The 2011 Web 2 Summit Program Is Live; My Highlights

August is a month of vacation, of beaches, reading, and leisure….unless you happen to work with me creating the program for the eighth annual Web 2 Summit this October. Each year, my “summer vacation” turns into a “working vacation” as my team and I spend hours massaging more than 50 speakers into a tightly choreographed program running over what always turns out to be an extraordinary three days. I must be a masochist. Because I always love how it turns out.

This year, as I wrote earlier, our theme is “The Data Frame.” And this year’s program hews more tightly to our theme than any before it. Just about every speaker will be presenting on some aspect of how data changes the game in our industry. From policy to tech, art to retail, we’ve got one of the most varied lineups ever. You can see it here, but remember, these are extremely volatile times. In other words, the lineup might change a bit in the next six weeks. I’m just glad I didn’t ask Carol Bartz to come back, but then again, that would have been fun, no?

Web 2 is a year book of sorts, a stake in the ground where our industry has some of its most important conversations. This year we are taking a new tack – eliminating panels altogether, and focusing on our trademark conversations, as well as short, high impact presentations.

Here are a few I’m really looking forward to.

We’ll start day one with Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga. Mark has been busy, in particular given both the growth of Zynga and the recent turmoil in the financial markets, which plan on welcoming his company to public status at some point in the near future. But Mark is just the starting gun of an amazing opening session, one that will include John Donahoe, CEO of eBay, Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel, Dennis Crowley, co-founder of foursquare, Ross Levinsohn,

EVP Americas at Yahoo!, and Reid Hoffman, founder and Chair of LinkedIn, the public market’s current darling.

Of the group, I’m particularly pleased to welcome Ron Wyden, Senator from Oregon. This will mark Web 2’s first ever visit from a sitting senator, and our industry will have plenty to discuss with him – he’s the man who has taken stands on COICA and its cousin Protect IP, controversial (and many would say flawed) pieces of legislation that may have significant impacts on how the Internet works.

After cocktails we’ll sit down to dinner, and I’m very pleased to announce that our dinner conversation with be with Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, a man who would win any “funniest CEO” competition. running away. Be prepared to snort wine through your nose.

Day two opens with Dell CEO Michael Dell, who will have plenty to say about the moves of his competitors HP, Apple, and Samsung. We’ll get our first taste of a new program element – “Pivot” – short presentations tailored to shift your thinking in five minutes or less. You’ll hear Pivots from Tony Conrad (about.me),Chris Poole (Canv.as, 4chan), Bill Gross (uber media), Aileen Lee (KPCB), David Hornik (August Capital) and many more.

We’ll also hear from two data and privacy policy experts – Dr. Ann Cavoukian, of the Ontario Office of Information & Privacy, and David Vladeck, of the FTC. Ben Horowitz (of Andreessen Horowitz) will sit for a conversation, as will John Partridge, President of Visa, and Dan Schulman, Group President, American Express – together. That’s sort of like getting Coke and Pepsi in the same room, which, it turns out, we did. Over the three days, we’ll hear from both Alison Lewis, CMO of Coca Cola Inc., as well as Frank Cooper, CMO of Pepsico Beverages.

This brings me to another important point – with data, all companies must become Internet companies. John, Dan, Alison, and Frank will bring that point home. As will Michael Roth, CEO of IPG, one of the largest advertising holding companies on the planet.

And of course we’ll hear from Mary Meeker, in her eighth appearance at Web 2. But this time, I’ve given her enough time to both do her “capital markets roundup,” as well as sit down with us and discuss her new role as partner at Kleiner Perkins.

A highlight of Day Two will be Thomas Drake, who used to work at the NSA on a forward-looking data surveillance program called ThinThread. While there, he uncovered facts about how the NSA was conducting surveillance which he believed was illegal. He blew the whistle, was charged with espionage, and lived to tell the tale.

Rounding out Day Two will be Jack Tretton, President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of American, Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora, and Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft.

But wait…there’s more! Sprinkled throughout the three days will be our trademark “High Order Bits” – shortform presentations designed to amaze, inspire, and even perplex. We’ll hear from voices as varied as Genevieve Bell, in house anthropologist at Intel, Peter Vesterbacka, the “Mighty Eagle” of Rovio,

Alex Rampell, CEO of TrialPay, Mike McCue, CEO of Flipboard, Bret Taylor, CTO of Facebook, Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy, Susan Wojcicki, SVP at Google, Deb Roy, Founder of Bluefin, Richard Rosenblatt, CEO Demand Media, Mike Olson, CEO of Cloudera, and even MC Hammer.

That’s a lot of names, and we’re not close to being done. Highlights of day three include James Gleick, who has written one of the most important books about data in recent years (“The Information”), and a passel of Facebook alums: Sean Parker, who has yet another startup to discuss, Dave Morin, of Path, and Charlie Cheever together with his co-founder Adam D’Angelo, of Quora. More High Order Bits will come from Hilary Mason, of bit.ly, Jeremie Miller, of Singly, and Josh James, of Domo.

Rounding out the day are Andrew Mason, of Groupon fame, and Vic Gundotra, the man behind Google+.

Whew. And that’s not even all the great folks who are coming. It’s going to be a spectacular three days. I hope you’ll join us!

My deepest thanks go out to my Web 2 Advisory Board, which gave me a lot of great input on the program, and to the teams at O’Reilly, Techweb, and FM. As well as all our amazing sponsors, of course, and my producer extraordinare, Janetti Chon. It’s almost showtime!

PS – Look for our announcement next week about the new “Data Layer” on our “Points of Control” map. It’s going to rock!