David Kirkpatrick

Summary

I've been a business journalist for 40 years! Yikes! I honed in on tech for the last three decades. Most recently I have pivoted towards learning and writing about climate tech and climate action. After a long career at Fortune and a hiatus writing a book about Facebook, in 2011 I founded New York-based conference and media company Techonomy Media. We organized events and created text and video content, all of it devoted to explaining and understanding the intersection of technology and progress. We aimed to be a community and nexus where business leaders intersected with tech innovators, and where leaders learned how to be better technologists for an age when every company is a tech company. We typically organized two annual invite-only Techonomy Conferences. In 2020 we moved our events online, and in 2022 resumed physical events, with Techonomy Climate and Techonomy 2022 in Sonoma. Climate action and climate journalism and convening has become a central focus of my work. In 2010 Simon & Schuster published my book The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company that is Connecting the World, and I continue closely to track Facebook and the global Internet industry, and threats that are posed to it by recklessly managed Facebook and other giants. The book is published in 32 languages, including Vietnamese and Catalan. At Fortune, where I worked for 25 years, I was Senior Editor for Internet & Technology and for six years wrote a weekly column called Fast Forward (https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fastforward/index.html). I created and hosted Fortune's Brainstorm conference, beginning in 2001. I'm a believer in the power of technology as a critical tool to change the world for the better. In addition to writing and producing video for www.techonomy.com, I have written for Forbes, Vanity Fair, Time, and The Information. I also speak and moderate, focused on technology's intersection with the economy, the Internet, the climate crisis, Facebook, social media, and how all those things connect. Specialties: technology, business, Internet, climate tech, climate action, Facebook, international development, technology and development, digital divide, technology journalism, global issues, technology industry competition, innovation, competitiveness, technology competition.