Speakers
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Tom KelleyGeneral Manager, IDEO
Author of "The Art of Innovation"
Grover Righter
General Manager & VP Marketing for Streaming Media & Internet Advertising, iMobileInternet.com
SPEAKER BIOS
Leila Boujnane
Co-Founder & CEO, Idée Inc.
Since co-founding Idée with Chief Technology Officer Paul Bloore, Leila
has been instrumental in making Idée the leader in visual search and
image recognition. Named by IDC as one of the top ten Canadian software
companies to watch, Idée is redefining image search.
Leila brings over a decade of experience in the technology sector to her
CEO role. An outspoken participant in the imaging and software industry,
Leila regularly speaks at industry conferences and is an active mentor
for young women in technology. She blogs at Hyperbio.
David Crow
Senior User Experience Advisor, Microsoft
Instigator, DemoCamp and Founders & Funders
David is a software designer with a passion for community. At Microsoft, David helps companies understand the technology and design opportunities for creating compelling digital experiences. He focuses on helping companies to extend their customers' reach with next generation technology for the desktop, digital devices, standards based applications for the Web, and rich media applications. David earned a Masters of Human-Computer Interaction with a specialization in Analysis and Evaluation at Carnegie Mellon University. He has been named Toronto's Best Web and Tech Evangelist for his efforts in founding DemoCamp, BarCampToronto and Founders & Funders. David has worked to facilitate a vibrant community and ecosystem in Toronto. And he continues to help clients understand the power of community beyond it just being an audience to market to. The community is the framework.
Jeff Fedor
Founder and CTO of Covarity & Ardesic
Jeff Fedor has been developing software solutions for more then 15 years. He's keenly interested in Internet-scale architectures and performance and has been quoted in several publications such as DMReview, eWeek, InformationWeek and the Wall Street Journal. Throughout his career he has contributed to many XML standards bodies and was both Vice-Chair and Chair of the XBRL GL International Working Group. In addition, he was a representative of the inaugural XBRL Standards Board. He has presented at numerous North American and European technology conferences on the topics of web services and XML.
Jay Goldman
President, Radiant Core, Inc.
Jay has been providing a human side to technology for over ten years, as both a User Experience Specialist and Visual Designer. His career has been focused on the interaction between people and technology, and his insights have helped to greatly improve products on mobile, web, and desktop platforms, including IBM DB2 and Mozilla Firefox. Jay has led our Professional Services Team on a wide variety of engagements across industries (including homebuilding, financial services, consumer packaged goods, pharmaceuticals, travel, and software) and is now focused on Sales and Business Development. He has been instrumental in the continued growth of the BarCamp community in Toronto and was one of the co-conductors of the very successful TransitCamp event held in partnership with the Toronto Transit Commission. Jay has been published in the Harvard Business Review and is currently writing The Facebook Cookbook for O'Reilly Media.
Eric Goodwin
Chief Executive Officer & Chairman, Fortiva
As CEO of Fortiva, Eric's focus is to establish market leadership in the managed email archiving market by offering a leading edge on-demand service that provides the best value to an organization's IT requirements and legal obligations. Eric was most recently President and Chief Executive Officer of Klocwork Inc., a leading provider of static analysis software, where he took the company to the next level through a venture funding round and initiated two years of rapid growth. Prior to that, he was CEO of FloNetwork Inc. until the firm was sold to DoubleClick in 2001. During that period, FloNetwork grew from a 25 person company to over 200, and was the acknowledged leader in email relationship management. Previously, he was a founder and CEO of Fulcrum Technologies, taking the company to over $60 million in revenue before the firm became part of Hummingbird Communications. Eric has received the Canadian Advanced Technology Association's award for Private Sector Leadership and has been named one of Canada's Top-10 Technology CEOs by Canadian Business. Eric earned his Bachelor of Commerce from Carleton University.
Jesse Hirsh
Founder of the Media Collective, TAO & Director of Openflows.org
Jesse Hirsh is a broadcaster, researcher, and Internet evangelist in Toronto, Canada. He frequently appears on CBC radio and has a weekly spot on CBC Newsworld, where he explains and analyzes the latest trends and developments in technology using language and examples that are meaningful and relevant to everyday life. Educated at the McLuhan Program at the University of Toronto, Jesse has been lecturing and engaging audiences internationally for a decade and a half. His passion is educating people on the potential benefits and perils of the Internet.
