Virtual Edge Summit 2010 Speakers (partial list):

Byron Reeves, the Paul C. Edwards Professor in the Department of Communication at Stanford University

Byron is also Co-Founder and Faculty Co-Director of the H-STAR Institute (Human Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research) and its industrial affiliate program, Media X. He is an expert on the psychological processing of media in the areas of attention, emotions, learning, and physiological responses, and has published over 100 scientific papers about media and psychology.  His research has been the basis for a number of new media products for companies such as Microsoft, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard, in the areas of voice interfaces, automated dialogue systems, and business process simulations.  He is currently working on the application of multi-player game technology to behavior change and the conduct of serious work, and is Co-Founder of Seriosity, Inc., a company building enterprise software inspired by game psychology. Byron is co-author (with Leighton Read) of Total Engagement:  Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete (Harvard Business Press).  

Chip Rodgers, VP and COO for Web 2.0 Communities for SAP

Chip operates the SAP Developer Network (SDN), the Business Process Expert (BPX), and the Business Objects (BOC) communities, totalling more than 1,900,000 individual members interacting around the clock and around the world in 200+ countries and territories. 

As COO, Chip is responsible for all SAP Communities core operations including: Formal content generated by SAP solutions and content experts; Collaborative content generated from our community of customers, partners, and SAP employees through blogs, forums, and wikis; TechEd and TechTour events globally attracting over 30,000 attendees annually and Managing financials and business performance of the Community Network team.

Michael Ray, North America Sales and Channel Enablement Manager, Intel Americas, Inc.

Michael Ray leads the Broad Channel Sales Enablement teams at Intel Corporation for North America.  His teams are focused on providing technical and marketing training, customer support, industry events, and sales representation for over 15,000 members of Intel’s Channel Partner Program.  These customers make up much of the large system builder channel that manufacture and deploy servers, desktop and mobile PCs across North America.  Mike has worked at Intel for over 12 years and is based in Salt Lake City, Utah.  During his career at Intel he has managed sales and marketing teams in the Integrator Channel team, the Communications Product Group, and the Networking Products Division. Mike came to Intel through acquisition, having worked for Dayna Communications, a small business networking company, for the previous 11 years in various sales, marketing, and finance roles ending as North America Sales Manager.   

Eilif Trondsen, Research and Program Director of the Virtual Worlds @ Work (VWW) consortium at Strategic Business Insights (SBI) 

Dr. Trondsen’s research and consulting at SBI—a spin-out of SRI International (formerly Stanford Research Institute)—is the use of technology for innovation, learning and performance improvement. He has 30 years' experience at SBI and SRI International, leading or contributing to a variety of projects for U.S. and foreign clients in the private and public sectors. At SRI and SBI, Dr. Trondsen has held the position of Research Director of the Business Intelligence Program (now the Scan program), the director of the Learning on Demand (LoD) program exploring the role of technology in learning and training, and is now leading VWW. At SRI and SBI, he has given numerous presentations on eCommerce, eLearning, innovation and virtual-worlds topics at conferences and SRI clients around the world. Dr. Trondsen has authored and co-authored numerous publications on eCommerce, eLearning and virtual-worlds issues. 

Kathleen Sulgit is the Director of Corporate Events at Cisco Systems

Kathy leads a team of world-class event managers who are responsible for managing Cisco’s portfolio of strategic and innovative virtual events, customer-facing proprietary conferences, advisory boards, and product launches in support of marketing campaigns across Cisco.  She also leads a team of technology experts who provide solutions and tools to expertly manage physical and virtual events.  

Kathy consults with groups across Cisco to integrate key Cisco technology into physical and virtual events, enabling Cisco to lead the industry in delivering innovative events.  A veteran in the high technology arena, Kathy has held management positions at Apple Computer and Hewlett-Packard where she led teams in the development of strategic alliances, small business marketing, product marketing, channel and field marketing.  

Stephanie Wilson, Virtual Events Program Manager for Intel Corporation 

Stephanie has worked for Intel for 12 years, as an instructional designer, evaluation specialist, manager, knowledge management consultant, and virtual events program manager.  Stephanie holds an MS in Instructional Design and an MBA. 

Michael Vargo, Director, Corporate Events, The Walt Disney Company

In this role, Michael works with Disney corporate departments including Investor Relations, Corporate Finance, Corporate Legal, Corporate Responsibility, Corporate Alliances, Corporate Governance, and other executive offices to execute various meetings, conferences, and events throughout the year.  

