Changes

Brigitte Daniel is a digital access advocate with experience in telecommunications and social entrepreneurship, she is a vocal advocate for gender and cultural diversity in the tech industry.

In May 2006, she became the executive vice president of Wilco Electronic Systems, a small telecommunications firm founded in 1977 by her father that has primarily done installations for the Philadelphia Housing Authority. Wilco is one of the last remaining African-American owned cable operators in the Nation and specialized in providing technology access to under-served communities.

In that role, she became a frequent speaker on digital divide and web literacy issues, particularly in the Philadelphia technology community. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Spelman College in1999 with degrees in History, Women's Studies, and Business Management and received her Juris Doctorate from Georgetown University Law School in 2002 and was admitted to the Bar of Pennsylvania in 2004.  She currently serves as the Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the Philadelphia Theatre Company's new Young Friends Executive Committee and also serves as a Board Director of the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition (GPUAC) and is on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia People's Emergency Center (PEC). She was part of the 2011 class of Eisenhower Fellows. Read more from her on [https://twitter.com/brigittedaniel Twitter].

Paul Ford is a Brooklyn-based writer and web technologist. He often writes about [https://medium.com/message/how-paper-magazines-web-engineers-scaled-kim-kardashians-back-end-sfw-6367f8d37688 the web], [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6241967 archives] [http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-paul-ford-what-is-code/ programming], [http://www.ftrain.com/wwic.html the nature of information], and [https://medium.com/message/networks-without-networks-7644933a3100 living in the information age]. Past projects include [https://medium.com/message/tilde-club-i-had-a-couple-drinks-and-woke-up-with-1-000-nerds-a8904f0a2ebf tilde.club] and the [http://www.ftrain.com/AWebSiteForHarpers.html semantic web-ified harpers.org] (back in 2003). His ~Ford's 30,00000-word article [http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-paul-ford-what-is-code/ What Is Code?] was the entire June 11, 2015 issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Learn more at his [http://ftrain.com website], on [http://twitter.com/ftrain Twitter], or on [https://medium.com/@ftrain Medium], or watch [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSL5qVL3Mng his talk at XOXO 2014] or [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-06-12/-what-is-code-charlie-rose-06-12- his interview on Charlie Rose]. He Paul was also interviewed at [http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2012/an-interview-with-paul-ford-and-gina-trapani/ at In the Library with the Lead Pipe, along with Gina Trapani].

Sorelle Friedler has been an is Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Haverford College since 2014 and was visiting at Haverford starting in 2012 (Haverford is just a few miles from Philadelphia). Her research interests include the design and analysis of algorithms, computational geometry, data mining and machine learning, and the application of such algorithms to interdisciplinary data. She is a [http://www.datasociety.net/updates/featured/announcements/2015/03/introducing-2015-2016-fellows-class/ 2015-2016 Fellow at the Data & Society Research Institute] for her work on preventing discrimination in machine learning. Learn more about her work on her [http://ww3.haverford.edu/computerscience/faculty/sorelle/index.php Haverford Computer Science page].

Kate Heddleston is a software engineer who mostly works primarily on Python projects. She has been a mentor for Hackbright Academy and PyLadies. She blogs and gives talks about how our engineering environments are killing diversity (see [https://kateheddleston.com/talk/ea142cd2-f026-4615-ab90-2170f06c739b her talk] and [https://kateheddleston.com/blog/how-our-engineering-environments-are-killing-diversity-introduction her blog series]), on [https://kateheddleston.com/talk/ef464595-b113-4c1b-9c5b-cc1f3681055c technical onboarding, training, and mentoring], and on the [https://kateheddleston.com/blog/a-modern-day-take-on-the-ethics-of-being-a-programmer ethics of being a programmer], among other topics. Here is her [https://kateheddleston.com/ website].

Prior to her work in online privacy, she served as Executive Director of the AIDS Policy Project, where she lead a successful effort to move $35 million into cure research at the US National Institutes of Health and wrote groundbreaking reports that showed for the first time how little the world was investing in the search for a cure for AIDS. Kate has been chosen twice as one of the Poz 100, one of the top 100 people working in AIDS in the world. She was a very early member of the renowned AIDS activist group ACT UP. She has also spoken at several hacker conferences, including Chaos Communications Congress, where [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMZ2FB574JY she delivered a talk on how mass surveillance in China ] and how it was converted into political repression.

(However--she *has* a sense of humor!)

