Android - An Open Handset Alliance Project

We'd like to thank all of our judges for their hard work and commitment to judging during the second round of the Android Developer Challenge 1.

Gadi Amit

Gadi is the principal designer and founder of NewDealDesign -- a strategic design studio located in San Francisco, California. Among NewDeal's clients are Dell, Fujitsu, Verizon, Logitech, Circuit City, Palm, Rio, Nokia, Sling Media and many more. Gadi's work has been featured in many design publications and has been exhibited at the Chicago Athenaeum, Cooper Hewitt-National Design Museum and San Francisco MOMA.

Gadi is a frequent jurist in Design panels, such as ID magazine, Fortune magazine and California Design Biennial. He has extensive experience designing for consumer electronics, mobile and personal computing as well as household goods. Gadi's design work has won numerous design awards including I.D. Magazine Design Annuals, IDSA/IDEA awards, BusinessWeek's "Product of the Year," iF, Good Design awards and Japan's G-Mark award. Prior to founding NewDealDesign, Gadi was with frogdesign for about seven years, ending as the Vice President of Design at frogdesign's San Francisco office.

Jens Begemann

Jens Begemann has worked in the mobile content industry for more than seven years. In 2001 he joined Jamba -- now also operating as Jamster and Fox Mobile Entertainment. Since then the company has become one of the world's leading providers of mobile entertainment with services in 35 countries, connected to 125 carriers and employing a staff of 800.

During his time at Jamba, Jens became Chief Content Officer, Chief Product Officer and member of the management board. He was responsible for content acquisition and creation, product management, user experience, quality assurance, technical operations and program management.

Jens left Jamba in August 2008 to found his own Start-Up. He lives together with his wife in Berlin, Germany.

Chris DiBona

Chris DiBona is the open source programs manager at Mountain View, Ca. based Google where his team oversees license compliance and supports the open source developer community through programs such as the Google Summer of Code and through the release of open source software projects and patches.

Mr. DiBona is an internationally known advocate of open source software and related methodologies. He occasionally appears on the This Week in Tech and Cranky Geeks podcasts. He is a visiting scholar at the MIT Sloan School of Management and has a masters in software engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. Additionally, he serves on the advisory board of imeem, a San Francisco, Ca. based social networking firm.

Leon Segal

Dr. Leon Segal is an Innovation Mentor, guiding companies and individuals through exciting and uncertain journeys of innovation. He has over two decades of experience studying and shaping human experience in a wide range of areas: from airplanes and trucks, through medical and consumer products, to retail banking and the design of innovation centers. Leon has innovated with many world-class organizations, including domain leaders such as, NASA, AIG, BMW, Kodak, Three and IDEO, in locations ranging from Palo Alto and Tokyo to Stockholm, Istanbul and Tel Aviv. He holds a Ph.D. in Cognitive and Engineering Psychology, plays soprano saxophone, and cultivates an organic olive grove.

Kristian Simsarian

Dr. Kristian Simsarian believes in the power of design to simplify, enrich and transform our lives and the world. His work focuses on bringing innovative human-centered design and strategy to meaningful fruition for companies and institutions, from pixels to processes. He brings a deep, diverse, and international background to his project work and to the creative teams he leads that span from healthcare to high-tech. In addition to his own publications and patents, Kristian's work has been featured in Business Week, The New York Times and Metropolis Magazine, as well as being highlighted in business books on innovation and interaction design.

Kristian co-founded the Software Experiences practice at IDEO and is currently Practice Director with a focus on mobile. Recently, Kristian has led design innovation initiatives for two of the world's largest brands. He lives in a fixer-upper Victorian in San Francisco with his psychologist wife and his obsessively-tuned biodiesel VW Golf.

Charles Warren

Charles Warren is a Senior User Experience Designer on Google's Mobile product development team, where he designs applications for iPhone and Android users, as well as for users in developing markets like Africa, India, and China. He's also responsible for Google Mobile's front-end product-concept development process.

Prior to Google, Charles was a design lead in IDEO's Software Experience Design Practice, where he led projects for Nokia and ABC Television among other clients. Prior to joining IDEO in 2002, Charles was involved in a number of early-stage technology and consulting businesses, including the web consulting firm Scient, (where he helped launch Scient's Innovation Acceleration Lab in San Francisco), the Idea Factory, and Cactus. His first job after college was at Pace Prints in New York City where he collaborated on printmaking projects with artists like Chuck Close and Peter Halley.

Jeremiah Zinn

Jeremiah Zinn is Senior Vice President of Syndication & Operations for MTV Networks (MTVN). In his role, Zinn works closely with the company's Global Digital Media team to manage operations for online content distribution. Zinn also oversees operations and product development for MTVN Mobile Media, which supports the company's brands in developing and distributing a wide portfolio of mobile content and applications.

Most recently, Zinn served as Vice President of Wireless Operations and Product Development for MTV Networks. In that role, Zinn managed the mobile product roadmap and development path for six Viacom Brands; MTV, VH1, CMT, COMEDY CENTRAL, Spike and LOGO. Zinn also oversaw production of all mobile products that MTV Networks distributes.

Prior to joining MTVN, Jeremiah was head of service development at Ericsson Mobility World (www.ericsson.com/mobilityworld/) where he worked with North American operators to bring innovative content and applications to their customers. He conceived, developed, and sold Ericsson's first hosted content services to both U.S. and European operators in the areas of MMS content, SMS content and Mobile downloads.

Before joining Ericsson, Jeremiah worked at several new media and Internet startups with a focus of creating entertainment experiences using emerging technologies.

In addition to being an experienced strategic planner and business manager, Jeremiah has extensive experience evaluating technology and consumer services for venture capitalists including the Soros Group.

Jeremiah is currently an adjunct professor at Parsons New School for Design, where he teaches mobile game design.

Prior to his new media career, Jeremiah studied Art History and Art Restoration at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Copyright 2008