Andrew Key‘s career has been at the intersection of capital markets and technology. He co-founded ConsenSys Capital, a financial services constellation of companies, including Fund Foundry, ConsenSys Ventures, and Token Foundry.

Previously, Andrew ran ConsenSys’ global business development from inception of the company, co-founded ConsenSys Enterprise, co-created the first Ethereum Blockchain-as-a-Service offering with Microsoft , and began the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance,

Andrew joined ConsenSys with capital markets, healthcare, technology and entrepreneurial experience. Previously, he worked for UBS investment bank in equities analysis. Later, he was involved within multiple hedge funds and broker dealers in alternative asset investing. After, he co-founded a healthcare revenue cycle management company where he learned about Bitcoin and eventually Ethereum.

He graduated from Loyola University in Maryland and University of Auckland with degrees in economics and international finance. Andrew’s best computer science was in college, and it’s been downhill technically, since then.

Andrew’s LinkedIn
Andrew on Twitter

Blockchain

A blockchain, originally block chain, is a continuously growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked and secured using cryptography. Each block typically contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp and transaction data.

By design, a blockchain is inherently resistant to modification of the data. It is “an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way”. For use as a distributed ledger, a blockchain is typically managed by a peer-to-peer network collectively adhering to a protocol for inter-node communication and validating new blocks. Once recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without the alteration of all subsequent blocks, which requires collusion of the network majority. This makes blockchains potentially suitable for the recording of events, medical records,and other records management activities, such as identity management, transaction processing, documenting provenance, food traceability or voting.

Blockchain was invented by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 for use in the cryptocurrency bitcoin, as its public transaction ledger. The invention of the blockchain for bitcoin made it the first digital currency to solve the double-spending problem without the need of a trusted authority or central server. The bitcoin design has been the inspiration for other applications.

Ethereum

Ethereum is an open-source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform and operating system featuring smart contract (scripting) functionality.It supports a modified version of Nakamoto consensus via transaction based state transitions. Ether is a cryptocurrency whose blockchain is generated by the Ethereum platform. Ether can be transferred between accounts and used to compensate participant mining nodes for computations performed.

Writing (Andrew Keys)

Blockchain Predictions for 2018
Blockchain Predictions for 2017
Blockchain Predictions of 2016
Memo from Davos
Building the Hyperconnected Future on Blockchains (responsible for writing healthcare section)
Non-Technical Introduction to Ethereum
Tokenization of Assets

Andrew/ ConsenSys in Mainstream Media 

New York Times: Ethereum, a Virtual Currency, Enables Transactions That Rival Bitcoin’s (03/2016)
Bloomberg: Post-Bitcoin Technology Has Geeks, Giants, and Hackers Excited (03/2017)
Wall St Journal: Ethereum Network Copes With Surge of Activity as Virtual Kitten Game Goes Viral (12/2017)
The Economist: Financial Technology is proving less of a battleground than feared (052017)
International Business Times: How Ethereum Blockchain Technology Will Revolutionize Digital Asset Value (01/2018)

More Videos with Andrew

The Blockchain will disrupt everything – Keynote, Berlin November 2017
Speaking at Davos, World Economic Forum (1/2018)
Keynote – Cloud Expo, Jacob Javitz Center (03/2018)

“I believe it is possible to end torture in my lifetime.”In 2000, Karen founded International Bridges to Justice to help create systemic change in criminal justice and promote basic rights of legal representation for defendants on the ground. Her foundation complements the work of witness groups, who do the equally vital work of advocacy, reports, photographs. Tse’s group helps governments build new systems that respect individual rights. In IBJ’s first years, she negotiated groundbreaking measures  in judicial reform with the Chinese, Vietnamese and Cambodian governments. It now works in sixteen countries, including Rwanda, Burundi and India.

