Current and Past Virtual Edge Speakers & Advisers : Eric G. Myers is the Director of Internet Marketing for Quest Software. Eric has over 15 years of experience in marketing and has worked
with diverse clients ranging from the NASDAQ stock market,
Nationwide Insurance, Waterpik, Hershey’s and many others. His
areas of expertise include web and user experience design, email
marketing, search marketing, and usability testing. In his tenure
with Quest, Eric has helped to pioneer new marketing strategies and
tactics such as the use of social media and virtual events. ![Chris Meyer](http://api.ning.com/files/mS4lCfZUUA4gumx-Pa9jY6IWnqu83zF1HRe0aHjGxcYooIVvmVZJWjgVoji1-xV8JJw2R9HrO5U8Jtr0jP86yFuxYYLjefhk/chrsimeyersBW.jpg")
Chris Meyer is the Senior Vice President Client Services Worldwide and General Manager ofGeorge P. Johnson. Chris Meyer oversees US West Coast & Asia Pacific Sales and corporate Digital Strategy for George P. Johnson, as well as all operations for its Northern California presence. In this capacity he primarily works with Chief Marketing Officers and senior marketing and sales executives at premier brands worldwide to develop integrated marketing programs that leverage the latest best practices in experience marketing and digital platforms. He also drives the development strategy around GPJ’s unrivaled Technology offering, a suite of software and mobile offerings designed to serve clients in event execution and audience management, portfolio performance and integrated marketing management. Under his stewardship, the agency’s profile within the IT market specifically has grown steadily, adding premier brands such as Cisco Systems, Oracle and Sun Microsystems to the GPJ client roster. Meyer joined GPJ through the company’s acquisition of Conference Planners in April 2000. As CEO of Conference Planners, he led a team of 150 employees across four worldwide offices. During his tenure, Conference Planners grew to be the leading event management and registration agency specializing in the IT market.  Chris is responsible for directing and implementing the strategy for all digital products within the company. Working closely with Sales, Editorial, Marketing and IT/Web operations, Chris drives the main portal, www.channelweb.com to new heights in both sales volume and traffic growth. Chris is also responsible for the performance based digital products, including netseminars/webcasts, Virtual Trade Shows and Custom Online Projects. Under Chris’ leadership, ChannelWeb was named one of the'10
Great Media Web Sites' in the portal category by BtoB Magazine's
Media Business for two consecutive years. In addition, Everything
Channel’s Virtual Tradeshows won both a min's Magazine Integrated
Marketing Award and a min's Best of the Web award.  Donna Lenart is the Director, Corporate Event Marketing for VMware. Donna has spent over 20 years developing innovative global event
marketing programs that increase brand awareness, create demand and
deliver bottom-line results. Her focus is on building strategic
event programs--aligned with corporate goals--that are a key
component of the company’s integrated marketing plan, optimizing
meeting consolidation efforts, transforming event teams to
results-oriented strategic business partners and exploring new
meeting technologies and best practices. Prior to VMware, Donna
held Director of Marketing and Event positions at Hyperion,
CTB/McGraw Hill and PeopleSoft. ![Ben Chodor](http://api.ning.com/files/7qt2Wl990Zl1ypPG9ETV6iQmveaYCuiGrKejV-1JvN8FRckt-6wyicmM3Qt7ymiFIkGizKJQ7CWm5F-80IAKc6gjzi6L47E-/benchodor.jpg")
Ben Chodor is the Founder and President of Stream57.
Chodor has spent his career seeking ways to facilitate online marketing and communications in the versatile and rapidly advancing world of interactive & streaming media. Chodor began his career as a principal of an independent production company, producing films and executing staging for a variety of clients. Following his successful ten-year employment in independent production, Chodor co-founded a streaming company focused on business-to-consumer-to-consumer healthcare called BabyPressConference.com. He was also instrumental in developing the Patient Locator for City of New York for locating patients in New York area Hospitals that may have been injured during 9/11. During his tenure at BabyPressConference.com, Chodor aided in the launch and management of Stream57, an interactive video & streaming media productions company. As chief technical officer and leader of sales & marketing, and creative efforts, he was given the opportunity to contribute both a technological and marketing perspective to the company. Chodor’s next step within communications media space was with the launch of Exciting New Technologies (ENT). Chodor is now back home with Stream57, and he’s helping bring to company to new heights of success, working with key industry players to create cost-effective communication applications. Stream57’s applications have already been leveraged by Fortune 1000 corporations, charities, higher educations facilities and health care organizations, and with new possibilities opening up, the company and the service will only continue to grow.  Kelly Graham is the Manager, Virtual Events Team, Cisco Systems. Kelly has over 10 years of experience leading strategy, program
management, and execution of live virtual and mobile video events.
