Jon Lebkowsky

Lebkowsky left Plutopia Productions, which later closed down. However in 2018 Lebkowsky and Sweeney revived the Plutopia News Network podcast. https://plutopia.io

Aligned with the 2011 event, Lebkowsky and producer Scoop Sweeney created a podcast called the Plutopia News Network.

In 2009 he left Social Web Strategies and returned to web consulting and development. He currently writes and speaks about the Internet, media, digital culture, and social technology. He has a web development and consulting company called Polycot Associates, a spinoff from Polycot Consulting.

Lebkowsky and Woodgate, partnering with Maggie Duval and Bon Davis, created an event company, Plutopia Productions. Plutopia produced four large events during SXSW Interactive in Austin, in 2008 at Scholz Garten, 2009 at Palmer Events Center, and 2010-2011 at the Mexican American Cultural Center.

He has been an advisor to the SXSW Interactive (SXSWi) conference for many years. He curated SXSWi tracks on wireless in 2004, digital convergence in 2006, and journalism in 2011. He was a cofounder and an original board member of the Society for Participatory Medicine, and currently manages the Society's social media presence. He formed an Austin-based social web consultancy, Social Web Strategies, where he was principal from 2006 to 2009. He was also instigator and principal of Plutopia Productions, a future-focused entertainment and production company. He has also been involved in Austin sustainability projects, including Austin EcoNetwork, Austin Green Art, Austin 350, Solar Austin, and the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems.

He also led Austin's Wireless Future project for the IC² Institute in 2003–2004, and was a prominent figure within the Central Texas Digital Convergence Initiative, Bootstrap Austin, ATX Equation, and other local economic development projects.

Lebkowsky turned to web development, and formed Polycot Consulting with Jeff Kramer and Matt Sanders on September 12, 2001. He became an advocate of Open Source systems based on PHP, and later Ruby on Rails.

In the early 2000s, Lebkowsky was a member of the board of the Central Texas Digital Convergence Initiative (http://dcitexas.org/). In 2005, with other members of the Digital Convergence Initiative, he worked on an installation intended for the then newly established South by Southwest Interactive trade show, which was referred to in planning stages as Futurama. Due to a lack of time and funds, the installation did not occur as planned, however from planning conversations, Lebkowsky had the idea for a think tank that produces events instead of white papers. With futurist Derek Woodgate and consultant David Demaris, he put this idea into practice, creating an installation called the DIY House of the Future for Maker Faire Austin in 2007. The installation was successful.

In 1997, he joined Whole Foods Market as its "Internet guy," to evangelize internally for the Internet and help lead their web-based ecommerce efforts, which ended in 2000 with the collapse of the so-called "Internet bubble." As Internet evangelist within the company, he advocated creation of online community at Whole Foods Market, and was Interactive Community Director for the ecommerce site that launched in 1998. When WholeFoods.com was replaced by the ambitious Whole People, Lebkowsky moved to Colorado and helped manage technology for the new enterprise until the company ended the project following the "dotcom bust."

Lebkowsky joined the WELL in 1990, and became a host or co-host of several forums on the conferencing system, including forums devoted to Factsheet Five, where he had a brief stint as book review editor, and Mondo 2000, where he wrote several articles and formed friendships with editors RU Sirius and Jude Milhon. Through the WELL, he also became associated with Howard Rheingold and Whole Earth Review, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and boing boing, where he was associate editor. He had early associations with staff at Wired Magazine and conducted a regular, weekly series of chats called Electronic Frontiers Forum at HotWired. He was a subdomain editor for the Millennium Whole Earth Catalog and, in 1996, became a community host at Howard Rheingold's Electric Minds.

Jon Lebkowsky (born April 20, 1949) is a web consultant/developer, author, and activist who was the co-founder of FringeWare Review (along with Paco Nathan). FringeWare, an early attempt at ecommerce and online community, published a popular "magalog" called FringeWare Review, and a literary zine edited by Lebkowsky called Unshaved Truths. FringeWare's email list, called the FringeWare News Network, established an international following for the organization, which also opened a store in Austin, Texas.

Lebkowsky has written articles and essays, and is a contributing writer and columnist at Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century, and one of the contributors to the book Worldchanging (book). He was co-editor (with Mitch Ratcliffe) of the book Extreme Democracy