Michael joined Disney in 1992 and soon advanced through a series of positions of increased responsibility within various departments including Disneyland Entertainment, Disneyland Television Productions, Walt Disney Special Events Group, and Disney Live Family Entertainment. 

Pascal Kaplan, Ph.D., CEO, iCohere

Dr. Kaplan blends a background in education and organizational development with skills as a software designer. Dr. Kaplan works with the leadership of international and national associations, Fortune 500 companies and corporations, and nonprofit and governmental agencies as they seek to create and maintain learning communities and collaborative action networks that integrate the principles of collaboration with the newest online technologies. His special expertise is in helping groups learn how to match the right innovative technology to their needs; and in facilitating the development and integration of attitudes, skills and capabilities needed to support organizational and cultural change. In addition to online and face-to-face presentations and training events, Dr. Kaplan has most recently co-authored the manual, Online Engagement: A Strategic Guide, to accompany his series of educational seminars with America’s Promise Alliance on how to launch, grow, and support online communities and a chapter for The Children of 2020, entitled “The Learning Communities of 2020.” 

Annie M. Yuzzi, Director, Global Events NA, SAP

As Director of Global Events in North America at SAP, Annie is responsible for managing the event marketing initiatives for internal, corporate, sponsored and customer focused events in both physical and virtual environments. A 20+ year veteran in event marketing, Annie is passionate about driving strategic events that focus on insight, innovation, demand generation and creating unique customer experiences.

Prior to joining SAP, Annie held positions with Business Objects, Vertical Communications and Key3Media in a variety of areas including business development, strategic marketing and operations.

Mark Prine, Divisional Director, Major Accounts, USMotivation  

has more than 25 years experience in customer relationship management, sales, operations, training and contracts administration. Mark is in his 9th year with USMotivation, an award-winning, full-service performance improvement and incentive marketing company, where he serves as the Divisional Director of Major Accounts, working with clients like AT&T, Porsche and other Fortune 500 companies. In this role he has proven experience developing and designing incentive programs that drive, measure and report the desired behaviors for each client’s program.   Early on, Mark recognized the opportunity for a virtual business component and has been a leader in incorporating virtual meetings and experiences into the core products and services offered by USMotivation. Mark is working toward USMotivation’s goal of producing effective, economical and creative virtual events that exceed clients’ business objectives and at the same time complement and enhance existing physical events.
 

Angie Smith, Manager, Global Sales Experience, Cisco Systems

Angie leads a team that produces the annual Global Sales Meeting and most recently, evolved that key internal event into the now-virtual Global Sales Experience (GSX). A 15-year veteran of the event and experience marketing industry, she has experience in all facets of marketing campaign development and execution, including  content strategy, attendee experience, technology integration and overall operational excellence. She is recognized by the industry and general business press for merging Web 2.0 and other technology-driven communication platforms into traditional event marketing programs and has been tapped by publications such as Event Marketer Magazine, BtoB Magazine, Special Events, Virtual Edge, Successful Meetings, 1:1 Magazine and other leading titles and analyst reports for her insight into this emerging best practice.  

Jim Sink, CEO of Avatar Reality 

Jim is the developer of the next generation high definition virtual world Blue Mars. Previous to his work at Avatar Reality, Jim managed business development and partner acquisition at Microsoft's Xbox Live division as well as managing business and game concept development at Foundation9, the world's largest independent game developer.

Randy Choco, Group Manager, Digital Events, Microsoft

Randy has more than 15 years’ experience in digital and online marketing communications. He joined Microsoft in 2003 to build out the digital events capability for the US subsidiary, working across the organization on virtual event strategy, innovation and execution. During his tenure, Randy managed the creation of an integrated, virtual event capability that encompasses webcasts, podcasts, virtual labs, simulcasts, test drives and social media.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Randy was Director of Marketing for Intermind, a Seattle-based startup, and Director of Marketing for Attachmate where he oversaw all marketing communication efforts, including CEO Summits and global satellite telecasts. 

