Supernova is produced independently by Kevin Werbach, professor at The Wharton School and former Counsel for New Technology Policy at the Federal Communications Commission.  Since 2005, it has been co-hosted by Wharton, the #1-ranked global business school.

Before starting Supernova, Werbach organized the legendary PC Forum with Esther Dyson. When the dot-com boom collapsed in 2002, he was struck by the level of innovation that continued to occur, despite conventional wisdom that the “Internet fad” was over.  He also saw an opportunity to use the very technologies Supernova addressed to reinvent conferences themselves.  By building around a networked community, merging the physical event with an extended virtual conversation, and making content freely available online, Supernova pioneered a new approach to conferences.

Four years ago, when Werbach wrote The Surging Tides of a Digital Torrent for BusinessWeek, the Web 2.0 boom hadn’t taken off, Facebook was limited to college students, and Barack Obama was a newly-elected Senator.   Yet his core insight was already well-developed: Business, technology, and social interactions are decentralizing, tearing apart industries with the force of a supernova. For eight years, the Supernova conference has explored these developments.  It has also served as a laboratory, embracing many of the cutting-edge tools it covers, from microblogging to interactive video to 3D virtual worlds.  As the Network Age unfolds, Supernova will continue to evolve.