Jimmy Wales, U.S. Internet entrepreneur and founder of Wikipedia, will be the keynote speaker during the Flexible Packaging Association’s 2014 Annual Meeting, March 4-6, 2014 at the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess in Scottsdale, Arizona. Jimmy will deliver his keynote address on Thursday, March 6, 2014 during the Annual Meeting Networking Luncheon. During his address, Jimmy will share with Annual Meeting attendees his thoughts on how open-source technology is affecting the fundamental ways that businesses interact with customers, distributors, suppliers, and the public. 

 

During the 2014 FPA Annual Meeting attendees will also hear from presenters Lisa Bodell of futureThink, who will discuss “Kill the Company: End the Status Quo, Start an Innovation Revolution;” Nick Vafiadis of IHS, who will discuss the flexible packaging materials market and significant changes impacting the flexible packaging industry; and Jan Homan of Constantia Teich, who will provide an update on the European flexible packaging market. The Meeting will also include a report on the state of the flexible packaging industry, the presentation of the 2014 FPA Flexible Packaging Achievement Awards and great networking opportunities with industry leaders. 

 

The 2014 FPA Annual Meeting is open to FPA members. Meeting registration and additional hotel information will be available in the coming months on the FPA Web site, www.flexpack.org. 

 

About Jimmy Wales

Jimmy has been ranked by Forbes Magazine as a “Web Celeb,” TIME Magazine named him one of the “100 Most Influential People” in 2006, and The World Economic Forum recognized Jimmy as one of the “Young Global Leaders” of 2007. His work with Wikipedia, which has become the world's largest encyclopedia and the 5th most popular Web site in the world, has helped popularize the Web 2.0 trend in web development that aims to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing among users.

 

In addition to Wikipedia, Jimmy is the founder of the Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit charitable organization dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to providing the full content of wiki-based projects to the public free of charge. The Wikimedia Foundation operates some of the largest collaboratively edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia. Jimmy also co-founded, with Angela Beesley, the for-profit company Wikia, Inc. Wikia is a wiki farm-a collection of individual wikis on different subjects, all hosted on the same Web sites. As a part of his work at Wikia, Inc., Jimmy is developing a human-powered search engine, Search Wikia, which will be based on the same open, transparent, community-driven principles of Wikia and Wikipedia. 

 

Jimmy is a Fellow of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. He serves on the Board of Directors of Socialtext, a provider of wiki technology to businesses and the non-profit organization Creative Commons. He has received an honorary doctorate from Knox College of Illinois and was presented with a Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2006.

 

For more information, contact FPA at (410) 694-0800.