Kathy Doyle, Director, Global Cisco Live & Networkers Conferences, Cisco

A senior-level event marketing executive with over 20 years experience producing and managing large-scale global customer conferences for Hewlett-Packard, PeopleSoft and Cisco. Kathy is a best practice leader in event strategy, event marketing, program development, exhibit sales, event operations, and virtual and hybrid events.  She has proven success in building strong high performing teams with strategic vision and the ability to create & execute programs establishing the highest level best practice standards while continuing to grow revenue and profit.

Kathy Visser-May, Marketing Director, Microsoft Corporation

Kathy oversees the digital and in-person events strategy for the US Subsidiary’s commercial business which develops and delivers thousands of Microsoft events on an annual basis. Her team partners with internal teams across Microsoft to explore the future of digital and in-person events. Kathy has been with Microsoft for 5 years, where she has evolved the in-person and digital event marketing business, and is well known for her vision and leadership in this area. Prior to Microsoft Kathy led the marketing strategy and execution for PeopleSoft’s annual User Conference.  She has a strong integrated marketing background, in addition to her focus on events, and has held positions in a variety of technology companies and advertising agencies. 

Frances Manwaring, founder and CEO, Virtual Expos New Zealand Ltd.

Frances is a highly experienced business and economic development specialist with an international career spanning the public and private sectors and a wide range of industries.  London based for thirteen years, early career highlights included roles in international media with Centaur Communications plc and in venture capital with Alan Patricof Associates (now APAX Partners).   She moved to New Zealand in the mid-nineties and, for the last decade, has run her own communications and business development consultancy, now based in New Zealand’s capital city, Wellington.  Throughout her career, Frances has organised a range of critically acclaimed physical events at venues such as London’s famous Banqueting Hall in Whitehall, and she is a passionate advocate of using new media and technologies to enhance people’s business communications.

Neal Thompson, Director of Strategic Technology at Maritz Travel

Thompson joined Maritz in 1993 and was the business architect for all internet based technologies. Today he continues his leadership role, responsible for emerging and strategic technologies by combining his technical depth of knowledge with his experience leading client projects focusing on virtual event technologies and services. Neal has a Masters in Human Computer Interactions (HCI) from the University of Maine and is currently an adjunct professor with the Keller Graduate School of Management. 

Kymberlee Weil, President, Intronetworks, Inc.

An internationally recognized expert on Adobe Flash technology, Kymberlee has authored two books that have shaped the way people use this complex and powerful technology. She was also the Director of the Flashforward Conference, where she saw first-hand how an innovative combination of Macromedia technologies could dramatically improve networking potential.

Kymberlee is an experienced technical writer, working on projects that include international conference manuals and software training materials. While earning her MBA at Pepperdine University, her passion for business was sparked and continues to grow stronger each year. She is currently a nationally recognized speaker, presenting at national and international conferences and leading universities.  

Kimberly Stone, Manager, Web and Creative Services, Planview, Inc.

With 16 years of experience in helping companies define and implement their Web programs, Kimberly Stone is currently manager of Web and Creative Services at Planview, Inc. in Austin, Texas. Kimberly drives global strategy and execution for social media programs, virtual events, and Web properties while managing a diverse team and developing relationships with key vendors. Kimberly has built her Web expertise at organizations such as the University of Florida, IBM, Lucent, and BMC Software, and has received the Ciber Performance Award and UF IFAS Superior Accomplishment Award. She has been recently featured on NPR Marketplace, Meeting News and the Virtual Edge Institute. 

Andrew Kun, Leadership Consultant, Empowered By Awareness

In a corporate career spanning over 25 years, Andrew has led peak performance teams – most of them geographically distributed – inspiring and leading them to reach their highest potential. Andrew is currently guiding individuals and teams to exceptional leadership as a consultant, trainer, speaker and coach.

Andrew thrives on challenges. As vice-president of product development, he fostered an attitude of service excellence in his team, which was recognized by customers stating “we wish all our suppliers were as responsive and helpful as you are”. Prior to that, as vice-president of engineering, he led a team of 175 people in four locations through a major turn-around, increasing productivity four-fold while also improving product quality and reducing customer response time. His formative years as a leader of distributed teams were at Motorola during the ‘80s, during its quest for excellence, being the first company to win the Baldrige quality award, and at Nortel during the ‘90s, in its period of peak innovation and growth. 