She currently manages Cisco's Corporate Virtual Events team
executing over 150 marketing events annually for customers,
partners, press, analysts, and investors. In 1999, she launched
Cisco's Online Events Program and has since overseen the creation
and launch of many virtual events including the 2003 Launch of
Networkers Online, 2008 Launch of Cisco Live Virtual and recently,
the Launch of live video webcasts via mobile devices.  John Grosshandler is the Director of Virtual Events Maritz and Founder eComXpo.
In 2004, John launched a virtual trade show called eComXpo. Held twice each year, it has become the highest-grossing, longest-running virtual trade show and achieved the #1 listing on Google, out of 6 million results, for the keywords virtual trade show. In 2008, John completed the first-ever sale of a virtual trade show by selling eComXpo to Worldwide Business Research.
While still running eComXpo, John was hired by virtual event platform provider InXpo (eComXpo was InXpo’s first customer) to help sell and implement InXpo’s technology to firms including IBM, ATT, SAP, Procter & Gamble, Monster.com, Sun Microsystems, Agilent and Cognos.
John now works for the leading physical meeting and events provider Maritz as their Director, Virtual Events. In this role, John overseas a cross functional team responsible for helping corporations host virtual events that are more effective, easier and safe.
Before starting eComXpo, John had a successful 20 year career in sales and marketing roles for high technology firms, including 8 years at BEA Systems where John became their Number 1 sales representative out of 230 in North America.
John’s views on maximizing the potential of virtual events and communities have been shared as a frequent presenter, including at American Business Media’s Top Management Meeting and for the Professional Convention Management Association, as well as being featured in numerous articles in B2B Magazine, Trade Show Week, Trade Show Executive and The Chicago Tribune. He’s also been a recurring guest on Entrepreneur Magazine’s eBiz radio show.
 Margaret Launzel-Pennes is the Vice President, Worldwide Events, Distributor Communications and Video Production for Herbalife International. In her worldwide events capacity, Margaret oversees the Los
Angeles-based company’s international events, incentive, and
vacations which host 100-25,000 Distributors annually and take
place in a dozen different countries each year. She previously
managed PGI’s (now TBA Global Events) worldwide technology events
as Group Vice President after managing the company’s San Francisco
destination management office for four years. Her prior career
spans more than 20 years of progressive experience in event,
tradeshow and conference marketing and management for a variety of
industries including technology, fashion, beauty, footwear, direct
and database marketing, and printing.  Mark E. Heimberg is the Director, Technical Strategy, PennWell Corporation. Mark Heimberg serves as PennWell's Director of Digital Media
Technology. In this role, Mark evaluates new technologies and
service offerings to determine their fit into PennWell's digital
media strategy. Mark's role is diverse, ranging from hands-on
coding and website creation to strategy, product launch and vendor
management and technical support. Prior to joining PennWell in
2001, Mark worked for venture-backed start-up hardware and software
companies. Mark has been working with Internet technologies since
1996.  Denise Persson, ON24 CMO and Vice President of Marketing As the Chief Marketing Officer for ON24, Denise Persson is responsible for the company’s strategic and tactical marketing efforts. Persson’s experience includes a variety of marketing management and product management positions. Prior to joining ON24, she was executive vice president of global marketing for Genesys, where her responsibilities included marketing, global sales coordination, strategic partnerships and the company’s product development roadmap. Persson holds an MBA from Georgetown University.  Jim Parker Digitell is a company that specializes in the digital development of
conference products and services. Mr.
