Stephen Baker, author of The Numerati

Stephen Baker, author of The Numerati, is a journalist based in the New York area. For more than 20 years, he was a writer at BusinessWeek magazine, in Mexico, Pittsburgh and Paris before returning to cover technology from New York. Before BusinessWeek, Baker was a reporter for the El Paso Herald-Post. Prior to that, he was chief economic reporter for The Daily Journal in Caracas, Venezuela. Baker holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin and a master's from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Sanju K. Bansal, Vice Chairman of the Board, Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer and Secretary, MicroStrategy

Sanju K. Bansal has served as executive vice president and chief operating officer since 1993 and was previously vice president, consulting since joining MicroStrategy in 1990. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of MicroStrategy since September 1997 and has served as vice chairman of the Board of Directors since November 2000. Prior to joining MicroStrategy, Mr. Bansal was a consultant at Booz Allen & Hamilton, a worldwide technical and management consulting firm, from 1987 to 1990. Mr. Bansal received an S.B. in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.S. in Computer Science from The Johns Hopkins University.

David Besemer, CTO, Composite Software, Inc.

David brings to Composite Software more than twenty years of software development and management experience, all with leading edge technologies and companies. David joined Composite Software as VP of Engineering in 2002, and became the CTO in 2006. Before joining Composite he was a “freelance CTO”, providing software technology intelligence to venture capital firms. Prior to that he was the CTO of eStyle, an e-commerce retailer serving the lifestyle needs of families. Previously, David ran a successful enterprise software consulting practice, headed software product marketing at NeXT Computer, built program trading systems on Wall Street, and researched natural language processing systems at GE’s Corporate R&D center. David holds a BS in computer science from Michigan State University and an MS in computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

David Birmingham, author of Netezza Underground and Senior Principal Consultant, Brighlight Consulting

David Birmingham is well known in the Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence world as one of the top experts on the power of data warehouse appliances and large scale analytical technology solutions. David has over 24 years experience in assessing, identifying, characterizing, designing and deploying business intelligence and data warehousing technology solutions of any scale or complexity. He has extensive experience across the entire BI lifecycle and been instrumental with numerous world class solutions across financial services, health care, retail and military applications. David is one of the world’s top Netezza experts, a frequent public speaker, author of the book Netezza Underground and Software Development on a Leash, author of numerous data warehousing articles, the Netezza Community’s blog “Gather ‘Round the Grill”, as well as the IT Toolbox blog “Ab Initio Underground”. He joins a growing team at Brightlight Consulting, who already has a worldwide reputation as one of the premier experts on data warehouse appliances and large scale analytical technology solutions.

Braden Callahan, Senior Director, Business Intelligence, Demand Media

Braden Callahan is the senior director of business intelligence (BI) for Demand Media, where he oversees BI, including web analytics , data warehousing, application development and analytics. While at Demand Media, Callahan has spearheaded the successful implementation of the existing BI Platform, which is tailored to handle large amounts of data across numerous, vertical subject areas. Additionally, he led the implementation of Omniture Insight for the organization's entire portfolio of web properties, including LIVESTRONG.com, eHow.com and Cracked.com to name a few. Previously, Callahan was the co-founder and partner at Business Performance Solutions. As the lead technical consultant, he architected and implemented complex systems including ERP, CRM and BI. He played a significant role in fostering the company's overall growth, including driving technical sales, structuring business partnerships and customer service across vertical markets. Prior, Callahan was in information technology for Bsquare, where he was responsible for the IT infrastructure, BI platform and business applications. Callahan received his B.A. in business management from the University of Washington.

Roland Cozzolino, Chief Technology Officer, MediaMath

Roland oversees the architecture and development for MediaMath's TerminalOne™ platform. With over a decade of experience in enterprise level software design, end-user windows applications, and web-based systems, he brings a tremendous depth of technical knowledge to the MediaMath team. Roland's initial foray into the business world started in the Marketing Research sector, where he was surprised to find use for a degree in mathematics (BA Washington University, Saint Louis). This stint was short-lived, as he realized he wanted to write code, something he had done since childhood on an Apple II. During the internet boom, he ran engineering for Tempest Software, building low-level messaging systems, and for WhenU as VP of Engineering, where he developed the first behavioral targeting and content contextualization engine. For the past several years he ran his own consulting and development firm, working with a large list of fortune 500 clients, developing code ranging from quantitative algorithms for financial trading, secure instant messaging solutions, compliance systems, digital rights management, to web applications too numerous to name. He is the rare technologist who understands the end to which code is the means. His passion of technology and art exposed him to over 25 programming languages, 3D modeling, video post production, and sound engineering. He even found the opportunity to compose a score for a nationally televised commercial. Its safe to say he strives to continuously learn anything he can and add a layer of creativity not often found within the development community. When time permits he still likes to trade equities, build furniture and play music ... and even fire up a chainsaw now and again. Most importantly, he always makes time for his wife and 3 boys. As he sees it, he's just 2 skaters away from a hockey team.

