Date: April 1, 2009
Speaker: Ward Cunningham — AboutUs.org
Born in Portland thirteen years ago, Wiki technology and the communities it supports have grown to disruptive proportions in business, education, collaboration, politics, and even intelligence. In this talk, the inventor of this technology relates Wiki’s founding motivation, design principles, and early impact. He turns then to the modern web, the technical and social challenges it presents, and the opportunities identified in his current position at AboutUs.org.
About the Speaker
Ward Cunningham is the Chief Technology Officer of AboutUs.org, a growth company hosting the communities formed by organizations and their constituents. Ward co-founded the consultancy Cunningham & Cunningham, Inc., and has served as a Director of the Eclipse Foundation, an Architect in Microsoft’s Patterns and Practices Group, the Director of R&D at Wyatt Software, and as Principle Engineer in the Tektronix Computer Research Laboratory. Ward is well known for his contributions to the developing practice of object-oriented programming, the variation called Extreme Programming, and the communities supported by his WikiWikiWeb. Ward hosts the AgileManifesto.org. He is a founder of the Hillside Group, where he created the Pattern Languages of Programs conferences that continue to be held all over the world.