If you can master stability and change simultaneously, you’ve got it made. We feel like we’ve got these ingredients nailed with the latest additions to the lineup of Brainstorm Tech, Fortune’s annual technology-industry conference in Aspen, Colo., These executives have plenty of experience in both. Google’s Susan Wojcicki was one of the ad-tech giant’s earliest employees, and now she’s the boss of its YouTube subsidiary. There’s no one better to speak to the breadth of challenges tech giants face as they surf the waves of change from the web to mobile to whatever comes next. In Wojcicki, the audience at Brainstorm Tech, which takes place from July 13 to 15 on the lush grounds of the world-famous Aspen Institute, will witness change and stability wrapped up in one person.
Two relative newcomers to their jobs at Silicon Valley giants are Devin Wenig, the incoming CEO of the soon-to-be-independent eBay, and Anthony Noto, chief financial officer at Twitter. Wenig joined eBay from Thomson Reuters, an electronic media giant grappling with its place in the world. After eBay splits off from PayPal, Wenig will be running a multinational behemoth that needs to prove its position in the current e-commerce environment. As for Noto, he spent the bulk of his career as an analyst and investment banker at Goldman Sachs before joining Twitter. His new company has proved it can make a lot of money. Now it needs to show it can grow by becoming an ever more mainstream product.
The top executives at three of the most important companies in the technology industry are only a few of recently added participants in Brainstorm Tech, itself an interactive gathering that features fireside chats, panels, roundtables, and more than a few events that are strictly for fun—and of course for schmoozing. At Brainstorm Tech, the action is in the conversations among participants—rather than in lectures from on high—and it goes from well before the mid-afternoon start on Monday to right up to the final session just before noon on Wednesday.
A selection of others who will participate include a bevy of e-commerce CEOs: Lisa Falzone of Revel Systems, Marc Lore of Jet, and Apoorva Mehta of Instacart. Yahoo’s Adam Cahan, Sara Clemens of Pandora, and Joe Marchese, who recently sold his TrueX to News Corp., are some of the ad-tech stars who will appear. A bevy of top Silicon Valley venture capitalists will brief the audience on what’s coming in the investment pipeline. One example: Bill Maris of Google Ventures. Growing at hyperspeed has never been a more important topic in the tech world. A few of the top people we’re tapping to discuss that are Dennis Woodside of Dropbox, venture capitalist (and Groupon co-founder) Brad Keywell, and Austin Geidt, who overseas market launches at Uber.
Marketers are technologists these days, and we’ll have some of the country’s top CMOs on hand. These include Bonin Bough of Mondelez, Amy Bohutinsky of Zillow, and Marc Mathieu of Unilever. We’ll also tap the expertise of some of the industry’s fastest-growing leaders to lend their expertise on management, including: Grokker’s Lorna Bornstein, Infor’s Charles Phillips, Eventbrite’s Julia Hartz, and Blake Irving of GoDaddy.
Design is another once-overlooked discipline that technologists now understand is as important as bits and bytes. Some of the design-focused thinkers in Aspen will include Tristan Walker, Hans Neubert, and Gadi Amit. The on-demand economy is all the rage, you might have heard. We plan to deliver Michael Dubin of Dollar Shave Club, Tri Tran of Munchery, and Shervin Pishevar, a venture capitalist who has invested in Uber and Shyp.
This list of participants at Brainstorm Tech is by no means comprehensive, and it adds to the previously announced group (many of whom are listed here) that includes GE’s Jeff Immelt, U.S. CTO Megan Smith, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Pinterest’s Ben Silbermann, Apple’s Denise Young Smith. We’ll be releasing more names in coming weeks. Brainstorm Tech is an invitation-only event, but we’ll be streaming selected sessions as well as deploying Fortune writers and videographers to cover every possible aspect of the conference.
