Note: This is the current list of confirmed speakers. More speakers will be added as they confirm. Please check back for updates.

For a detailed schedule including which panels and workshops each presenter will appear on, click here.

Keynote Speakers:

Patrick Reinsborough, of the smartMeme project in San Francisco will kick off the conference at 9 a.m. speaking on: “Winning the Battle of the Story: Creating a Culture of Change.” Patrick is dynamic a grassroots organizer, campaigner, and media strategist who spent four year as the organizing director of the Rainforest Action Network, where he mobilized thousands of people to confront corporations who destroy the environment and violate human rights. The smartMeme project is a collective of organizers, trainers and media activists who help grassroots groups magnify their impact by linking traditional movement building skills with cutting edge media campaigning.

Bert Sacks will speak on “Sanctions, War, Occupation, and other Failures of the Media.” Bert Sacks has traveled to Iraq nine times since 1996 with Voices in the Wilderness and Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, and has extensive experience lobbying the media for greater and more accurate coverage of the situation in Iraq and the Middle East.

James Longley traveled to the Occupied Palestinian Territories in 2001 to make the feature-length documentary film Gaza Strip. Shortly thereafter he began work on a new documentary about Iraq under the working title Iraq in Fragments. After first traveling to Iraq in 2002 with Bert Sacks to document the effect of US-led sanctions, James returned to Iraq immediately after the 2003 invasion, living and filming in Iraq for two full years before returning the United States in April 2005. James is now editing his Iraq documentary film at the 911 Media Arts Center in Seattle. For more information, visit: http://www.daylightfactory.com

Presenters:

Pippa Breakspear is a film-maker, chemical dependency treatment counselor and an adult educator in Bellingham. She has worked in film production for 26 years and is the filmmaker of On the Rocks, a film about chemical and alcohol dependency.

Michael Carlberg, Phd Assistant Professor of Communication, Western Washington University. He teaches in the field of media studies and critical media literacy.

Natasha Chart, Pacificviews.org

Ted Coopman has been a media activist and researcher since 1993. His work encompasses media law and regulation, the micro radio movement, activist use of new media, and emergent resistance networks. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington.

Doug Collins is the editor of Washington Free Press, a statewide progressive newspaper which has published a print and web version for 12 years. www.washingtonfreepress.org

Dean Evenson, musician and composer, media pioneer and the co-founder of the independent music label, Soundings of the Planet.

James Gillies is a local independent media guru.  He's also the technical coordinator for this conference

Rahul Gupta of Voices of Diversity has been a contributing writer to several news and feature publications in Dallas, Olympia and the Seattle area. He was founder and editor in chief of the South Asian Journal, a local progressive news, features and arts publication for Puget Sound's South Asian communities. He is currently Communications Officer for a private, progressive foundation. Rahul was a founding contributor and organizer of the Independent Media Center, and an active member of the Activ8media International collective.  The collective focused on print and audio and video documentary coverage of globalization and liberalization in the Americas. He has numerous publication and credits, including SAMAR, South Asian Magazine for Action and Reflection, International Examiner, Real Change News, South Asian Journal, Independent Media Center, SCAN Network, Eros and Pavement and the OLYarn.  As a volunteer with KBCS, Rahul has contributed to the development and expansion of public affairs programming as a member of the Voices of Diversity task force to redirect and strengthen volunteer contribution and accountability.

Angelica Gutierrez, radio producer and member of the America Latina Al Dia Collective, which produces ‘America Latina Al Dia’ a bilingual public affairs show on Vancouver Cooperative Radio 102.7

Cortney Harding is the membership coordinator for the Public News Service, an organization that provides reporting on a wide range of social, community, and environmental issues for mainstream and alternative media and that amplifies progressive voices. She has previously worked on several political campaigns and as well as Boston NOW, NARAL, and the Feminist Majority.

Sheri Herndon, is an organizer and media activist with 14 years of experience making media and educating people about independent media as a leverage point for radical social change. As a cofounder of the Independent Media Center in Seattle in 1999, she spent 4 years developing the Indymedia network's communications and governance structures and processes and took on numerous project management roles in policy development and legal and strategic collaborations. Current IMC projects include developing research.indymedia.org, an Indymedia research site serving as a nexus for practitioners and theorists to engage on the issues surrounding all aspects of the IMC model, and developing the women.indymedia.org site to be an international portal of news by and about women. In 2004, she co-founded Bridgeweaver Design providing tools and strategic consulting services for improving cross-network communication. Current projects include network-centric advocacy models for the environmental movement.

Tim Johnson is the editor of the Bellingham Weekly, a local independent newspaper. He also co-founded the Every Other Weekly in 1997 and operated that publication for six years.

Dennis Lane, Executive Director, Whatcom Community Television and Communications (WCTC) for 8 years, President, KingStreet Productions 30 years, has more than 25 years in Radio,Television Broadcasting and Film Production work.  He Produced and Hosted the radio show  "What's To Eat"  on WNYC-FM and WNBC- FM in NYC for over 8 years. Recently, he has worked with the Opportunity Council to develop their radio series " Windows on the Community" which aired in Whatcom County for over 5 years.  Currently, he is working with both the Van Zandt Community Center and the American  Museum of Radio and Electricity in setting up their Low - Power Radio Stations in Whatcom County..

