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For all the world-changing of recent weeks you’d think there were more important matters to parse than The New York Times paywall, AOL’s acquisition of The Huffington Post, the new iPad or the latest corporate power play for domination on the Net.

Here’s a suggestion: let’s refocus the conversation on the Power of Us. We’ve bringing leaders of the personal media revolution to New York on April 6 to restore the balance of power:

– Independent journalist Mona Eltahawy, who channels and gives context to the voices of democracy in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and the Mideast.

– Meetup founder Scott Heiferman, who reminds us that change is not about the latest iPad model, but rather the “people apps” that bring us together.

– Covida Raven, the “She Geek” who makes technology relevant to the culture.

– Rex Sorgatz, whose hybrid Kinda Sorta Media company is transforming conversations on the Internet.

– Video-sharing visionary Steve Rosenbaum who steers us through the morass in Curation Nation.

– And the legendary Craig Newmark, who’s committing the next 20 years to connecting the world for common good.

That’s just the beginning. Check out the full roster of world-changers for a tight, day-long conference that includes a competition for the next big ideas in news and information. People and their ideas are at the forefront of our agenda. They arrive at another pivotal moment.

We Media ushered in an era of unprecedented freedom in communication and culture. With the arrival of open, social platforms, people are creating their own media, launching their own media businesses, expressing their citizenship, connecting with each other and taking responsibility for the information that shapes their lives. But a predictable threat has emerged: Corporate powers are jockeying for control of the gateways. New information empires are replacing old ones. Free and open technology could be centralized and closed.

History is on their side. Each democratizing medium has flourished with a wave of idealistic opportunism before succumbing to the inevitable undertow of commercial control. A similar struggle looms over the Internet, increasingly the pipeline of all media. The stakes have never been higher.

We Media NYC takes it personally. Things have a better chance of improving if we improve them ourselves. Join us if you agree. Or disagree.

The brainpower gathering for We Media NYC, on April 6th, is off the charts. Here’s a sampling of who will be there:

• Rafat Ali, founder, PaidContent
• Ben Berkowitz, CEO, SeeClickFix
• Stowe Boyd, social philosopher and web anthropologist
• Merrill Brown, Principal, MMB Media
• Anil Dash, managing director, Activate & Expert Labs
• Mona Eltahawy, independent Egyptian journalist
• Scott Heiferman, founder, Meetup
• Shelley Kuipers, chair & CEO, Chaordix
• Craig Newmark, founder and customer service guy, craigslist
• Charlie O’Donnell, Principal, First Round Capital
• Corvida Raven, the SheGeek of technology and culture
• Steve Rosenbaum, film maker, author of Curation Nation and founder of Magnify.net
• Roo Rogers, co-author of What’s Mine is Yours & founder of Redscout Ventures
• Brian Reich, founder, Little M Media
• Steve Rubel, SVP for insights, Edelman PR
• Kim Scheinberg, founder, Presumed Abundance
• Rex Sorgatz, aka Fimoculous, New York's coolest medianista
• William C. Weiss, chairman & CEO, The Promar Group; board chair, iFOCOS
• Diana Wells, president, Ashoka
• Nate Westheimer, founder of 0hours.org and organizer of the NY Tech Meetup
• Melinda Wittstock, founder of Capital News Connection and NewsIt

Among others.

Seats are still available. If you’d like to join in, click here for more about the program and to register.

Image: Charles Bell (1774-1842): The Anatomy of the Brain, Explained in a Series of Engravings. London: T.N. Longman and O. Rees (etc.), 1802. via brainblogger.

We’re teaming up with PBS MediaShift April 5 to kick off the We Media NYC Conference, and you’re invited. Dale and I will be there, along with key people from MediaShift, including Mark Glaser and Dorian Benkoil, along with $4 mixed drink and beer specials, and the first round is on MediaShift.

If you’d like to join us there, please sign up for the RSVP list.