International Bridges to Justice (IBJ) is a non-governmental organization based in Geneva, Switzerland. The organization’s stated mission is “to protect the basic legal rights of ordinary citizens in developing countries by guaranteeing all citizens the right to competent legal representation, the right to be protected from cruel and unusual punishment, and the right to a fair trial”. IBJ has the additional stated goal “to end torture in this Century”

IBJ only works in countries whose international treaty obligations and national laws have already laid the legal framework for the protection of their citizens and where a Memorandum of Understanding has been signed with the relevant government and legal authorities, setting out the parameters under which IBJ will work. It adopts a three pillar approach to accomplishing its aims:

Other articles/links/videos:
Documentary on her work in India and Cambodia (18 min/ French with English subtitles):

Karen Tse’s TED Talk: How to End Torture  (transcribed in over 30 languages)

Career:  Bestselling author, strategic advisor, innovation activist dubbed “Mr. Creativity” by The Economist; Chairmen & CEO EdgeMakers; Chairman ILSI
Interests: Jazz, Film & Theater (actively!). Unpeeling the onion, reinvention of education, innovation at societal scale.
Hometown: San Francisco, USA

John Kao was born in 1950 to Chinese immigrant parents. An accomplished jazz pianist, he spent the summer of 1969 playing keyboards for Frank Zappa. Kao studied philosophy at Yale College, received an MD from Yale Medical School, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He taught at Harvard Business School from 1982-96, where he specialized in innovation and entrepreneurship and created executive and MBA programs on innovation. He has also held faculty appointments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, Yale College, and the Naval Postgraduate School.

John is a leader in creating and delivering high end innovation leadership executive programs for both public and private sectors. He is chairman of the Institute for Large Scale Innovation, whose i20 group is an association of 30 national ‘Chief Innovation Officers.’  John coined the term “large scale innovation” to refer to innovation as a societal agenda.  He has advised numerous nations and regions on innovation strategy and execution, including Finland, Singapore, the City of San Francisco, Abu Dhabi and elements of the US government as well as the European Union innovation policy team.

His advisory work for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was described in The New York Times as “out of the box”

More:
www.johnkao.com
John Kao on Wikipedia
John on Twitter
www.edgemakers.com

Key publications:
Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity (1996; still reprinted and available in 16 languages)
Innovation Nation: How America Is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do to Get It Back (2007) 

Career: Advisor to UN Secretary General for Innovative Financing, Chair UNITAID and Millennium Foundation, UN Deputy
Previously French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Health etc. Prior to that Cardiologist and Professor of Public Health
Interests: Global Health, Medicine, Mico-Financing
Hometown: Paris, France

Dr. Philippe Douste-Blazy is one of the world’s foremost experts on innovative financing to reach the Millennium Development Goals. In 2006, he founded the Leading Group on Solidarity Levies to Fund Development at Paris Conference on Innovative Development Financing Mechanisms and was elected President of UNITAID in the same year.
Prior, he held several ministerial positions in France, including Minister of Health (1993-1995), Minister of Culture & Communication (1995-1997), Minister for Solidarity, Health & Family (2004-2005) and Minister of Foreign Affairs (2005-2007). Before embracing policy initiatives, Dr. Douste-Blazy was practicing cardiologist & Professor of Public Health at Toulouse University in France.
On 19th Feb. 2008, he became Special Advisor on Innovative Financing for Development, with the rank of UN Under-Secretary-General by the UN, following his experience as chairman of the International Drug Purchase Facility hosted by the WHO et al.

UNITAID’s mission is to contribute to scaling up access to treatment for HIV/ AIDS, malaria & tuberculosis, primarily for people in low-income countries, by leveraging price reductions for quality diagnostics & medicines, and accelerating the pace at which these are made available.
Since UNITAID’s overall objective is to serve the needs of the poorest countries & most vulnerable populations, it dedicates at least 85% of its funds to providing health commodities to low-income countries. UNITAID uses less than 10% of its funds to purchase products for lower middle-income countries & less than 5% for upper middle-income countries. These criteria are a key consideration in the decision to fund partner projects.

The Millennium Foundation for Innovative Finance for Health was established in Nov. 2008 as an independent non-profit Swiss foundation, located in Geneva. Their mission is aligned with helping achieve the three health-related Millennium Development Goals agreed to by the UN by implementing new innovative financing mechanisms to expand sources of funding available to help eradicate life-threatening contagious diseases, including HIV/AIDS, malaria & tuberculosis among the world´s most vulnerable populations. These mechanisms have the form of projects, such as “MassiveGood” which was launched in March 2010 and aims at giving travelers the possibility to add a $2, £2 or €2 micro-contribution to the purchase of a travel reservation, with all proceeds going to fight against diseases as mentioned above.