Sean Devine, Vice President of Pricing and Engineering, Con-way Freight

Sean Devine is the Vice President of Pricing and Engineering at Con-way Freight. He is responsible for pricing, billing, strategy, business intelligence, lean six sigma, operations research and enterprise architecture. He is also on the three member management committee for Sales, Marketing and Pricing. Prior to working at Con-way, Sean was worked primarily in the supply management software and consulting industry.

John F. Elder IV, Chief Scientist, Elder Research, Inc.

Dr. John Elder heads a data mining consulting team with offices in Charlottesville Virginia, Washington DC, Mountain View California, and Manhasset New York (www.datamininglab.com). Founded in 1995, Elder Research, Inc. focuses on investment, commercial and security applications of advanced analytics, including text mining, stock selection, image recognition, process optimization, cross-selling, biometrics, drug efficacy, credit scoring, market timing, and fraud detection.
John obtained a BS and MEE in Electrical Engineering from Rice University, and a PhD in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia, where he’s an adjunct professor teaching Optimization or Data Mining. Prior to 15 years at ERI, he spent 5 years in aerospace defense consulting, 4 heading research at an investment management firm, and 2 in Rice University's Computational & Applied Mathematics department.
Dr. Elder has authored innovative data mining tools, is a frequent keynote speaker, and was co-chair of the 2009 Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining conference, in Paris. John’s courses on analysis techniques -- taught at dozens of universities, companies, and government labs -- are noted for their clarity and effectiveness. Dr. Elder was honored to serve for 5 years on a panel appointed by the President to guide technology for National Security. His book with Bob Nisbet and Gary Miner, Handbook of Statistical Analysis & Data Mining Applications, won the PROSE award for Mathematics in 2009. His book with Giovanni Seni, Ensemble Methods in Data Mining: Improving Accuracy through Combining Predictions, was published in February 2010.
John is a follower of Christ and the proud father of 5.

Usama Fayyad, CEO, Open Insights

Usama Fayyad is CEO of Open Insights, a data strategy, technology and consulting firm he founded to help enterprises understand data strategy and deploy data-driven solutions that effectively and dramatically grow revenue and competitive advantages. Up until September 2008, he was Yahoo!'s chief data officer and executive vice president of Research & Strategic Data Solutions. Fayyad was the industry's first chief data officer, responsible for Yahoo!'s global data strategy, architecting Yahoo!'s data policies and systems, prioritizing data investments, and managing the Company's data analytics and data processing infrastructure. Fayyad’s groups managed a data flow of 25 Terabytes per day and built the largest scale ad targeting system in the world. Fayyad also founded and managed the Yahoo! Research organization with offices around the world. Yahoo! Research is building the premier scientific research organization to develop the new sciences of the Internet, on-line marketing, and innovative interactive applications. Prior to joining Yahoo!, Fayyad co-founded and led the DMX Group, co-founded and served as CEO of digiMine Inc. (Audience/Revenue Science, Inc.), led the data mining and exploration group at Microsoft Research, and held a leadership role at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Fayyad earned his Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1991), and also holds BSE's in both electrical and computer engineering (1984); MSE in computer science and engineering (1986); and M.Sc. in mathematics (1989). He has published over 100 technical articles in the fields of data mining and Artificial Intelligence, is a Fellow of the AAAI (association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence) and a Fellow of the ACM (association of Computing Machinery), has edited two influential books on the data mining and launched and served as editor-in-chief of both the primary scientific journal in the field of data mining (Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery) and the primary newsletter in the technical community published by the ACM: SIGKDD Explorations.? He is active in the academic community and holds adjunct professor positions in Australia and Hong Kong. He regularly delivers keynotes and talks at government, industry and academic conferences around the world.