Mixer Details | Click to RSVP
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
6 pm to 9 pm
Solas Bar
232 E 9th St (between Stuyvesant St & 2nd Ave), New York, NY 10003
(917) 402-5217 | Yelp map

If you are interested in sponsoring the mixer or the conference, please contact sales@wemedia.com or call (703) 880-2659.

The We Media NYC conference is the next day, April 6.

• Click here for program, venue and travel details
• Click here to register for the conference

Drink image by Dana Beveridge via Flickr.

“My birth at the end of July 1967 makes me a child of the naksa, or setback, as the Arab defeat during the June 1967 war with Israel is euphemistically known in Arabic. My parents’ generation grew up high on the Arab nationalism that Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser brandished in the 1950s. But we “Children of the Naksa”, hemmed in by humiliation, have spent so much of our lives uncomfortably stepping into pride’s large, empty shoes.

But here now finally are our children – Generation Facebook – kicking aside the burden of history, determined to show us just how easy it is to tell the dictator it’s time to go.”

This is Mona Eltahawy writing in The Guardian. If you seek meaning from the events in Egypt, then you know her. “An Egyptian from the inside and outside,” she is the voice of a people, an interpreter for Western media.

It’s personal for Ms. Eltahawy. She’ll explain at We Media NYC on Wednesday, April 6 at the Digital Sandbox Events Center. The program features a talented new generation of reporters and innovators redefining news and how we know it through personal brands and social media. Program. Register.

Living in the U.S. for a decade, Ms. Eltahawy draws on her reporting experience as well as her family background in Egypt. With a background in traditional journalism, she’s been a correspondent in Middle East and North Africa for Reuters and other news organizations. But it is on her blog and through Twitter that she has become an authority to which Western media have turned.

In politically-focused analysis, Eltahawy has persuaded CNN to stop using “chaos” and “crisis,” and using “revolt” or “uprising” instead. “Egyptians want to fix Egypt, they don’t want to destroy Egypt,” she said, on air. Less than an hour later, CNN changed its onscreen headline from “chaos in Egypt” to “uprising in Egypt.”

Meet her and learn more at We Media.

Mona Eltahawy’s blog
On Twitter:
In print
?OnTV/video

The Gorgeous Blur is coming back to NYC.

The We Media conference returns to New York on April 6 with a fresh flash of the breakthrough projects, prescient insights and cutting-edge innovations shaping media and technology.

If you’re a Digital daVinci — a changemaker in media, markets, technology and the way we interact with the world — you’ll want to join us at the Digital Events Sandbox in the financial district. This year’s conference is a lightening-strike for fast-movers: a one-day event filled with must-have intelligence, inspired ideas and brilliant people. It’s designed to spark the next wave of development and reinvention in media. More on that follows.

Conceived as a one-time event to bring leaders together around the profound changes we had been forecasting for media, technology and society, the We Media conference was first held in 2005 at AP headquarters in New York. More than 250 movers and shakers participated, including Al Gore who delivered a breakout agenda for expressing citizenship through news and information. One reporter described the event as “a gorgeous blur” of the smartest people and ideas shaping media and technology.

Things took off from there. Next in London, later in Miami and Buenos Aires, We Media became an evolving showcase for fast-forward thinking and powerful ideas for those using digital technology to redefine and reshape news and information. With the addition of an investment challenge for promising early-stage startups, We Media has become the go-to event for using emerging technology to reinvent media throughout our connected society.

As we return to New York, We Media 2011 moves beyond. Here’s what we’ve got planned:

What comes after. We’ll explore the idea of knowing in an age of enlightened anxiety and the emergence of digital information empires in the post-newspaper era.

What comes now:
– Data-driven media. The world of data we’re creating. Journalism and content in the age of data.
– Mobile 3E and place-based economies: The new local emerges everywhere
– Touchy-Feelly, shiny new devices. Human-computer interaction. Gestural interfaces. Mobile apps. Tablets, v2. Interactive screens. Kinnect and Kinnect hacks.
– Collaborative consumption. Sharing, bartering, lending, trading, gifting, swapping and branding redefined by technology and peer communities.

