Stanford University, Graduate School of Business
Stanford, California 94305

"Peer production is about more than sitting down and having a nice conversation... It's about harnessing a new mode of production to take innovation and wealth creation to new levels." -- Eric Schmidt, CEO Google.

Wikipedia does it. So does Yelp, Amazon and Digg. Millions of customers have eagerly helped to build up reviews, ratings and other content for the most popular sites on the web. CEOs, founders and VCs talk up the growing number of opportunities in crowdsourcing and answer questions such as: How can you get your customers to work for you? What rewards do they need? How do you deal with the issue of accuracy and reliability of the information? What are the trials and tribulations of crowdsourcing? Who’s making money and what are the business models?

Come join us to find out about the next wave of customer driven companies and see how entrepreneurs are letting customers take charge in order to help change the world.

Moderator

Jeff Howe, Contributing Editor, Wired Magazine

Panelists

Michael Sikorsky, CEO & Founder, Cambrian House
Mike Agnich, Co-Founder & CTO, Predictify
Bill Reichert, Managing Director, Garage Technology Ventures

Bios

Jeff Howe, Contributing Editor, Wired Magazine

Jeff Howe is a contributing editor at Wired Magazine, where he covers the media and entertainment industry, among other subjects. In June of 2006 he published "The Rise of Crowdsourcing" in Wired. He has continued to cover the phenomenon in his blog, crowdsourcing.com, and is currently writing a book on the subject for Crown Books to be published in July 2008. Before coming to Wired he was a senior editor at Inside.com and a writer at the Village Voice. In his fifteen years as a journalist he has traveled around the world working on stories ranging from the impending water crisis in Central Asia to the implications of gene patenting. He has written for U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Post, Mother Jones and numerous other publications. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Alysia Abbott, their daughter Annabel Rose and son Phineas and a miniature black lab named Clementine.

Source: http://crowdsourcing.typepad.com/about.html

Michael Sikorsky, CEO & Founder, Cambrian House

Michael loves startups, software and people. Since the age of 14, he has been involved in community-based software development and entrepreneurship.

His fifth and most recent startup, Cambrian House, launched in 2006. Since then, it has become an internationally-recognized leader in crowdsourcing (leveraging the wisdom and participation of online crowds for commerce). As CEO, Michael has been invited to speak about Web 2.0, entrepreneurship and crowdsourcing at Cyberport Hong Kong, Harvard Business School, MIT, Community 2.0 Las Vegas, VidFest, and WebGuild's Web 2.0 Expo.

In 2007 he was named "Canada's Internet Revolutionary" by Profit magazine and a "CEO to Watch" by CNNmoney.com. Michael sold his last software company, Servidium, to ThoughtWorks, received a Computer Engineering degree from the University of Alberta, and holds a software patent related to innovative rendering techniques.

Mike Agnich, Co-Founder & CTO, Predictify

Mike Agnich is Co-Founder and CTO of Predictify.com. Predictify is an internet platform which allows users to predict and “go on record” with everything from pop culture to current events. Monetizing through a combination of market research and brand engagement, Predictify allows users to generate expert (or not so expert) reputations over time and to compete against friends. In early 2008, Predictify closed its series A financing lead by Sierra Ventures.

Michael has a 4 month old daughter and has been happily married for four years. He has a BS in computer science from Stanford University and is an MBA candidate ’08 at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Prior to business school, Michael was one of the first employees at Zazzle.com where he spent over five years leaving as Vice President of Product Technology.

Bill Reichert - Managing Director, Garage Technology Ventures

Bill Reichert has over 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur and an operating executive. Since joining Garage in 1998, Bill has focused on early-stage information technology and materials science companies. He sits on the Boards of CaseStack, WhiteHat, ClearFuels, cFares, and ThermoCeramix. Prior to Garage, Bill was a co-founder or senior executive in several venture-backed technology startups, including Trademark Software, The Learning Company, and Academic Systems. Earlier in his career, he worked at McKinsey & Company, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., and the World Bank. Bill earned a B.A. at Harvard College and an M.B.A. from Stanford University. He was a founding board member and a Chairman of the Churchill Club, and a Charter Member of the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs. Currently he is the Chairman of the Small Fund Roundtable of the VC Taskforce and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Official Website: http://www.vlab.org/article.html?aid=184

Added by japazillian on May 7, 2008

Comments

ArvindS

The event has SOLD OUT