Brilliant Visionaries

Imagine we could invite anyone in the world to talk with us about the future of the Wikimedia projects. Who would you like to talk to?

I'm thinking about people who've had an extraordinary impact on the world, people who think deeply about emerging ideas, people with a unique perspective and unique experiences. And - people who care about the things we care about.

Please help by contributing names below.

Thanks Sue Gardner


  • Jimmy Wales
  • Larry Lessig
  • Clay Shirky (AB member)
  • Joi Ito
  • Richard Stallman
  • Matthew Cooney (Cooney Technology & Innovation, also related to JFK Jr.)
  • Mohammed Yunus
  • Cass Sunstein
  • Henry Jenkins (MIT)
  • Roger McNamee (AB member)
  • Bill Joy (early Sun guy, written about in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers)
  • David Weinberger
  • Scott Cook (Intuit CEO)
  • Nicholson Baker (novelist who wrote a charming New York Book Review piece on Wikipedia)
  • John Seely Brown (The Social Life of Information, etc.)
  • Steven Johnson (Everything Bad Is Good For You, etc.)
  • Mitch Kapor (AB member)
  • Tim Bray (Sun)
  • Bill Gates
  • Tim Berners Lee
  • Don Norman
  • Nicholas Negroponte
  • Stewart Brand
  • Brewster Kahle
  • Kevin Kelly
  • Esther Dyson
  • Alberto Ibarguen
  • Dan Ariely
  • Yochai Benkler http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/yochai_benkler_on_the_new_open_source_economics.html
  • Dave Eggers (author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, interested in education)
  • Howard Rheingold http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/howard_rheingold_on_collaboration.html
  • Charles Leadbeater http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/charles_leadbeater_on_innovation.html
  • Richard Branson (Virgin)
  • Jen-Hsun Huang (CEO, NVIDIA)
  • Jeff Skoll (formerly of eBay, now runs Skoll Foundation)
  • Jeff Jarvis (former journalist and founder of Entertainment Weekly magazine, now internet pundit)
  • Pierre Omidyar (eBay founder, now runs Omidyar Foundation)
  • Jeff Bezos
  • Bono
  • Mena Trott (blooger, co-founder of Six Apart)
  • Steve Jobs
  • Robert Darnton
  • Edward Tufte
  • Stu Card
  • Ward Cunningham (AB member)
  • John Perry Barlow
  • Angela Beesley (AB chair)
  • Melissa Hagemann (AB member)
  • Neeru Khosla (AB member)
  • Teemu Leinonen (AB member)
  • Rebecca MacKinnon (AB member)
  • Wayne Mackintosh (AB member)
  • Benjamin Mako Hill (AB member)
  • Trevor Neilson (AB member)
  • Florence Nibart-Devouard (AB member)
  • Achal Prabhala (AB member)
  • Ethan Zuckerman (AB member)
  • Doug Englebart
  • Brion Vibber
  • Larry Sanger
  • Erik Möller

Please note I don't have any plans to do anything immediately with these names; I just think it's a good idea to collect them. Also, if you make comments on the people listed here, please be diplomatic.