Rational exuberance. A funding forum with VCs and entrepreneurs.

The Pitch It Challenge. Early-stage startups pitch for $50k in seed funding.

How to create the world we want. Five thought-leaders, five big ideas, each in five minutes, for creating the world we want through media and technology.

As usual, we’re lining up an impressive group of expert speakers. We’ll post updates in coming weeks. Participation is limited to 200 people, so register early to catch the gorgeous blur.

Here’s how We roll in 2k11:

– We’re issuing a We Media challenge to create the brilliant city of the future.
– We’re awarding $50k to the best start-up ideas.
– We’re holding a boot camp for would-be entrepreneurs.
– We’re bringing the We Media conference back to New York.
– We’re adding new ways to think, create and change everything.

Now’s the time to sign on. Start by reserving your place at We Media NYC on April 6 at the Digital Sandbox Events Center in the heart of the Wall Street’s financial district. Click here to register now.

PitchIt! We’re holding the finals of the PitchIt! Investment Challenge at We Media NYC, as well as a PitchIt! Boot Camp. Now in its third year, PitchIt! helps would-be entrepreneurs turn their bold ideas into something real by awarding $25,000 to the two best pitches. It’s sponsored by the Ethics & Excellence in Journalism Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. With the Knight support we’re adding a mentoring program with top entrepreneurs to prep and advise finalists. Enter PitchIt starting Jan. 10.

We Media NYC: The annual We Media conference is where technovators, changemakers and socialpreneurs apply media, tech and “the power of us” to bring solutions to 21st Century needs. With a fresh on-the-moment theme each year, the We Media conference features the people and ideas shaping media, technology and society. Now in its seventh year, it returns to New York, where Al Gore first helped us set an agenda for participatory media and social action enabled by technology. The conference has since traveled to London, Buenos Aires and Miami, featuring breakthrough ideas and inspiring gamechangers. Participation is limited to 200 people to keep it intimate, personal, meaningful and valuable. We’ll announce program details soon. Sign up now to get the lowest price. Click here to register now. Or contact us to talk about sponsorships.

There’s more coming. You should be, too. We Media 2011: Think, create, change everything. See you there.

I’m rooting for two of the eight companies presenting at a startup pitch event I’ll be attending tomorrow in Tysons Corner, Virginia. Selfishly. We Media has a strong connection to both of them.

The first is NewsIT, a crowd-powered news service, which was one of the winners of the We Media PitchIt seed investment challenge earlier this year in Miami. (Stay tuned everyone – Pitch 2011 details and entry info will be announced soon).

The other is Ringio, a slick virtual PBX service with built-in CRM. Ringio works out of WeSpace, the co-working studio we opened in Reston, Virginia, this past summer. Good luck Melinda and Sam! (aka CNCPundit and @samaparicio.

SXSW Accelerator, part of the annual SXSW interactive conference, showcases new apps, products and services in front of a jury of industry experts, venture capitalists and a live audience.

There’s an emphasis on new and innovative technologies, and to show off yours it must fit into one of five categories: web, social media/social networking, entertainment, health or news.

There’s a $150 non-refundable application fee, and the entry deadline is Dec. 10, 2010.

Info and application at SXSWi.

Has Wikileaks just reinvented investigative reporting?

Is Flipboard the social magazine we’ve been waiting for?

Can design hubs and templates can actually stir creativity at newspapers?

Did Steve Jobs steal my old idea for the tablet?

Opinions or insights? Let’s talk and share. We’ll share ours at a salon on current issues of creativity at our meetup on Saturday at world headquarters at Lake Anne Village, Reston.

Creativity often consists of merely turning up what is already here. I recently learned that left and right shoes were thought up a little more than a century ago.

