A record crowd is expected today at the Raleigh Convention Center for the sixth Internet Summit as put on by Triangle-based TechMedia.

The Startup Summit on Tuesday kicked off three days of Internet and high-tech business and strategy. The main event opens today with a crowd of nearly 2,000 people expected.

The program features a heavy emphasis on mobile technology and business opportunities as well as challenges in that space, says TechMedia co-founder Eric Gregg.

The Startup Summit, with an emphasis on early-stage companies, is a new addition to the Internet Summit and continues today.

The Internet Summit features a lengthy agenda of keynote addresses, panel discussions and meetups as well as giving entrepreneurs chances to meet with potential investors and partners.

Keynote speakers, with bios provided by TechMedia, include:

  • Sarah Lacy, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, PandoDaily.com

Sarah Lacy knows great entrepreneurs. After more than a decade covering business in Silicon Valley, Lacy is well known in tech hot spots around the world for finding great entrepreneurs before most other reporters or venture capitalists do. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of the newly launched tech news site PandoDaily.com. Previously, she was the senior editor at TechCrunch.com, the largest blog on tech entrepreneurship in the world.

She is also the author of the critically-acclaimed Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0 (Gotham Books, May 2008). Called the definitive book of the Web 2.0 movement, Once You’re Lucky tells the story of how Web 2.0 was born through the eyes of the founders of companies like Facebook, Twitter, Slide, Digg, LinkedIn, and others.

Recently, Lacy decided to follow the flow of capital into the developing world. She bootstrapped a two-year, 40-week journey through the Middle East, South America, Africa, India, China, and Southeast Asia looking for the best entrepreneurs Silicon Valley had never heard of. The result is her second book, Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky: How the Top 1% of Entrepreneurs Profit from Global Chaos, which Fortune called “an outstanding piece of journalism” (Wiley, February 2011).

  • Tim Sullivan, President and Chief Executive Officer, Ancestry.com

Tim Sullivan has served as the President and Chief Executive Officer and as a director of Ancestry.com since September 2005. Ancestry.com is the world’s largest online resource for family history, with approximately 2 million paying subscribers around the world.

Prior to joining Ancestry.com, Mr. Sullivan was Chief Operating Officer and then President and CEO of Match.com. Prior to Match.com, Mr. Sullivan served as Vice President of E-commerce for Ticketmaster Online-Citysearch, Inc. and held multiple positions at The Walt Disney Company, including Vice President and Managing Director of Buena Vista Home Entertainment Asia Pacific. Mr. Sullivan holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and was a Morehead Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

  • Curtis Brown, Chief Technology Officer, AOL

As AOL’s Chief Technology Officer, Curtis Brown leads all aspects of AOL’s technology strategy, platform development and external technology partnerships. Brown previously served as SVP of Engineering and CTO of AOL’s global advertising business,

Advertising.com. He is a technology leader with over 20 years of experience across a range of media and Internet driven businesses and has an extensive background in building and managing large web sites and technical teams. An Internet pioneer, Brown built and launched one of the first music e-commerce sites, CDNow, in 1995. He has held the title of CTO at Skymall, Oxygen Media, The Princeton Review, CTB/McGraw-Hill and Kaplan Test Prep. Brown graduated cum laude from New York University and has additional graduate studies in Psychology.

  • Frederick Townes, Sr Technical Advisor, Mashable; Founder, W3 EDGE

Frederick Townes is the Senior Technical Advisor to Mashable, from 2007 to January 2012, he served as the Chief Technical Officer, building / maintaining of the network of sites / products and scaling Mashable‘s infrastructure. He is also founder of W3 EDGE a new media oriented software development company. W3 EDGE has provided solutions for brands like: Constant Contact, CVS Pharmacy, Edelman, Hyatt, Kodak, Lord & Taylor, Microsoft, Sanyo, Southwest Airlines, Staples, Sony, REI, Weight Watchers and Yahoo.

His passions and experiences are diverse, ranging from founding startups, user interface design and development, blogging and Internet marketing. Frederick currently splits time between Florence, Italy and Boston, Massachusetts and is a graduate of Boston University, where he focused on computer science and mathematics.

  • Brent Herd, Director of Southeast, Twitter

Brent is The Director of Southeastern U.S Sales for Twitter and is responsible for all Southeastern revenue and business partnerships on the Twitter platform.

Most recently, Brent served as Senior Vice President at ShareThis where he was responsible for North American revenue generation activities as well as business development partnerships for the company. Previously, Brent established himself as a leader in the South as he helped grow online revenue and introduced innovative partnerships for the combined AOL – Advertising.com entity.

Brent began his career at Yahoo! In 1998 in NYC. In 1999 Brent moved to Atlanta with Yahoo! and was given the Yahoo! Super Star Award in 2001, the highest distinction a Yahoo! Employee can earn.

Currently, Brent lives in Atlanta with his wife Carolina, his three year old son Sammy, his one year old son Dylan and his 130lb Bull Mastiff, Marshall. Brent enjoys spending time with his family, golfing and general aviation.

  • Angus Davis, Founder & CEO, Swipely

In 1999, Angus co-founded Tellme, which revolutionized speech recognition systems today used by 1 in 3 Americans. In 2007, Microsoft acquired Tellme in its largest-ever acquisition of a private company. Prior to Tellme, Angus joined Netscape as their youngest employee where he was product manager for the company’s leading Web browser.

Angus founded Swipely in 2009 to help local merchants accept payments, track customers, and grow revenue by unlocking the “big data” behind every transaction. Swipely is based in Providence with a world-class team and the support of Index Ventures, First Round Capital, Greylock Partners and others.

  • Donnell Rawlings, Comedian and Actor

Donnell Rawlings is an overnight success a decade in the making. He made a splash in the DC comedy clubs going from a heckler in the audience to HBO’s Def Comedy Jam in a period of six months. You’ve seen him as ‘Ashy Larry’ on Comedy Central’s award winning and critically celebrated Chappelle’s Show, where he joined Dave Chappelle as both as a writer and performer. Today you can watch Donnell on MTV2’s most watched shows Guy Code and Hip Hop Squares. He was a regular on E!’s “Chelsea Lately”, starred in Comedy Central’s “Reality Bites Back,” and was the resident “Funny Guy” on the Ricki Lake Show.

As an actor Donnell has also appeared in the Law & Order series, Special Victims Unit (SVU) and Criminal Intent (CI) as well as NBC’s Third Watch, the Emmy-Award winning HBO Mini-Series: The Corner and as Day-Day Price on HBO’s Emmy-Award winning series “The Wire.” On the big screen he could be seen in the blockbuster Spider-Man II.

  • Stephen Wellman, Vice President and Editor-in-Chief, Geeknet Media

Stephen Wellman is Vice President and Editor-in-Chief at Geeknet Media where he oversees all editorial content creation and operations across the company’s industry-leading media properties, including Slashdot, SourceForge, and FreeCode. Stephen works with the editors and writers as well as the online communities at Geeknet Media to ensure the company’s sites deliver the best possible content and community experiences available for IT professionals and influencers.

Prior to joining Geeknet, Stephen served as Senior Vice President of Community & Content at Ziff Davis Enterprise (ZDE), where he oversaw editorial for the company’s leading brands, including eWeek, Baseline, CIO Insight, Channel Insider, and the Developer Shed Network. In addition, Stephen was responsible for leading ZDE’s Strategic Content team, crafting and guiding custom content programs from conception to completion for a large number of technology clients including IBM, Dell, Microsoft and others.