DCWEEK 2011

Vote:Tech is a unique event that brings norm-shattering, ground breaking technology in the political, electoral and civil spheres to the forefront. For campaign directors, CTOs, political strategists and fundraisers, this engaging half-day conference blends demos, talks and panels on how to leverage emerging technology to discover, engage and activate voters. Vote:Tech is happening in collaboration with DC Week, taking place at the core conference on 11/11/11.

 

The event will be split into sessions that span the entire campaign process from discovering voters and supporters to engaging these groups to activating and calling them to action. Sessions will be structured as stand alone talks or as a demo + panel combination. Each part of the event will tackle the larger trends, problems and opportunities related to the theme. 

Speaker

Ryan Merket

Ryan is the CEO and Founder of Appstores.com, a white-label appstore platform that helps media publishers, API platforms, and app enthusiasts build appstores for the web and mobile devices. Before Appstores, Ryan was a Partner Engineer at Facebook where he helped top media publishers and API partners to conceptualize Facebook Connect integrations and on-Facebook app integrations. Prior to that, Ryan co-founded Ping.fm (acquired by Seesmic) and served as a Senior Designer for CBS Interactive. Ryan proudly lives in Oakland, CA with his wife, Jenn, and his cat, Emerson. He loves design – from a slick UI design to the typography on street signs.

Pierre-Loic Assayag

Pierre-Loic pushes the boundaries of Traackr's business and builds the team to support its expansion. He is passionate about social media and plays an instrumental role in the transition of the marketing and PR industries in the post mass media era. He is a veteran of the web industry, acting as Peugeot-Citroen's first Director of New Media in the 90s, then joining the front-line of the Internet economy.

Aaron Perry-Zucker

Aaron is a designer, entrepreneur and community maker with a B.F.A. in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design. Aaron launched Design for Obama, an online collaborative poster project, and formed a global community of artists and designers who created hundreds of campaign images. He subsequently joined forces with Spike Lee to publish a book about it, Design for Obama - Posters for Change: A Grassroots Anthology with Taschen books, Spike Lee, and Steven Heller. Aaron co-founded Big New Ideas and now lives in San Francisco perpetually experimenting with a crazy idea or two.

Dan Siroker

The inspiration for Optimizely came from Dan's experience as the Director of Analytics for the Obama Presidential Campaign and Deputy New Media Director for the Presidential Transition. Before Optimizely, Dan co-founded an online math game for kids called CarrotSticks. He was formerly a Product Manager for Google Chrome and AdWords. Dan graduated with Honors from Stanford University with a B.S. in Computer Science.

Guy Hirsch

Guy is a wantreprenuer. After managing a marketing department for a financial consulting firm, he started Patus, a startup that develops olfactory-based solutions for police and military personnel. After selling Patus to an Investment House, he got a call from a venture capitalist to build Vestopia, a venture-backed startup that launched a social utility for registered investment advisors that at peak had 50K+ members and $20M+ in tracked assets. Guy is now building Saygent, a venture-backed customer listening platform used by Fortune 500 firms. He somehow earned an LLB and BA from IDC in Israel.

Daishin Sugano

Daishin Sugano is the Co-Founder of Grubwithus, Inc., the social meals platform looking to bring online connections offline over great food. In addition to overseeing the day-to-day operations of the company, Daishin experiments with different ways to help improve the user experience of the site, as he heads up front-end development and design.  Prior to creating Grubwithus, he and his Co-Founder Eddy Lu failed miserably on a myriad of web and mobile applications as well as creating companies in the tea, apparel and financial industries. It is through their hardship that they learned the value of friendship, teamwork and determination in order to create something people want. Daishin is a Los Angeles native and received his Bachelor of Science in Political Economics from the University of California at Berkeley. He is currently looking for balance in his life since work consumes him and is taking suggestions on a hobby to pursue.