By theodp, 1:40 PM on Mon Jun 23 2008, 617 views (Edit, to draft, Top, Slurp)

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Information is sparse on some of the companies selected to attend the exclusive O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures Startup Camp (and follow-up Foo Camp), but no less than 4 of the 7 companies picked from 'an overwhelming response' have principals whose resumes include stints as O'Reilly authors or O'Reilly conference speakers.

For starters, take Michael Slater, CEO of Collective Knowledge, who not only spoke recently at RailsConf, but also helped O'Reilly arrange a past invitation-only Foo event and is allowed to use O'Reilly HQ for his events.
Then there's Luke Kanies of Reductive Labs, a perennial O'Reilly OSCON speaker. Stonewall Software CEO John Viega has penned two O'Reilly books and made appearances at O'Reilly Conferences both in the States and abroad. Finally, there's eduFire CTO J. Scott Johnson, who co-wrote O'Reilly's Essential Blogging with Rael Dornfest, O'Reilly's ETCON conference chair and ex-CTO. And while Replicator founder Steve Leibman apparently has yet to strike a deal with O'Reilly, his Fab professor - MIT's Neil Gershenfeld - is an O'Reilly favorite and oversaw work Tim's son-in-law Saul Griffith did on his PhD at MIT. (Photo by takeshi)