Jarod Caporino, Managing Partner, Resolute Digital

Jarod brings over 12 years of agency, publisher and search engine experience with many of the most recognizable names in the industry.  Prior to collectively forming a successful interactive agency, Jarod served as Senior Director of Sales & Agency Relations at MIVA. At Miva, Jarod lead a group of 20 sales associates, responsible for nearly $50 million in annual revenues generated in 2005. Before MIVA, Jarod worked for Go2Net/Infospace in several capacities from 2000–2004, most recently as their East Coast Ad Sales Director. In that capacity, Jarod oversaw the advertising sales for all of the Infospace search engines, which included Dogpile, Excite, Metacrawler, and Webcrawler. Prior to Infospace, Jarod worked for Paragon Media, supervising its Media Planning/Buying Department, and also held the position of Business Development Director.  At Paragon, Jarod was actively involved in the strategic planning and media buying for Pfizer, Hewlett-Packard, Johnson & Johnson, Major League Baseball and the NEA. Jarod frequently speaks at Universities in the New York area, The Media School, and on various industry panels sponsored by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, Search Engine Strategies and others.  Jarod received a Bachelors degree in marketing from Rutgers University School of Business. 

Wm. LeRoy Heinrichs, M.D., Ph.D., FACOG

Dr. Heinrichs’ earned his MD degree with Honors in his native state of Oklahoma, completed a residency in Ob/Gyn at Wayne State University, Detroit MI, and earned M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Biochemistry at the University of Oregon Health Sciences campus. He was named a Josiah Macy, Jr., Faculty Fellow, and his first academic position was at the University of Washington.  His research earned the President’s Award of the ACOG. Dr. Heinrichs, now Professor (Emeritus) and Past Chair of Ob/Gyn at Stanford University, taught laparoscopic surgery for two decades before retiring to SUMMIT where he developed an anatomically correct, award-winning, human 3D model (Lucy v.2.7) as the virtual anatomy for pelvic surgical simulators. 

Helaine de Tomasi, Virtual Program Manager, Cisco

Helaine de Tomasi is the Virtual Program Manager at Cisco producing virtual trade shows, video webcasts, green screen videos, as well as consulting on strategy for global Cisco Expo, and designing environment templates for virtual platforms. de Tomasi has more than 18 years of global event marketing, brand awareness and corporate communications experience. Prior to Cisco, de Tomasi was a Senior Director of Marketing at Aldon managing global events, PR, marketing communications and pre-sales.  Prior to that, she worked for Cyclades Corporation and helped increase the company’s revenue by 120% in two years. de Tomasi has held management positions with several startups in the business process, storage and CRM industries, including a supervisor position with Niehaus Ryan Wong PR managing clients such as Vignette, Deloitte Consulting and BroadVision. She has a B.S. degree in Journalism from West Virginia University and holds a Trade Show Management certification. 

Robert Rosenbloom, President & CEO of PlatformQ

PlatformQ is a leading producer of digital events in the Education, Energy, Healthcare and Bio-Life Science industries. Events produced by PlatformQ include CollegeWeekLive, Virtual Energy Forum, CardioCareLive and BioConferenceLive.  Robert is considered to one of the true pioneers of virtual events, and has be interviewed or quoted by several leading media outlets. Prior to founding PlatformQ, Robert was a co-founder and VP of Business Development at iCongo, and a Director of Strategy and Finance at Primedia.  He was also an advisor and served on the Board of Director for Navic Networks, the leading interactive technology provider to the cable and satellite television industries, acquired by Microsoft last year.  Robert is a graduate of McGill University and received his MBA from Columbia Business School. 

Paul Dodd, Chief Strategy Officer, 6Connex

As CSO of 6Connex, Paul is responsible for securing strategic account relationships for 6Connex. He plays a critical role orchestrating the deployment of 6Connex resources to provide custom virtual technology marketing solutions for key strategic Fortune 500 customers such as HP. Before joining Design Reactor, Paul spent the last 13 years with several Fortune 100 companies including Dell, Sherwin Williams Paint Company, TestChip Technologies and Advanced Micro Devices. At AMD he acted as the Key Accounts Marketing Manager, managing AMD's messaging and strategy, building brand awareness, and developing solutions-based marketing for B-to-B products. As the Large Account Brand and Marketing Manager at Dell, Paul directed business development and marketing programs, servicing many Fortune 1000 companies.

