David Albert -- David Albert is a well-known homeschooling dad, speaker, and author of Have Fun. Learn Stuff. Grow. Homeschooling and the Curriculum of Love (Common Courage Press, 2006), And the Skylark Sings with Me: Adventures in Homeschooling and Community-Based Education (New Society Publishers, 1999), and Homeschooling and the Voyage of Self-Discovery: A Journey of Original Seeking (Common Courage Press, 2003). He is also editor of the two-volume set The Healing Heart ~ Families: Storytelling to Encourage Caring and Healthy Families and The Healing Heart and Communities: Storytelling to Build Strong and Healthy Communities (New Society Publishers 2003). You can get more information about David at his website: http://www.skylarksings.com

Blake Boles -- Blake Boles has worked extensively with teens outside of the traditional high school environment. He is the author of College Without High School, a teenage guidebook for getting into competitive colleges with little or no high school. Blake designs and leads innovative trips teenage unschoolers through his company, Unschool Adventures. He has co-led a teen leadership program for three summers as the assistant director of Deer Crossing Wilderness Summer Camp and served as an advisor to unschooling teens at Not Back to School Camp since 2006. For more on Blake, check out his website at http://www.blakeboles.com

Chance Massaro, M.A. -- Chance  will be joining us for the first time this year to talk about learning styles and how the brain works to learn and retain information. Chance has been training and consulting in planning and communicating for over 25 years. He has worked for over 300 organizations throughout California. Throughout that time he has been fascinated by how people learn, remember and use information. His Master’s Degree in Learning Clinic from San Francisco State University prepared him to notice how people prepare to remember, use their senses, connect or associate what they want to remember and use it constructively. He has published three books: Cooperative Time Management, Easy Genius, and Easy Genius at Work. Check out his website at http://www.memorybackguarantee.com

Mark Schlichting -- Mark Schlichting is a well-known pioneer of the children's multimedia and interactive design industry. He has over 25 years of design, publishing, and creative management experience. As one of the first interactive CD-ROM designers, Mark is probably best known as the creator of Broderbund's Living Books series. Living Books delivered one of the first truly interactive CD-ROM titles (for children) and was seen as the benchmark for engaging and educational multimedia in the early 90’s.  In 2000, Mark founded NoodleWorks, a design consulting company specializing in children’s interactive design, development, and social networks. Clients include LeapFrog, eScore - Learning Centers, Pearson Broadband (Educational Division, London), Fisher/Price, Snicker Interactive Toys, Serosity, and many more. 

Tammy Takahashi -- Tammy Takahashi is the former editor for the California Homeschooler magazine, published by the Homeschool Association of California.  She is also the author of Deschooling Gently:  A Step by Step Guide to Fearless Homeschooling.  Tammy's articles have appeared in  variety of magazines, including Home Education, Live Free Learn Free, and Life Learning.    Tammy writes about zenschooling, deschooling, unschooling, homeschool politics, important California homeschool news at her blog, "Just Enough and Nothing More", http://www.justenoughblog.com.    Besides homeschooling, Tammy's other interests include writing fiction, practicing yog, running, reading, playing games, visiting new places, studying Buddhism and other religions/philosophies, and finding the awesome that is in everyone. 

Mark Tollefson -- Mark  works with the Wilderness Youth Project and has extensive training in martial arts, wilderness survival, tracking, and was head chef and an instructor with the Tom Brown Tracker School. He was also a lead instructor for the national Art of Mentoring workshop training program with Wilderness Awareness School. Mark was born in northern Alberta, Canada and spent many of his formative years in the wilds of Alberta and British Columbia. He has been fortunate to have had many wonderful mentors through his life that have helped guide and shape his life. Mark focuses his time on developing deeper understandings of how the mentoring process in nature helps facilitate the formation of exceptional human beings.

Sharon Tollefson -- Sharon is also with the Wilderness Youth Project, has over 10 years of experience working with youth and families from a variety of backgrounds and was full time staff with WYP from 2001-2008. She earned her B.A. in Sociology from UCSB and has since trained with the Tracker School, Wilderness Awareness School, and School of Lost Borders. Sharon is a certified emergency medical technician and her passions include surfing, backpacking, exploring mysteries, journaling and connecting.

Rose Vasquez -- Also known as Professor of Potions and Headmistress of Nova Academy of Sciences and Arts, Rose earned a BA in psychology, with a minor in special education, from San Francisco State University. She worked with children in mainstream classrooms, special education and residential treatment, before having own children. Now, she homeschools two wonderful boys. While trying to keep up with the interests of the boys, she discovered science is a lot of fun. She enjoys sharing science fun with family, friends, at birthday parties, and with our homeschool community.

Jon Young -- Tracker, naturalist, and teacher who co-founded of the Wilderness Awareness School. Jon is an innovator in combining native mentoring techniques with the tools of modern field ecology to offer antidotes to nature-deficit disorder.  Out of the Wilderness Awareness School, Jon developed a system that is now called “8 Shields Cultural Mentoring”. This system tracks processes and mentoring techniques that are built into the design of one-on-one mentoring programs, family mentoring practices, community-based mentoring and more traditional modes of education. The 8 Shields Cultural Mentoring model has now influenced well over 100 nature and eco-community programs in the United States, Canada and Europe, and is also used in his consulting for organizations, government agencies and communities worldwide.  For more information on Jon Young, please visit his website at http://www.jonyoung.org