More:
www.pdousteblazy.com
Blog: Philippe Dousty-Blazy

Philippe Douste-Blazy on LinkedIN
Philippe Douste-Blazy on Facebook
Philippe Douse-Blazy on Twitter

www.unitaid.eu
UNITAID on Facebook

www.millennium-foundation.org
www.massivegood.org

Other articles/links/videos:
Video: Philippe Douste-Blazy  –  Advocate for the Millennium Development Goals

Career: Executive Director Ushahidi, TED Senior Fellow, Blogger
Interests: Photography, Architecture, Mobile Sensors, African Futurism
Hometown: Eldoret, Kenya

Juliana Rotich is Co-Founder and Executive Director of Ushahidi, the crowdsourcing platform that leverages mobile phones and the internet to change the way information flows. Ushahidi is a web based reporting system that utilizes crowdsourced data to formulate visual map information of a crisis on a real-time basis. In the Kenyan scenario it was used to map out incidents of violence. Ushahidi then grew to be an open source platform that has been used in various situations such as the Haiti and Chile earthquakes, the Palestine conflict crisis, Japan’s Earthquake and the Lybian conflict.
Prior to Ushahidi Juliana has worked in the telecommunications industry for over ten years.  She is originally from Kenya, with a Computer Science degree from the University of Missouri, Kansas City. She is a technology, budding African Futurist and TED Senior Fellow. She co- founded Mobisoko, a mobile marketplace for language and location relevant apps in Africa. She also writes the well-respected ‘Afromusing’ blog, typically with a focus on African tech and renewable energy. She often speaks at international conferences about technology, innovation, media, open source, crisis mapping and Africa; Past conferences she has spoken at include Lift, DEMO, TTI Vanguard, TransMediale, WSIS, DLD Women, Guardian Activate World Economic Forum -Davos, and ARS Electronica. She was named one of the Top 100 women by the Guardian newspaper and top 2 women in Technology 2011.

Ushahidi is a non-profit tech company that specializes in developing free & open source software for information collection, visualization &  interactive mapping to  democratizing information, increasing transparency & lowering the barriers for individuals to share their stories (Crowdmap, SwiftRiver). “Ushahidi” means “testimony” in Swahili, and was a website initially developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout in 2008.  Since then Ushaidi has grown to a focused organization and now consists of a strong team of volunteer developers primarily in Africa, but also Europe, South America and the U.S. It is a disruptive organization that is willing to take risks in the pursuit of changing the traditional way that information flows.

Crowdmap is designed and built by the people behind Ushahidi. As the Ushahidi platform has evolved, so have its uses. Crowdmap allows you to set up your own deployment of Ushahidi without having to install it on your own web server. It is the fastest, simplest installation of the Ushahidi platform. Within minutes you’ll be up and running with your own installation, mapping reports events and visualizing information.

SwiftRiver is a free open source platform that helps people make sense of information in a short amount of time. The platform was born out of the need to understand and act upon a wave of massive amounts of crisis data that tends to overwhelm in the first 24 hours of a disaster.  In practice, SwiftRiver enables the filtering and verification of real-time data from channels such as Twitter, SMS, Email and RSS feeds. This free tool is especially useful for organizations that need to sort their data by authority and accuracy, as opposed to popularity. These organizations include media, emergency response groups, election monitors and more. This might include journalists and other media institutions, emergency response groups, election monitors and more.

Juliana´s TED Story: “I met two of the three co-founders of Ushahidi at TEDGlobal 2007, a conference that was a seminal moment for Africa, and for me. TED not only brought together online friends and kindred spirits, thereby seeding what later became Ushahidi, but it also changed my whole perspective about Africa, and the world. Since 2007, my life has taken an arc that I could not be happier about. I hosted the second annual TEDxNairobi, where the ideas worth spreading that TED lit in the TED Fellow’s minds, get passed on to others in the Kenyan community. As a TED Senior Fellow, I have had the incredible opportunity to make friends from around the world, and within the TED community, friendships that I treasure as we continue this journey of sharing knowledge and living our lives as active change agents in this world.”

