Lawrence Lessig is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the school's Center for Internet and Society. Prior to joining the Stanford faculty, he was the Berkman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and a Professor at the University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court.

Professor Lessig represented web site operator Eric Eldred in the ground-breaking case Eldred v. Ashcroft, a challenge to the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. He has won numerous awards, including the Free Software Foundation's Freedom Award, and was named one of Scientific American's Top 50 Visionaries, for arguing "against interpretations of copyright that could stifle innovation and discourse online."

Professor Lessig is the author of Free Culture (2004), The Future of Ideas (2001), Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999) and Code 2.0 (2006). He chairs the Creative Commons project, and serves on the board of the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Public Library of Science, and Public Knowledge. He is also a columnist for Wired.

Henry Jenkins is the Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities. He is the author and/or editor of nine books on various aspects of media and popular culture, including Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture and From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. His newest books include Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture.

Until recently, Jenkins wrote a monthly column and blogged about media and cultural change for Technology Review Online. A longtime advocate of games culture, he currently co-authors a column with Kurt Squire for Computer Games magazine which seeks to promote innovation and diversity in game design. Jenkins recently developed a white paper on the future of media literacy education for the MacArthur Foundation, which is leading to a three year project to develop curricular materials to help teachers and parents better prepare young people for full participation in contemporary culture.

He is one of the principal investigators for The Education Arcade, a consortium of educators and business leaders working to promote the educational use of computer and video games. He was also one of the principal investigators on collaboration with Initiative Media to monitor audience response to American Idol with an eye towards developing new approaches to audience measurement. He is one of the leaders of the Convergence Culture Consortium, which consults with leading players in the branded entertainment sector in hopes of helping them adjust to shifts in the media environment. Jenkins has a B.A. in Political Science and Journalism from Georgia State University, a MA in Communication Studies from the University of Iowa and a PhD in Communication Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has taught at MIT for more than 16 years, where he is also housemaster of Senior House dormitory.

Dr. Patricia Aufderheide is a well-known cultural journalist, policy analyst, and editor on topics related to media and society, and has received numerous journalism and scholarly awards. Her relationship as a senior editor and columnist dates back to her tenure as culture editor for In These Times from 1978 to 1982.

Dr. Aufderheide is a professor in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, DC and the director of the university’s Center for Social Media, which “showcases and analyzes strategies to use media as creative tools for public knowledge and action.” Aufderheide is also director of the Independent Television Service, which produces innovative television programming for underserved audiences under the umbrella of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. She serves on the film advisory board of the National Gallery of Art, and on the editorial boards of a variety of publications, including Communication Law and Policy.

Aufderheide is the author of The Daily Planet: A Critic on the Capitalist Culture Beat (University of Minnesota Press, 2000), and Communications Policy in the Public Interest: The Telecommunications Act of 1996 (Guilford Press, 1999) and the editor of Beyond PC: Toward a Politics of Understanding (Graywolf Press). She has been a Fulbright and John Simon Guggenheim fellow and has served as a juror at the Sundance Film Festival.

J.D. Lasica is one of the world's leading authorities on social media and the revolution in user-created media. A writer, strategist, blogger and consultant, he is the co-founder and editorial director of Ourmedia.org, president of the Social Media Group and a partner in Outhink Media, a company that enables social media and distributed video production. He is currently helping to architect Bid4Vid, a new marketplace for getting videos produced.

His book Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation (Wiley & Sons, May 2005) explores the personal media revolution and the emerging media landscape. Author Lawrence Lessig said of "Darknet": "There are few who see the future clearly, and even fewer who can explain what they see. This brilliant, beautifully written book sees, and explains."

JD was an editor at the Sacramento Bee for 11 years, has written articles about technology and culture for major publications, and headed up editorial teams at three startups. He is an original member of the AlwaysOn Open Media 100 in Silicon Valley. He led the effort to take his college daily (the Rutgers Daily Targum) independent, and spoke at Rutgers to commemorate the anniversary of independence. His articles are online here. He blogs at SocialMedia.biz, Darknet.com and his videoblog-only Real People Network. JD lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and is a frequent speaker and panelist at technology and media conferences.

Matt Mason is the critically acclaimed author of The Pirate’s Dilemma, the first book in the history of the world to hit the number one spot on Amazon’s economics/free enterprise bestseller list, and the rap bestseller list, at the same time. It has since been published in seven countries and counting.

Mason began his career as a pirate radio and club DJ in London, going on to become founding Editor-in-Chief of the seminal magazine RWD. In 2004, he was selected as one of the faces of Gordon Brown’s Start Talking Ideas campaign, and was presented the Prince’s Trust London Business of the Year Award by HRH Prince Charles.

He has written and produced TV series, comic strips, viral videos and records. His journalism has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, The Observer Music Monthly, Dazed & Confused, Adweek, VICE, Complex, Libération, and other publications in more than 20 countries. He has spoken on the subjects covered in the book all over the world. He recently founded the non-profit media company Wedia with his wife Emily. He lives in New York City.

Mark Hosler is one of the founding member of the band Negativland, an experimental music and sound collage band which originated in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1970s. Since 1980, the 4 or 5 or 6 Floptops known as Negativland have been creating records, CDs, video, fine art, books, radio and live performance using appropriated sound, image and text. Mixing original materials and original music with things taken from corporately owned mass culture and the world around them, Negativland re-arranges these found bits and pieces to make them say and suggest things that they never intended to. In doing this kind of cultural archaeology and "culture jamming" (a term they coined way back in 1984), Negativland have been sued twice for copyright infringement.

Over the years Negativland's "illegal" collage and appropriation based audio and visual works have touched on many things - pranks, media hoaxes, advertising, media literacy, the evolving art of collage, the bizarre banality of suburban existence, creative anti-corporate activism in a media saturated multi-national world, file sharing, intellectual property issues, wacky surrealism, evolving notions of art and ownership and law in a digital age, and artistic and humorous observations of mass media and mass culture.

Luminosity is a prominent fannish video editor and recut artist. Her work recuts and recontextualizes film and television as music videos with varied and complex messages and readings. Luminosity's work has gained notoriety for its artistic expression and its critical thinking. NY Magazine interviewed her about fannish media production recently, and her hilarious, virtuoso send-up of 300 to Madonna's "Vogue" was chosen one of the Top 20 Intentionally Funny Videos of 2007.

Her well-received "Scooby Road" was the first album-length concept vid, underscoring the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer with The Beatles' "Abbey Road."

Luminosity has been active in the fannish vidding community for nearly a decade. When she is not vidding, she mentors new vidders and is on the staff of Vividcon, the annual vidding convention held each August in the U.S.