Michael Kushner, Founder, Virtual Media Strategies

Michael Kushner has held various sales and business development positions at companies such as Frost & Sullivan, Forbes, Inc., Freedom Technology Media Group, Reed Elsevier and The Nielsen Company. In these roles, Michael's responsibilities included the development and execution of profitable new business models in such areas as digital events that serve as brand extensions; securing sponsorships for web-based and face-to-face interactive forums; the creation of monthly live webcast series for multiple magazines; developing branded Virtual Conferences and Expos; capturing and repurposing content at physical conferences and trade shows; and working with editorial, sales, marketing and website staff to help pull it all together. He is the founder of Virtual Media Strategies, which specializes in developing and implementing strategies that enable companies and organizations to expand their business across multiple channels, including digital, social media, print, e-commerce and events.

Steve Gogolak, Director of Media & Webcasting, Cramer 

Steve brings an exceptional amount of knowledge to the table including extensive experience in the streaming media industry. As the Director of Media & Webcasting at Cramer, Steve manages the team that delivers every live broadcast from the Cramer studios and the field. He also manages the complex physical infrastructure and network of vendors that enable a completely redundant, highly fault-tolerant internet broadcasting capability. Prior to his current position, Steve served as a Project Manager for 3 years which gave him the critical understanding of what it takes to deliver projects on time and within scope. Prior to that Steve ran the Media Services group at Cramer, including the uniquely-designed Media Lab which acts as Cramer's digital conversion shop and video compression studio. Steve graduated from Bowdoin College in 2005 with an AB in Economics, specializing in efficient resource allocation and sustainable development, and Film Studies.  

Dan Yaman, CEO, Live Spark

Dan started his career at age 17 as America's youngest stage hypnotist. As he traveled around the country performing before audiences, he realized that there was a bigger need for helping audiences stay awake during presentations. 

As the CEO of Live Spark--a strategic event design company--he developed innovative ways to help clients engage audiences. The Live Spark client list includes: Intel, Pillsbury, American Express, Honeywell, Seagate, and many others, and they’ve captivated over 10 million audience members around the world.  Dan’s pioneering methodology combines the “art of theater”, the “science of learning" and the "psychology of persuasion" to create environments where message comprehension and content retention soars.  This unique brain-based approach helps his clients put on events that profoundly increase their ROI while making the event more enjoyable, meaningful and relevant for the audience. 

Mr. Yaman also founded LearningWare—a company dedicated to making training more engaging and effective through the use of interactive game shows--in 1994. Additionally, Dan co-authored the best-selling training book "I'll Take Learning for 500: Using Game Shows to Engage, Motivate and Train" with Missy Covington.
 

Ken Hudson, Managing Director, Virtual World Design Centre, Loyalist College

Ken Hudson is Managing Director of the Virtual World Design Centre, Loyalist College, where he creates virtual world environments and experiences for business, education, and government. He has collaborated with dozens of organizations using virtual worlds including Harvard and Brown Universities, US Department of State, US Naval Postgraduate School, University Health Network, Canadian Border Services Agency, and the Government of Canada. Ken launched the use of Second Life at Loyalist College in 2006, making it the first post-secondary institution in Canada to apply this new medium to learning contexts. His Canadian Border Simulation is Second Life demonstrated successful metrics for the use of virtual worlds for applied learning, and is one of the most often cited case-studies illustrating successful virtual world learning. In 2008, Ken's work was recognized with the Colleges Ontario Innovation Award and the Orion Learning Award of Merit.

Darren Ross, Executive Vice President of Digital Marketing Cramer

Darren combines technological and strategic marketing expertise, providing direction and leadership for Cramer's Digital Marketing, Design and Planning teams. Since joining Cramer, Darren has successfully integrated the latest digital capabilities and emerging marketing trends, broadening the reach and impact of our clients' integrated marketing solutions. In only 24 months, Darren’s leadership led to doubling of the company's Digital Solutions business. Darren also serves on Cramer's Executive Board, steering technology decisions company-wide. 

Dean Takahashi, Lead Writer for VentureBeat 

Dean covers video games, security, chips, virtual and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. 

Greg Nuyens, Chief Executive Officer, Teleplace

Greg Nuyens has more than twenty-five years experience as a high tech entrepreneur, including founding and executive roles at both private enterprises and large public companies. He has served as CEO of Devicescape (backed by Kleiner Perkins and August Capital) CTO of Neomar (now part of Motorola), and chief technologist at Inktomi. Earlier roles included co-founder at Ilog (now part of IBM), director at Sun Microsystems and researcher at Xerox PARC and Xerox AI Systems.
Greg holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Carleton University.

