Toshi Anders Hoo is the Director of the Emerging Media Lab (EML) at Institute for the Future (IFTF). The EML researches and prototypes the future of human communication and collaboration and their work has been featured at venues and events around the world including The United Nations, Ars Electronica, and the Dubai Future Foundation. His work has focused for over 2 decades on exploring, experimenting and implementing projects utilizing emerging media technologies for museums, non-profits, commercial clients and artistic endeavors. Hoo also served as media technology advisor to famed futurist, Ray Kurzweil and has produced projects for NASA and the United Nations.

Josette Melchor is the Founder of Gray Area Foundation For The Arts, a leading San Francisco non-profit dedicated to applying art and technology to create social and civic impact. As a Community Organizer, she partners with cities to address civic issues through public activations such as the Urban Prototyping Festival. A respected Executive Director, she has implemented sustainable revenue models to stabilize organizations and led fundraising campaigns to revive the historic Grand Theater as an 800 person venue in the Mission District as well as the Oakland Fire Fund to serve hundreds affected by the Ghostship tragedy. As a Curator, Josette instigated the first exhibition that paired artificial neural networks with artists which helped establish the Artists and Machine Intelligence program at Google. She was gifted her first set of turntables at seventeen, which inspired her to DJ and develop an eclectic collection of music at the confluence of disco, techno and house. Her selections are influenced by over fourteen years of large-scale media arts production and relationships with well known music producers. She has led the development of hundreds of creative technology projects utilizing cutting edge technologies and alongside work at Gray Area is starting an experiential media studio Dreamboat with a small team of artists. In other words, Josette Melchor is a Human classified as a Community Organizer, Curator, Entrepreneur, DJ, Queer Mexican Woman programming life at the intersection of art and technology based in San Francisco. She founded Gray Area Foundation for the Arts– a leading nonprofit media arts center– more than a decade ago and is driven to serve diverse audiences with her work. She has also worked with notable designers and interdisciplinary research centers including: MIT Senseable City Lab, Institute of Computer Sound and Technology, Stamen Design, Code for America; artists C.E.B Reas, Robert Hodgin, Aaron Koblin, Camille Utterback, and many more. She has spoken at DLD, PICNIC, TEDx Silicon Valley, Art Center College of Design, and Stanford. She is also on the Advisory Board of the Burning Man Project and The Processing Foundation. You can visit her website here: josettemelchor.com

Yelena Rachitsky is an Executive Producer of Experiences at Oculus, overseeing dozens of groundbreaking, narrative-driven VR projects that range from Pixar's first VR project to original independent work. Prior to Oculus, she was the Creative Producer at Future of Storytelling, which aims to change how people communicate and tell stories in the digital age. Yelena also helped program for the Sundance Film Festival and Institute's New Frontier program and spent four years in the documentary division at Participant Media, working on films like Food Inc. and Waiting for Superman. She's passionate about big creative ideas that will make technology meaningful.

Knight Foundation is a national foundation with strong local roots. The foundation supports informed and engaged communities and strongly invests in journalism, the arts and cities. Knight Foundation also supports innovative experiments in the use of digital media and technology to inform. The foundation identifies, explores and invests in innovative technology approaches and applications with the greatest potential to advance the fields in which they work.