More:
LinkedIn: Juliana
http://www.ted.com/fellows/view/id/31 (2011/03/16)

www.ushahidi.com
Twitter:@ushahidi
vimeo: Ushahidi
Facebook: Ushahidi
Crunchbase: Ushahidi
Wikipedia: Ushahidi

www.crowdmap.com
Twitter:@crowdmap
Facebook: Crowdmap

Swiftriver
Twitter:@swiftriver
Facebook: Swiftriver

www.afromusing.com
Twitter:@afromusing

Other articles/links/videos:

Japan:

Die Zeit: Ushahidi: Wissen, was wo in Japan passiert (2011/03/16)
GOOD: Earthquake in Japan: Help Google and Ushahidi Rescue Trapped Citizens and Reunite Families (2011/03/11)
Scienceray: Google and Ushahidi Serving Japan (2011/03/16)
Jonathan Stray: UN asks Ushahidi to produce Crisis Map of Lybia (2011/03/08)
Global Pulse: Crisismappers Extend UN Capacity in Lybia (2011/03/04)
Guardian.co.uk: Top 100 women: Technology – Juliana Rotich (2011/03/08)
Video: Interview Juliana Rotich on DLD (2011)
Global Voices: Japan: Earthquake Crisis Mapping on Ushahidi (2011/03/15)
Ushahidi: Crisis Mapping Japan´s Earthquake and How You Can Help (2011/03)
Geocommons: Japan Radiation Report Data Stream from Ushahidi (2011/03)
Davos: Ushahidi Grows Its Global Crowd-sourcing Platform, Slams Twitter Censorship (TCTV) (01/12)

Davos: Ushahidi Grows Its Global Crowd-sourcing Platform, Slams Twitter Censorship [TCTV]

Egypt:

Ushahidi: Crowdmapping Egypt (2011/01/25)
Diary of a Crisis Mapper: Ushahidi Egypt: When Open Data is Not so Open, or When People Just Don´t Get it (2010/11/20)

Ushahidi´s Juliana Rotich introduces Crisis Mapping in short:

Career: Theoretical Physicist. Professor at Yale, Harvard, Case Western Reserve and Arizona State University. Bestseller author e.g. “The Physics of Star Trek”.
Interests: Mountain Bike, Fly Fish, Scuba Dive
Hometown: Phoenix (AZ), USA

“I became a scientist in part because I read books by other scientists, such as Albert Einstein, George Gamow, Sir James Jeans, etc, when I was a child, and my popular writing returns the favor. One of my greatest joys is when a young person comes up to me and tells me that one of my books motivated them to become a scientist.

I believe science is not only a vital part of our culture, but is fun, and I try and convey that in my books and lectures. I am honored that Scientific American referred to me as a rare scientific public intellectual, and that all three major US Physics Societies: the American Physical Society, the American Association of Physics Teachers, and the American Institute of Physics, have seen fit to honor me with their highest awards for research and writing.

My research focuses on the beginning and end of the Universe. Among my contributions to the field of cosmology, I helped lead the search for dark matter, and first proposed the existence of dark energy in 1995.”

(LMK, Amazon Biography)

Lawrence Maxwell Krauss is an American Theoretical Physicist. In 1982, he received undergraduate degrees in mathematics and physics from Carleton University and his Ph.D. from the MIT. In 1985, he became assistant professor at Yale University and Associate Professor (1988). From 1993 to 2005, he was professor of astronomy and Chairman of Physics Department at Case Western Reserve University.
In August 2008, he joined the faculty at Arizona State University as Foundation Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration, and the Department of Physics in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, and Director of University’s Origins Initiative. In 2009, he helped inaugurate this initiative with the Origins Symposium in which 80 of the world’s leading scientists participated, and 3000 people attended. He currently serves on advisory board of Scientists and Engineers for America (SEA) and was elected to the Board of Directors of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS).
He regularly appears in national media for public outreach in science and has written many editorials, e.g. New York Times.

More:
Facebook Fanpage
Lawrence M. Krauss Faculty Website

Wikipedia: Lawrence M. Krauss
Media Bio of Lawrence Krauss

Lawrence’s books on Amazon
Lawrences books, publications, lectures an other media and public appearances

Other articles/links/videos:
Video: “A Universe From Nothing” by Lawrence Krauss, AAI 2009

Career: Founder BraveNewTalent
Chair Take Heart India, Young Global Leader WEF
Interests: Social Recruiting & Networks, New Media, Social Media,
Entrepreneurship, Generation Y, India, Youth, Leadership, Innovation
Hometown: London, UK

Lucian Tarnowski has been honoured as Europe’s youngest Young Global Leader (YGL) by World Economic Forum (WEF). He is winner of Global Enterprising Young Brit (2009) and was named as one of Britain’s rising business stars by The Spectator Business. He is on UKTI’s Global Entrepreneur Program with BraveNewTalent being described by UK Government as a “Technology Company of Exceptional Potential”. He plays an active role in UK tech start-up scene and speaks regularly around the world on the way social recruiting is changing the global talent market. In his spare time he runs the no overhead education charity Take Heart India.

