Keynote Speakers Include: Saul Griffith, Kathy Sierra, Lawrence Lessig, Tim O'Reilly, and Alex Steffen

Sebastopol, CA, December 7, 2007--The final touches are being added to the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, taking place March 3-6 in San Diego, California. Now in its seventh year, ETech hones in on the ideas, projects, and technologies that the alpha geeks are thinking about, hacking on, and inventing right now, creating a space for all participants to connect and be inspired. ETech is expected to draw more than 1,200 technologists, CxOs, IT managers, hackers, product developers, researchers, academics, thought leaders, business managers, strategists, artists, fringe technologists, entrepreneurs, business developers, and venture capitalists.

Conference chair Brady Forrest has put together a top-notch, dynamic program and had this to say about Etech 2008, "As always, we'll have speakers who live at the cutting edge of technology, but this year I'm particularly excited that of the 44+ speakers scheduled to present at ETech, many have a revolutionary perspective that offers different cultural, gender, and artistic views on how technology influences us."

ETech is about peer-to-peer networks to person-to-person mobile messaging, web services to weblogs, big-screen digital media to small-screen mobile gaming, hardware hacking to content remixing. Expect much of what you see in early form here to show up in the products and services you're taking for granted in the not-too-distant future. Via tutorials, sessions and evening events, ETech will spark education and knowledge exchange. Tutorial sessions include:

-"Storyboarding for Non-Fiction," Kathy Sierra

-"iPhone Software Development," Nate True

-"Live, Vast, and Deep: Web-native Information Visualization," Tom Carden, Eric Rodenbeck 

-"Debugging Hacks: What They Never Taught You about Solving Hard Bugs," Marc Hedlund

-"Kitchen Hack Lab: Food Hacking for Techies," Marc Powell

-"Making Things Talk Tutorial," Brian Jepson, Tom Igoe

Although there will be plenty of blue-sky theorizing, there will also be a wealth of real-world practical information. Conference sessions will be in-depth, and offer a vast array of subject matter from which to choose, including presentations from the leaders of hot "start-ups" such as Jeff Han, Peter Semmelhack from Bug Labs, and Steve Cousins of Willow Garage. Conference sessions include:

-"How Technology Almost Lost the War: In Iraq, the Critical Networks Are
Social--Not Electronic," Noah Shachtman, Wired Magzine

-"Sexual Identity Online," Violet Blue, blogger, author

-"Users, Socializers,  and Producers," Elizabeth Churchill, Yahoo! Research

-"DIY Drones: An Open Source Hardware and Software Approach to Making 'Minimum UAVs,'" Chris Anderson, Wired Magazine

-"Use Your Head: The Future of Mind Hacks," David Pescovitz, BoingBoing.net

-"Personalized Genomics: Benefits and Risks," Pauline Ng, J. Craig Venter Institute

-"The PC-Free Internet," David L. Rose, Ambient Devices

-"Information Visualization is a Medium," Eric Rodenbeck, Stamen Design

O'Reilly conferences are always about participation and networking. ETech is a wonderful example of how provocative subject matter inspires conversation well beyond the actual sessions. ETech is built on many layers of conversation including:

-Lively "hallway track" fosters unexpected encounters

-AppNight: an opportunity to see the latest and greatest applications

-Interactive game playing: Werewolf

-The Exhibit Hall reception: a chance to mingle with fellow attendees while perusing the latest offerings from sponsors and exhibitors

-Birds of a Feather sessions (BOFs), an O’Reilly conference staple provide attendees with an evening discussion forum around topics of their choosing

-Emerging Arts Fest: An evening "science-fair" style exhibition that showcases the intersection of art and technology

-Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Pioneer Awards: Awarded every year since 1991, the Pioneer Awards recognize leaders who are extending freedom and innovation on the electronic frontier

For 2008, the Exhibit Hall will include sponsors and exhibitors from a wide array of technology companies. Attendees will have an opportunity to discuss the latest trends with representatives from Sun Microsystems, Walt Disney Internet Group, O'Reilly Make Magazine, Adaptive Blue, and many others.

Learn more about ETech 2008 by visiting:
http://newsletter.oreilly.com/t/47247/7778468/7/0/

To see a brief video of presentations from the 2007 ETech Conference,
visit:
http://newsletter.oreilly.com/t/47247/7778468/8/0/

ETech is co-located with the Graphing Social Patterns (GSP) Conference: March 3-4, 2008 San Diego, CA. There will be a discount available for attendees who would like to visit both events. More information about GSP West will be available soon.