Consider what else you might discover over a Dale’s Pale Ale. Bring both feet — appetite and brains, too — to the meetup with the DC Area Online News Association Meetup Group from 3:30 to 6 pm Saturday at Lake Anne Village, Reston.

DC/ONA members can register here.

Friends of We Media can register here.

One way or the other, Flipboard will make you flip. The new Pad app is either the personalized, social magazine you’ve been waiting for. Or it’s just another slick, content thief that fails to deliver on a promise.

At first flip, Flipboard is stunning (you have to download the app; the website is a brochure). The free app renders links from top tech and social media sites into a well-designed, magazine-style layout. Flip through content with a flick of the finger. The content-at-your-fingertips interface is intuitive, functional and fun — yet another incremental advance in haptic, information design based on human gestures. Touch screens, the iPad and trackpads move us closer to Minority Report.

But Flipboard is off to a shaky start. The app exhausted capacity within a few hours of launch. Flipboard’s big idea — creating sections for the news that my networks and friends are sharing — fizzled at the start.

I couldn’t add either my Twitter and Facebook accounts. Rather, I was instructed to email Flipboard for an invitation to add content. The shortcomings of the launch made me and other customers cynical.

Without personalized feeds, Flipboard is just elegant aggregator. It’s a leap forward from Internet sites that look as if they’ve been assembled by computer, which they are, or shoveled by news organizations from an old ditch into a new one. Flipboard feeds display-content into images and extended briefs that link to original content. It leaves the impression that content is personal and that on Flipboard it has been curated, redesigned or re-edited with a personal touch.

Incumbents see the threat and are staking out traditional ground. After its impulsive tech writer praised the Pulse News Reader, a visual browsing app, The New York Times forced Apple last month to remove Pulse from the App Stores for infringing on its rights. The app, a $4 download, was reinstated after Times feeds were removed.

The impressive part about Flipboard, as well as Pulse, is that it applies visual, nteractive and social metaphors to news access. The interface is far more appealing than the existing metaphor, the old syndication standby, RSS. RSS pulls original content and formatting from simple, authorized feeds. Traditional providers embrace RSS because they believe it extends distribution of content prepared for another medium by sending users to their destination sites — which happens only some of the time. Flipboard is just one of a new breed of “feed readers” that ditch the visible plumbing of RSS for their own content scrapers. Those scrapers translate content into visual nuggets that fill the nutritional needs of most news consumers on the Internet. The issue is whether they’re fair.

“Fair Use” — the principal that guides usage and linking to original content — remains the force majeure of the Internet. Aggregators and indexers such as Yahoo! and Google have stretched the limits of fair use on one of the fronts of the unholy war with content providers. It’s a war the aggregators winning. The weakened providers have settled for a truce that grants them pageviews from links and RSS feeds. But where traditional news providers have largely capitulated in the interests of survival, the new breed of Internet-only news providers are beginning to take exception. One of them, the technology weblog Gizmodo, even questions whether Flipboard is legal: “Flipboard … has a problem: it scrapes websites directly rather than using public RSS feeds, opening it to claims of copyright infringement.”

You can read that sentence in the digital version of Wired, which licenses content from Gizmodo, which supplies content to Flipboard. Presumably, you’ll soon be able to add feeds from your Twitter and Facebook friends linking to the Gizmodo story that appeared in Wired that was picked up by The New York Times and distributed through its RSS feed.

Flip to the next page. It looks better.

Top ten things to do in Washington on a hot August afternoon:

1. Freeze flip-flops, walk the Mall until feet thaw.

2. Frozen ritas in the Metro Center ESPN Zone.

3. Turn the AC app on your iPad all the way up.

4. Duck boat tour with crash in the Potomac.

5. Movie at Iceplex 16: Cold Souls.

6. Speed Segway races down Capitol Hill.

7. Edit Flickr photos of February snowstorm.

8. Alaska cruise with Sarah Palin. Cold, very cold.

9. Hurl water balloons from top of Washington monument.

10. Cold showers with Michaela and Taraq Salahi.

Or you could chill with us from 3:30 to 6 pm on Saturday, August 7 at our Lake Anne meetup in Reston with the DC Area Online News Association Meetup Group: paddle-boat rides, WeSpace open house and picnic, Dale’s Pale Ale, and a salon on creativity at Cafe Montemartre.

