Nick Bilton
PopTech 2009
After stints in the branding industry and at Miramax Films, Nick Bilton currently holds two titles at The New York Times: Design Integration Editor and User Interface Specialist & Lead Researcher. He is charged with exploring and testing technologies that could become commonplace — be it two years or ten years from now.
Bilton’s work in The NYT’s R&D Labs includes prototyping content and interaction on futuristic flexible digital displays, an array of mobile applications and devices, print-to-mobile SMS, Semacode integration, data visualization, and context aware sensors.
Bilton is also the co-founder of Shifd.com, a startup within The NYT that helps people shift content easily between multiple devices and which won “Best Overall Hack” at Yahoo! Hack Day in 2007. His book in progress is tentatively titled Byte. Snack. Meal: The New Business of Storytelling, and will be published by Random House in 2010. Bilton aims to shed light on how the proliferation of bite-sized narratives is affecting our brains and ultimately the culture industries.
Co-founder of NYCResistor—a hacker collective in downtown Brooklyn—Bilton is also an Adjunct Professor at NYU / ITP. Although he is not proud of it, he also designed the first Britney Spears doll.
Watch Nick Bilton’s talk at PopTech 2009