Parker is a 30 year veteran in the conference industry and a frequent speaker
to national organizations on a variety of topics including the marketing and
distribution of educational materials, “Going Green” initiatives and virtual
technology. Mr. Parker is known
throughout the conference industry for
pioneering numerous products and services, including the first multi-media
conference CD-ROM, the first conference digital multi-media library and his
latest product release, avatar based virtual business environments. Digitell provides services to over 80 leading
organizations as well as servicing the world renowned Chautauqua Institution
for the past 24 years.  Malcolm L. Lotzof is Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder of InXpo At InXpo, Mr. Lotzof is responsible for driving the company’s vision. Throughout his career, Mr. Lotzof has been developing new technology products and related businesses that address paradigm changes in the market. This formula has proven to be very successful for Mr. Lotzof, as InXpo is his fourth venture following the above strategy. Previously, Mr. Lotzof was Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Proamics Corporation, a Professional Service Automation Software Company. While growing the company, Mr. Lotzof was instrumental in formalizing the Professional Automation Market Place. He successfully sold Proamics Corporation to Niku Corporation in 1999. Prior to Proamics, Mr. Lotzof was the Chief Executive Officer and founder of Lotzof & Associates Inc., a Value Added Reseller of ERP Solutions, and Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Cost Management Systems Inc., a Software Development Company for Time & Billing solutions. Both of these companies were sold to Platinum Software Corporation where he became President of the Financial Software Development division, responsible for all Financial Applications. Mr. Lotzof has also worked for IBM, and spent time in Public Accounting. He is a past member of the Young Presidents’ Organization and a current member of the World Presidents’ Organization. Mr. Lotzof is also a Chartered Accountant and holds Bachelor’s degrees in Accounting and Commerce from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. 
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 Sandy Carter is IBM Corporation Vice President, SOA, BPM & WebSphere Strategy, Channels and Marketing Sandy Carter is Vice President, SOA, BPM & WebSphere Strategy, Channels and Marketing for IBM Corporation. She leads a global, award-winning marketing organization for IBM Software Group. In 2009, Fast Company named Ms. Carter one of the most influential women in technology. She was also honored with the AIT United Nations Member of the Year award in 2008 and in previous years for helping developing countries in the area of technology. Ms. Carter orchestrates IBM’s cross-company, worldwide SOA marketing initiatives. In this role, she sets the direction for IBM’s SOA marketing strategy across software, services and hardware. Under her leadership, IBM’s SOA marketing efforts have resulted in 64 percent market share for SOA. In addition, IBM WebSphere® has become a market leader and has received more than 34 industry awards. As the worldwide leader for Channels, Ms. Carter has grown the SOA IBM Business Partner ecosystem to more than 5,000 companies. She led the development of the Smart SOATM approach, a set of guiding principles built on the SOA experiences of more than 7,000 IBM customers. She defines the role of SOA in IBM’s new smarter planet initiative. Ms. Carter is the author of an award-winning book, “The New Language of Business, SOA and Web 2.0,” that helps business and IT executives, and others in both areas, get started with service oriented architecture (SOA) and Web 2.0. In November 2008, she published a book on social media marketing, titled “The New Language of Marketing 2.0: How to Use ANGELS to Energize Your Market.” Ms. Carter has published more than 32 industry perspectives and bylines about SOA in a variety of business and technology media. She explores SOA topics in her blog at: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/SOA_Off_the_Record. Ms. Carter speaks frequently at industry events sponsored by organizations such as Forrester, Gartner, IDC, Women in Technology (WITI), and InfoWorld magazine. She is an active member of a number of professional organizations, such as WITI, and serves on the WITI Executive Advisory Council. Ms. Carter is listed in Madison’s Who’s Who. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in math and computer science from Duke University and an MBA from Harvard, and is fluent in eight programming languages.  Paul Salinger is a Vice President at Oracle Paul Salinger joined Oracle in 1999, after having worked with them from the event agency side, to bring into the marketing organization a resource that had background in event marketing combined with a creative and strategic approach to the business. His day to day role is working on strategic messaging to drive pipeline and revenue for the company and to champion sustainability across event marketing. A current focus is to participate in defining and delivering strategies for virtual experiences that combine live and virtual elements into an integrated campaign, taking advantage of many different tools and technologies to identify methodologies and behaviors that meet audience expectations for different kinds of both face to face and virtual environments.  Vickie Singer is the Vice President, Strategic Partnerships for the U.S. Travel Association Prior to joining the U.S. Travel Association (Formerly, Travel Industry Association), Vickie was the principal consultant and founder of Travel Technology Source. Travel Technology Source focused on assisting technology companies in need of a travel industry expert to evaluate or enhance the effectiveness and flexibility of applications; vacation packagers and tour companies who sought guidance and assistance in developing strategic plans; and travel agencies requiring assistance in identifying technology options to expand their business. As a part of Vickie's consultancy work, she developed and co-producer, the leading travel industry technology conference, Res-Expo. Under Vickie's guidance Res-Expo became the "must attend" event for travel industry technology and know-how. Having successfully produced Res-Expo since 2002, Vickie is recognized as an industry leader and as integral part of the show's success. Before launching Travel Technology Source, Singer was the co-owner of Renaissance Travel Solutions, a leading wholesale tour operation representing its own vacation product line, along with numerous private label programs for airlines and vacation destinations. In addition Singer co-owned and operated several retail travel agencies in the Baltimore area. During her tenure at RTS, Vickie directed applications development, e-commerce strategy and daily operations. RTS thrived under her leadership and experienced substantial growth, utilizing technology as the catalyst for success.
