My first encounter with William Hurley, better known as whurley to most of us, was at an Austin Social Media Club meeting. At the time I wasn’t aware of his immense stature within the open source community. I didn’t know he was the Chief Architect for open strategy at BMC Software. I also wasn’t familiar with his history as a master inventor at IBM, as a successful entrepreneur and the holder of a number of important patents. I just thought he was an unusually intelligent and very nice guy who seemed to know a lot about social media. When I asked him for a business card and got a moo card that simply said, “whurley – evil genius.” I liked him immediately.

Later, as I got to know whurley better, I learned that he is literally a virtual crystal ball into the future of technology. I imagine that he can see around the next technological curves in the road the way that few are able and, like the geniuses before him, we should be listening now rather than later.  I also have come to learn that whurley is: a multi-faceted and talented man who invents better skateboards – more specifically, longboards – for frequent flyers to fit into the overhead compartments on airplanes; he is a great musician and audio expert; and, is generous with his time to a fault, among many other things.

It has occurred to me that whurley actually fits the description that I would use for a modern-day renaissance man.  whurley is a digital renaissance man.

whurley is going to be a keynote speaker at the upcoming Interactive Austin 2009 conference scheduled for April 27th. He will share with attendees his vision of where technologies associated with the social web will develop in the future and how they will impact our businesses and personal lives. whurley will, no doubt, engage the audience in the very unique and effective way he is known for within and outside of the social computing community.  It’s definitely a session you don’t want to miss if you want an honest and informed assessment of where you and your enterprise need to be positioned to be profitable in these difficult economic times.

Note – To keep up to date on everything involving Interactive Austin, follow our Twitter updates @IA09.

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