Amy Austin is the longtime publisher of Washington City Paper, one of the country's leading alternative weeklies. With exceptional editorial voice and a digital suaveness that makes City Paper a leader in online audience and revenue, Amy has helped City Paper cultivate an ideal combination: an audience of local young professionals who interact with the website and the print publication several times a week, and key local advertisers who depend on Washington City Paper to talk with this hard-to-reach audience. Amy understands that good journalism is the path to success: Dating back two decades and several media revolutions, she has built a market-leading print publication and a robust online platform alongside strong editors including David Carr, the recent subject of Page One, The New York Times documentary. She believes the current editorial voice is at its highest-level of excellence with the current editor, Michael Schaffer. Today City Paper's digital revenues and audience outpace online sites and comparable alternative publications. Amy is a also an active member of the community, known among the leaders in government, arts and entertainment, sports, and restaurant community for her passionate devotion to improving and participating in Washington D.C.

David S. Bennahum is President and CEO of the Center for Independent Media (CIM), which publishes six news sites that impact public debate and advance the common good. The Center's news sites currently operate in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, and a national program in Washington, D.C, with a seventh site -- The Florida Independent -- slated to launch in late spring of this year. The Center's reporters, during their tenure with CIM, have won over forty prestigious awards for excellence in journalism.David's career in new media began as a founding writer with Wired magazine in 1994. His reporting on the rise of the Internet and its impact on our culture was published in The New York Times, New York magazine, and The Economist. Prior to his career in new media, David's business career included guiding online strategy for several Fortune 500 corporations and partnership in a New York-based private equity fund that invested in next generation wireless mobile services.

Patricia Calhoun has the world’s shortest resume. After graduating from Cornell University, she founded the SandPaper, a weekly on Long Beach Island, New Jersey. In 1977, she started Westword, an alternative weekly in Denver, where she's been the editor ever since. Her columns have been awarded the Golden Quill, the Unity Award and the national Women in Communications prize, in 2006 and again this year. Her career highlights including serving as the president of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia and, interviewing President Bill Clinton (in flip flops!), and playing an actual reporter in John Sayles’s movie Silver City.

Roxanne Cooper is the associate publisher of Alternet.org.

Ken Doctor , a leading news industry analyst, is the author of "Newsonomics: Twelve New Trends That Will Shape the News You Get" (St. Martin’s Press, Feb. 2). It's a handbook for the digital news decade to come. Newsonomics.com, with its new daily 5Spot feature tracking the trends, launches in late January. As news industry analyst for Outsell, a global research and advisory firm, and through his own Content Bridges company, he covers the transformation of the news media, as it moves from print and broadcast to digital, focusing on changing business models and the journalism created. In his work as an analyst, consultant and speaker, he focuses on what's being lost and what's being gained and on how sustainable models of contemporary journalism can be built. He believes we are now entering the Digital News Decade. A veteran of the digital news industry, he combines deep experience as an executive in news strategy, revenue models and journalism. Ken's experience includes 21 years with Knight Ridder, as well as time spent in the worlds of magazines, alternative journalism and syndication.

Don Eggert is creative director and associate publisher of Seven Days. Although he spends most of his time designing and project-managing web projects and marketing initiatives, Don still finds some time to oversee five designers and manage the office IT. When he's not working, he likes to build things and watch Bravo with his partner and pet dachshunds, Edna & Trixie.

Carol Flagg is a managing partner in HITECH Answers and founder of Pivotal Solution Group. Before going out on her own in 2008, Carol was the advertising director for many years for The Austin Chronicle. She resides outside of Phoenix, Ariz.

Julia Goldberg is the editor of the award-winning Santa Fe Reporter, heralded by a blogger in 2009 as one of the country's most "fabulous" papers, notably for its coverage of domestic violence and wild animals (as separate topics). Julia also serves as the editorial chair for AAN's board of directors.

Murray Grevious For ten years, Murray Grevious has kept the systems running at Creative Loafing as director of its Management Information Systems department. Murray devotes a considerable amount of time managing Creative Loafing's web systems. For the past five years, he has help to lead initiatives to improve the SEO of Creative Loafing sites and provide SEO training to editorial and online teams for all six CL papers. When he's not buried behind a tangle of cords and cables, Murray enjoys sci-fi, tennis, video games and classic hip-hop music.

Bill Jensen has a master's degree in religious studies from the University of Kansas, has written about unsolved crimes, punk rock and fisticuffs and played professional roller hockey (earning the first minor penalty in league history). He co-founded the nerd news and self-loathing blog Topless Robot and the Long Island Press newspaper and website (where he hired Amy Fisher as a crime columnist). In 2006, Bill took the digital helm at Village Voice Media to oversee all web and mobile content and platforms for 17 newspapers (including LA Weekly and Village Voice). During his tenure, digital media revenue grew more than 400%, and pageviews and uniques grew from 176 to more than 750 million. Bill also created several mobile apps which have been downloaded more than two million times. Itunes named the "Best Of" app one of the top five travel apps of 2011, and Wired included it in its collection of "400 Essential Apps." In November 2011, Bill moved to Los Angeles where he ran the music content platform for BuzzMEDIA, including Stereogum, Idolator, and SPIN magazine. He now consults newspaper and other media companies to implement new digital strategies and revenue streams. He recently had a development deal with Cartoon Network, and just launched Epic Playgrounds, a non-profit with the singular goal of building the coolest playgrounds in the world.