Randall Howard
General Partner, Verdexus & Chairman, Iotum Corporation
Randall Howard has over 25 years experience as a senior technology executive working to build world-leading, high-growth technology organizations. He is the founding general partner at Verdexus, an international financial and management boutique dedicated to turning great technologies into globally competitive companies. From its founding in 1984 to 2000, Mr. Howard drove the growth of MKS Inc., one of Canada's leading enterprise software vendors whose products optimize internal software development within large corporations. As Chairman and CEO, he led growth to a public company with $70 million revenue and 400 employees worldwide. At MKS, he also guided a roll-up of 7 acquisition transactions within MKS. As a seasoned board member/advisor, Mr. Howard has worked with many technology firms. Currently, Randall is Chairman of Verdexus portfolio company iotum and from 2004 to 2006, Randall was CEO of portfolio company Software Innovation. Randall is a Board member of Communitech Technology Association and founder/Chairman of Elora Centre for Environmental Excellence. Mr. Howard holds an Honours B.Math from University of Waterloo and was the 1997 High Technology Entrepreneur of the Year.
Butch Langlois
President & CEO, PlanetEye
Butch LangloisAs PlanetEye’s president and CEO, Butch Langlois is responsible for setting the company’s strategic direction, as well as evangelizing the company’s unique value proposition to the world. Before joining PlanetEye, Butch was president and CEO with Truition Inc., a leading business-to-business e-commerce software and service company. While with Truition, Butch led the company’s expansion into the U.K. and Germany, which let him explore many parts of Europe as part of his day-to-day activities. These adventures and the challenges he faced during his initial visits to these cities are playing a key role in the development of the ideas at PlanetEye.
Stuart MacDonald
Founder & CEO, Tripharbor.com & Former Chief Marketing Officer, Expedia.com
Stuart MacDonald, the founder of Tripharbour Limited, operator of Tripharbor.com and Tripharbour.ca, is no stranger to the online travel planning world. In truth, you could just about call him a seasoned veteran. You may have heard of Expedia.ca. Well, Stuart started that particular endeavour in his home, and then grew it to be most successful online travel company in Canada and one of the country's largest and most profitable online ventures. Oh, and not only that, but Expedia.ca also became the most successful local Expedia unit in the world. Stuart then got involved with Expedia.com (one of the leading brands in the world), as the SVP Packages and Chief Marketing Officer. Through a combination of huge brand smarts, business acumen and plain old marketing intelligence, Stuart deployed Expedia.com's $300 million marketing budget and delivered a planned $10 billion in annual gross bookings. He also ran Expedia's packaged travel business - the fastest growing and most profitable area of the company's activities - to the tune of about 30% of Expedia.com's total revenue. So that's a fair bit of online travel planning experience. And there's also the early (well, earlier, anyway) days, when he led the online initiative for Signature vacations, while holding various senior management positions in both sales and marketing. And now we get to Tripharbour.ca and Tripharbour.com. It was on a cruise, in 1992, he asked his fiancée to marry him - happily, she said yes. And so began a long and amicable (to say the least) relationship with cruising. However, as Stuart has long been less than delighted with the planning aspect of cruise vacationing - he's decided to fix it. Thus Tripharbour.ca and Tripharbor.com were born - out of a desire to make planning a cruise vacation easier, smarter and more well informed. To give people a way to share their cruise experiences and learn insider tips, and just generally plan a cruise that's perfect for them - because they've seen all their options and they've learned a whole lot. When Stuart is not changing the future of cruise vacationing, he sits on the board of directors of TakingItGlobal.org, the Toronto-based global online community for youth. With over 170 000 members worldwide, TakingItGlobal.org uses social media to promote social change. He's also an advisor to GiveMeaning.com, a Vancouver-based philanthropic giving portal.
Ron McKenzie,
Chief Executive Officer, Octopz
Ron McKenzie oversees all aspects of the Company and is chartered with leading the strategic development and growth of Octopz in the marketplace. Ron has extensive experience in leading high growth technology companies in both Canada and the United States. He has held leadership roles in the computing and communications sector with companies such as Hewlett Packard, SGI, FORE Systems and most recently as Executive Vice President, Marketing and Business Development, of MTS/Allstream (formerly AT&T Canada). Ron led all product generation, lifecycle management and marketing activities, as well as directing strategic business development and acquisitions. Prior to Allstream, he was Managing Director of Whitecap Venture Partners where, among other responsibilities, he took an active role in building investee companies. Ron has extensive experience in leading high growth technology companies in both Canada and the United States. He has held leadership roles in the computing and communications sector with companies such as Hewlett Packard, SGI, FORE Systems and most recently as Executive Vice President, Marketing and Business Development, of MTS/Allstream (formerly AT&T Canada). Ron led all product generation, lifecycle management and marketing activities, as well as directing strategic business development and acquisitions. Prior to Allstream, he was Managing Director of Whitecap Venture Partners where, among other responsibilities, he took an active role in building investee companies.