Brave New Talent is a game changing Social Recruiting platform with traction, blue chip clients and heading for Global scale. Jobseekers use the site to create a professional profile and follow their target employers thereby allowing the employer to develop a professional talent community. The service is free to access for talent and generates revenue from employers using Talent Words™ to drive targeted people into their communities. The platform brings together all social media content the employer has – jobs, tweets, blogs, news, pictures, videos and more. BraveNewTalent is developing a new model of online education based on employers distributing training and skills to their talent communities in advance of the job. Clients include blue chip brands such as IBM, L’Oreal, Tesco and McAfee.

Take Heart India is a youth run charity focused on practical education projects in India. They are relatively unique in the charity sector for two reasons: They do not employ a single person, which means that 100% of proceeds are directed out to the education projects in India. 2. They run with the leitmotiv ‘Work builds, charity destroys’. Rather than giving money the aim is to empower people through practical education. Since 2004 Take Heart has built an IT school that has provided real job opportunities to thousands of students. The school specialises in training blind students IT skills and has been recognized as one of India’s top 3 IT training facilities for blind students.

More:
www.luciantarnowski.com
Lucian on LinkedIn
Twitter: @LucianT

www.bravenewtalent.com
BraveNewTalent on Facebook
Twitter: @BraveNewTalent

www.takeheartindia.org
Take Heart India on Facebook
Twitter: @TakeHeartIndia

www.oneyoungworld.wayn.com
One Young World on Facebook
Twitter: @OneYoungWorld

Other articles/links/videos:
The Telegraph: Recruitment revolution: A “Facebook for corporates” (11/03)
The Telegraph: Europe is just one player in a global ´digital enlightenment´. (11/01)
Microsoft Europe: Digital Natives – The new way to engage Gen Y. (10/01)

Video: BraveNewTalent quick view
Video: Lucian Tarnowski – Founder & CEO, BraveNewTalent
Video: Lucian Tarnowski, BraveNewTalent (TCTV)

http://blog.bravenewtalent.com/2011/01/reflections-on-the-decade/
http://blog.bravenewtalent.com/2010/10/recruiting-youth/
http://blog.bravenewtalent.com/2010/10/social-learning-and-the-big-society/

Short intro to BraveNewTalent:

Career: Curator & Host INK Conference (formerly TED India), Founder & CEO Ixoraa Media, Founder Digital Equalizer Program, Partner at Global Catalyst Partners
Interests: Collecting People, Human Spirit, Matching Indo and U.S Business
Hometown: Milpitas (CA), USA; New Delhi, India

Lakshmi Pratury is Founder and CEO of Ixoraa Media whose mission is to strengthen ties between the US and India through corporate, cultural, and media events. As a social entrepreneur, Lakshmi was a leading force at the American India Foundation (AIF), that raised over $30M in five years to channel towards development activities in India. She also started ‘Schools Online India’ (later ‘Digital Equalizer’) where she brought internet access to underprivileged children. Earlier, she was partner at Global Catalyst Partners (GCP) and was the first to turn the VC firm’s attention onto India. Lakshmi was co-host of the first ever TED conference in Asia – the TEDIndia. She continues sharing untold stories with the annual INK Conference, in association with TED.

The Ink Conference is an annual conference that aims to fuel innovation and foster knowledge by bringing together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers from a range of disciplines such as art, architecture, dance, design, music, science, social entrepreneurship, sports and technology. The first INK was in December 2010 in Delhi and will be featured annually.

Ixoraa Media is dedicated to bringing together extraordinary talent across generations and disciplines to focus on shaping the thinking, policy, and progress in the Indo–U.S. corridor. Ixoraa Media bandwidth ranges from technology projects with the private office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to music concerts. Ixora Media was host of TEDIndia, which attracted a global audience and featured thought leaders from India. Currently it is hosting The INK Conference in association with TED.