Since 2006, Brian B. Quinn has been finding ways to use geospatial data to define mirror world content in simulators accessed by Linden Lab type viewers.  To date, he has recognized three levels of detail in mirror world builds based on real-world map data. Brian was trained as an exploration geophysicist, but to remain in the San Francisco Bay Area, he turned away from both academic and petroleum pursuits to work for a leading  architecture, engineering, and construction firm.  While there, Brian  applied digital signal and image processing techniques to satellite and other remotely-sensed imagery.  He also was trained to apply GIS to engineering and environmental projects.

Ed Kaim, President, SharpLogic, Inc.

Prior to founding SharpLogic, Ed was the Windows developer platform product manager at Microsoft, where has was also responsible for Visual Studio and the .NET Compact Framework. Ed's technical presentation experience ranges from one-on-one briefings for Fortune 100 CEO's to stadiums full of thousands of IT professionals. By the age of 23, Ed had delivered keynote addresses in seven countries on four continents and had presented onstage alongside Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and other industry visionaries. Ed’s team uses Silverlight and Windows Azure to solve challenging problems through innovative products such as Boost Virtual Events and the non-linear presentation tool, SpeakFlow.

Craig Becker, STSM/Tech Lead Virtual Spaces Technology, IBM

Craig Becker is the Technical Lead for IBM Virtual Space Events. He is a member of the original team that spearheaded IBM’s movement into the 3D Internet space, and he led the design and construction of IBM’s public virtual world presence in SecondLife. Working with Linden Lab, he successfully set up the world’s first "corporate SecondLife grid" behind IBM’s firewall, and has led development teams to design several virtual conference facilities within that secure environment. 

Susan A. Friedmann, The Trade Show Coach

Susan A. Friedmann, is an internationally recognized expert and "how to" coach who has traveled the world helping companies put their best foot forward at trade shows and events. Susan offers training programs to increase results and focus on building better relationships with customers, prospects and advocates in the marketplace.

Michael Gialis, Business Development for WonderBuilders, LLC.

Mike also is in charge of community advocacy for Open Wonderland - a new community originated from Project Wonderland. His responsibilities include community and partner development in addition to supporting commercialization efforts. Mike participates in several virtual world community, industry, and academic efforts which further the development of use-cases, ROI realization, open source adoption, new technology development, collaborative research efforts, and investment opportunities in the virtual world, mixed-reality and on-line gaming segments. Mike was previously with Sun Microsystem's Lab and Chief Technology Office.  

Ira Kerns, Managing Director, MeetingMetrics

Ira is the founder of both MeetingMetricsSM and its parent company, GuideStar Research. He is a pioneer of meeting results research with over twenty years experience and the designer of the MeetingMetrics online system. He leads a combined staff of research professionals, consultants and programmers serving a variety of corporate, association and government clients from their New York office. The firm was recently honored as the winner of the 2008 EIBTM Technology Watch award and is the meeting and event results measurement partner of MPI and PCMA. 

John S. Gibb, Principal, JSG Consulting

Most recently with Gartner, John is a marketing professional with over a decade of strategic experience that is recognized as visionary in the area of integrated event marketing management, branding and communications. John’s career has spanned various capacities and levels of marketing leadership, including Gartner, The Conference Board, Global Business Research, The National Retail Federation and Government Executives Network. John has strategically and tactically driven successful new attendee acquisition, business development and legacy marketing campaigns in the US, Latin America, EMEA and APAC. John has a BA in Journalism from New York University and an MBA from the University of Connecticut.

Todd Hanson, CRP, CPIM President and Founder,  Catalyst Performance Group and ROi of Engagement

Todd began his career as an award winning sales representative for a global leader in agricultural chemicals. Next, he was a top performing sales executive, a manager of sales professionals and a key management executive and owner of a top ten performance improvement, incentive and meeting planning provider with sales exceeding $100,000,000. He brings personal experience in product launches, corporate reorganizations, marketing communications strategy and fulfillment, web-site strategy and development, sales and non-sales incentives, channel partner campaigns, medical symposia, training meetings, sales meetings, events, team-building programs, board meetings and technology solutions for events, awards and communications.