Tim Keck is the publisher of The Stranger and the president of Index, which also owns the Portland Mercury. Keck and Weekly Alibi Publisher Emeritus Chris Johnson co-founded The Onion in 1988 while they were students at the University of Wisconsin; they sold it to colleagues the following year.

Jeff Lawrence is the founder and owner of the award-winning Weekly Dig, The Best Little Paper in Boston.

Patrick Mersinger joined Creative Loafing as senior director of Interactive in 2007. Leading the charge with new strategies, products and training, he has engineered and overseen a 500% increase in digital sales. Patrick started at IWCO Direct in Minnesota selling direct marketing services to Fortune 500 clients when he was transferred to Washington, D.C., where he spent five years working in business development. In 2005, Patrick went to buySAFE, a start up organization in Arlington, Va., where he managed the top 50 clients representing $200 million in annual client sales. At buySAFE, Patrick launched cross-promotional marketing programs with key strategic partners including eBay, Overstock, Tias, DOBA, Zoovy and Miva. He was recognized as top revenue producer for Q2 and Q3 of 2006 before he moved with the Vice President of Overstock to Bid4Assets where he launched the private auction platform to supplement their Government Auction program.Within the first four months there Patrick was increased online auction potential revenue by 1200% while also  negotiating and promoting key partnerships with Infopia, ChannelAdvisor, Marketworks.

Dan Rubin A highly accomplished designer, Dan Rubin has over ten years of experience as a leader in the fields of user interface design and web standards, specifically focusing on the use of (X)HTML and CSS to streamline development and improve accessibility. His passion for all things creative and artistic isn’t a solely selfish endeavor either -- you'll frequently find him waxing educational about a cappella jazz and barbershop harmony, philosophy, web standards, typography, psychology, and design in general. In addition to his contributions to sites including Blogger, the CSS Zen Garden, Yahoo! Small Business and Microsoft's ASP.net portal, Dan is a contributing author of Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content from Presentation (2nd Edition, friends of ED, 2003), technical reviewer for Beginning CSS Web Development (Apress, 2006), The Art & Science of CSS (SitePoint, 2007) and Sexy Web Design (SitePoint, 2009), coauthor of Pro CSS Techniques (Apress, 2006), and Web Standards Creativity (friends of ED, 2007), writes about web standards, design and life in general on his blog, SuperfluousBanter.org, and spends his professional time on a variety of online and offline projects for Sidebar Creative, Webgraph and Black Seagull, consulting on design, user interaction and online publishing for Garcia Media, and speaking and teaching at events, conferences and workshops (including An Event Apart, @media, SXSW Interactive, and various Refresh and AIGA events) around the world.

Evan Smith is editor in chief and CEO of The Texas Tribune. He spent nearly 18 years at Texas Monthly, stepping down in August 2009 as the magazine's president and editor in chief. Previously he served as editor for more than eight years -- only the third person to hold that title. On his watch, Texas Monthly was nominated for sixteen National Magazine Awards, the magazine industry's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, and twice was awarded the National Magazine Award for General Excellence. He previously held editorial positions at a number of national magazines; most recently at The New Republic, where he was deputy editor. He hosts a weekly interview program, Texas Monthly Talks, that has aired on PBS stations all across Texas since 2003, and he is an occasional guest on numerous TV and radio shows. In 2005, in recognition of his contributions to Austin and Texas, Smith was named Austinite of the Year Under 40 by the Young Men's Business League and Young Women's Business League. In 2006, he was inducted into the Medill School of Journalism Hall of Achievement.

Elaine Wolff is the editor of the San Antonio Current, where she previously served as the arts and film editor. Prior to her life in print, she was a member of KOOP Radio in Austin, Texas, where she served as a host on news and variety hours, and co-founded the long-running Radical Mothers' Voice weekly program.

Raven Zachary is president of Small Society, working with big brands, established companies, investors, and startups on iPhone strategy and product development. Raven directed the Obama '08 for iPhone application for the Obama Campaign, and has worked with companies such as Whole Foods Market®, Zipcar℠, CLIF BAR®, and Air New Zealand℠ on iPhone application initiatives. He is the founder of iPhoneDevCamp, a not-for-profit iPhone developer conference. Raven is also a Contributing Analyst with The 451 Group, an IT industry analyst firm and works closely with O'Reilly® Media on iPhone and mobile technology related events and coverage. He is regularly quoted by the press about the iPhone market and is a frequent conference speaker on the topic.