Fredrik Lane, Northwest Indian News

Jonathan Lawson from Reclaim the Media in Seattle will give a report back from the National Media Reform Conference held in St. Louis May 14th.

Kevin Nelson runs Bison Bookbinding & Letterpress. His column "Golden Age of Scandals" is a bi-monthly feature in the Bellingham Weekly.

Holly O’Neil is a professional facilitator with Crossroads Consulting, specializing in organizational development, training, and research for non-profit organizations and community coalitions. Holly became interested in independent media working with the Seattle IndyMedia Center (IMC), and worked with her community in the South Fork Nooksack Valley to apply for an low power FM (LPFM) license to create a local community radio station.

Bradley Pavlik is co-host of Planet Earth, a local radio forum on social and environmental issues aired on 89.3 FM KUGS.

Tim Pilgrim, Associate Professor of Journalism at WWU

Lee Rosenberg is a blogger from Seattle who also works full time in the tech industry. The blog he established, Reload (http://www.reload.ws/blog), is an opinion and humor site that is generally left-leaning and libertarian. Lee collaborates on the blog with several others, and enjoys using the platform as a way to break down misperceptions and lies in the media, and also to explore how the perceptions of current events in our world rarely line up with reality.

Sukhi Sanghera, Bellingham independent filmmaker, is drawn to the stories she finds in the margins of our society. Her first short documentary examined arranged marriages in the Sikh culture. Her work since then has looked at heterosexual crossdressers, transgenderism, and the backlash against Muslim and Sikh Americans after 9-11. She co-directed Creek Story with Dan Hammil.

Michael Shephard, filmmaker & filmmaking instructor at Northwest Indian College. For the past three years Michael has worked at Northwest Indian College to start a digital video documentation program to document Lummi language and culture to aid the development of a culturally-based curriculum. He is a co-director of the film Healing Our Spirits - Strength Through Tragedy at Semiahmah. A shorter version of this film been screened at tribal conferences around the United States and to several U.S. Senators and Congresspersons to lobby for stronger grave protection laws for Native Americans.

John Sinno of Arab Film Distribution in Seattle will present a workshop on the demonizing and stereotyping of Arabs in the media and popular culture. John Sinno is the owner of Arab Film Distribution, the largest distributor of Arab cinema in the U.S. and Canada. In addition, he produces and curates the Seattle Arab & Iranian Film Festival.

Alexis Sloan co-directed "El Pueblo Unido" with M.E, Quinn for the Skagit Valley Workers Solidarity Council.   They are Fairhaven College Students at Western Washington University studying American Cultural Studies and social justice.

Matthew St. Carrell, Stone Egg Productions/West Sound Community TV, filmmaker, high school instructor, and media activist from Bremerton, WA.

Aaron Thomas, Illumination PR. Aaron is an enrolled member of the Lummi Nation. In 1998, Aaron graduated from the Edward R. Murrow School of Communications at Washington State University. He became the youngest director at Spotlight 29 Casino, accepting the Director of Communications position in 1999. After four years as the Director of Communications, Aaron decided to come home to assist the Lummi Nation in communicating its mission and goals to the enrolled tribal membership as well as building alliances in the greater Whatcom County.  Aaron left the Lummi Indian Business Council earlier this year to pursue a dream of owning his own public relations firm. In March of 2005, Aaron started Illumination Public Relations, a firm dedicated to communicating, educating and promoting businesses, governments as well as personal messages.

Darren Thompson, Editor, Organic Press, Skagit County.

Amoshaun Toft helped to start Radio.Indymedia.org in 2001, and has helped coordinate a number of collaborative broadcasting projects, navigating the convergence between web distribution and FM broadcast. He has also produced content for several nationally syndicated programs including Free Speech Radio News, and Democracy Now! He is a graduate student in communication at the University of Washington.

Lexie Tom is a 21 year old Native American filmmaker from the Lummi Nation. She has been working at Northwest Indian College for 3 years. She is the co-director of the film Healing Our Spirits - Strength Through Tragedy at Semiahmah. A shorter version of this film been screened at tribal conferences around the United States and to several U.S. Senators and Congresspersons to lobby for stronger grave protection laws for Native Americans.

Seth Vidana, media instructor, Wellspring Community School in Bellingham.

Sheri Ward is the managing editor of the Whatcom Independent and has
been involved with the newspaper from its inception.  Before that, she was active in city grass-roots politics, including a run for City Council in 2003.  She is a 20-year resident of Bellingham, and a native of Seattle.

Brenna Wolf is a collective member of Riseup Networks, www.riseup.net. She is also a producer with the Voices of Diversity public affairs program on KBCS, 91.3 FM. She has worked on media activism and social justice organizing in Seattle for over six years. She co-founded Reclaim the Media and was active in the development of the indymedia network movement.