Speaker Line Up - February 9th, 2012 @ The Bier Baron DC

Benjamin Keep - thirst for knowledge

Ben studies how communities of non-scientists grapple with the findings and controversies of modern science. Using his "forensic attorney tricks," he has negotiated the uncomfortable space between scientific inquiry, legal reasoning, and common sense defending the indigent in D.C. He does not watch CSI. He will talk about what's going to happen tomorrow, when science proves you wrong.

Steve Davis, PhD - thirst for the frozen (space or otherwise)

Steve makes sure that the rockets travel straight into space, the capsule lands in the right spot in the ocean, and that SpaceX will be ready for a mission to Mars in the next 4 years. Rockets be damned, Steve is the owner of Mr. Yogato, a fun frozen yogurt store in Dupont Circle where customers can earn discounts in goofy ways, such as doing the Thriller dance, getting a stamp on their forehead, or reciting the Braveheart speech.

Matthew Francis, PhD - thirst for the universe

Matthew Francis is a physicist, science writer, former college professor, ex-planetarium director, occasional musician, and frequent wearer of jaunty hats. He blogs about science and science communication at Galileo's Pendulum, and regularly for uber tech blog Ars Technica. Matthew's work can be also seen on Wired Science, Scientific American Blogs, Culture of Science, and the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast. You can't get him to shut up when he starts talking about how complex ideas in science can be understood by anyone.  @drMRfrancis

Chris Mooney - thirst for communication

Chris is the one of the world's foremost experts on science communication. Young, brash, and confident, he has
written several best-selling books such as Un-scientific America and The Republican War on Science, and he is a
prolific blogger at Science Progress Action (The Intersection). Chris' ideas are provoking, inciting scientists to improve
how they communicate and the research behind how the public responds to scientific discovery.  @chrismooney_

 

Speaker Line Up - November 10th, 2011 @ The Bier Baron DC

Matthew Francis, PhD - thirst for the universe

Matthew Francis is a physicist, science writer, former college professor, ex-planetarium director, occasional musician, and frequent wearer of jaunty hats. He blogs about science and science communication at Galileo's Pendulum, and has also written for Scientific American Blogs, Culture of Science, and the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast. You can't get him to shut up when he starts talking about how complex ideas in science can be understood by anyone.

 

Chris Mooney - thirst for communication

Chris is the one of the world's foremost experts on science communication. Young, brash, and confident, he has
written several best-selling books such as Un-scientific America and The Republican War on Science, and he is a
prolific blogger at Science Progress Action (The Intersection). Chris' ideas are provoking, inciting scientists to improve
how they communicate and the research behind how the public responds to scientific discovery.

Marcus Dowling - thirst for information

A native Washingtonian with a voracious appetite for music and trending popular culture, Marcus Dowling is one of Washington, DC's rising freelance journalists. Sitting comfortably at the confluence of the underground and mainstream, Marcus uses an evocative writing style to advocate for spotlight worthy ideas and sounds. His present schedule includes writing for the Washington City Paper, DC cultural megablog Brightest Young Things, the Pink Line Project, leading urban alternative site The Couch Sessions and working as editor-in-chief of the official site for US electronic dance music's quickest rising new sound, moombahton.com. A history buff doubling as a perpetual early adopter of cultural progressions, Marcus' viewpoint involves viewing an issue from what is a rare and/or unexplored side of the prism of opinion.

Joseph Meyerowitz - thirst for engineering

Joseph T. Meyerowitz has blazed a zigzagging path across academia, industry, and government, touching ground everywhere from NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers to the White House and beyond. Now, as a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellow at Caltech in Pasadena, California, he works on synthetic biology, bringing everything from graph theory to evolution to bear on some of the biggest problems facing us today. His urges to communicate science to everyone in sight are often satisfied through the monthly, nerdy destination, Mindshare LA, where he helps cultivate and select speakers for each event, soon to be supplemented by Thirst DC.

 

DJ Dianamatic - thirst for records

Dianamatic masquerades as a software developer by day and has worked on everything from robots to radar to adaptive information retrieval systems. In real life, however, her mission is to logically prove beyond a doubt that the future is already passé, at least when it comes to music. Each set consists of a fresh-to-death mix of girl groups, garage punk, rockabilly, yé-yé and random exotica, all guaranteed to put more static in your attic. Check out her radio show going strong since 2004 on DC's own Radio CPR 97.5FM, or stop by her monthly dj nights: Noisegate (Dodge City 11/13) and Modern World (Black Cat 11/25).

 

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Speaker Line Up - October 13th, 2011 @ The Bier Baron DC

Featured Speaker: Simon Owens - thirst for messages - watch the talk now!