He is the CTO and founding partner at of Zepheira; , and has helped lead been a leader in the implementation of the LibHub Initiative. From [http://uche.ogbuji.net/ his website]: "Uche is a leading expert in data design and distributed systems. He has worked with XML, RDF and Web Services since the inception of those technologies. He has been technical lead on many open specifications and open source projects as well as on Zepheira's platform for library data transforms." Also He was also recently named [https://twitter.com/uogbuji/status/632936838622089217 poet laureate] of Balisage: The Markup Conference!More information is available at his [http://uche.ogbuji.net/ website.]

Lauren Pressley became the University of Washington Tacoma Library Director and Associate Dean of University Libraries on in September 15, of 2015. Her professional interests include formal and informal learning, design in library services, the evolving information environment, organizational change, and the future of libraries. She is the author of [https://unglue.it/work/76348/ So You Want to Be a Librarian] and [http://www.alastore.ala.org/detail.aspx?ID=3969 Wikis for Libraries], a co-chair of [https://www.librarypipeline.org/ Library Pipeline], and holds an elected position on the American Library Association Council. She has also served on the Library Information Technology Association board of directors and the [http://www.nmc.org/nmc-horizon/ Horizon Project] advisory board.

Tech and social justice activist. Engineer. Read more at [http://www.techrepublic.com/article/aliya-rahman-former-code-for-progress-director-tech-and-social-justice-activist-martial-artist/ Tech Republic Aliya Rahman] and on ([https://twitter.com/AliyaRahman Twitter]) is a tech and social justice activist, and an engineer. From her [http://codeforprogress.org/app/program_director/ Code for Progress bio]:

[http://www.carlstahmer.com/ Carl Stahmer] ([https://twiter.com/cstahmer Twitter]) is a Polymath extraordinaire; , doing digital humanities before it was cool; and 20 years of experience in information architecture design and programming for the World Wide Web; . He is Director of Digital Scholarship at the University Library, University of California, Davis; , Technical Lead for the English Short Title Catalogue; , and Associate Director of the English Broadside Ballad Archive. Currently He is currently helping to lead the IMLS-funded BIBFLOW project at UC Davis. Read more on [http://www.carlstahmer.com/ his website] or [https://twitter.com/cstahmer Twitter].

Cecily Walker is the Assistant Manager for Community Digital Initiatives & eLearning at Vancouver Public Library. In addition to her work on user experience and open data, she is an experienced speaker (keynoting DLF Forum this year) and has hosted a Twitter chat for first-generation library professionals (#L1S). Learn more at [http://cecily.info/ her website], and on [https://twitter.com/skeskali Twitter], [https://github.com/skeskali GitHub], and [http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/about/editorial-board/cecily-walker/ In the Library with the Lead Pipe] (, where she is a member of the editorial board).

Making front-end development easier by the second. Co, Brock Whitten is the co-creator of Surge, Harp, and Cordova/PhoneGap. Mozilla-WebFWD Alumni and advocate of a free and open web. A friend of the community. Read about Surge [https://surge.sh/tour hereSurge] and ([https://medium.com/surge-sh/introducing-surge-the-cdn-for-front-end-developers-b4a50a61bcfc hereRead about it on Medium)], Harp, and Cordova/PhoneGap, as well as a Mozilla-WebFWD Alumnus and an advocate of a free and open web. Here is He's also a friend of the community who has spoken at several conferences, including GOTO Chicago, Copenhagen, and Aarhus; RubyConf Argentina; CascadiaJS Seattle; NodeBrigade; VanJS; JSConf Washinton D.C.; Erlang Meetup Vancouver; OSCON San Jose; Future Ruby Toronto; and MerbCamp San Diego. Read more at his [http://sintaxi.com/ Brock's website].

Founder, The founder of [http://www.transhack.org/ Trans*H4CK ]--the only tech event of its kind that brings visibility to trans* tech innovators and entrepreneurs--Kortney Ryan Ziegler is an award winning artist, writer, and blogger based in Oakland, California. Dr. Ziegler is also the first person to hold the Ph.D. of African American Studies from Northwestern University. Dr. Ziegler is the founder of [http://www.transhack.org/ Trans*H4CK]--the only tech event of its kind that brings visibility to trans* tech innovators and entrepreneurs. He is also , the director of the multiple award winning documentary, [http://www.stillblackfilm.org/ STILL BLACK: a portrait of black transmen], and runs the GLAAD Media Award nominated blog, [http://blackademic.com/ blac (k) ademic], and in . In 2013, Dr. Ziegler was named one of the Top 40 Under 40 LGBT activists by The Advocate Magazine and one of the most influential African Americans by TheRoot100. Dr. Ziegler , and in 2014 he gave the closing keynote at the 2014 Annual LITA Forum in Albuquerque, New Mexico.