Face to Face with Esther Dyson April 7, 2009

Esther Dyson takes the long-term view about marketing, personal data, social media, and whatever you want to ask her about. Freshly back from a six-month sabbatical training as a backup cosmonaut in Russia and Kazakhstan (during which she also managed to visit England, Uganda, France, Azerbaijan, Finland and Germany), Dyson is known for her insight and her ability to take an outsider's view of an industry she has been part of for decades. She has no canned speech, so come prepared with curiosity and questions. You can follow her on Twitter (edyson), Facebook Flickr (flickr.com/photos/edyson) or, occasionally, the Huffington Post.

Esther currently does business as chairman of EDventure Holdings; she sold the predecessor company (but not the name) to CNET in 2005. Her current board seats include 23andMe (personal genomics), Airship Ventures, Boxbe, CVO Group, Eventful.com, Evernote, Meetup, Voxiva, WPP Group and Yandex (Russia). Her advisory board seats include Ameritocracy, AnchorFree, Choicestream, IBS Group, Keas, Live Journal, PGP Corp., ReframeIt and Viewpoint. Companies she has invested in include Del.icio.us and Flickr (both sold to Yahoo!), Medstory and Powerset (sold to Microsoft), Brightmail (sold to Symantec), as well as ChallengePost, Dopplr, Icon Aircraft, Linqia, PatientsLikeMe, ReliefInsite, Space Adventures, School of Everything, Technorati and Xcor Aerospace.

She is also a trustee of the Eurasia Foundation, the Long Now Foundation, the National Endowment for Democracy, Personal Genomes.org (for which she has posted her genome and soon all her medical records online), the Santa Fe Institute, Stop Badware and the Sunlight Foundation.

As usual Gourmet Dinner and wine is included.

$25 online, $40 at the door.

Official Website: http://www.meetup.com/CIO-IT-Executives/calendar/10016018/