Political organizer and technologist Dan Ancona builds and evangelizes online tools that strengthen democracy. He has helped create and build interest in numerous products in fifteen years at several startups and in academia (with a research focus on visualization), but since 2006 has been accelerating the shift from top-down, broadcast style politics to a more networked, person-to-person, diversity-positive and inclusive democratic system with clients including TargetSmart Communications, Citizen Engagement Lab, and the Agenda Project, and as the founder of California VoterConnect and Democracy Dashboard. His other interests include urban design, economics, strategic communications, DJing and sailing. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and fellow organizer Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, their son Marco, and their extraordinarily large and friendly cat, Oscar.