Erica is a Senior Engineering Manager at Patreon and advocate for diversity and inclusion in tech, and expanding access to tech education. Erica's career in tech began fifteen years ago doing domain administration for the University of Alaska Statewide System, before becoming a Googler in 2006. Erica's role grew and shifted within Google, growing from Support Technician to Site Reliability Engineer. At Slack, she built the Native Client Build and Release infrastructure. She joined Patreon in 2017 where she manages the Infrastructure Engineering team. Erica is on the Board of Directors for Girl Develop It, the advisory Boards for Atipica and Hack the Hood, and is a Tech Mentor for Black Girls Code. Erica is a founding member of Project Include, was the 2015 Level Playing Field Institute Lux Award winner, a nominee for the 2016 Crunchies Include Diversity Award, and was included in WIRED Magazine's 2016 Next List. Erica is currently based in Oakland, California.

Kat Blaque is an animator, illustrator and Youtuber from Southern California who has been openly blogging about her life for the past 10+ years. Experiencing the ups and downs of new media, she has ultimately concluded that social platforms are a powerful force for change and awareness. She currently uses her platforms on Youtube (114k subscribers) and Facebook (180k with an average weekly reach of 4 million people) to speak about the topics she’s passionate about as well as cultivating conversations that encourage education across intersections. She playfully refers to herself as “intersectionality salad” as she embodies various identities and experiences. As a woman and survivor of rape and sexual assault, she is very passionate about fostering conversations where survivors and victims alike can feel as though they have a voice. As an outspoken feminist, she’s often on the receiving end of online harassment that she’s had to learn to accept as a woman who dares to have an opinion. As a black woman, she is invested in starting conversations about white supremacy and how it’s impacted her own life as well as various others. As a Trans woman, she believes that speaking about her growth and acceptance of self is vital in a world where trans people aren’t seen as valid and their possibilities are often seen as limited.

Gary Chou is the founder of Orbital, a studio for building networks, and Faculty at School of Visual Arts MFA in Interaction Design program where he co-teaches Entrepreneurial Design with Christina Xu. Previously, Gary worked at Union Square Ventures where he created the USV Network. He advises Austin Center for Design, which exists to transform society through design and design education; and Venture for America, which seeks to revitalize American cities and communities through entrepreneurship. As an active supporter of independent creators, he has executive produced two award-winning films and backed numerous Kickstarter projects.

Austin Kleon is the New York Times bestselling author of three illustrated books: Steal Like An Artist, Newspaper Blackout, and Show Your Work! His latest release is The Steal Like An Artist Journal: A Notebook For Creative Kleptomaniacs. His work has been translated into over twenty languages and featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, PBS Newshour, and in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. New York Magazine called his work “brilliant,” The Atlantic called him “positively one of the most interesting people on the Internet,” and The New Yorker said his poems “resurrect the newspaper when everybody else is declaring it dead.” He speaks about creativity in the digital age for organizations such as Pixar, Google, SXSW, TEDx, and The Economist. He grew up in the cornfields of Ohio, but now he lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and sons.

Indhira is the founder and creative director of the mental health magazine Anxy. Anxy is a bi-annual publication exploring vulnerable personal stories through an artful and creative lens. As a design consultant during the day, and a magazine maker during the “night”, her days are a balancing act of client requests, designing, art directing, and managing projects, plus addressing the new challenges (or adventures) that Anxy throws her way.

Jesse Thorn is the host and producer of Bullseye and Jordan, Jesse, Go!, and the co-host and producer of Judge John Hodgman. He's also the proprietor of MaximumFun.org. Bullseye began in 2000, as The Sound of Young America in 2000, while Thorn was still a student at the University of California at Santa Cruz. In 2007, the show began to be distributed by Public Radio International, making Jesse the youngest national host in public radio history. The show became Bullseye in 2012, and in 2013 it began being distributed by NPR. The show currently airs on NPR stations around the country. As owner of MaximumFun.org, Jesse oversees a network of more than two dozen podcasts, along with video and other content production. The company helped set the template for the modern podcast network, and continues to be a leader in independent, audience-supported media production. Fast Company magazine called Thorn "the most important person in entertainment you've never heard of." In addition to his work at MaximumFun.org, Thorn hosts and helps produce Put This On, one of the country's most popular web series and blogs about men's style. He also hosted The Grid, a culture recommendation program on IFC, The Sound of Young America on Current TV and has appeared on IFC's Comedy Bang Bang among other television outlets. A native of San Francisco's Mission District, Jesse lives in Los Angeles. With his wife, podcaster and author Theresa Thorn, three children and two dogs.

I am currently the Chief Product Officer at Kickstarter. Previously I was co-founder and CEO of VHX, a platform for selling film & TV online, which was acquired by Vimeo in 2016. In 2010 I won a Primetime Emmy for my work on Star Wars Uncut, a crowdsourced recreation of the much-loved original: http://starwarsuncut.com While working at Rocketboom I helped create the Know Your Meme video series and Internet culture database. We sold the site to Cheezburger in 2010. In 2007 and 2008 I taught the Internet Famous Class in Parsons' Design & Technology graduate program, the world's first algorithmically-graded graduate course. Students' grades were determined by views, followers, subscribers, and other online popularity metrics.