Michael Conniff

Past Board Member (2022)

Mr. Conniff graduated from Harvard with honors in History and won a summer fellowship at the Harvard Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.  He was the first Harvard writing instructor to use word processing as a teaching tool and is considered a pioneer in the online world. He is co-founder of the Isaacson School for New Media in Aspen—selected Faculty of the Year by students—and founded the Digital Story Lab at Colorado Mountain College. In addition, he is a Mentor at NewChip Accelerator in Austin, Texas, and the Editor-at-Large at SKI TV.

Mr. Conniff cut his teeth as a copy boy and then a reporter on the San Francisco Examiner, Baltimore News American, and Boston Herald; in his career, he has started four independent news services and co-founded Interactive Sports, a consumer media company that pioneered analytics in sports and produced over 100,000 stories for company-owned brands and a joint-venture with the New York Islanders of the National Hockey League (NHL). The company also developed and operated the interactive information network at MCI Center in Washington, D.C., one of the first such systems of its kind in the world.

He is the former host of Con Games in Aspen, the #1-rated radio talk show in that market. He was also the editor-in-chief of the blog Aspen Post and editor-at-large at Aspen Peak magazine.

His novel, BOOK OF O’KELLS: MOTHER NATURE, reached the Amazon Top Ten list for Historical Fiction. The author of more than a dozen published short stories, he was selected as a Sokolov Scholar in Fiction at the Breadloaf Writers Conference. His play, THE MADNESS OF HATTERS, from the multimedia, multi-form BOOK OF O’KELLS, was performed in workshop by Theatre Aspen; BOOK OF O’KELLS: THE GOOD EGG, was the first and only novel ever conceived and consummated on Facebook.

In addition, he has written several TV pilots in the teen action-thriller-fantasy space, including CLIMATA, SPY HIGH, BLOOD R-E-D, and DIRE; the action feature films JOE SMALL and MUTINY ON THE MAIDEN; the dramatic thriller television pilots for GET OUT OF DODGE and CONSPIRATORIUM; the novella HYDE: SEEK; and the how-to book WRITE GOOD!

For more: Michael Conniff Story on Facebook, @michaelconniff on Twitter, @michaelconniff on Twitter; and michaelconniff.com.