Alan Marshall Meckler (born 1945) is an American internet pioneer and publishing executive. [1] Meckler started his own publishing business in 1971 which evolved into Mecklermedia Corporation in the 1990s until the company was acquired by Penton Media in November 1998, [2] and founded several print magazines including Virtual Reality World, CD-ROM World, and Internet World. [3] [4] Mediabistro was purchased in 2007 and later sold to Prometheus Global Media in 2014. [5] Currently Meckler is CEO of 3DR Holdings LLC based in New York City which offers news coverage of the additive manufacturing fields and quantum computing through websites and trade shows. [6]
Born in New York City in 1945, Meckler was raised in Great Neck, NY. Meckler attended the Pennington School 1959-1963. He attended Tulane University 1963-1965 and received his BA from Columbia College 1967, a Masters (1968) and Ph.D. (1980) in American history from Columbia University. [7] He is also the brother of director Nancy Meckler.
His doctoral dissertation Scholarly Micropublishing in America was published by Greenwood Press in 1982. [8] He is also editor of The Draft and its Enemie published by the University of Illinois Press (1974). [9] His book The Internet's First Entrepreneur was published in 2021. [10] Meckler served in the New York Air National Guard and the United States Army Reserve (1969-1975).
Meckler is known for creating the trade show Internet World in 1993. The event started with a few hundred people and no exhibits. By 1996 it attracted 75,000 attendees at the Javits Center in New York City and was also produced annually in Los Angeles and Chicago as well as in many international venues. [10] Meckler also created the event Search Engine Strategies trade show in New York City in 1999. [10] Since 2013 Meckler has been producing trade shows for the 3D printing industry. In 2014, with his son John, Meckler created a mutual fund devoted to 3D printing and additive manufacturing. [11] 3D Printing and Technology Fund was the first mutual fund worldwide devoted to this investment coverage.
Meckler also launched a trade show for the virtual currency Bitcoin. The first show was launched in New York City in July 2013. In May 2015, Meckler launched a show "RoboUniverse" in New York City. [12]
Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The earliest known form of printing evolved from ink rubbings made on paper or cloth from texts on stone tablets, used during the sixth century. Printing by pressing an inked image onto paper appeared later that century. Later developments in printing technology include the movable type invented by Bi Sheng around 1040 and the printing press invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century. The technology of printing played a key role in the development of the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution and laid the material basis for the modern knowledge-based economy and the spread of learning to the masses.
Stephen McConnell Case is an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist best known as the former chief executive officer and chairman of America Online (AOL). Case joined AOL's predecessor company, Quantum Computer Services, as a marketing vice-president in 1985, became CEO of the company in 1991, and, at the height of the dot-com bubble in 2000, orchestrated with Gerald M. Levin the merger that created AOL Time Warner, described as "the biggest train wreck in the history of corporate America."
In-Q-Tel (IQT), formerly Peleus and In-Q-It, is an American not-for-profit venture capital firm based in Arlington, Virginia. It invests in companies to keep the Central Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies, equipped with the latest in information technology in support of United States intelligence capability. The name "In-Q-Tel" is an intentional reference to Q, the fictional inventor who supplies technology to James Bond.
Soros Fund Management, LLC is a privately held American investment management firm. It is currently structured as a family office, but formerly as a hedge fund. The firm was founded in 1970 by George Soros and, in 2010, was reported to be one of the most profitable firms in the hedge fund industry, averaging a 20% annual rate of return over four decades. It is headquartered at 250 West 55th Street in New York. As of 2023, Soros Fund Management, LLC had $25 billion in AUM.
3D printing or additive manufacturing is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer control, with the material being added together, typically layer by layer.
Daktronics, Inc. is an American company based in Brookings, South Dakota, that designs, manufactures, sells, and services video displays, scoreboards, digital billboards, dynamic message signs, sound systems, and related products. It was founded in 1968 by two South Dakota State University professors.
