Meet the judges...
We have assembled an expert panel of judges from the worlds of business, media, academics and policy to create a list of our 75 honorees. They will also select the ".com 25", so stay tuned to this site to see the final honorees.
Steve Blank
Retired entrepreneur, Stanford and Berkeley Adjunct Professor
After working 21 years at 8 high-tech companies, Steve became a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley and founded a variety of successful technology companies including Zilog, MIPs Computers, E.piphany, Convergent Technologies, Ardent, SuperMac, ESL, and Rocket Science Games. Upon retiring, Steve wrote a book about building early stage companies called Four Steps to Epiphany and currently uses the book as a class textbook as a Stanford and UC Berkeley Adjunct Professor. In 2009, Steve was awarded the Stanford University Undergraduate Teaching Award in the department of Management Science and Engineering and the San Jose Mercury News listed him as one of the 10 Influencers in Silicon Valley.
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David Kirkpatrick
Journalist and Author (The Facebook Effect); co-founder, Techonomy
Kirkpatrick wrote for Fortune beginning in 1991, covering computers and the impact of the Internet on business and society. He has written cover stories on Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Intel Sun, and numerous other topics including blogging. He is regularly ranked one of the most influential tech journalists in the U.S. He is also the author of the definitive book on Facebook, The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That is Connecting the World and leveraged his extensive Fortune Brainstorm leadership experience to co-found Techonomy, a new event in August 2010 looking at the intersection of technology and the economy.
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Kevin Maney
Technology Author and Journalist
Kevin Maney is an author and journalist and has interviewed many of the biggest names in business in a career spanning 25 years. He recently published a book in the fall of 2009 titled, Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don't. He writes for Fortune, The Atlantic and Fast Company, among other publications and previously wrote for Conde Nast Portfolio and was formerly technology columnist and senior technology reporter at USA Today. Maney is the author of the critically-acclaimed The Maverick and His Machine: Thomas Watson Sr. and the Making of IBM, published in 2003. Working with Chicago firm VSA Partners, Maney is currently an historical consultant and collaborator helping IBM plan for its 100-year anniversary in 2011. Maney also wrote the 1995 BusinessWeek bestseller Megamedia Shakeout.
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Daniel Scheinman
Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Media Solutions Group
Daniel Scheinman is responsible for developing and marketing and infrastructure software product called CISCO Eos© that helps digital media content owners improve the experience for consumers. Scheinman has been with Cisco since 1992 and previously was Senior Vice President of Corporate Development, overseeing the merger and acquisition, venture investment, strategic alliance, and technology incubation functions within the company. Scheinman has been a longtime champion for developing new, network-based distribution models for digital content, including his sponsorship is News@Cisco, an online portal launched in 2000 with multimedia information on Cisco opinions, strategies, and news.
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Drew Schutte
Senior Vice President & Chief Revenue Officer, Conde Nast Digital
Drew Schutte is responsible for the sales and marketing of the company's 25 Web sites. He also oversees the digital sales teams while working closely with the magazine publishers on integrated sales. Prior to this role, Schutte was Vice President and Publisher of The New Yorker. This followed a stint as Vice President and Publishing Director of Wired Media, where he oversaw Wired magazine, Wired Digital, and Wired brand extensions such as NextFest, the Wired Store, and Wired Home. During his tenure, Wired magazine was named to Adweek's "Digital Hot List." In November 2005, Schutte launched the Wired Store, an annual holiday shopping destination for tech enthusiasts. Before joining Wired, Schutte spent time at BusinessWeek, Inc., PC Week, and PC Magazine.
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Jonah Seiger
Founder, Managing Partner at Connections Media LLC
Jonah Seiger is a digital communications strategist and advisor to corporations, associations, and candidates for federal, state and local office. Widely regarded as an Internet pioneer, Seiger lead some of the first large-scale online advocacy campaigns including the groundbreaking 1996 "Black Page Protest" in which thousands of web sites - Yahoo and Netscape among them - went black for 48 hours to protest Congressional passage of restrictive content regulations for the Internet. Seiger began his career in 1993 working on Internet policy issues with Congressman Edward J. Markey (D-MA) on the House Telecommunications Subcommittee and then with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). In 1994 he was an original founder of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a leading Internet policy and advocacy organization. In 1997, Seiger co-founded Mindshare Internet Campaigns and built the company into one of the country's leading providers of Internet strategies for public affairs. In 2001, Seiger was recognized by the American Association of Political Consultants and Harvard University on its list of "The 25 Who Are Changing the World of Internet Politics." Seiger also serves as the Chairman of the Board of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University and is an adjunct professor at the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management. Seiger founded Connections Media in 2004.
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Ikhlaq Sidhu
Founding Director of UC Berkeley's Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology.
Ikhlaq Sidhu is an authority on the process of Innovation Engineering and has held senior executive and technology leadership positions at U.S. Robotics Corporation, 3Com Corporation, and Cambia Networks. He was awarded 3Com's "Inventor of the Year" award in 1999, and has been granted over 50 US Patents in fundamental and broadly used areas of networking technology, IP telephony, and PDA functionality. Technology and intellectual property from his work has been cross-licensed to Palm Computing, 3Com, and UT Starcom. He was a founding member and Board Director of the SIP Forum organization. In 2009, he received the Emerging Area Professor of Industrial Engineering & Operations Research Award at the University of California Berkeley.
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