Rob Masson, Director of Research for EMC Cambridge

Rob has been with EMC for over 5 years, originally joining the company as part of its Collaboration Software Group (formerly eRoom) and worked as a Solutions Architect with the Product Management Team.  2 years ago Rob moved to the Corporate CTO Office as a Senior Technologist and manages a team of developers based out of Shanghai.  Earlier this year Robert became Director of Research in Cambridge and reports to Dr. Burt Kaliski, Sr. Director of Research and Innovation at EMC.  Robert is responsible for EMC's academic relations in the Cambridge area which includes MIT and Harvard.  He is also the primary liaison between EMC Staff and the Media Lab where EMC is a Corporate Research Sponsor.

Jeff Hurt, Director of Education and Engagement, Velvet Chainsaw Consulting

Jeff Hurt has worked in events/nonprofit arena for more than 20 years including Keep America Beautiful as a consultant/ trainer/writer; Keep Texas Beautiful as Education Coordinator; Professional Development Manager for Meeting Professionals International; Professional Development Manager for Promotional Products Association International; and Director of Education and Events for the National Association of Dental Plans. He has also served on several board of directors for several North Texas, state and national charities and organizations. He blogs about the convergence of Web 2.0, social media, meetings, events and education.

John Barber, Vice President, Digital Strategy, Immersa Marketing

Immersa’s Digital Strategy Practice engages with global brands, including Cisco Systems, and with industry trade associations to create digital strategies and select, integrate and implement emerging online technologies for community building and event marketing. Prior to Immersa, John consulted on product design for uShow,  an online social video tagging and sharing platform tightly integrated with Twitter and Facebook. At BDMetrics (now Three Stage Media), John was SVP Audience & Media, helping develop the first online, SaaS-based search, personalization, and agenda-planning platform for the event industry used by more than 3.5M attendees and over 100 leading trade shows. 

Joerg Rathenberg, Senior Director of Marketing, Unisfair 

With more than 12 years of high tech marketing experience, Joerg has focused on positioning and commercializing emerging technologies worldwide. Prior to joining Unisfair, he held senior management positions at Salesforce.com, KXEN, Brio, SQRIBE, APC and IBM. His background in cloud computing, business intelligence and advanced analytics has helped companies to successfully grow revenues and capture market share. Joerg holds an MBA from Thunderbird and a Master in Computer Science from Hamburg University. 

Mike Agron, Principal and Executive Webinar Producer, Webattract LLC

 Mike Agron is a results oriented sales and business development executive with a 25 year history at top technology hardware and software firms such as Apple, Oracle, MapInfo, SeeBeyond and deCarta. Mike has worked in the trenches and as an executive, where he led global business development, channel, and partner sales teams that have contributed significant revenue and profitability while opening up new market segments.

In 2008 he launched Agron Business Development to help top tier technology corporations, start-ups, and mid-sized firms improve sales execution. He is most proud of the recent work he’s done with Directions Media, a leading on-line publisher serving the geospatial community. The creation of the Directions Media Sponsored Webinar series has resulted in a new line of business for Directions Media and has boosted its thought leadership to its advertisers and readers. 

Darius Lahoutifard, Chairman & CEO of ALTADYN

Darius leads Altadyn, developer of 3DXplorer, the first and the only Browser-based and installation-free 3D virtual platform which is avatar-based, immersive and fully interactive.
Darius  is a long time international leader in Innovative Enterprise Software Companies. He served as Managing Director of PTC (Nasdaq:PMTC) at its early days, where he multiplied the revenue by 7 in three years reaching $27M. Before that he successfully ran Applicon-Schlumberger’s business in Europe (later acquired by SIEMENS). In late 90s he ran Saqqara, a silicon valley provider of e-catalog software and configurators. Before Altadyn, Darius founded and ran 01consulting, a management consulting boutique that helps worldwide enterprise software companies develop their business through market research, consulting  and interim management.  

Claire Sookman, President, Virtual Team Builders, Inc.

As the driving force behind the training/consulting firm of Virtual Team Builders, Claire Sookman brings to the table over a decade's worth of corporate training experience, working with well over 2,000 Project Managers in the past three years alone. Specializing in virtual team building and communication strategies, Claire's company provides training, consulting, facilitation, and design using a unique, targeted approach that helps her clients increase the productivity and efficiency of project teams. Her personalized, focused seminars continue to garner numerous accolades, putting her services in high demand throughout North America. 

