Esther Dyson would be one of the grand old men of the Internet software industry...if she were old and a man. Instead, this attractive dynamo has such an extraordinary track record in the tech space that it's easy to overlook just what a seminal player she has been. Taking over the Rosen Electronic Letter from Ben Rosen (the industry sage who first funded Compaq and Lotus), she turned RELease 2.0 into the must-read periodical of the software industry. PC Forum, the annual event she hosted for well over a decade, was THE place to network and cut deals. And when the Internet moved into the 'real' word, she was elected the first Chairperson of ICANN, the Internet Committee for Assigned Names and Numbers (in other words, Esther *ruled* the Internet!) EDVentures, her holding company for her newsletter, conferences, and other activities, was acquired in 2004 by c|net, and since then Esther has become one of the most prolific technology angel investors in the country (eventually reclaiming the EDVentures name). She is an active member of New York Angels (who attends most of the meetings, and even screening meetings, is involved on the cutting edge of everything (particularly international technology development), seems to never sleep, documents her entire life on Flickr, and has the most unbelievable travel schedule in the universe. As Arianna Huffington put it on Huffingtonpost: "Esther Dyson is the Internet’s court jester, a person of no institutional importance who somehow manages to speak the truth and to be heard when and where it matters."