Donald Feinberg, Vice President & Distinguished Analyst, Gartner

Donald Feinberg is a vice president and distinguished analyst in Gartner Intelligence in the Information Infrastructure group. Mr. Feinberg is responsible for Gartner's research on database management systems and data warehousing infrastructure. Before this, Mr. Feinberg held various management jobs within Gartner, most recently vice president and general manager of Latin America operations. Mr. Feinberg began his career at Gartner in the Software Management Strategies group responsible for DBMS engines and vendors. Prior to joining Gartner, Mr. Feinberg was director of technical marketing for Oracle Corporation’s IBM mainframe database business. In this capacity, he was responsible for technical sales and marketing support of the products worldwide. Previously, Mr. Feinberg was an assistant professor of mathematics at Boston University. Mr. Feinberg resides in São Paulo, Brazil.

Dr. Richard D. Hackathorn, President, Bolder Technology, Inc.

Dr. Richard Hackathorn has over thirty years of experience in the Information Technology industry as a well-known industry analyst, technology innovator, and international educator. He has pioneered many innovations in database management, decision support, and data warehousing. He has founded three companies, one of which grew to 180 employees and was acquired by Sybase in 1994. Richard publishes many articles in trade and academic publications, presented regularly at leading industry conferences, and conducted professional seminars in eighteen countries. He writes regularly for the Business Intelligence Network, active in the Boulder BI Brain Trust, and has written three books. Richard was a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and at the University of Colorado. He received his B.S. degree in Information Science from the California Institute of Technology and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Information Systems from the University of California, Irvine.

Claudia Imhoff, PhD, President and Founder, Intelligent Solutions, Inc.

A thought leader, visionary, and practitioner in the rapidly growing field of business intelligence – Claudia Imhoff, Ph.D. is a popular and dynamic speaker and internationally recognized expert on analytical CRM, business intelligence, and the infrastructure to support these initiatives – the Corporate Information Factory (CIF). Dr. Imhoff has co-authored five highly-regarded and popular books on these subjects and writes monthly columns (totaling more than 100) for technical and business magazines. She has an expert channel, monthly newsletter, and popular blog on the B-EYE-Network.com web site. She has served on the Board of Advisors for DAMA International and was chosen by the DAMA organizations to receive the 1999 and 2005 Individual Achievement Awards. She is an advisor for and was bestowed the title of Fellow of the Data Warehousing Institute and serves as an advisor for several technology and commercial companies.

James Kobielus, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research, Inc.

James serves Business Process & Applications professionals. He is a leading expert on data warehousing, predictive analytics, data mining, and complex event processing. In addition to his core coverage areas, James contributes to Forrester's research in business intelligence, data integration, data quality, and master data management. James has a long history in IT research and consulting and has worked for both vendors and research firms. Most recently, he was at Current Analysis, an IT research firm, where he was a principal analyst covering topics ranging from data warehousing to data integration and the Semantic Web. Prior to that position, James was a senior technical systems analyst at Exostar (a hosted supply-chain management and eBusiness hub for the aerospace and defense industry). In this capacity, James was responsible for identifying and specifying product/service requirements for federated identity, PKI, and other products. He also worked as an analyst for the Burton Group and was previously employed by LCC International, DynCorp, ADEENA, International Center for Information Technologies, and the North American Telecommunications Association. He is both well versed and experienced in product and market assessments. James is a widely published business/technology author and has spoken at many industry events.

Kuldeep Makhni, world-renowned Indian Master Chef

Kuldeep Makhni – otherwise known as Royal Chef or Chef Mak – is a highly acclaimed Indian Master Chef with 30 years experience cooking for royalties and celebrities around the world, including Her Majesty the Queen, His Royal Excellency Mustafa Bin Edress of Saudi Arabia, the late Diana, Princess of Wales, Mother Teresa, and Hollywood/Bollywood stars such as Sylvester Stallone, David Copperfield, Lady Diana Riggs, and Anil Kapoor. Makhni today owns a restaurant in the UK called MAKHNI'S TAJ.

Chris Marinak, Senior Director, Labor Economics, Major League Baseball

Chris joined Major League Baseball in June 2008 and is currently the Senior Director of Labor Economics. Chris leads a team of analysts responsible for player contract valuation, salary arbitration analysis, team payroll reporting and administration, umpire performance reporting, and financial analysis and modeling related to revenue sharing. Chris is the lead business customer for all on-field related technology projects. His team will also negotiate all economic provisions of the upcoming 2011 Basic Agreement with the Major League Baseball Player’s Association. Prior to his role with MLB, Chris was a Manager in Strategic Analysis at Capital One Financial and responsible for a variety of technology projects related to marketing research and analysis. Chris received an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Virginia. He was a four year letterman as a pitcher for the UVA baseball team and was the team captain his senior year.