Dan Savage, Managing Partner, Search and Analytics, Resolute Digital

Dan is a 30-year veteran of trade magazines, directories, and online publishing. Dan combines his extensive background as a magazine publishing executive with nationally recognized expertise in online marketing and digital agency operations. He has been studying and testing search algorithms for nearly a decade and typically writes proprietary reporting, campaign, and bid management software to provide his clients with a competitive advantage. During the past year, Dan and his team have managed innovative and successful SEM and SEO campaigns for Fortune 500 firms including News Corp (Wall Street Journal, New York Post), Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Meredith Publishing, Christies, as well as leading ecommerce firms.  Prior to joining Resolute, Dan served as VP, Media and Web Analytics at Market Maker Interactive (MMi), a New York City-based digital agency. On the client side, Dan held CEO roles at ThomasB2B.com, a specialized B2B search engine and the global business directory, Sourcetool.com, and headed up strategic online alliances for the Thomas Publishing Company. 
 

Paul Way, Senior Director of Business Development, ON24, Inc.

Paul oversees the webcast and virtual events provider’s global strategic partnership initiatives. In particular, Paul manages the development of a global partner network for ON24, as well as working on new market opportunities in regions like Japan. He spearheads the development of strategic partnerships—both OEM and with regard to ancillary features and services—to augment ON24’s stable of market-leading products, including webcasts, virtual shows and virtual briefing centers.

Paul joined ON24 in 2009 as a veteran of the online media business, having spent 13 years at United Business Media. Among his roles at UBM was the development of that company’s unified streaming media strategy for the US. 

Michael Westcott, Manager Strategy & Non-traditional Marketing Innovation, Red7 Media
 
Michael runs the Event Marketing Institute which helps global brands and agencies use events as a more strategic part of the marketing mix. He has been instrumental in helping to shape the dialogue in the brand and experiential marketing industry for over twenty years. He has founded and managed several marketing and creative service firms including Firebrand, Fitch & PatternWorks and served as Vice President of Marketing for The George P. Johnson Company (number 20 Ad Age global agency listing), a global event marketing agency. In this position, Westcott helped redefine the event marketing industry through his writing and seminars. As lead strategist, Westcott helped establish a GPJ as a global agency, where his role included creating new processes and tools to plan, execute and measure experiential marketing programs for such clients as IBM, Chrysler, Toyota, Cisco and Dow. Previously, he managed successful branding and marketing programs for clients such as Hasbro, Fleet Bank. Johnson & Wales University, Reebok, 3M, Mazda, Disney and Weyerhaeuser. 

Erin Handel, Co-Founder, COO,  Bankerstuff.com

Erin began her career working in events in 1990, cultivating her appreciation for, and knowledge of, event production and logistics, sales and events operations. Initially attracted to the event industry’s fast pace and blend of creativity and practical-minded business, Erin flourished in the dynamic and highly energized environment. With a focus on customer service, client development, operations and event design, she developed the diversity of skills and experiences that her clients and employers find invaluable in creating cohesive, fluid and strategic events. Working in such organizations as Bankerstuff.com, BAI, VentureOne, The University of California, San Diego, and Technology Transition Corporation and with various Fortune 500 companies, Erin Co-Founded Bankerstuff.com, an online portal of banking education and information, where she launched the banking industry’s first virtual conference and expo and serves as the COO. She is a Certified Meeting Professional (CMP), a Certified Meeting Manager (CMM) and holds a B.S. from Bloomsburg University in Business Administration. 

Tim Clark is a Partner and Senior Analyst with The FactPoint Group

FactPoint ia a Silicon Valley-based market research and consulting firm which conducts proprietary research projects for specific customers and creates strategic content for clients. Its methodology relies on in-depth interviews with early adopters of new technology. Clark’s recent research has spanned virtual events, Software as a Service, open source, data center automation, virtualization management and Green IT.

Prior to FactPoint, Clark was a senior analyst at Jupiter Media Metrix, an Internet research firm. In March 2000, Jupiter acquired Net Market Makers, a Berkeley-based firm that did pioneering B2B research and market development. Clark was a vice president at NMM. Before becoming an analyst, Clark was a reporter and editor for 24 years, working as enterprise software reporter and e-commerce columnist for CNET's News.com, Inter@ctive Week and Advertising Age.