Bio
Isaac Mao is a computer scientist, entrepreneur and thinker. He is the creator of $Music, Musicoin.org, and served as CTO of Aivvy Inc from 2014-2016. He has also served on the board of directors at Tor Project from 2008-2012, was a research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University from 2008-2009, and served as VP of TMT at UCI Investment from 2004-2008.
Isaac was described as the first blogger in China by The Guardian. He co-founded CNBlog.org in 2002 to evangelize grassroots publishing and sharing in China. During 2004-2008, he chaired the Chinese Blogger Conference, a convention gather together opinion leaders in China, which was later was banned by Chinese authorities in 2009. Besides this work, Isaac led a series of initiatives in China to advocate free access, free speech and free thinking, and brought the Creative Commons project into China.
During his fellowship at the Berkman Center, he coined the term Sharism, a new philosophy explains how a fully connected society will transform human beings to emergent super intelligence. In 2014, Sharism was rewarded as “Idea of the Future” by Davos Communication Forum.
In his open letter to Google founders in 2007, Isaac raised the global alarm of the responsibilities of multinational enterprises to maintain internet freedom in local markets. Inspired by this letter, Google retreated from China at 2010 to protest censorship in China. Through joining the board of Tor Project, and as an advisor to Global Voices Online, Isaac has fostered global collaborations to defeat censorship across boundaries.
Striving to be a global bridge of civil society, Isaac speaks regularly to World Economy Forum, Web 2.0 Summit , Wikimania, Chinese Internet Research Conference, Ci’Num , PICNIC, TED and other global digital cultural events. He was also jury member to Prix Ars, The Deutsche Welle International Blog Awards etc.