Sound nice? Click for directions and to RSVP

We’re advising and eagerly following the progress of the We Media PitchIt! investment challenge winners. We help the winners turn their ideas for new ventures into something real – and they help others who follow in their footsteps by sharing their experiences, insights and lessons learned. Here’s an update on the progress at ReportIt, a next-generation crowd journalism platform.

So, there I was on a sun-soaked Miami street back in March, mildly hung-over and hailing a taxi to the airport while juggling my suitcase with a billboard-sized check for $25,000. No problem finding a taxi. Or crowds of passersby who wanted to pose for pictures with our winnings.

We’d won the WeMedia PitchIt! Challenge for what we now call ‘Report It’ – an innovative ‘crowd sourcing’ mobile and web app that will turn thousands of citizens into investigative journalists in local communities across the U.S. and beyond, ‘mashing up’ social networks with professional newsrooms and assuring high-quality, high-impact user generated content simply not available anywhere else.

Back in Washington, it was time to turn ideas into action, plans into reality. There were tasks to prioritize, milestones to meet.

We’ve been toiling in offices of Capitol News Connection on workflows, wireframes, user interfaces, algorithms, user reward and recognition for several months now, as we scramble to raise enough funding to build and launch Report It, drive participation and ensure its success and sustainability.

Now we lift the curtain on our progress, ideas and challenges, as we work toward unveiling a 1.0 iteration of Report It this fall. We’re building a user-generated content platform that involves users in every step of the content creation, curation, and distribution process – so we want and value your input as we build and iterate our apps over the coming year.

This summer we’ll be looking for your feedback on everything from the type of assignments you would sign up to complete, how to ensure our user interfaces are elegantly intuitive and fun, how best to recognize and reward users for their contributions, and what would make you shout from rooftops to all your friends about why they must (must!!!) join your assignments and ‘Report It.’

It may be that you are in Louisiana documenting with photos and video the sickening spread of oil into wetlands and beaches. You may want to be one of 2,793 people standing on 2,793 bridges documenting crumbling concrete and corroded steel. It may be that you want to collect conflict of interest statements from local officials in your area, ‘find the pork’ in the financial reform bill, or follow incumbents and challengers on the campaign trail during the Midterm election campaign. You may want push alerts on your iPhone so you can volunteer for breaking news assignments in your area. And of course you will want to provide tips and story ideas for Report It assignments!

Right now we are putting a lot of thought into what sort of assignments Report It users will want to tackle. We want to make sure there’s something for everyone, so we’re matching assignments to interests, expertise, time commitment, user ideas and demand. Not everyone is going to be a Pulitzer or Peabody Award winner, so we want to make sure there’s an assignment for folks at all levels – and that users can improve their contributions, reliability and community ratings, and progress over time.

Broadly speaking, we think quality begins … at the beginning, with highly-focused assignments that limit the chance of failure by pairing users with the right assignments, and by being there to help with real-time advice of award-winning journalists and online tutorials. Quality is also assured by the community, who will rate and rank each others’ submissions, by Report It algorithms, which will help establish user accuracy and impact over time, and by a professional newsroom – our own and those of our content partners.

We’re putting a lot of thought right now into the best way to define and incentivize user success. We’ve started by asking a simple question: What is success? We want users to be accurate. We want them to find out things no one else knows. We want them to help ‘connect the dots’ by discerning patterns or trends. We want them to produce quality video, audio and photos. We want them to create high-impact ‘viral’ content. We want them to bring their friends into assignments. We want them to make waves, change things and improve their communities. In the coming weeks we are working on front-end and back-end solutions that will translate into success – and soon we’ll be running ideas past you as we progress in this ‘bootstrap’ period.

