The Big Mashup: See Who's Participating

Born in1970, Andrew Barron is a producer-director best known as the creator of the popular daily newscast Rocketboom, currently hosted by Joanne Colan. Baron is also listed as co-executive producer of Rocketboom's second production, JETSET. Rocketboom has steadily increased in popularity since it began in October 2004. He received a master of fine arts in design and technology at Parsons School of Design, NYC.

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Gillian Caldwell, executive director of WITNESS, is a filmmaker and an attorney. She was formerly co-director of the Global Survival Network, where she coordinated a two-year undercover investigation into the trafficking of women. Gillian received a bachelor of arts from Harvard University and a juris doctor from Georgetown University. She is a recipient of the 2000 Rockefeller Foundation Next Generation Leadership Award, was named one of 40 Outstanding Social Entrepreneurs by the Schwab Foundation, a 2003 Tech Laureate by the Tech Museum, and a Special Partner by Ashoka: Innovators for the Public. She speaks English and Spanish.

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Born in Lancashire, UK, Joanne Colan appears weekday mornings as the anchor of the popular vlog Rocketboom. With an eye for irony and a comedic slant, she hosts the series from a desk in the Rocketboom studio, offering amusing and/or informative video clips and web links. She has also delivered Rocketboom field reports from Lincoln Center, Coney Island and other New York locations. In addition to Rocketboom, Colan is also the host of the travel adventure series Any Given Latitude where she is seen trekking, climbing, sailing, scuba diving and snow-mobiling. The 13-episode series, which took her to 13 countries from Austria to Vietnam, premiered in April of 2006, when Scripps Networks launched its Fine Living Network. She began hosting Rocketboom on July 12, 2006. Colan's move to new media comes at a time when shows such as Rocketboom are attracting record levels of attention away from traditional media.

Joel Hyatt is the CEO and co-founder, with former Vice President Al Gore, of Current TV, the innovative news and information cable channel and website targeting young people and using viewer-created content. Additionally, Hyatt teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford Business School, and is the CEO of IndTV, a new 24 hour cable network that he established with Gore. In 1977, he founded Hyatt Legal Services to provide accessible legal services to middle- and lower-income families. Joel was also the founder, president, and chief executive officer of Hyatt Legal Plans, Inc., America's largest provider of group legal services.

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Chris Melissinos is Sun Microsystems' CTO of Web 2.0 and Chief Gaming Officer and a self-proclaimed video game addict. His responsibilities include the development of Sun Microsystems programs, offerings, and vision targeting the electronic entertainment industry. He is responsible for driving an industry-wide movement toward Java technology-based game development and building infrastructure programs for massively connected game play. Melissinos' speaking resume includes high profile conferences such as the Consumer Electronics Show, Electronic Entertainment Expo, Game Developers Conference, Harvard's Cyberposium, Java Conference in Milan, Italy, and Ziff-Davis's Electronic Gaming Summit.

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Paul D. Miller is an artist, writer, and musician working in New York. His written work has appeared in The Village Voice, The Source, Artforum, Raygun, Rap Pages, Paper Magazine, and a host of other periodicals. Miller's first collection of essays, Rhythm Science, was published by MIT Press in April 2004, and was included in several year-end lists of the best books of 2004, including the Guardian (UK) and Publishers Weekly. In 2007, Sound Unbound, an anthology of writings on sound art and multi-media by contemporary cultural theorists will follow Rhythm Science.

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Douglas Rushkoff is the author of over ten bestselling books about culture, values, media, and change, including Media Virus, Coercion, and, most recently, "Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out." He lectures around the world, made two Frontline documentaries- The Persuaders and The Merchants of Cool - and is a professor of communications at New York University.

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Martin Stiksel, born in Austria, has been working with music since 1995 as a producer for Austrian National Radio (ORF) and a sound designer with NBAW. In 1999 he set up insine.net, a platform for unsigned artists and bands and an online record label together with Felix Miller. They were joined by Richard Jones of Audioscrobbler fame in 2003 and founded Last.fm with a view to building the social music platform to end them all.

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