Who's this guy?

Hi, I'm Anil Dash. I'm a blogger, entrepreneur and geek living in NYC.

• I'm the Director of Expert Labs, a new non-profit organization that helps regular people share their ideas with policy makers in the U.S. federal government. Expert Labs is part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science — the folks who publish the journal Science — and is supported by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, which means we can work closely with the White House and agencies across the federal government while still being non-partisan and independent.
• I am a partner at Activate, where I advise companies about the opportunities at the intersection of technology & media. Activate is a new consultancy founded by Michael Wolf, and I became the first partner because I think there's a huge opportunity for traditional media and entertainment companies to take advantage of the changes in culture that are happening because of technology.
• And of course, I'm a blogger who's written over half a million words here at my personal website Dashes.com over the past decade. I write about technology and how it shapes the way culture is made. It's probably worth mentioning that none of those organizations I mentioned above are responsible for anything you see on this site.

If you're looking for a formal bio:

Anil Dash is a pioneering technologist who began Dashes.com in 1999 as one of the earliest and most influential blogs on the Internet. Dash is the founding Director of Expert Labs, an independent non-profit which invents new web technologies to help policy makers in the White House and the Federal Government use social networks to tap into the expertise of the public. Dash is also the first partner in Activate, the new strategy consulting firm that advises companies at the intersection of media, entertainment and technology.

He is a recognized expert on web technology, web culture and the software industry. A frequent public speaker, Dash has delivered keynote presentations around the world about the future of social communication online, the relationship between social and traditional media, and the evolution of social web technologies for government, science and culture. His works have also been showcased in museums including the New Museum of Contemporary Art and in 2010 Dashes.com was named a Webby honoree in the Personal Blog category.

Dash has also been recognized for his role in popularizing web culture in venues ranging from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to the Houston Chronicle, which labeled him a "legendary blogger". NowPublic named Dash one of the top ten most influential people in New York City in 2008, and Forbes named him second most media-connected person in technology in 2010. He is also a member of the advisory board for the Web 2.0 conference in New York City, an advisor to StackOverflow, a United Nations Social Media Envoy in the effort to control malaria, and a member of the National Advisory Council of noted education non-profit DonorsChoose.

Dash's earlier career involved a seminal role as Chief Evangelist at Six Apart Ltd, where he joined as the first employee at the world's leading blogging company, and that work was proceeded by roles in the newspaper and music industries.

Dash lives in New York City with his wife Alaina Browne, general manager of Serious Eats, the James Beard Award winner for Best Food Blog. Dash can be found online at dashes.com and on nearly every social network as "anildash".

If you need a picture for publication, a large-format photo in multiple resolutions is available, courtesy of Merlin Mann. Also available is a 1000 x 800 camera-ready photo courtesy of James Duncan Davidson/O'Reilly Media, and a 3916 x 2634 JPEG image by Joi Ito, freely licensed from Wikipedia .

What I Do

I've been writing on this site since the early days of blogging, which led to me becoming the first employee at Six Apart, which today is a global blogging company that makes TypePad and Movable Type, powers sites that reach hundreds of millions of readers every month, and which helped inspire the online media revolution. I've spent my career developing relationships with some of the most innovative people in the technology world, which has given me a front-row seat to the reshaping of media, business, government, communications, and society itself. (I think the Houston Chronicle was half-joking when they called me a "legendary blogger", but it's still pretty nice.) 

I love the web, its fun and crazy culture, and its inspiring ability to help us communicate better. So these days my mission is to find ways to put that power in everyone's hands. Because amazingly, the connections I've made through this website have taken me and my career everywhere from the top of the Empire State Building to the White House, from across the web to around the world. And I think everybody should get that kind of opportunity.

Out and About

Over the past decade, my work's been acknowledged on TV and radio, in newspapers and magazines, and even put on display in a few museums, as you can see in my full bio. I've popped up in serious books like Chris Anderson's The Long Tail, Don Tapscott's Wikinomics, Lawrence Lessig's Remix and Scott Rosenberg's Say Everything. And it's just as important to me that I've participated in the more fun aspects of web culture, earning acknowledgments in silly books like I Can Has Cheezburger? and Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle. Perhaps most appropriately, I've also been fortunate enough to be linked to by thousands of blogs all across the web, leading being named one of the top ten most influential people in NYC, according to NowPublic, and the second most media-connected person in technology, according to Forbes. I've tried to use that influence to draw attention to some of my independent efforts like Last Year's Model, which advocates getting the most out of the gadgets and technologies that we consume, and to support the effort to control malaria as a United Nations Social Media Envoy.

Personal Info

• Contact me via email at anil@dashes.com for more information, or reach me by phone at +1 646 833 8659 or via instant message to anildash. You can follow me on Twitter as @anildash as well.
• I live in New York City with a dog, a cat, and a human, each of which is the ultimate representative of her respective species.
• You might want to check out what I've written — I have archives of my best writing and my most popular writing.

Selected Press/Media

You can see a list of recent press mentions and quotes on Google News, see published mentions of me on this Amazon.com Search, and see academic citations of my work via Google Scholar. Some highlights:

• A profile in Fast Company's "Who's Next" from February 2010
• A New York Times One-on-One interview from January 2010
• A featured set of video interviews by Big Think from August 2009
• A quote in the New York Times Sunday Magazine's "On Language" column from August 2009
• A New York magazine roundtable from June 2009
• A video feature in Rocketboom's coverage of "Battledecks" in 2008
• Featured articles in the September 2006 and March 2007 issues of Wired
• This New York Times piece from June 2005
• A Wired News story from July 2004
• A profile in New York magazine from November 2003
• An extensive video segment on PBS from January 2003