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David Pogue

Emmy Winning CBS News Correspondent ; New York Times Columnist

Fee Range: $25,001 - $30,000
Traveling From: New York

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Favorites List: 0 Speakers

Biography

David Pogue grew up in Shaker Heights, OH, a suburb of Cleveland. (Mom's the Welcome Wagon lady; dad's a lawyer.) He was a music/theatre geek from Day 1, starring in, composing, playing piano for, or conducting musicals and choirs from elementary school through high school. He was also a language jock, winning the Ohio Spelling Bee in 1977, and a magician, performing over 400 magic shows during his teen years.

He studied music, English, and computer science at Yale. He graduated summa cum laude in 1985, with Distinction in Music, having continued to write and conduct musicals each year. (In 2007, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in music from the Shenandoah Conservatory. So that's "Dr. Pogue" to you, bud.)

After college, Pogue moved to New York City, with aspirations to compose Broadway shows. He worked as conductor, synthesizer programmer, arranger, or assistant on several Broadway shows (Carrie, Welcome to the Club, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Anything Goes at Lincoln Center) and a few Off-Broadway ones (Pajama Game, Godspell, and Flora, the Red Menace,which he also orchestrated).

In the interests of hedging his bets, he also founded and taught, for several years, the beginning magic courses at the New School for Social Research and New York's Learning Annex. He also codesigned and wrote the manuals for music software programs like Finale, from Coda Music Technology.

Unfortunately, the demand for new young composers on Broadway is about zero these days, and Pogue saw the writing on the wall; through this time, his computer-teaching skills were turning out to be in more demand than his musical ones. So he started teaching the Broadway community how to use their Macs -- first composers such as Stephen Sondheim, John Kander, Jerry Bock, David Shire, and Cy Coleman, and then later Hollywood and literary celebrities, from Mia Farrow to Harry Connick, Jr.

He began writing for Macworld magazine in 1988. His triple-award-winning column, "The Desktop Critic," appeared on the back page until November 2000, when he joined The Times.

In 1992, IDG Books asked Pogue to write Macs for Dummies. (This was back when there was only one Dummies book -- DOS for Dummies.) The book quickly became the #1 bestselling Macintosh book, and remained so, month after month, ever since -- in all of its 17 languages and six editions.

He wound up becoming a ridiculously prolific author, writing or co-writing 7 books in the “for Dummies” series (including Opera, Classical Music, andMagic), six editions of the 1,300-page bestseller Macworld Mac Secrets (co-authored with former Yale roommate Joe Schorr) and a novel, Hard Drive (a New York Times "notable book of the year"). In 1998, his PalmPilot: The Ultimate Guide became the #1 bestselling Palm book.

In 2000, Pogue created the Missing Manual series: a line of superbly written, printed manuals for computer products that don't come with any--in other words, "the book that should have been in the box." The series, published in collaboration with O'Reilly & Associates, now includes over 100 titles, includes bestsellers on topics like Mac OS X, the iPhone, Windows XP and Vista, Dreamweaver, iMovie, iPhoto, Microsoft Office, and others.

In November 2000, Pogue became the personal-technology columnist for theNew York Times. (His Times column, "State of the Art," appears every Thursday on the front page of the Business section.) Soon thereafter, he began writing his daily Times blog, "Pogue's Posts," authoring a weekly e-mail Times newsletter, "From the Desk of David Pogue," and shooting his double-award-winning, very silly Times Web videos.

Pogue appears frequently on radio and TV. For several years, he was a regular technology guest on Martha Stewart's pre-jail TV show and on NPR's "Morning Edition"; today, he appears weekly on CNBC's "Power Lunch," monthly on CNBC's "On the Money," and about six times a year on "CBS News Sunday Morning." In 2004, his "Sunday Morning" segments on Google and the spam problem won a 2004 Business Emmy.

Pogue lives with his wife Jennifer Pogue, MD, son Kelly, daughter Tia, and son Jeffrey, in Connecticut, where he entertains them with magic tricks, piano playing, and a lifelong stream of appalling puns.

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Media files by David Pogue

David Pogue | What The Future Holds (in Tech & Culture)

Speaker Programs (Click on each program to view the description)

