The New Disruptors

James Flynn is a New Zealander who relocated to San Francisco where he runs Extrasensory Devices. He's an engineer who started by developing modems, and then released on his own a set of drum-tempo monitors and a light-meter add-on for the iPhone. He's launched three Kickstarters, all of which funded, and has plenty more in his pipeline.

Jack Conte is a musician and entrepreneur, and one-half of the group Pomplamoose with Nataly Dawn. He and his partner have had millions of people watch their videos on YouTube, and launched a successful career for their stripped-down but layered covers. Jack and Nataly also both have branched into solo work, and Jack recently launched a twist on "conventional" crowdfunding with Patreon, an artist-supporting site.

Marisa McClellan puts stuff in jars and it's delicious. Her Food in Jars blog on canning and preserving went from a side venture alongside a full-time job to her main hub as a food writer. She writes for Food Network and Table Matters (part of Saveur). She conducts dozens of workshops and demonstrations every year. Her first book is Food in Jars: Preserving in Small Batches Year-Round, and she is in the middle of writing her second book, Preserving by the Pint. You want to pickle something? She's your woman.

Choire Sicha (pronounced "Corey SEEK-a") is one of the founders of The Awl, a site devoted to new writing and events of the day, with four sister sites under the same umbrella. Choire was an editor at Gawker — and returned as editor a second time after he first left. He's written for or worked at the New York Observer and Radar. Choire just came out with the fictionalized but entirely true novel, Very Recent History: An Entirely Factual Account of a Year (c. AD 2009) in a Large City.

David Malki's biography would take five minutes to read out. You may know him best as the perpetrator of the cartoon Wondermark, but he's also a filmmaker, a movie trailer editor, an author, an entrepreneur, and the Supreme Commander of Publicity & Promotions at TopatoCo, a firm that handles merchandise primarily for webcomics. He's available for weddings and bar mitzvahs. We talk about making films, making cartoons, and making books, and having a great time at all of it.

Adam Lisagor didn't set out to be the face of app advertising, but his acting and directing style mesh perfectly with the zeitgeist. It's a bit of irony without the snark. It's charming, straightforward, quiet, and informative. You've almost certainly seen his work repeatedly, and once you follow this link to Sandwich Video and watch some of his studio's work, you'll be able to recognize his work from now on. From his first video to promote an app he was co-developing to the massive amount of work done since, Adam has defined a style that others now aspire to. But this wasn't a plan. We'll talk about how he got here.

Erika Moen has been drawing comics since she was a teenager, and found online success with DAR: A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary while working full-time jobs. Fortunately, she was laid off, and moved into new chapters of her life, which included an appearance on the Web reality show Strip Search (from Penny Arcade) and the launch this year of Oh Joy Sex Toy, a regularly appearing comic that reviews and recommends adult paraphernalia. We talk about her career and how the Oh Joy project has consumed all of her time and some of her husband's. (This episode contains frank discussions of sex toys and sexuality, a few obscenities, and is marked explicit on iTunes.)

Andrew Huang, known as "bunnie" (lowercase) to his friends, first came to the public eye when, while a graduate computer-science student at MIT, he cracked the proprietary wrapper around Microsoft's Xbox operating system in 2002, which allowed it then to run any software of his choosing. Microsoft didn't like this and MIT told him it wouldn't provide any support if a legal defense were needed. Fortunately, Microsoft quickly realized how embarrassing the situation could be, never pursued legal action, and bunnie published a book on the topic. He went on to design the Chumby, a squeezable interactive personal app device, and now works on a variety of projects for the public good, including an open laptop design and an open design for a radiation detector in the wake of the nuclear plant disasters in Japan.

People dream of the open road, but do they dream of hitting the highway with thousands of pounds of metal type? Kyle Durrie did, and she's spent the last two years crisscrossing America like a Janey Typeseed. She funded her initial excursions almost three years ago through Kickstarter for the Type Truck, a converted packet van from which she teaches about letterpress type and printing. Her Power and Light Press relocated its permanent home last year from Portland to New Mexico, from which state she still takes tours when the roads cooperate.

On Twitter: Kyle Durrie

Matthew Amster-Burton is a food writer and host of the podcast Spilled Milk. Matthew has a particular affinity for Japanese food, and that led to a trip to that country he'd promised to his daughter, Iris, who stars in his book Hungry Monkey. Their trip led to a second visit to Japan with Matthew's wife and Iris's mom Laurie, and to a second book, Pretty Good Number One, about eating in Tokyo. He talks about the perils of publishing with a large firm and on his own, and how he's navigated the maze of electronic book production.

Matthew on Twitter: @mamster