Speaker

Chris Anderson (born 1961) is editor-in-chief of Wired, which has won a National Magazine Award for general excellence three times during his tenure. He wrote an article in the magazine entitled The Long Tail , which he expanded upon in the book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More (2006). He currently lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and five children. He is the founder and chairman of BookTour.com.

 

Before joining Wired in 2001, he worked at The Economist, where he launched their coverage of the Internet. He also has a degree in physics from George Washington University and did research at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He has also worked at the journals Nature and The Scientist.

 

His newest book, entitled Free: The Future of a Radical Price, which examines the rise of pricing models which give products and services to customers for free, was released on July 7, 2009, by Hyperion. 

 

Anderson generated controversy for plagiarizing content from the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, among other sources, in Free. Anderson responded to the claim on his The Long Tail blog that there were disagreements between him and the publisher over accurate citation of Wikipedia due to the changing nature of its content. Also on his blog, he took full responsibility for the mistakes and noted that the final version of the printed book still contains the plagiarized passages, but the digital editions of Free will be corrected. The notes to the book will also contain corrections.

 

In 2007, Mr. Anderson founded GeekDad, a do-it-yourself blog that became part of Wired.com. He acted as the editor until handing the title to Ken Denmead. Mr. Anderson now serves as editor emeritus of GeekDad. 

 

Anderson also founded Booktour.com, a free online service that connects authors on tour with audiences, and 3D Robotics, an open-source robotics company.