Jim Mlodgenski, Chief Architect, EnterpriseDB

Jim is Chief Architect at EnterpriseDB. He is one of EnterpriseDB's first employees, having joined the company in May, 2005. Over several years, Jim has been responsible for key activities such as sales engineering, professional services, strategic technology solutions delivery and customer education. Prior to joining EnterpriseDB, Jim was a partner and architect at Fusion Technologies, a technology services company. For nearly a decade, Jim developed early designs and concepts for Fusion's consulting projects and specialized in Oracle application development, Web development, and open source information architectures.

Neil Raden, Co-founder & Partner, JA Raden Ground and Founder & CEO, Hired Brains

Neil Raden is an "industry influencer" – someone who is followed by technology providers, consultants and even other analysts. His deep knowledge of the analytical aspects in information technology is the result of thirty years of intensive work. Prior to co-founding JA Raden Group an analytics consulting firm, he was the founder of Hired Brains, a research and advisory firm offering research and analysis services to technology providers and venture capitalists as well as providing consulting and implementation services in Business Intelligence and Analytics to many Global 2000 companies. Mr. Raden began his career as a casualty actuary with AIG in New York before moving into software engineering, consulting and industry analysis, with experience in the application of modeling and analytics in fields as diverse as health care to nuclear waste management to cosmetics marketing and many others in between. He is an active consultant, industry analyst, speaker and author. His blogs, "Competing on Decisions," can be found at intelligententerprise.com/experts/raden/ and the B-Eye-Network. His articles appear in industry magazines, he is the author of dozens of sponsored white papers for vendors and other organizations, he has contributed to numerous books and is the co-author of "Smart (Enough) Systems: How to Deliver Competitive Advantage by Automating Hidden Decisions" (Prentice Hall, 2007).

Olga Raskina, Operations Research Principal, Con-way Freight

Olga Raskina is an Operations Research Principal at Con-way Freight. She has been with the company since August 2009, working on analytical models to support its strategic directions. Prior to Con-way Freight she worked at the software company Emptoris, where she held the lead scientist position, leading research efforts for all the company’s products. Olga received her Ph.D. in Operations Research from Columbia University.

Shawn Rogers, President, Analytic Response

Shawn Rogers has more than 19 years of hands-on IT experience with a focus on Internet-enabled technology. As a founder of both the BeyeNETWORK and DMReview magazine he has helped create the largest and most read communities covering the business intelligence, data warehousing, performance management and data integration space. His newest venture Analytic Response LLC helps companies understand collaborative business intelligence, social CRM and cutting edge analytic strategies.

Charles Rosa, Operations Research Principal, Con-way Freight

Charles Rosa is an Operations Research Principal at Con-way Freight. He has been with the company since August 2009 working on analytical models to support its strategic and operational decision making. Prior to joining Con-way Freight, he worked for a number of different companies developing OR based tools for revenue management, production and pricing optimization, combinatorial optimization based strategic sourcing, and transportation modeling (e.g., vehicle routing and fleet assignment optimization). Charles received his Ph.D. in Operations Research from the University of Michigan.

Derek Smith, Vice President, Retail Industry Marketing, DemandTec

As the Vice President of Retail Industry Marketing, Derek is responsible for DemandTec’s worldwide strategy and positioning within the retail industry. Previously, as the Vice President of Solution Consulting, Derek was a key member of the company’s sales management team. Derek was responsible for a global team of seven Solution Consultants located in Europe, South America, Asia, and the United States. Derek joined DemandTec in early 2000 as one of the first 10 employees. Prior to DemandTec, Derek was a director in the Global Strategy Development group at The Kellogg Company, where he developed sales and distribution strategies for the US business and identified and assessed growth initiatives for the European market. Derek joined Kellogg’s from the consulting firm of Booz | Allen | Hamilton where he worked with clients in several industries, including consumer packaged goods. Derek’s work focused on promotion strategies, electronic distribution opportunities, and sales strategy. Derek received his undergraduate degree in Business Economics from Miami University in Ohio and an MBA from the University of Chicago in 1996.

