Ayah Bdeir is the founder and CEO of littleBits, an award-winning library of electronics dubbed "LEGOs for the iPad generation." Bdeir is an engineer, interactive artist and one of the leaders of the open source hardware movement. Bdeir's career and education have centered on advancing open source hardware to make education and innovation more accessible to people around the world. She is a co-founder of the Open Hardware Summit, a TED Senior Fellow and an alumna of the MIT Media Lab. Bdeir was named one of Inc. Magazine's 35 Under 35, one of Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People in Business and one of Popular Mechanics 25 Makers Who Are Reinventing the American Dream. littleBits was named as one of CNN's top 10 Emerging Startups to watch. Originally from Lebanon and Canada, Ayah lives in New York City.
Matt Richardson is a San Francisco-based creative technologist and contributing editor to Make: Magazine. He's the owner of Awesome Button Studios, a consultancy focused on blending creativity and technology. After graduating with a Master's from New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) in 2013, he continued his work there as a resident research fellow. Matt is the co-author of Getting Started with Raspberry Pi and the author of Getting Started with BeagleBone and Getting Started with Intel Galileo.