Ed Guy started his career at General Electric and Digital Equipment but joined the VoIP industry right at its inception. He worked initially with Bellcore/Telcordia and then moved to Pulver.com where he built and launched Freeworld DialUp – the world’s first network to offer free voice calls over the Internet. The ensuing furore lead to the Pulver Act which has ensured net neutrality for communications companies over the last 20 years. He is therefore considered one of the fathers of VoIP. He founded IPeerx, the VoIP peering exchange, in 2000 which was sold in 2006. He was Chief Architect for Truphone from 2006 to 2014 and more recently has been CTO of a medical communications and AI company. He has served as a VoIP instructor to Internet2.0 community and FCC and, authored RFC 5456 and related RFCs. He holds a PhD in Computer Engineering and has extensive experience in network-based, large-scale & highly-available voice and data systems.

Erik Viirre is a Professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), in the Departments of Neurosciences, Surgery and Cognitive Science. Dr Viirre has extensive experience in cognitive systems development for interaction between humans and technology. Between 2012 and 2017, he was the Medical and Technical Director of the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE, a technology competition for consumer-driven mobile health platforms with embedded Artificial Intelligence. Dr Viirre has worked on human safety and medical applications of VR and its human factors with funding from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, US Navy, DARPA, NASA and numerous corporate sources. Dr Viirre has participated in a variety of start-up companies, including Zero-G Corporation, 3E Therapeutics and Otosound LLC, which has developed his patented medical device for treatment of tinnitus. He has a PhD in Neurology and is a Medical Doctor, specialising in disorders of the inner ear.

Andy had his first job in marketing, events and communications at age 14 when he was working in media relations for a professional sports team in Philadelphia, and since then he’s never stopped. Over the past 44 years, Andy has been on all sides of the marketing communications triangle-client, agency, and media and has operated his value creation communications agency, Comunicano, since 1992.

Andy has also been heard and seen as a technology correspondent and interviewed on CNET, TMCnet, Voice of Disruption, Business Rockstars, KenRadio, the BBC’s ClickOnline and his online sites, VoIPWatch, WineScene, and WorkingAnywhere. Often quoted by media on travel, marketing, and technology, he holds a degree in Journalism from Temple University. He is currently CEO of Comunicano, Inc., a global value strategy agency, working with startups and companies in transition, with 45 exits to his credit in the last 18 years in addition to serving on the advisory boards of early stage and privately held companies.

David Brin is a scientist, tech speaker/consultant, and author. His new novel about our survival in the near future is Existence. A film by Kevin Costner was based on The Postman. His 16 novels, including NY Times Bestsellers and Hugo Award winners, have been translated into more than twenty languages. Earth, foreshadowed global warming, cyberwarfare and the world wide web. Dr. Brin serves on the external advisory board of NASA’s Innovative and Advanced Concepts program (NIAC). David appears frequently on shows such as Nova and The Universe and Life After People, speaking about science and future trends. He has keynoted scores of major events hosted by the likes of IBM, GE, Google and the Institute for Ethics in Emerging Technologies. His non-fiction book — The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Freedom and Privacy? — won the Freedom of Speech Award of the American Library Association.

Professor Michael Mainelli FCCA FCSI FBCS co-founded Z/Yen, the City of London’s leading commercial think-tank and venture firm, in 1994 to promote societal advance through better finance and technology. Z/Yen boasts a core team of respected professionals as well as numerous associates and is well-capitalised due to successful spin-outs and ventures. A qualified accountant, securities professional, computer specialist and management consultant, educated at Harvard University and Trinity College Dublin, Michael gained his PhD at London School of Economics where he was also a Visiting Professor. His PhD was on the application of risk/reward methodologies involving chaotic systems. Michael’s career summary is a decade of technology research, followed by a decade in finance, then two decades at Z/Yen.

Michael has published over 50 journal articles, 180 commercial articles and four books. Michael’s humorous risk/reward management novel, Clean Business Cuisine: Now and Z/Yen, written with Ian Harris, was a Sunday Times Book of the Week in 2000; Accountancy Age described it as “surprisingly funny considering it is written by a couple of accountants”. Their third co-authored book, The Price of Fish: A New Approach to Wicked Economics and Better Decisions, won the 2012 Independent Publisher Book Awards Finance, Investment & Economics Gold Prize.

Gioia Messinger is an accomplished serial entrepreneur, executive and corporate director with extensive background in connected devices, digital health, robotics/AI and video technologies. She serves as Founder and Principal of LinkedObjects, Inc. and as Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of California, San Diego. Previously, she was Founder and CEO of Avaak, Inc. (acquired by NETGEAR), a venture-funded company that created Arlo. Prior to Avaak, Gioia founded SUMMIT Design Technologies, Inc., a San Diego based engineering services firm. In that role, she contributed to the development of the first wireless Endoscopic Capsule or PillCam™. She is a member of the screening committee of the Triton Technology Fund, an early-stage seed fund dedicated to investing in UCSD related companies, and a visiting lecturer at the Rady School of Management at UCSD. She serves as an independent director for several private technology firms. Formerly, she served on the board of Vicon Industries (NYSE:VII). Ms. Messinger is involved in a number of not-for-profit and educational organizations. and serves as a judge for the Anu and Naveen Jain Women’s Safety XPRIZE. She received her master’s degree in Business Administration from the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine. She is the recipient of the Women Who Move the City Award and Athena Pinnacle Award.

Sir Roger Penrose, Emeritus Professor at the Mathematical Institute of the University of Oxford, Emeritus Fellow at Wadham College, and winner of the Wolf Prize in Physics, has made profound contributions across a broad range of scientific disciplines. His work encompasses geometry, black hole singularities, the unification of quantum mechanics and gravity, the structure of space-time, and the origin of our Universe. His geometric creations inspired the works of Escher, and the Penrose steps have been featured in several movies. His tilings adorn many public buildings, including the Oxford Mathematics Institute, and will soon decorate the San Francisco Transbay Terminal. The five-fold symmetry, initially thought impossible or a mathematical curiosity, has now been found in nature. In 1989 Penrose wrote The Emperor’s New Mind which challenged the premise that consciousness is computation and proposes we need new physics to understand it.

Throughout his highly successful international career, Jeff has been insistently promoting internet communications and telephony and has helped change the way the world communicates. An “Order” named after Jeff Pulver was issued by the Federal Communications Commission, supported by the White House.

Details: Jeff Pulver can be described as Internet Pioneer, VoIP; Entrepreneur, Investor, Strategist, Astrophotographer, Speaker, Futurist. Helped shape the worldwide market acceptance of VoIP; Founder/co-founder of numerous startups including Alchemist, Free World Dialup, VON, Vivox, MoNage and Vonage. A veteran of the Tradeshow industry; producer, host, curator of events. Known as a globally renowned Internet thought leader. In 1995 defined “VON” to stand for Voice/Video on the Net. From 1997 to 2008 he hosted/produced the VON Conferences which helped grow the VoIP Industry. In 2009 started the #140conf events. Founded MoNage in 2016 and co-founded Alchemist in 2017. His work in Washington is the reason services like FaceTime, Messenger and WhatsApp are free. Has influenced the creation of numerous other startups.

Dan first made his foray into international
business by building and executing the marketing strategy for a children’s’ brand that went from zero to one hundred million dollars in sales with no marketing budget outside of Facebook.

He moved on to run social media monetization
for a handful of A-list celebrities, generating millions of dollars from their social media accounts; from there he co-founded the leading AI-powered influencer marketing company.

Dan has spent the past year entrenched in the
blockchain community and is advising a select number of companies and projects.