Kenny Lauer is Director Digital Technologies at George P. Johnson Kenny Lauer is a specialist in Digital Technologies and Web 2.0 tools and strategy. His extensive background in customer strategy enables a unique perspective of the interlacing of traditional customer and marketing strategies with online opportunities. Kenny current directs GPJ's Digital expertise and ensures their clients understand how to leverage the intersection of the virtual and live worlds. Most recently, Kenny has been helping companies understand the value of performance based marketing and social media techniques as an extension of their existing marketing efforts. While at the industry marketing leaders Peppers & Rogers Group and Carlson Marketing Group, Kenny consulted with large clients (like Ford, E*Trade, Adobe, Hewlett Packard, SAP) on how to build relationships with their customers at key touchpoints (like customer service). When Kenny was Director of Consulting Services for Prospero Technologies, on online community and interactive technology and services firm, he led Fortune 500 clients through the strategic process of building better relationships through online communities. While at KPMG, Kenny enjoying a national charter to help business re-engineer their processes for maximum efficiency. Kenny began his career as an Evangelist for Apple Computers preaching and selling the amazing machines.
Kimberly F. Smith is World2Worlds' Chief Operations Officer and co-founder. Kim comes to virtual reality as the culmination of a long career in technology training and engineering/public works. She was Sr. Vice President of Office Automation Training, Inc., providing computer and application training and course design for corporations in the Northwest. She spent more than 19 years in positions of increasing responsibility in operations, logistics, sales and management at several of the nation's largest Architecture and Engineering (A&E) firms, including CH2M Hill, Tetra Tech and Black & Veatch, at different times managing client service programs, and sales and business development operations for large public works, military and corporate construction and technology projects in the Northwest and globally. An early adopter of virtual world technology, Ms. Smith founded RM Metaverse Services (now World2Worlds) in 2006, providing metaverse design/build, community, commerce, branding and event consulting services to corporations entering that environment. As a consultant to global publisher United Business Media, Ms. Smith co-founded and produced Life 2.0 Summit, the leading virtual event on metaverse development. In her capacity as consulting director of Operations and Sales for UBM Metaverse, she has produced virtual world projects for clients including Intel, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Kelley Executive Partners, IBM and Microsoft.
Susan McPherson is the Vice-President, Global Events for PR Newswire Susan is Vice-President/ Global Events at PR Newswire, the world's leading provider of electronic news distribution, media targeting, measurement and broadcast services on behalf of tens of thousands of corporate, government, association, labor, non-profit, and other customers worldwide. Susan has over twenty years experience in strategic business development, technology sales and sales management, new product offerings and successful team development. Her tenure at PR Newswire has included a variety of roles including playing a key part in the development of the firm's first bureaus in China (Beijing and Shanghai) and the launch of MediaSense, a very successful media measurement tool. Prior to her career at PR Newswire, she worked in both the editorial and marketing departments of USA Today. Susan holds a B.A in History from the State University of New York at Albany and conducted graduate studies at Boston University's College of Communications with a focus on broadcast journalism. Susan serves on the board of Bpeace (http://www.bpeace.org/aboutus_work.php), an organization dedicated to assisting women in regions of conflict and post-conflict start businesses. She also serves on the board of the non-profit New Democratic Majority, and resides in New York City. Prior to moving to New York in 2003, she lived in Seattle, where she was actively involved in FareStart, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing job and life-skills training to the disadvantaged, and served on the board of the Seattle chapter of the National Investor Relations Institute.  Martha Schwartz is Vice President, Group Sales for InformationWeek and TechWeb Network at United Business Media. Martha drives the TechWeb strategy for virtual events and all immersive environments of which TechWeb is the leader- hosting 20 virtual trade shows annually, 22 concierge sites and the growth and development of more interactive, immersive products. Under Martha’s leadership, InformationWeek was the winner of the 2009 Mins’s Best of the Web Awards ” Best Virtual Tradeshow”. Martha is responsible for directing and implementing the complete product sales strategy for InformationWeek and the Business Technology Network which includes InformationWeek , Network Computing, Global CIO, DDJ, Byte and Switch, Dark Reading, Internet Evolution, Plug into the Cloud, InformationWeek Government, Intelligent Enterprise, bMighty and Contentinople. Martha manages sales for the largest group within TechWeb, while working side by side with the Content, Marketing, Audience Development and Performance Marketing teams.  