Tim O'Reilly

Official Bio

Tim O'Reilly is the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. The company also publishes online through the O'Reilly Network and hosts conferences on technology topics. Tim is an activist for open source, open standards, and sensible intellectual property laws.

Since 1978, Tim has led the company's pursuit of its core goal: to be a catalyst for technology change by capturing and transmitting the knowledge of "alpha geeks" and other innovators. His active engagement with technology communities drives both the company's product development and its marketing. Tim has built a culture where advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism are key tenets of the business philosophy.

Some notable instances of O'Reilly's catalytic impact on the technology world include:

• 1992. Published The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog, the first popular book about the internet, which was later selected by the New York Public Library as one of the most significant books of the twentieth century.

• 1993. O'Reilly's Global Network Navigator site (GNN, which was sold to America Online in September 1995) was the first web portal and the first true commercial site on the World Wide Web.

• 1998. The term "open source" was formally adopted at a summit of key free software leaders hosted by O'Reilly. Tim is honored with Infoworld's Industry Achievement Award for his role in open source advocacy.

• 2000. O'Reilly introduces Safari Books Online, the first web-native service for online book content.

• 2000. Tim's "Open Letter to Jeff Bezos" in protest of Amazon's 1-Click patent is signed by 10,000 supporters in four days, leading to joint lobbying for software patent reform by Amazon and O'Reilly.

• 2003. O'Reilly holds the first Foo Camp, a private gathering at its Sebastopol, CA campus, where, as Business 2.0 noted, the alpha geeks were "...hard and happily at work moving the entire economy of the Web forward, to good end."

• 2004. The Web 2.0 Conference, hosted by O'Reilly, John Battelle, and MediaLive, introduces the Web 2.0 meme to a sold-out crowd.

• Tim has served on the board of trustees for both the Internet Society and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, two organizations devoted to making sure that the internet fulfills its promise. He was on the board of Macromedia up until the recent merger with Adobe. He is currently on the board of CollabNet.

• Tim graduated from Harvard College in 1975 with a B.A. cum laude in Classics. His honors thesis explored the tension between mysticism and logic in Plato's dialogues.

• An archive of Tim's online articles, talks, and interviews can be found at Tim's archive page.