I’m getting so fired up about the people we have coming to join us at the mesh conference (May 30 and 31 at the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto) that I thought I would list some of them here, just to give you a taste — there’s lots more at www.meshconference.com and also listed on the blog there. But here are some of the highlights for me:
- Mike Arrington, obviously — the founder and editor of TechCrunch is pretty much the poster boy for Web 2.0 and also at the epicenter of what’s going on with new media.
- Jim Buckmaster — the CEO of Craigslist, which isn’t just a phenomenally successful social network, but also an incredible story of how the founders have deliberately avoided making money.
- Rachel Sklar — Toronto-born former lawyer who is now the editor of the Eat The Press section of Huffington Post, a giant in the field of new media and a wonderful writer to boot.
- Jeff Howe — a Wired contributing editor and veteran journalist who invented the term “crowdsourcing” and is now working on a book about the concept of content produced by users.
- Simon Pulsifer — Canada’s own “king of Wikipedia,” who has written more than 2,000 entries in the open-source encyclopedia and edited almost 100,000.
- Mike Masnick — the founder of Techdirt, a key source of creative thinking about Web 2.0 and technology in general, as well as a people-powered consulting company.
There are lots more too: How about Garth Turner, blogger/author and MP? Or Christine Herron, a venture capitalist with The Omidyar Network. Or Scott Feschuk, writer/comedian and former Paul Martin speechwriter. Video-blogger Loren Feldman from 1938media. Andrew Coyne, columnist and gadfly. McLean Mashingaidze-Greaves, creator of CBC’s Zed and now Rapspace.tv. And dozens more. Better hurry — tickets are going fast 🙂