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.  Salim Ali is Vice President, Ecosystem and Community Marketing SAP Americas / SAP AG Salim Ali is Vice President of Ecosystem and Community Marketing for SAP. In this position, Mr. Ali is responsible for managing the development and implementation of all marketing initiatives for SAP’s Ecosystem and Community portfolio, with particular focus on leveraging communities along the complete customer lifecycle. Prior to assuming his current position, Mr. Ali served as Senior Director responsible for SAP’s marketing efforts with strategic ISVs. He also worked on projects for the company’s Ecosystem Platform & Adoption initiatives. Previously, Mr. Ali worked for Veritas, now part of Symantec; McKenna Group; and Tibco Software. Salim Ali holds both bachelor and master of science degrees in computer science, as well as a master of business administration from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.  Zain Naboulsi is a Developer Evangelist at Microsoft For over 15 years Zain has been teaching and consulting on the latest Microsoft technologies. He’s been a Consultant and Microsoft Certified Trainer since 1995 and holds all major Microsoft certifications. He is the creator of Virtual World Evangelism (VWE) which is an effort to build communities in virtual places like Facebook, Second Life, and OpenSim. He is not only a proponent of the community aspect of virtual worlds but also is a supporter of the myriad business applications that these new mediums offer. Zain’s efforts have been featured by eWeek, Redmond Developer News, and many others. He has been interviewed by Forrester Research, ThinkBalm, UgoTrade, Gartner, and the Science Channel for his work with virtual world communities. He is a frequent speaker at events in Second Life, Facebook, and other virtual worlds. and lectures world-wide to evangelize the future of this exciting new medium.  Mark Yolton is a Senior Vice President, SAP Community Network, SAP AG Mark Yolton brings more than 20 years of experience to his current role of Senior Vice President for SAP’s Community Network. In this role, Mr. Yolton leads the SAP Developer Network and Business Process Expert communities, of which he is charged with strengthening in order to deepen and accelerate adoption of the SAP platform, products, and services for the benefit of SAP and its ecosystem of customers and partners. Prior to joining SAP, Mr. Yolton worked at PeopleSoft managing PeopleSoft.com and the core aspects of its customer and partner portals. Following PeopleSoft’s merger with Oracle, he served as Senior Director of Oracle’s Web-based marketing activities, where he was responsible for managing Oracle.com, the Oracle Partner Network, the Oracle Technology Network, and the employee portal MyOracle. Previously, Mr. Yolton served as Vice President of Marketing and Strategy at Sun Microsystems, and in various roles with Unisys Corporation and The Prudential.  Pam Rorke Levy is a Creative Director and Writer at The Kenwood Group Pam has worked on a wide range of high-stakes events and media projects for industry-leading companies like HP Software, Intel, Visa, TIBCO, Hyperion, Seagate, NetApp, and Sun. Her work at Kenwood is focused on the strategic deployment of corporate messaging across any and all platforms, including virtual events and social networks, with a special emphasis on the innovative use of new technologies and emerging forms of artistic expression. Pam brings a unique blend of skills and perspectives to her corporate work, drawing extensively on her experience in broadcast television, the performing arts, and educational software development. Pam's work in television includes the creation of many groundbreaking programs, such as The Discovery Channel's long-running high technology series, Next Step, and KQED's multi-platform arts program, SPARK. She has produced, directed, and written documentaries and series for National Geographic, PBS, A&E, This History Channel, TLC, and HGTV, among other clients and channels, garnering awards from the New York Film Festival, the American Video Institute, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the National Association of Television Programming Executives, the Chicago Film Festival, and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. She has served on the boards of the Bay Area Video Coalition, ZSpace Studio, and the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.  Chris Collins is the Director of Enterprise Systems at Linden Lab Chris Collins leads corporate partner initiatives at Linden Lab. His main focus is building a worldwide network of large enterprise partners to continually add value and expand the reach and breadth of the virtual world of Second Life. Through his efforts, Linden Lab's consumer and corporate customers will benefit from increased scalability of the Second Life Grid. Before joining Linden Lab, he was Founder and CEO of Zudora, a job search engine. Prior to Zudora, Chris was the Managing Director of The Solution Base, a CRM software and consulting company in the UK, where he succeeded in turning the company around from a loss to a profit within his first year. Chris has worked as a consultant and an accountant in Australia, Europe, and the US; he has a Bachelor of Commerce in Accounting and Finance from the University of Western Australia.  