Heard of Twitter? Thought so. I remember the old days of Twitter in 2007 when everyone made fun of the words ‘tweets’ and now the media uses them as press releases. Times change for sure.
Twitter is the modern-day telegraph: a social media vehicle that instantly connects you to the people and information you need, all in concise, 280-character or less tweets.
Seattle is blessed to have a plethora of influential Twitter accounts you can follow, ranging from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) and musician Macklemore (@Macklemore) to The Oatmeal’s creator, Matthew Inman (@oatmeal). Hundreds, if not thousands, of area tech geeks (including yours truly, @BrettGreene) are on Twitter, making it a great channel for forming industry connections.
We thought it might be fun to randomly choose and present five local technology influencers on Twitter. These are people other than the obvious (@BillGates, we’re looking at you) that caught our eye due to their pithy commentary, interesting curated content or just sheer volume of tweets.
We realize this list could be of 500 people to follow and we wouldn’t cover all the greatness out there, but here’s a tiny sample. If you’re not already following them, these are people you should discover, in no parti
Chris Capossela is more than just the face of marketing for Microsoft; he holds degrees in computer science and economics from Harvard, and was recently named one of the top 25 CMOs to follow on Twitter by Inc. Magazine. It’s easy to see why, since his latest tweets range from commentary on Alan Turing to a sweet accolade to his high school computer science teacher.
Full disclosure – Tarah’s a dear friend of mine and past New Tech presenter so I’m biased on this one. Talk about a juggling act – Tarah Wheeler has more balls in the air at one time than most of us. She is an author (Women in Tech), entrepreneur, non-profit founder, speaker and the CEO of Red Queen Technologies, as well as a current cybersecurity policy fellow at New America. There just isn’t much about infosec that she doesn’t know. Her tweets are entertaining, educational…and sometimes irreverent.
If you’re passionate about artificial intelligence and machine learning, then you’ll want to follow Pedro Domingos. A computer science professor at UW and author of The Master Algorithm, Pedro is one of the leading authorities on these subjects. One of his current research efforts is in the area of large scale machine learning, where massive data streams can be mined. He was recently interviewed by Der Spiegel on whether AI changes the balance of power between democracy and authoritarianism.
You have to love a guy who believes the world needs more UX designers giving life and career advice. Patrick Neeman is currently the senior director of user experience for iCertis and a part-time instructor at General Assembly, as well as a keen observer of the tech world. He has a witty style of writing that often delivers information you might have overlooked; as an example, he recently pointed out that Apple has made more in three months than Amazon has in its entire lifetime. Think about it, and then check out his posts.
How could you not be intrigued by the man called “the most dangerous CEO in America?” The head of Gravity Payments (technologies related to credit card processing), he made headlines around the world by announcing a $70,000 annual salary as the company’s minimum wage. Forbes recently ran an update on his audacious plan, which seems to be working. You’ll enjoy reading his thoughts on wealth, the class disparities and the media.