Asked what he does for a living, Simon Owens often responds that he's a journalist who subsidizes his journalism with PR. As Director of PR of JESS3, he has driven millions of pageviews to client projects, securing thousands of media hits from major news outlets. As a journalist, his writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Harvard's Nieman Lab, Forbes, PBS' MediaShift, and The Next Web. He contends that his experience as a reporter constantly being bothered by PR flaks has made him slightly less annoying when he's pitching other journalists.

Karen Reilly - thirst for information - watch the talk now!

Karen is an expert on Internet policy, spending her time in DC explaining how the Internet works to people with the power to break it. She works with people who want to stay safe online, whether they are going after criminals on behalf of their governments, going after the criminals who run their governments, or just regular people trying to preserve their privacy. She will be talking about the parts of the Internet that are hidden or just harder to reach, and why Orwell was an optimist.

 

Danielle Ricks - thirst for technology - watch the talk now!

Danielle Ricks is a longtime story-teller and mass communicator. Working as Social Media Specialist for social change, Danielle likes to connect the dots and connect people. She’s enjoyed a long career in broadcast television producing for BET, ABC, CBS and the Gayle King Show... you know... Oprah’s best friend. She spent several years working at the happiest place on earth as an Entertainment Producer and she left the working for the Mouse at Walt Disney World, she returned to DC, the town that she loves. And all this experience has taught her a thing or two about how the virtual world has changed how we feel attraction to people. When’s she’s not tweeting, blogging, or posting in one of her 65 sites, she can be found biking all over DC taking in the sites and observing human behavior... her favorite past-time.

 

Amos Snead - thirst for communication - watch the talk now!

Amos Snead is a nerdy jack-of-all trades, with a serious love for DC and its multi-faceted culture. From politics to blogging to college football, Amos crafts messages that capture the oft-hilarious side of DC. Via his must-read blog, FamousDC, Amos informs the Beltway denizens about the daily tomfoolery that comprises the nation's capital.

 

 

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Speaker Line Up - August 25th, 2011 @ The Bier Baron DC

Featured Speaker: Chris Mooney - thirst for communication - watch the talk now!

Chris is the one of the world's foremost experts on science communication. Young, brash, and confident, he has
written several best-selling books such as Un-scientific America and The Republican War on Science, and he is a
prolific blogger at Discover magazine (The Intersection). Chris' ideas are provoking, inciting scientists to improve
how they communicate and the research behind how the public responds to scientific discovery.

 

Melissa Pierce - thirst for technology - watch the talk now!

Star and creator of the award-winning series Life in Perpetual Beta Project, Melissa goes around the world interviewing people about how technology has drastically changed our world. She will be discussing the top 5 counter-intuitive aspects of technological advance that have shaped our modern world. Her insights will challenge how you view the technology you use everyday and how that technology impacts society as a whole.

 

Briana Pobiner - thirst for biology - watch the talk now!

Briana is a rockstar paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program. She's an
excellent science communicator dedicated to understanding how we humans came to eat meat. Fresh off her
research trip to Africa, Briana expertise is in primitive human diet, specifically the shift from veggies to meat.
Mmmm..meat. She will be talking about what one significant technological shift hundreds of thousands of years
ago changed the way we eat, and how humans may be shifting their diets again in ways our ancestors could have
only imagined.

 

Daniel Alexander - thirst for weather - watch the talk now!

Co-founder of WeatherAlpha and meteorological marketing expert, Daniel and his partners have developed software that uses real-time weather information to streamline digital advertising. A man obsessed with weather, Daniel applies his training in probabilistic modeling and quantitative analysis to the impact of weather on psychology and consumer behavior. Daniel will be speaking about how the many moods of the atmosphere subtly influence your decisions in ways you may not have considered.

 

Shauna Dillavou - thirst for film - watch the talk now!

Globetrotter, idea-machine, and plan-hatcher, Shauna is always off to the next adventure, whether studying
political tolerance among art colonies in Beijing, China, volunteering at micro-finance organizations in Oaxaca,
Mexico, or driving cross-country to film a documentary on finding her namesake. When not on the road, she does
research on foreign affairs issues, teaches yoga, and works in classes of many stripes, such as knitting, Chinese,
or floral arrangement. Shauna stars in the documentary detailing her trek around the world to track down her
namesake (The woman who won Wheel of Fortune the week of her birth). She is going to be speaking about social
media as a reluctant tool in the global search for her namesake.

 

DJ Neekola - thirst for music - watch the talk now!

DJ Neekola, our-internationally known electronic dance music DJ, is speaking very briefly about her nerd-ness
and her love of music. You can listen to her amazing set all night while you chat up the hottie standing next to you.
Check out her new record label, Nom Nom Records, to hear other awesome electronic dance music artists.