New Speakers: Evan Williams, Jack Cheng, Adrian Holovaty, Jack Conte
Today, four more ridiculously multi-talented people responsible for some of our favorite projects ever: Evan Williams, Jack Cheng, Adrian Holovaty, and Jack Conte.
Evan Williams
For the last 15 years, Evan Williams has made it easy for non-geeks to find their voice online. He cofounded Blogger in 1999, Odeo in 2004, Twitter in 2006, and last year, Medium. Each of his projects built on the last, democratizing personal publishing for everyone. You can follow him on Twitter, along with 1.68 million of his closest friends.
Jack Cheng
Shanghai-born, Detroit-raised, and Brooklyn-based, Jack Cheng is a designer turned full-time writer. These Days, his self-published first novel, raised $23,000 on Kickstarter. In the weekly updates that followed, he outlined every step of the creative process, giving an inside look into the publishing and editing process to his 961 backers. Released in April, These Days can be ordered on Amazon, or pay-what-you-like as part of the DRM-free Tomely E-Book Bundle.
Adrian Holovaty
As a coder, Adrian Holovaty pioneered the field of computer-assisted journalism, co-creating the Django web development framework and launching Chicago Crime, the influential Google Maps mashup that evolved into the Knight Foundation-funded EveryBlock.
Since 2007, he’s led a double life as one of YouTube’s most popular guitarists, with over 17 million views for his videos. Adrian’s newest project, SoundSlice, is a powerful tool for transcribing and sharing guitar tablature for YouTube videos. Last week, he announced Pitch Perfect, a new way for independent musicians to sell official transcriptions of their work.
Jack Conte
You probably know Jack Conte as one-half of Pomplamoose, the duo that exploded the Internet with their tightly-edited VideoSongs on YouTube. Frustrated by a lack of funding options for musicians like him, the San Francisco-based multi-instrumentalist launched Patreon, a subscription service for artists who create a stream of smaller works, like YouTube videos, blog posts, or daily comics. Jack’s currently wrapping up his West Coast tour, and you can download his new EP for free through Patreon.