Anil Dash (; born September 5, 1975) is an American

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...

executive,

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

Prince A prince is a male ruler (ranked below a king, grand prince, and grand duke) or a male member of a monarch's or former monarch's family. ''Prince'' is also a title of nobility (often highest), often hereditary, in some European states. Th ...

scholar and writer. He is the Head of

Glitch A glitch is a short-lived fault in a system, such as a transient fault that corrects itself, making it difficult to troubleshoot. The term is particularly common in the computing and electronics industries, in circuit bending, as well as among ...

and VP of Developer Experience at

Fastly Fastly is an American cloud computing services provider. It describes its network as an edge cloud platform, which is designed to help developers extend their core cloud infrastructure to the edge of the network, closer to users. The Fastly edge ...

Career

In 1999, Dash launched his personal weblog, dashes.com (now anildash.com), while working as an independent technology consultant. From 2001 to 2003, he worked as a

new media New media describes communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for ...

developer for the ''

Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the creat ...

'' before becoming the first employee of

Six Apart Six Apart Ltd., sometimes abbreviated 6A, is a software company known for creating the Movable Type blogware, TypePad blog hosting service, and Vox (the blogging platform). The company also is the former owner of LiveJournal. Six Apart is he ...

, the makers of

Movable Type Movable type (US English; moveable type in British English) is the system and technology of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual alphanumeric characters or punctuatio ...

TypePad Typepad is a blogging service owned by Endurance International Group, previously owned by SAY Media (from the merger of Six Apart Ltd and VideoEgg). Originally launched in October 2003, Typepad is based on Six Apart's Movable Type platform, and ...

, and Vox, where he served as a vice president until 2009. From 2009 to 2012 he served as the director of

Expert Labs Expert Labs is a non-profit technology incubator intended to aid government access expertise from interested members of the public. Part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, it was formed in November 2009, following discussion ...

, a

Gov 2.0 E-government (short for electronic government) is the use of technological communications devices, such as computers and the Internet, to provide public services to citizens and other persons in a country or region. E-government offers new ...

project to facilitate political participation. After this work, he became an advisor to the White House Office of Digital Strategy under the Obama administration. He was also previously a partner with Michael J. Wolf in Activate Consulting, a media and technology

management consulting Management consulting is the practice of providing consulting services to organizations to improve their performance or in any way to assist in achieving organizational objectives. Organizations may draw upon the services of management consultant ...

firm, and a co-founder (with

Gina Trapani Gina Marie Trapani (born September 19, 1975) is an American tech blogger, web developer, writer, and technology executive. Biography Trapani was born and raised in an Italian people, Italian Catholic family in Brooklyn, New York (state), New York ...

) and CEO of ThinkUp, a social media aggregation and analysis tool. The company was shuttered in June 2016. Dash was appointed CEO of Fog Creek Software in December 2016. On September 25, 2018, the company was renamed Glitch after its flagship product. In March 2020, Glitch and its union signed a collective bargaining agreement, the first in the tech industry. Dash was host of ''Function with Anil Dash'', a podcast about technology's effects on culture, co-produced by Glitch and

Vox Media Vox Media, Inc. is an American mass media company based in Washington, D.C., and New York City. The company was established in November 2011 by Jim Bankoff and Trei Brundrett to encompass ''SB Nation'' (a sports blog network founded in 2005 by ...

The podcast ran for two seasons from 2018 to 2020. Dash is also a scholar of the musician

NFTs

In 2014, as part of a collaboration with Kevin McCoy, Dash co-created Monegraph, a

blockchain A blockchain is a type of distributed ledger technology (DLT) that consists of growing lists of records, called ''blocks'', that are securely linked together using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a ...

-based system for verifying original digital artworks initially called ''monetized graphics'', which has since been called the first implementation of

non-fungible token A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided, that is recorded in a blockchain, and that is used to certify authenticity and ownership. The ownership of an NFT is recorded in the b ...

s (NFTs). Dash has been critical of present day usage of the NFT concept, stating "The only thing we’d wanted to do was ensure that artists could make some money and have control over their work," and that co-creator "McCoy still believes that blockchain technologies can help artists sustain their work."

Recognition

In 2004, he won an

SEO contest An SEO contest is a prize activity that challenges search engine optimization (SEO) practitioners to achieve high ranking under major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN using certain keyword(s). This type of contest is controversial ...

which required contestants to get the top Google ranking for the made-up phrase "nigritude ultramarine". In 2010, Dash's weblog was an honoree in the Personal Blog/Website category of the 2010

Webby Awards The Webby Awards are awards for excellence on the Internet presented annually by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a judging body composed of over two thousand industry experts and technology innovators. Categories include ...

. In 2022 Dash and McCoy won the Webby lifetime achievement award for the development of NFTs.

Personal life

Dash was born to

Odia Odia, also spelled Oriya or Odiya, may refer to: * Odia people in Odisha, India * Odia language, an Indian language, belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family * Odia alphabet, a writing system used for the Odia languag ...

parents from

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

and grew up near

Harrisburg Harrisburg is the capital city of the Pennsylvania, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, Dauphin County. With a population of 50,135 as of the 2021 census, Harrisburg is the List of c ...

, Pennsylvania. He lives in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

with his wife Alaina Browne and one son.

References

External links