More:
www.theinkconference.com
www.ted.com
www.ixoraamedia.com

The INK Conference on Facebook
TED on Facebook
Twitter: @TEDTalks

Lakshmi on LinkedIn
Twitter: @LakshmiPratury
Lakshmi on Facebook

Other articles/links/videos:
Videos talks from INK Conference – The INKTalks: www.inktalks.com
Your Story: Lakshmi Pratury on INK conference: “We want to showcase innovation of thought” (10/2010)
Blogadda: Interview with Lakshmi Pratury (2010)

Short intro to The Ink Conference:

More:
www.jolicloud.com
www.facebook.com/jolicloud
www.twitter.com/jolicloud
Jolicloud on Wikipedia

www.netvibes.com

Tariq on Twitter
Blog: http://www.tariqkrim.com
Tariq’s profile on LinkedIn

Other articles/links/videos:
Techcrunch: Jolicoud’s netbook will launch first in the UK (11/2010)
TechCrunch: Hands-On Review Of Jolicloud, The iPhonesque OS For Netbooks (06/2009)
Zmogo: Jolicloud, A Fantastic OS For Your Netbook (06/2009)
TripTech blog: Nevermind Mac and Windows; It’s a Cloud World Now (07/2009)
ZDNet UK: Jolicloud: The future is HTML 5 (08/2010)

Short intro to Jolicloud and Jolibook:

Career: Scientist and Entrepreneur (Technology Pioneer 2010 by WEF), Founder and CEO Aura Biosciences
Interests: Art, Music, Travel, Languages, Photography, Innovation, Giving Back
Hometown: Barcelona, Spain; Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Elisabet de los Pinos is Founder and CEO of Aura Biosciences, a next-generation biotechnology company seeking to greatly improve the efficacy of cancer treatment. Her career spans oncology and translational research in both biotech and large pharmaceutical settings, including Lilly Pharmaceuticals. Elisabet received a magna cum laude doctorate in Molecular Biology at the University of Barcelona. She completed part of her training at Mount Sinai School of Medicine Institute of Molecular Medicine (NY-USA) and at Georgetown School of Medicine (Washington DC). Following that, she worked as a post-doctoral Fellow at the Institute of Cancer Research in London (UK). She has a Master degree in Business Administration from European IE Business School and is a graduate of the Entrepreneurship Development Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Aura Biosciences, is a next-generation biotech company developing the Nanosmart(tm) platform for the delivery of nano-enabled drugs. Nanosmart solves critical issues in drug delivery by encapsulating therapies within protein nanoparticles engineered for precise targeting, immune system evasion, and efficient cellular uptake. Aura is applying Nanosmart to two important areas, the well-studied area of chemotherapeutics and the emerging field of RNAi. With an initial focus on cancer, Aura’s goal is to increase patient survival rates by making chemotherapy better tolerated and more efficacious. The company was recognized in 2009 as a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum and is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

More:
www.aurobiosciences.com

Other articles/links/videos:
Time Magazine: Tech Pioneers Who Will Change Your Life
Bloomberg Businessweek: Aura Biosciences Targets a New Era of Cancer Drugs (2009/12)
YouTube by WEF / Technology Pioneer 2010: Delivering the Next Generation of Nano-embeded Drugs

Short intro to Aura Biosciences:

Career: Social Media Architect, World Economic Forum
Interests: Food, Travel, Family
Hometown: Lake Geneva, France; Krefeld, Germany

Matthias Lüfkens, Associate Director-Media, World Economic Forum, aspires to inspire. After bringing Davos to the world for five years, he now brings the world to Davos through his innovative use of social media, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, MySpace, Wikipedia, Qik and Livestream included.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is a non-profit foundation best known for its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which brings together top business leaders, international political leaders, selected intellectuals and journalists to discuss the most pressing issues facing the world, including health and the environment. The WEF is active on numerous social media platforms to engage the wider public in their activities and to debate the key challenges facing the planet.

Previously a journalist, he was Baltic States correspondent for Agence France Presse, Libération and the Daily Telegraph (1991-96); and later Deputy Editor-in-chief of EuroNews television (1996-2004). Lüfkens is writing a bi monthly column about social media for the Swiss-French magazine Bilan which are also published on his blog: http://lufkens.wordpress.com. In 1991 he founded the In Your Pocket city guide series in Lithuania, now Central Europe’s premier publisher and provider of city information. In his free time, when not slavishly tracking tech trends, Lüfkens films and edits videos for his multiple YouTube channels.

More:

Matthias Lüfkens on
http://twitter.com/luefkens
http://facebook.com/luefkens
http://youtube.com/luefkens
http://linkedin.com/in/luefkens
http://foursquare.com/luefkens
http://lufkens.wordpress.com