Nick Bilton

Nick Bilton is a journalist, designer, UI specialist, technologist, author, hardware hacker, and researcher. He is currently the lead technology writer/reporter for The New York Times' Bits blog, and a reporter for the paper. Exclusively represented by Leading Authorities speakers bureau, Bilton has worked in numerous different industries within the context of design, research and development, technology, and storytelling – all with a focus on how technology is shaping our brains and our lives.

Bilton is the author of I Live in the Future & Here’s How It Works. The book explores the effects our byte-sized culture is having on our brains—looking at key research taking place in neuroscience and memory labs around the world. He also explores how technology will affect our culture, work, and brains when we look two to 20 years out.

Bilton’s presentations focus on the future of technology trends and how this evolution affects our day-to-day lives, both at home and at work. He is a great choice for a forward-looking talk on innovation, generations (and how they fit into the workforce), communications, and social networking. He uses an extremely visual speech style, integrating video, slides, and interaction with the audience in order to engage his listeners and drive his message home.

The Future Guru. He was previously the design integration editor for The New York Times and the user interface specialist and researcher forThe New York Times Company Research and Development Lab. There he worked on a variety of research projects and explored technologies that could become commonplace in the next two to 10 years. His work in the R&D Labs included exploring and prototyping content and interaction on futuristic flexible digital displays, a vast array of mobile applications and devices, the Times Reader 2.0, print-to-mobile SMS, Semacode integration, data visualization, content in the living room, and context-aware sensors.

His role required core research of upcoming trends, technologies and reader behaviors, and the development of future example prototypes. Some of these included “smart content,” where content followed the user around between devices, becoming aware of his or her location, interests, and previous news consumption. Additionally, Bilton is the co-founder of Shifd.com, a startup within The New York Times that helps people move content easily between multiple devices. ShifD came from winning a major technology competition in 2007 called Yahoo! Hack Day.

More about Nick Bilton. Outside of The New York Times, Bilton helped co-found NYCResistor, a hacker space in Brooklyn which offers hardware and programming classes and allows people to collectively work on innovative open source hardware and robotics projects. Bilton also is an adjunct professor at NYU/ITP (the interactive telecommunications program within the Tisch School of the Arts). Prior to working at The Times, Nick worked in the film industry with Mirimax Films and in the advertising and branding industry as a creative director.