Jerry Paffendorf

After dropping out of high school and earning a BFA in New Jersey, Jerry Paffendorf moved to Portland to make art, and then followed his emerging interest in emerging technology to the University of Houston-Clear Lake where he earned a Masters of Science in Studies of the Future. From there he got busy as a futurist and internet creative, first working with the nonprofit Acceleration Studies Foundation in LA, and then joining a startup based in DC called the Electric Sheep Company where he began making and studying new experiences in 3D virtual worlds. Next he co-founded Wello Horld in Brooklyn where he helped invent the coolest realtime social internet software you've never heard of. That venture capital-fueled adventure ended, appropriately, in San Francisco. Always building on past experience, lifelong passions, and a sense of where the web is going, in early 2009 Jerry moved to Detroit to start LOVELAND Technologies (www.makeloveland.com) because his "spider senses were tingling" with the opportunity to help weave a collective internet experience into the fabric and regrowth of a great American city.