That’s the fun stuff. And, man is it fun! But fun it won’t be if we don’t raise enough money to actually develop and launch the app. So you can imagine, that’s what’s occupying a huge amount of our time right now. We’ve assembled a talented team of developers to get this done, but we have to find a way to pay them – from the mathematicians who will make the algorithms work to the designers and UX experts who will make the app intuitive and fun to use, from the information architecture to the CMS, from iPhone and iPad to Droid, WAP and desktop – it adds up. And we haven’t even talked about the editorial, engagement, sales or marketing teams needed to drive participation, content partnerships and monetization strategies. So we’re all ears about ideas, prospects and introductions for fundraising and investment.

And finally, as we build the 1.0 app, we plan – parallel to our development efforts – outreach to journalism schools, media content partners, local community and interest groups and others to drive early participation. We want to launch with an active user base.

Did I mention we’ve been busy? Did I mention I am also launching an app to increase the hours in the day to 36? Please send your thoughts, comments and ideas to us. We’re all ears! Comment here or catch us at reportit@cncnews.org

Photo by Dierken.

In advance of today’s Tabula Rasa DC event — WeMedia’s hyper-interactive discussion about how the iPad, and other tablet devices, will re-shape our media and technology landscape — I asked some uber-smart people to share their impressions and insights on the world post-iPad.  Several new essays will be released in the coming days/weeks, but for now, I want to preview one essay in particular by Fred McClimans.

Fred McClimans knows as well as anyone how people get/share information and what role technology can, and should, play in that effort. He is an Information, Technology and Business Analyst with over 20 years of experience in developing information/analytical methodologies and content distribution systems for global markets.  In his WeThink essay, Fred explains how he “expected the iPad to be a phenomenal tool for getting news/analysis online.” But after visiting about 40+ different “media” sites, he isn’t convinced.

Here is an excerpt:

I’ve been waiting for Apple’s iPad for about 10 years, ever since the first real “tablet” PC prototypes began to hit the market, and I’ve been logging some serious time on it since it came out – enough to say that if AT&T retains its newly announced tiered data plan structure, I’ll be in the top 2% that will take advantage of the unlimited plan. Yes, I’m impressed with the iPad. Great book readers. Perfect for email and social media sites, not to mention web surfing and tons of cool apps (even though many of them are still suffering from Rev 1.0 Crashing Syndrome). And I’m sure I’ll be equally impressed with many of the coming Droid-based dPad’s and the Microsoft-based mPads that I’ll also buy, analyze and try to break.

What I really like about the iPad is the devices “concept” – it’s not a “touch-screen PC” or laptop replacement and is clearly not a “content creation” device, as evidenced by the fact that writing this piece on my 64Gig 3G unit – without an external keypad – is like watching my 2 yr old try to unlock my cell phone (slightly amusing at first, but ultimately annoying when he figures it out and starts deleting emails). Rather it’s a new breed of device with a form, fit and function radically different from its bigger brother (the Mac) and its smaller siblings (the iPhone/iTouch/iPod, etc.). While the iPad is not bad for email, taking notes, social media sites, etc., this device is clearly a “content delivery and consumption” device.

With this in mind, I expected the iPad to be a phenomenal tool for getting news/analysis online. But after visiting about 40+ different “media” sites, I realized that:

• Most “news/analysis” sites have not yet figured out the iPad’s real function or how to present information in this new X by Y format, not to mention the internal inconsistencies that abound (such as sites that routinely mix Flash and non-Flash video on a page by page basis, or those that offer different page layouts based either by author or subject matter – a major turn-off),
• The iPad highlighted differences between “blogs”, “analytic” and “journalistic” sites (Mashable, btw, still comes across as a blog, CNN as more of a newsy site, the WSJ as a clear journalistic site and the NYTimes as a hybrid split personality “not quite sure” site), and
• Nobody has yet figured out how to appropriately use different media formats to best convey their news/information on the iPad (a great example being a five-page, text-only news story that I read – I don’t remember what the story was about but I do remember it made me feel like I was sitting on a runway tarmac for five hours without bottle of water).