Staci Clark Marketing Strategy Manager, Cisco Live As marketing strategy manager for Cisco Live, Staci oversees the planning and execution of attendee and partner marketing programs for Cisco Live and Cisco Live Virtual -- Cisco's largest in-person and virtual user conference events. In this capacity, she combines market intelligence with campaign data to identify historical and emerging trends that influence the behaviors and motivations of her target audience, and then designs messaging and programs to address those needs. With the emergence of complimentary virtual programs, Staci and her team are expanding their marketing program portfolio to address unique and shared audiences in the virtual space. Prior to joining Cisco, Staci was Vice President of Client Services for WingateWeb (now part of Active Events) where she oversaw the creation, delivery, and measurement of event-related services. Before making the move to events, Staci held marketing management positions in corporate communications and product marketing for various enterprise software providers, including J.D. Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Oracle.  John Jainschigg is Director of Ziff Davis Enterprise's Internet and Community Laboratory The Community Laboratory is an incubator for new online and social media technology and products. As Executive Director of UBM Metaverse, John created the virtual worlds consulting business for United Business Media and founded Life 2.0 Summit, the leading virtual event for virtual world developers. A 25-year veteran of online software development and media, John's career spans roles as print and/or online Editor in Chief of award-winning CMP B2B technology publications such as Teleconnect, Computer Telephony, Communications Convergence, and Dr. Dobb's Journal, with stints in online software development and custom media and market consulting for diverse clients in telecommunications, networking and online. A forceful advocate of business use of virtual worlds, and pioneer developer of technologies for integrating virtual worlds with the web, John has consulted on virtual world technology and business best-practice for IBM, Sun Microsystems, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft and other clients. He is chairman of the advisory board for World2Worlds, Inc., a leading virtual event and immersive-experience agency based in New York and Seattle.  Dannette Veale is tbe Global Strategist, Cisco Live and Networkers Virtual, Cisco As the Global Cisco Live and Networkers Virtual Manager at Cisco, Dannette Veale lives and breathes new media. Dannette currently focuses on producing hyrbid events to support global Cisco Live and Networkers conferences, Cisco's suite of user conferences taking place around the globe. When she’s not traveling the (real) world evangelizing and enabling the use of a central shared virtual platform to a global audience, you’ll find Dannette engaged in such varied hobbies as producing streaming media, designing Web sites, or watching classic films such as Blade Runner. Outside of her daily immersion with collaborative media, Dannette’s also been known partake in such real world activities as gardening, baking, and knitting—while watching cyberpunk anime, of course.  Neal Thompson is 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.  Debbie McGrath, Founder and Chief Instigator, HR.com  Stu Schmidt, Vice President, Global Sales & Services for Unisfair Stu Schmidt is a 25+ year sales and services veteran, having managed sales forces selling both products and services. He is credited with developing sales methodologies for numerous companies, from start-ups through fortune 50 companies. His career spans 16 years with Digital Equipment Corporation followed by senior sales management roles at two large System Integration companies. Stu was VP Sales then COO of the DSM division of OAO Technologies that grew to $150M in annual revenue in 3.5 years, and was instrumental in their successful IPO in late 1997. Subsequent to that endeavor, he was a Senior Partner and co-founder of a sales process consulting firm for 7 years. Mr. Schmidt joined WebEx in 2004, and developed the WebEx Selling methodology and most of the metrics currently employed in the WebEx sales organization. As Vice President of Global Sales & Services at Unisfair, Stu ensures that every client engagement is successful, producing outstanding business results.  Dennis Shiao is Client Services Executive at InXpo. Dennis works with strategic clients on their virtual event programs. Prior to InXpo, Dennis served as Director of Product Management, Webcasts at TechTarget, where he helped produce over 20 virtual tradeshows for B-to-B technology advertisers. Prior to TechTarget, Dennis spent several years in Information Technology management, with responsibility for large scale web and server infrastructure.  Robert Rosenbloom is 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 the CNN, New York Times, ABC World News Tonight, USA Today, BusinessWeek, Fox Business, CNet, NewsWeek and CBS.
