On Thursday, October 22, EFF hosts the 2009 Pioneer Awards in conjunction with the Web 2.0 Summit, and keynote speaker Reid Hoffman will be answering pre-submitted questions from EFF supporters. Wanna know how he came up with the idea for LinkedIn? Curious about what he thinks the Next Big Thing will be? Here's your chance to ask!

Reid Hoffman is the Executive Chairman and co-founder of LinkedIn, the business-oriented social networking site. Before LinkedIn, Reid was Executive Vice President of PayPal and has also held management roles at Fujitsu Software Corporation and Apple. Reid serves on the Board of Directors for SixApart, Kiva.org, and the Mozilla Corporation.

Reid will be interviewed on stage by EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn, who will present pre-submitted questions alongside a collection of our own inquiries on innovation and digital freedom. If you have a question you'd like to ask, please submit it to events@eff.org no later than noon on Thursday, October 22.

The EFF Pioneer Awards have been presented since 1992 to honor leaders in the fight for freedom and innovation on the electronic frontier. This year's winners -- Limor Fried (aka Ladyada), Harri Hursti and Carl Malamud -- have made a critical impact on our digital future with their efforts in open-source hardware and software hacking, electronic voting, and public domain advocacy.

Buy your tickets for the 2009 Pioneer Awards today and save!