Mecklermedia was a U.S.-based corporation. The original WebMediaBrands was established in 1994, and headquartered in New York. Founded by Alan M. Meckler and Tristan Louis, the company provided business-to-business (B2B) services for creative, business and information technology professionals, including recruitment and event promotion.
TimothyShiou-Ming Wu is a Taiwanese-American legal scholar who served as Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy at the United States from 2021 to 2023. He is also a professor of law at Columbia University and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. He is known legally and academically for significant contributions to antitrust and communications policy, coining the phrase "network neutrality" in his 2003 law journal article, Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination. In the late 2010s, Wu was a leading advocate for an antitrust lawsuit directed at the breakup of Facebook.
Stratasys, Ltd. is an American-Israeli manufacturer of 3D printers, software, and materials for polymer additive manufacturing as well as 3D-printed parts on-demand. The company is incorporated in Israel. Engineers use Stratasys systems to model complex geometries in a wide range of polymer materials, including: ABS, polyphenylsulfone (PPSF), polycarbonate (PC) and polyetherimide and Nylon 12.
Cimatron is an Israeli software company that produces CAD/CAM software for manufacturing, toolmaking and CNC programming applications.
Prometheus Global Media was a New York City–based B2B media company. The company was formed in December 2009, when Nielsen Company sold its entertainment and media division to a private equity-backed group led by Pluribus Capital Management and Guggenheim Partners. Guggenheim acquired Pluribus's stake in the company in January 2013, giving it full ownership under the division of Guggenheim Digital Media.
Shapeways, Inc. was a global, 3D printing marketplace and service, publicly traded company. Users design and upload 3D printable files, and Shapeways prints the objects for them or others. 3D printing resources are available for university students, faculty, and educators with an .EDU email
Jack Hidary is the CEO of AI and quantum technology company SandboxAQ.
Fused filament fabrication (FFF), also known as fused deposition modeling, or filament freeform fabrication, is a 3D printing process that uses a continuous filament of a thermoplastic material. Filament is fed from a large spool through a moving, heated printer extruder head, and is deposited on the growing work. The print head is moved under computer control to define the printed shape. Usually the head moves in two dimensions to deposit one horizontal plane, or layer, at a time; the work or the print head is then moved vertically by a small amount to begin a new layer. The speed of the extruder head may also be controlled to stop and start deposition and form an interrupted plane without stringing or dribbling between sections. "Fused filament fabrication" was coined by the members of the RepRap project to give an acronym (FFF) that would be legally unconstrained in its use.
Carbon, Inc. is a digital manufacturing company that manufactures and develops 3D printers utilizing the Continuous Liquid Interface Production process. The company was founded in 2013, and maintains its headquarters in California, United States.
Avi Reichental is an Israeli-American businessperson in the 3D printing industry. He is the founder and executive chairman of XponentialWorks, a venture investment, advisory and product development company. Reichental is CEO, chairman and co-founder of Nexa3D and co-founder and executive chairman of NXT Factory, Centaur Analytics and ParaMatters.
In recent years, 3D printing has developed significantly and can now perform crucial roles in many applications, with the most common applications being manufacturing, medicine, architecture, custom art and design, and can vary from fully functional to purely aesthetic applications.
A variety of processes, equipment, and materials are used in the production of a three-dimensional object via additive manufacturing. 3D printing is also known as additive manufacturing, because the numerous available 3D printing process tend to be additive in nature, with a few key differences in the technologies and the materials used in this process.
Rigetti Computing, Inc. is a Berkeley, California-based developer of quantum integrated circuits used for quantum computers. The company also develops a cloud platform called Forest that enables programmers to write quantum algorithms.
Markforged is an American public additive manufacturing company that designs, develops, and manufactures The Digital Forge — an industrial platform of 3D printers, software and materials that enables manufacturers to print parts at the point-of-need. The company is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, in the Greater Boston Area. Markforged was founded by Gregory Mark and the chief technology officer (CTO) David Benhaim in 2013. It produced the first 3D printers capable of printing continuous carbon fiber reinforcement and utilizes a cloud architecture.