Clearly there are issues with the iPad – and everyone seems quick to highlight them. But these issues are technical in nature and they will be solved (for example, fixed-size images work great on a laptop, but “tappable” thumbnails that expand are ideal for an iPad device).

But the most significant theme that kept coming to mind as I cruised from site to site involved the shortcomings of the individuals who were actually producing the online content – the editors and writers themselves! It wasn’t that their content was bad, but that more often than their “content creation” approach just didn’t match up to the UI (user interface), screen size and “application-oriented” potential of the iPad.

[More later]

Fred’s full essay will be available later this week, so stay tuned.  In the meantime, Fred will be at the Tabula Rasa DC event to share some his thoughts about the iPad, and help brainstorm a more effective use of tablet technology by folks in the content business (details about attending the event available here: http://trdc.eventbrite.com).

Attendees at TRDC can disrupt conventional thinking and stimulate innovation by using Disruptathon’s mobile application platform at the event.

Ask questions, raise issues, arrange meet-ups, provide feedback, or note key findings for innovation from the conference. Just bring your iPad and download the Disruptathon app. Or use an iTouch that Disruptathon founder Pete Erickson will provide you at the conference.

TRDC is all about creativity, connections and the latest technology. It’s about participation, too. The Disruptathon platform is just one way we’ll capture ideas and examples from everyone, including TR’s group of Digital da Vincis.

Panels and Powerpoints are for the Digital Dinosaurs. Join us for creative conversation, striking show-and-tell and cool connections on Monday, June 14 at Gannett-USA TODAY headquarters from 1 to 4:30 pm. Check out the latest on the program and watch the video.

Register today.

Leonardo da Vinci wasn’t just interested in anything. He was fascinated with everything. The human body and nature. Physics and mechanics. Science and music. Military engineering and the culture of the times. Inventor and artist, he wrote fables and was a philosopher.

Channeling the spirit of Leonardo, a diverse and multi-talented group of Digital da Vincis will help guide us through the creative moment at Tabula Rasa DC, our Washington-area program on innovation in the iPad Age. They’ll share experiences, add expert insights, help us shape the conversation.

The invention session is from 1 to 4:30 pm Monday, June 14 at Gannett-USA TODAY headquarters in McClean. Register at http://trdc.eventbrite.com/ Check out the program and watch the video here.

Leonardo would hate Powerpoints and panels almost as much as we do. We’d rather show, share and do. The da Vincis will serve as guides with a unique perspective into opportunities and issues for Washington-area innovators and explorers. Meet them:

Content and marketing strategist TIFFANY SCHAKELFORD. Tiffany is the senior communications strategist at Phase2 Technology in Alexandria, Va. She serves as the Executive Director of Capitolbeat, the Association of Capitol Reporters and Editor and organizes the Washington DC area Online News Association group. She previously worked on the staff of the Democratic Leadership Council and Progressive Policy Institute and served as the Assistant Managing Editor at Stateline.org a nonprofit, nonpartisan online news site affiliated with the Pew Research Center.

Pollster extraordinaire and audience analyst JOHN ZOGBY. Well-known across media platforms, John is the author of The Way We’ll Be. Founder, president and CEO of Zogby International, a worldwide research and marketing firm. He also serves as Senior Advisor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, on the Advisory Council for Bio-Technology for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and is a Commissioner on CSIS’s Commission on Smart Power. He is the first Senior Fellow of the Catholic University Life Cycle Institute in Washington, but IS also proud to have been spoofed on NPR’s All Things Considered and twice interviewed by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.

Inventor and tech star DANNY ESPINOZA.  The founder and CTO of CardStar, Danny invented the company’s patent-pending SyncScan technology that allows for effective rendering of 1-D barcodes on mobile phone LCD screens.  A software architect, designer and developer with 25 years of professional experience, Danny is also a serial entrepreneur that has founded a number of innovative technology companies including Lumifi LLC, Quece LLC and Mesa Dynamics LLC.