 Stuart Bowen Senior Director of Virtual Events, ON24 In his current position, Bowen oversees the sales and business development efforts supporting ON24’s flagship product, ON24 Virtual Show, working with ON24 Sales, executive management and Product Development. Bowen has years of experience in the B2B media space. He worked previously at United Business Media, where, as Vice President of Sales, he was responsible for creating the company’s first “online-only” sales team and then developing the original cross-product (print and online media) sales team. He also headed up a United Business Media team that evangelized to internal and external customers the use of virtual worlds in a business environment.  Mark Fein is Senior Director of Strategy for Immersa Marketing Mark brings a unique tool kit to clients, developed from his experience creating and executing winning marketing strategies in a wide range of industries. In his current role for Immersa Marketing, Mark helps leading brands develop experience marketing strategies that build and stimulate communities and drive business results. With extensive experience at Fortune 500 companies, as well as start-ups, Mark provides a blend of process and creativity to continuously push the envelope, while achieving key marketing objectives. Previously, Mark led the marketing efforts at the financing arm of Oracle and held various marketing and consulting positions in the energy, information technology and education sectors. Mark holds a Bachelor of Arts from Tufts University, a Master of Arts in Political Science from Columbia University and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Southern California.  Kevin Aires is Director, Digital Experience for George P. Johnson  Brent Arslaner, Vice President of Marketing & Channels, Unisfair As Vice President of Marketing & Channels at Unisfair, Brent oversees all Global Marketing ensuring Unisfair maintains its leadership role in providing Virtual Event solutions. Prior to joining Unisfair, Brent was Vice President of Marketing at Jamcracker, a leading provider of On Demand Delivery solutions. Before Jamcracker, he was Vice President of Product Strategy at Kana Software, through its acquisition of Broadbase Software. At Broadbase, he was instrumental in driving the IPO process, successfully acquiring and integrating six companies and growing the company to over $100 million in sales. Brent holds a B.S. in Supply Chain Management from Syracuse University.  Michael Gialis, New Business Development for Sun Microsystem, Lab and Chief Technology Office. Michael's responsibilities include community and partner development in addition to supporting commercialization and adoption of SunLabs technologies related to virtual world, mixed-reality and on-line gaming segments. 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 these spaces.  Dan Parks, President and Creative Director of Corporate Planners Unlimited, Inc. Dan has applied his futuristic, creative picture for CPU and the entire meetings industry, which has placed them in preferred position in the meeting, events and travel management arenas. He is one of the founding members of MeCo, "the Meetings Community" industry listserv. With over 3000 planners, 50,000 posts & over 16,000 topics discussed, MeCo has established itself as one of the prominent worldwide meeting resources, attracting the most important and knowledgeable planners as members, who post daily their experiences, suggestions and general industry information. As their Monday Moderator, Dan has built a large audience of readers who also believe as he does, that positive powerful thinking with expanded knowledge, brings great success and fulfillment in one's life and career. Dan first learned of Second Life® in September 2006. Soon after he was taking classes and learning everything he could about this new world, he developed the MECO mansion, for use by meeting and event professionals. The MeCo mansion is a "Virtual Educational Facility". The 16 amazing rooms within the mansion were designed to provide an optimal virtual environment and provide free resources for meeting and planning professionals. Every aspect of the industry is covered by dedicating rooms to the education, networking, entertainment, and information for all visitors. Dan's next creation was the Virtualis™ Convention and Learning Center. Virtualis™ is the largest and most meticulously-designed convention center in Second Life®. Mirroring lavish real-world convention centers with lush grounds, Virtualis™ is the only facility designed, owned and operated by real life meeting and event management professionals. 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. Click here to start typing your text |
