About Byron

Byron Reese brings his vast technical understanding to illuminate how today’s technology can solve many of our biggest global challenges. He speaks with the unrivaled authority of an accomplished high-tech trailblazer, inventor, and entrepreneur, and the wisdom of a life-long historian. Byron’s enthusiasm and talent for deciphering our common destiny is overshadowed only by his inspiring sense of optimism.Reese started his first business as an undergraduate at Rice University. Two companies he started were later sold: Hot Data, ultimately to Pitney Bowes; and PageWise, the parent company of ExpertVillage.com, to Demand Media. He currently serves as Chief Innovation Officer for Demand Media, overseeing research and development. The company has filed and received patents on Reese’s work in disciplines from crowdsourcing to content creation to psychographics.

Reese has served on both public and private boards of directors, has started several non-profit organizations and has just completed the forthcoming book, Golden Age 2.0: How The Internet Will End Ignorance, Disease, Hunger, Poverty, And War.

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What Others Say

  • “Byron’s ability to synthesize history, vision and market realities is unparalleled. He is a dynamic and informative futurist who I highly recommend as a speaker.”

    Steve Semelsberger, SVP & GM, Social Solutions, Demand Media
    January 2012

  • “As the closing speaker at the Wolfram Data Summit, Byron Reese was not something the conference expected. Byron took the audience for a ride into his future. As an astrophysicist and a data scientist I often think about the future, but I was struck about Byron’s precise dissection of how our future is and will be determined by the data that is already starting to shape our lives: our self-generated data. Byron’s vibrant and precise delivery painted in everyone’s mind a picture of the positive future we all thought was likely but perhaps unreachable. Byron dared everyone, including himself, to make this future possible, and led us on a journey of discovery we never wanted to end.”

    Dr. Alberto Conti, Archive Scientist at STSI and former Hubble Chief Engineer
    commenting on Byron’s keynote at the 2011 Wolfram Data Summit

  • “Over the past decade, Reese has quietly pioneered a new breed of media company”

    Bloomberg Businessweek
    January 26, 2011

  • “Reese is a tall Texan who serves as Demand’s chief innovation officer and who created the idea-spawning algorithm that lies at the heart of Demand’s process.”

    Wired Magazine
    October 19, 2009

  • “Byron Reese is typical of the new wave of internet entrepreneurs out to turn the economics of the media industry on its head.”

    Financial Times of London
    February 15, 2007