Battledecks is a laugh-riot rollercoaster of fun and nerves as several contestants try to put together coherent presentations from nonsensical Keynote decks. Previous contestants have laughed, cried, wet their pants and gotten impregnated during the show. The audience has a great time. Everyone goes home happy. Last year's show was a huge success, and we didn't even hand out free vuvuzelas to the audience.
Albert McMurry, American Drink’s mastermind, lives in Tacoma, WA. His writing can be found under false names in the “Letters” sections in back issues of Penthouse and Hustler, on Twitter as @SeoulBrother, at seoulbrother.com and on American Drink dot net.
Vice President of Experience Design at Razorfish. I say inappropriate things.
Bryan is one of the founders and the president of Typekit, a service for making everything awesome. He grew up in Colorado, so it's probably the altitude.
David Cairns is a San Francisco-based comedian and freelance software engineer. He is currently 26 and still doesn't understand the emotions coursing through his lithe, young body. If you pay him money he will make beautiful things for you, and everyone will be happy.
Jen Bekman is a gallerist, entrepreneur and writer. A native New Yorker—she attended Stuyvesant High School and Hunter College—Jen opened her eponymous gallery on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 2003 and founded Jen Bekman Projects in 2007.
She began her career directing community and editorial efforts for groundbreaking internet companies such as New York Online, Electric Minds and Netscape. Jen went on to oversee interactive programming efforts at Disney/GO Networks in San Francisco. In 2000, she moved back to New York City and continued her internet career as the Chief Creative Officer at an AOL-funded streaming video company and then later at Meetup, where she was the VP of User Development.
When she opened Jen Bekman Gallery, Jen’s internet experience, integral to her PR and marketing strategy, and her fresh perspective on the art world helped the gallery quickly establish itself as an exciting, unique space with a critically acclaimed program, focusing on emerging artists and innovative group shows. The gallery would later become the flagship of Jen Bekman Projects, a network of ventures with the mission of bringing the value and joy of collecting art to a dramatically wider audience than has ever been possible. JBP also includes 20x200, an e-commerce site offering curated, affordable limited-edition prints, and the critically acclaimed international photo competition Hey, Hot Shot! which discovers, recognizes and promotes photographers at all stages of their careers.
In January of 2007, American Photo named Jen an Innovator of the Year. In 2008, the Griffin Museum of Photography honored her with the Rising Star Award. In April 2010, she was named one of Fast Company’s Most Influential Women in Technology. In October 2010, Jen and 20x200 were profiled by American Express OPEN forum: Small Business Rules.
Jen frequently makes public appearances, participating in panels and portfolio reviews and leading seminars. She has spoken at SXSW, Web 2.0 Expo, the AIGA annual conference and reviewed portfolios at Fotofest Paris, Review Santa Fe, Parsons, The New York Foundation for the Arts, PhotoExpo and the Minnesota Center for Photography. She juried the 30th Anniversary Memberʼs Exhibition for the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University and has participated in the Mentors Program at the School of Visual Arts for several years. She served on the advisory board for 25 for 25: The AOL Grant Program, in which twenty-five $25,000 grants were awarded to artists, journalists and creative minds.
The founding editor of the design blog Unbeige and this blog, Personism, Jen maintains an active presence on both Twitter and Tumblr.
You know that time when your friend sent you that website and you thought your screen had a bug on it, but then it turned out it was just part of the website? I'm THAT girl.
Josh A. Cagan enjoys his wife, his couch, and any movie with “Switchblade” in the title. His 2009 movie BANDSLAM didn’t have the word “Switchblade” but he, and 90% of the top critics on Rotten Tomatoes enjoyed it anyway.
He was the head writer and the voice of various nerds on MTV’s animated series “Undergrads,” and if you’re one of the 16 people that means anything to, that’s a pretty big deal, right?
He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and their stuffed animals, all of whom have different voices and catchphrases. Nothing weird about that.
I’m the Design Director at Mule.
Molly has a hard time explaining to her extended family why she gets recognized by strangers occasionally.
Most of the time it's because they've seen her play ukulele, either on her YouTube channel or onstage with Jonathan Coulton and W00tstock.
Sometimes it's because they've seen something she made that accidentally went viral on Twitter, like the dinosaur coloring book that she turned into Hipster Dinosaurs, or the Doctor Who nesting dolls she made for her boyfriend.
Her family understands it to be "an internet thing."
Molly spans the entire west coast, dividing time between her family in Orange County and her college in Washington.
Nick Douglas edits Urlesque, a blog of fun things on the internet, for AOL. He's the editor of the book Twitter Wit, the former editor of Valleywag, and he's been published in Wired, Slate and Esquire.com. Now he wants to write for TV.