Mobile/ventures entrepreneur RICK ROBINSON. Rick has been a leader in the creation of innovative online content, products and community for multiple platforms since the early1990s. He helped aunch AOL’s Digital City and later led operations for the DCI network, pioneering what has come to be known as “geobrowsing,” as well as leading the efforts to deliver content across early handheld and mobile devices. A patent holder, he helped found AOL Wireless in 2000, launching content and community apps on several wireless carriers, and partnering with marketers providing WAP and SMS marketing programs. He left AOL in 2005 for start-up Freewebs.com where he led product and programming, helping to pioneer widget innovation around content and marketing. In 2007 he became VP of Products and Services for XOHM, Sprint’s foray into 4G broadband, where he oversaw a successful launch of the products and content services prior to its acquisition by Clearwire. In 2009 until April of this year he spent time in Malaysia helping YTL Communications prepare for the first ever nationwide launch of 4G mobile services as head of Customer Experience and Innovation Programs. Today Rick advises companies on Web strategy and manages startups at sonicgleek.com.

Social Media Marketing expertROHIT BHARGAVA. Rohit pioneered the concept of Social Media Optimization (SMO). A founding member of the 360 Digital Influence group at Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence, he is the author of Personality Not Included, a guide on how to use personality to reinvent your marketing that has been published globally in 8 languages. He writes the Influential Marketing blog, ranked by AdAge among the top 50 marketing blogs in the world, and has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, PBS, SkyNews, MarketingChina and Fast Company. Rohit teaches Global Communications at Georgetown University and is a frequent keynote speaker at marketing and business events around the world.

Tall guy and digital high-flyer JOSH HATCH. Josh is Interactives Director at USA TODAY and an adjunct professor at American University. He consults with Webbmedia Group.

Designer, developer and all-around cool guy ROB RHYNE. Rob holds an opinion tragically uncommon for his field: he believes that technology should appear as beautiful to the user as it does to the developer. As a UI designer & developer for SRA International he led design & development projects, including work for the Maryland Dept. of Health & Mental Hygiene, the American Red Cross, Missile Defense Agency and the Environmental Protection Agency. He also runs his own design company, Digital Arch, which provides end-to-end design & development services for small businesses. He’s an advocate for user-centered design and knows how to sell it to those not often concerned with the everyday user. Rob specializes in User Interface Design and Software Development in the digital mediums. He is proficient in developing on several platforms. During his tenure at the Naval Research Laboratory he became the youngest ever recipient of the Berman Research Award at the age of 21.

Strategy consultant BRIAN REICH. Managing Director of little m media, Brian provides strategic guidance around the use of the internet and technology for communications, engagement, education, and mobilization. Brian is also the author of Media Rules!: Mastering Today’s Technology to Connect With and Keep Your Audience (Wiley 2007). He edits Thinking About Media (www.thinkingaboutmedia.com) and contributes as a Fast Company Expert. Brian was previously a principal at EchoDitto, Director of New Media for Cone Inc, and served asaSenior Strategic Consultant and Director of Boston Operations for Mindshare Interactive Campaigns, an interactive public affairs agency. From 2000 – 2004, he ran Mouse Communications after serving two years as Vice President Gore’s Briefing Director in the White House. Brian has spent much of his life working in and around politics, including helping to direct dozens of campaigns across the country.

Financial manager and entrepreneur RICHARD BRINDISI. CFO/COO at KvJ&Co. and its Oh!magination start-up, Richard brings deep experience in financial management to the innovation age. He’s a partner at 4731 Consulting and has served as a consultant for Plante Moran Financial Advisors and Lotus Capital Advisors. A graduate of of the University of Richmond School of Law, Richard has also served as a director for Credit Suisse First Boston and Sun Life Financial.