Garth Sundem, author of Geek Logik: 50 Foolproof Equations for
Everyday Life

Garth Sundem's descent into solving life with math started on a dorm couch at Cornell University: should person X go to the library or could he continue sitting on said couch consuming Labatt Ice? The factors included time until test, studying needed to excel, studying already accomplished, likelihood of romantic success in each place, etc. An equation was born (results published in the Ithaca police blotter, circa 1995). Previously, Sundem was geek before geek was cool: math club, jazz band, chess club, and middle school president of the model rocket club. He's imprinted his personal brand of humorous geekery on over 25 books in the areas of science, math, humor, education and history, including the best-selling Geek Logik: 50 Foolproof Equations for Everyday Life, The Geeks’ Guide to World Domination: Be Afraid, Beautiful People, and the forthcoming Brain Candy: Science, Paradoxes, Puzzles, Logic and Illogic to Nourish Your Neurons. He's a frequent correspondent for the Science Channel and has offered quirky mathematical solutions to everyday problems on shows ranging from Good Morning America to the CBS Early Show to the BBC science series Horizon. He's written for Esquire, Congressional Quarterly, Seed, Wired, Maxim, Publisher’s Weekly, Bookpage, and Men’s Health (among many others). Sundem graduated magna cum laude with distinction in all subjects from Cornell University (despite the opening anecdote...) and until recently, taught at Montana State University. He lives in the hills outside LA with his wife, two kids and large Labrador. Sundem fondly recalls working Games Magazine cover-to-cover with his father, a former president of the American Accounting Association.

Dan Vesset, Program Vice President, Business Analytics Solutions, IDC

Dan Vesset is Program Vice President of IDC's Business Analytics research. Mr. Vesset’s research is currently focused on business intelligence and analytics software and services markets and practices. Mr. Vesset served as the lead analyst for the IDC study on best practices in pervasive business intelligence. His research is currently focused on trends leading to wider and more effective use of business intelligence, data warehousing, and analytic applications. Mr. Vesset has authored numerous research publications on business intelligence and analytics and has been published and quoted in business and trade publications. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and seminars worldwide and has over 15 years of experience as a user, implementer, and analyst of business intelligence and analytics solutions. Prior to joining IDC in 2000, Mr. Vesset was a consultant in the Enterprise Applications practice of Deloitte Consulting. He also has experience as a systems analyst in the financial services industry, including State Street Bank & Trust. Mr. Vesset earned an M.S. in management information systems and an M.B.A. from Boston University and holds a B.S. in finance from Babson College.

Ted Westerheide, Chief Architect, Aginity LLC

A 20+ year “Big Data” veteran, Ted is the architect behind The Netezza Enterprise Data Factory.

Ted remains actively involved with customers, bringing his passion to dig into the technology and create big data solutions. Ted came to Aginity from ShopLocal, a provider of online media, where he was responsible for building and launching an innovative information and analytic business used by marketers to measure the online and offline effect of online advertising on e-commerce and in-store purchasing. Prior to ShopLocal, Ted was Senior Vice President of Loyalty Analytics at market researcher Information Resources. Ted has also held leadership positions as the technology Partner at Fusion Ventures, an early stage venture fund and Chief Technology Officer at Xcelerate (acquired by Avenue A Razorfish/ Microsoft), where he was instrumental in growing the technology and interactive marketing services company from a start-up to over $30 million in annual revenue.

A few of Ted's career achievements include:

• Building a measurement and market research service for online ad response behavior with NPD and Nielsen/Claritas.
• Building an Information Resources (IRI) division from the ground up to create a service for customer-centric retailing. Innovative (patent pending) technology and an ASP service to change retail, enabling targeted marketing and shopper specific merchandising, pricing and promotion.
• As a venture capitalist at Fusion Ventures, Ted provided seed stage venture funding for SaaS and consumer behavior companies. He was an active coach and worked with early stage companies as board member and principal.
• Built highly scalable VLDB warehouse and analytic systems across marketing, CPG, financial services and hospitality.
  

Todd Wilkes, Vice President, Healthcare Informatics Architecture & Applications Development, Premier, Inc.

Todd Wilkes leads the architecture and development of Premier’s Healthcare Informatics’ product line, which helps member hospitals improve the quality of care while reducing cost. The products includes Advisor Exchange, ClinicalAdvisor™, OperationsAdvisor®, SafetySurveillor®, QualityAdvisor™, Quality Manager™ and Quality Measures Reporter®. These products concentrate on the clinical, financial, operational, quality and safety data within a healthcare delivery system. The datasets are acquired by using both real time and retrospective data collection methods. The cleansed and standardized data supports real time alerts and complex analytics from Premier’s data warehouses.