with a focus on African tech and renewable energy. She is a budding African Futurist and a TED Senior Fellow. She often speaks at international conferences about tech and Africa.