Alan McMillan
Chief Executive Officer, Empirical
Alan is a dynamic executive manager with a history of driving impressive revenue and results for both start-up and traditional corporate entities within the information technology industry. Prior to joining Empirical Alan was the CEO of Avokia Inc, a company that built the world's first data layer virtualization product. Alan also took Think Dynamics, a software company, from a beta product through to exit as the CEO. He built a solid team to attack the F2000 market, extensively worked the analysts community and created service, support and pre-sale strategy. Alan negotiated the sale and sold to IBM for $75 Million CDN in 2003. Think Dynamics won the "Investment of the Year" CVCA award.
Alan's career spans the globe as CEO of Plant Intra, one of the world's first hosted software companies located in Mountainview, California. He also worked in Hong Kong for eight years where he was the Founder/CEO of Pacific Connections, a web services company that was acquired by China.com; and the Managing Director, PCBU, Asia Region for Digital Equipment Corporation where he grew the business to $200 million over a 4 year period. Alan is highly involved with IT in Canada as the Co-Founder and First Chair of Acetech Ontario, a non-profit association for technology CEO's in Ontario. He is a member of the YPO (Young Presidents Organization) and even launched a Facebook application called Lobbythem.com. He has a BCOMM from the University of Windsor and is a certified Corporate Director ICD.D from University of Toronto Rotman School. He lives in Toronto with his wife Jane and children Jack and Lian.
David Neale
Senior Vice President, Products & Services
TELUS Consumer Solutions
With TELUS since January 2007, David Neale was appointed Senior Vice President, Products & Services for TELUS Consumer Solutions in September 2007. In this position, Mr. Neale is responsible for directing the development of the full range of Consumer products and services for Wireline and Wireless Broadband, IPTV, Internet, and Mobile Wireless. Prior to joining TELUS, Mr. Neale was most recently Vice President, Service Development for Rogers Communications Inc, and also held the position of VP Product Development at Rogers Wireless until July 2005, where he was responsible for long-term network and technology strategy and architecture, and for overseeing the development and implementation of all new wireless voice and data products. Active with several industry organizations, Mr. Neale most recently served on the Board of the GSM Association Executive Management Committee (2006). Mr. Neale served on the Board of the Inter-Carrier Messaging Council of the Canadian Telecommunications Association, he was past Chairman of the Paging Executive Council, CWTA 1993, and 1997-1999, and past Chairman of the International Mobitex Operators Association (MOA) 1997-2001.
Tomi J Poutanen
Former Director of Product Management, Yahoo! Social Search
Tomi J Poutanen is formerly the Senior Director of Product Management, Yahoo! Social Search. At Yahoo! he directed the product management team overseeing the company’s social search products Yahoo! Answers, del.icio.us and Yahoo! Bookmarks. Prior to this he was the founder and General Manager of the paid inclusion group at Inktomi, a Web Search technology provider, prior to its acquisition by Yahoo. While at Inktomi, he oversaw Inktomi's Web Search partnerships with AOL, MSN, Lycos and others. Poutanen started his technology career when he founded Data Compression Technologies Inc. while still a computer engineering student at University of Waterloo. The company specialised in high-end data compression utilities for software distribution. In 1996, Microsoft acquired exclusive rights to the company's patented technology, which today forms the basis of the CABARC compression utility used in all Microsoft software distribution. Poutanen holds an MBA and MASc in Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto.
Grover Righter
General Manager & VP Marketing for Streaming Media & Internet Advertising, iMobileInternet.com
Grover Righter has held executive positions in marketing and product development at AT&T, Kabira, Geoworks, Novell, Interix, and SCO. He has significant experience in mobile telecoms, financial services, networking, government and security-centric solutions. At Kabira, Grover was a member of the management team that serviced more than 70 GSM and CDMA mobile operators in the delivery of new services. He also directed the J2EE solution launch with Sun in 2003, which helped drive sales into major customers in the USA, Europe and Asia. As Vice President of NetWare at Novell, his development teams designed the secure enterprise object directory. He also headed the Java server technologies initiative at Geoworks, resulting in major sales to global telecom system providers. Grover is actively involved in the JCP, IETF, IEEE and ITU technical standards. He has degrees in mathematics and computer engineering and has completed the International Business Marketing program at INSEAD.
Jeremy Wright
CEO, B5 Media and Author of “Blog Marketing”
Jeremy Wright is a serial entrepreneur, some have even said a blogpreneur for his focus on communications-oriented ventures. He has been involved in IT, programming and the business side of IT for nearly a decade. Jeremy is the President of b5media, a prominent blog network. He is the author of Blog Marketing, a business book on blogging and writes Ensight, a popular business and technology blog. Jeremy consults on blogging, communication, IT and time management. He is the father of two boys, Evan and Alex, and a semi decent husband to Shannon.