Elizabeth is a senior user experience designer on Google Maps. She has also supported Google Web Search. Prior to Google, Elizabeth managed the website
for the American Red Cross of Greater Chicago and designed websites for corporations such as Ford Motor Company, Hachette Filpacci, Sun Microsystems, and Bell and Howell.

Elizabeth has a master’s degree in interaction design from Carnegie Mellon University. She earned a bachelor’s degree in graphic design from the University of Michigan, where she graduated magna cum laude.

Bernhard Seefeld is the product manager for Google Maps. Prior to Google, Bernhard was the Lead Software Engineer at Endoxon AG, a Swiss mapping company that pioneered AJAX-based mapping and CTO and Co-founder of search.ch, one of the first local search engines.

Bernhard has a master’s degree in theoretical physics from the University of Berne, Switzerland.

Prior to joining Palm, Matías established the Experience Design department at Helio, a Los Angeles based boutique cellphone MVNO targeted at young, tech-savvy, mobile trendsetters. Before moving to LA, Matías lived for eight years in San Francisco. Working in Palo Alto, he founded the Design team at the startup company Danger, where he helped create the award winning Sidekick mobile communicator.

Matías holds a passionate conviction that the future of computing is mobile computing, and maintains an irrational fondness for sticky notes.

David Merrill
One of the creators of Siftables, the world’s first general-purpose, distributed, inch-scale tangible user interface platform. View his demonstration of Siftables at TED.com.

Sarah Jones
A Tony Award winning playwright and performer.

Kristina Halvorson
Widely recognized as one of the country’s leading web content strategists. Founder and president of Brain Traffic.

Sarah Jones is a Tony Award winning playwright and performer. Her multi-character solo show Bridge & Tunnel was originally produced Off-Broadway by Oscar-winner Meryl Streep, and went on to become a critically acclaimed, long running hit on Broadway.

Educated at Bryn Mawr College and the United Nations International School, Sarah recently returned to her UN School roots by becoming a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador with the title of first ever Official Spokesperson on Violence Against Children, traveling and performing for audiences from Indonesia to Ethiopia, the Middle East and Japan.

Winner of the 2007 Brendan Gill Prize, Sarah has also received grants and commissions from The Ford Foundation, NYSCA, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, and others, and theater honors including an Obie Award, a Helen Hayes Award, two Drama Desk nominations, and HBO’s US Comedy Arts Festival’s Best One Person Show Award, as well as an NYCLU Calloway Award in recognition of Sarah as the first artist in history to sue the Federal Communications Commission for censorship. The lawsuit resulted in reversal of the censorship ruling, which had targeted her hip-hop poem recording, “Your Revolution.”

A regular uncensored guest on public radio programs such as Fresh Air and Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen, Sarah has also made numerous TV appearances on programs including Charlie Rose, The Today Show, CBS Sunday Morning, Live with Regis and Kelly, Now on PBS, and on Sesame Street as ‘Ms. Noodle’ on Elmo’s World.

Most recently, Sarah was invited by First Lady Michelle Obama to perform at The White House in celebration of Women’s History Month. She is currently at work on a commission for Lincoln Center Theater and is developing a television project based on her characters.

His background is in Cognitive Science and Computer Science, and he develops interactive physical-digital tools that enable new forms of expressivity, problem-solving and collaboration. David’s expertise includes product invention, design, and implementation (electronics, sensing, embedded firmware, software, wireless communication). His Ph.D. thesis developed Siftables, the world’s first general-purpose, distributed, inch-scale tangible user interface platform.

David holds an MS from The Media Lab at MIT, and an MS in Computer Science and BS in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University.

Dr. Grandin didn’t talk until she was three and a half years old, communicating her frustration instead by screaming, peeping and humming. In 1950, she was labeled “autistic,” and her parents were told she should be institutionalized. She tells her story of “groping her way from the far side of darkness” in her book Emergence: Labeled Autistic, a book which stunned the world because, until its publication, most professionals and parents assumed being diagnosed “autistic” was virtually a death sentence to achievement or productivity in life.

Dr. Grandin has become a prominent author and speaker on the subject of autism because “I have read enough to know that there are still many parents, and, yes, professionals, too, who believe that ‘once autistic, always autistic.’ This dictum has meant sad and sorry lives for many children diagnosed, as I was in early life, as autistic. To these people, it is incomprehensible that the characteristics of autism can be modified and controlled. However, I feel strongly that I am living proof that they can.” (Taken from Emergence: Labeled Autistic)

Even though she was considered “weird” in her young school years, she eventually found a mentor, who recognized her interests and abilities, which she later expanded into becoming a successful livestock handling equipment designer, one of very few in the world. She has designed the facilities in which half the cattle are handled in the United States, consulting for firms such as Burger King, McDonald’s, Swift and others.

She presently works as an Associate Professor at Colorado State University but also speaks around the world on both autism and cattle handling.

Dr. Grandin’s current best seller is Animals in Translation. She also authored the best seller – Thinking in Pictures and Other Reports From My Life With Autism and produced videos – “Visual Thinking,” “Sensory,” “Careers” and “Medications” VHS; and Dr. Temple Grandin (DVD), which can be obtained from Future Horizons. At every Future Horizons’ conference on autism, the audience rates her presentation as 10++; her books have drawn equally-superlative reviews.

She is a passionate advocate for web content strategy and speaks regularly on the topic to audiences around the country. As founder and president of Brain Traffic, Kristina oversees the agency’s three core service offerings: web content strategy, information architecture, and writing for websites. She is the author of Content Strategy for the Web, due out from New Riders Voices that Matter in June 2009.