La Shawn Barber is a freelance writer, blogger, and blog consultant. Her features, essays and reviews have appeared in The Washington Post, Washington Examiner, Washington Times, Christian Research Journal, Christianity Today, Today’s Christian Woman, Beliefnet.com, Townhall.com, National Review Online, BlogCritics.org and other publications. La Shawn has appeared on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” BBC, MSNBC, C-SPAN and several national talk-radio programs, including National Public Radio, Michael Savage’s “The Savage Nation,” Bill O’Reilly’s “The Radio Factor,” and “The Hugh Hewitt Show.” Her political blog has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, and in the Washington Post.

David Mastio is the founder and editor of BlogNetNews.com, a nonpartisan aggregator of the best state and local news and public affairs blogs. Before fleeing to the Web, Mastio was the youngest member of USA Today's editorial board, a Washington correspondent for The Detroit News, an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot, founding editorial-page editor of The Washington Examiner and a speechwriter for a member of the Cabinet. Mastio has written a guide to running online opinion sections for the National Conference of Editorial Writers and served fellowships at USA Today, the Knight Center for Digital Media and the Hoover Institution.

Rob Neppell is founder and president of Kithbridge, Inc. (see booth 310) and is best known online by the pseudonym "N.Z. Bear". In 2002, Rob created the first and still-definitive blog tracking system, The TTLB Blogosphere Ecosystem, and over the past six years has earned a reputation as one of the key innovators in the new world of weblogs and citizens' media. For his efforts online, Rob was awarded the first-ever “Blogger of the Year” award in March 2007 at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and is a member of The Heritage Foundation's New Media Advisory Board. Rob is co-founder with Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds of Porkbusters, and spearheaded the "Secret Hold" effort which resulted in the passage of the historic Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act. In September 2007, in recognition of his work as founder of The Victory Caucus, Rob was honored to be invited to the White House with a small group of bloggers to spend an hour with President Bush discussing the war in Iraq and the role of online media in the educating the public about the conflict.

Faiz Shakir is the research director at the Center for American Progress and serves as editor-in-chief of ThinkProgress.org and The Progress Report. He holds degrees from Harvard University and the Georgetown Law Center. Faiz previously worked as a research associate for the Democratic National Committee; as a legislative aide to Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee; and as a communications aide in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. His writings have appeared in the Jerusalem Post, Florida Today, and Salon. Faiz has appeared on CNN, Fox News, and CNBC television, among other places, and has been a guest on many radio shows.