The Web Culture Crash Course: You've seen the Star Wars kid, right? You know about Mentos and Coke, Where's the Chapstick, and Evolution of Dance? You've checked in with FourSquare, you're following some good people on Twitter, and your Facebook page is up to date? If not, you may find yourself feeling slightly out of the loop when it comes to what's happening online. (You wouldn't be alone- it moves fast.) Leave it to New York Times columnist David Pogue to bring you up to date. He'll demystify the online tools worth knowing (like Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, LinkedIn), show you the YouTube videos that everyone should know, and, above all, help you assess which of this stuff are just teenage fads, and which have meaning for your current career, social life, and personal time.
David Pogue's Tech Update: The very simple premise here, If you want to know what of importance is going on in the world of technology, New York Times columnist David Pogue is the perfect tour guide. This talk is constantly updated to represent what's going on in tech right now, whether it's the gadgets themselves, amazing free Internet services, or social-media shockwaves. The talk was originally designed for groups who hire David to return to their conferences each year, so they'd be sure to see fresh, funny material every time - but it turns out to be just a great standalone, highly entertaining crash course in what's worth knowing about at the time of your event.
Disruptive Tech - What's New, What's Coming, and How It Will Change Everything: As the New York Times's tech reviewer, David Pogue has a front-row seat for observing the blazing-fast torrent of new inventions. Hundreds of gadgets and technologies come down the pike every year, and plenty get lots of press--but most of it's junk. But in this fast, funny presentation, Pogue will stick his neck out to predict which will actually cause major, disruptive changes. He'll display, discuss, and even demonstrate the technological advances--in personal entertainment, cellular tech, Web 2.0, and more--that will have the most impact on society in the coming years.
Web 2.0, Social Media, and Other Buzzwords: What do YouTube, MySpace, eBay, and Craigslist have in common? They're all part of "Web 2.0," in which a Web site's material is supplied by its visitors. What do blogs, vlogs, and podcasts have in common? They're all new ways for individuals--and even corporations--to express themselves online. In this head-spinning talk, David Pogue, the New York Times's most popular blogger (and first video blogger), helps to make sense of the explosively expanding realm of Web 2.0 and all kinds of 'casting. He'll advise both individuals and companies on how to exploit these live-wire technologies, supply some horrifying and hilarious real-world stories, and hint at the future, the pitfalls, and the rewards of these revolutionary new channels.
Why Products Fail: In his 10 years reviewing tech products for the New York Times, David Pogue has seen his share of turkeys. Many were so obviously failures, a kindergartener could have spotted them. Sometimes the problem is design. But more often, it's procedural, having to do with misfires in communication, PR, marketing or groupthink. In this entertaining talk, he'll revisit some horrifying disasters from his journalism career - and, more important, pick apart how things went off the tracks.
David's Mobile Show and Tell: David Pogue reviews over 200 products a year for the New York Times. If anyone can identify the breakthroughs, he can. In this lively presentation--half talk, half magic show--David will present and actually demonstrate the latest and most amazing mobile gadgets, and offer his mini-critiques of each. The assortment changes monthly, of course, but past presentations have included the cellphone that offers unlimited free calls via Wi-Fi; the pocket camera that beams photos instantly onto Flickr (the photo-sharing Web site); the music player that downloads wirelessly from a catalog of 2 million songs; a folding memory card for cameras that eliminates the need for wires or card readers; the secret of getting Directory Assistance for free on your cellphone (rather than $2 per call from your carrier); the latest breakthroughs in speech recognition; and, of course, the iPhone. Prepare to have your mind blown--and your credit card stressed.
The Power of Simplicity: Why are consumers so fed up with their computers? "Software rage" has become an epidemic, help lines are flooded, and people are flinging their machines out the window in frustration. More often than not, the problem is the software design itself--the interface. The design of programs and Web sites grows in importance every day. Getting it right--packing a lot of features, the right way, into a small screen area--is extremely difficult, and the masters of the art are few and far between. But David Pogue, who analyzes software design each week in his New York Times column, has found some fascinating real-world examples that illustrate both clever solutions and horrifying failures. He'll also look forward to interface design of the future--speech, animation, and other innovations--as we move into an era of both much bigger and much smaller screens.
The Megapixel Challenge: If you believe the marketing, the quality of a digital camera is determined by the number of megapixels it has. 10 megapixels must be better than 5, right? In this hilarious talk, David Pogue relives his four-month quest to determine, once and for all, just how important megapixels are in a digital camera. His adventure wound up involving the Discovery Channel, the New York Times, the technical director of Professional Photography magazine, 100 passersby in Times Square, the way, and over 500 angry bloggers. You'll walk away with a new understanding of how cameras work--and the unpublicized measurement that REALLY determines the photo quality you'll get.
Blogs vs. Journalism: It's been said, over and over again, that blogs unleash the power of the citizen journalist. A new day has dawned, when news can hit the Web instantly, long before the mainstream media gets around to it. That, after all, is how so many of the great scandal stories have broken in the last few years. But is blogger journalism actually journalism? David Pogue, who writes a column for the New York Times, obviously has an opinion--but it might not be the one you expect. In this funny, thought-provoking talk, he tries to pin down the pros and the cons of the blogger as journalist, as well as the journalist as blogger--and offers a few suggestions that might give the public the best of both worlds.
Digital Photography, No Negatives: Anyone who already knows photography has a huge advantage when it comes to digital cameras--a familiarity with principles of light and composition, for example. At the same time, the "digital" part is a whole new world, entailing a new set of skills. In this entertaining presentation, New York Times columnist (and digital-camera reviewer) David Pogue offers a concise, meaty, funny crash course for the photographer who wants to exploit the digital possibilities without going quietly mad. Includes an updated glimpse at what's new and what's coming in digicams, plus workarounds for the ever-shorter list of digital drawbacks.