Ben Mezrich, Bestselling Author of 11 books including, The Accidental Billionaires

Ben Mezrich has created his own highly addictive genre of nonfiction, chronicling the amazing stories of young geniuses making tons of money on the edge of impossibility, ethics, and morality.

He has authored eleven books, including the wildly successful Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions, which spent sixty-three weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List, and sold over 2 million copies in fifteen languages. His latest book, The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal - debuted at #4 on the NY Times Bestseller list, instantly became an international phenomenon, and has been adapted into a major motion picture.

While writing these true stories, he has been afforded access to worlds seldom talked about. During his research for Bringing Down the House, he taped $250,000 to his body and smuggled it through airport security with some of the most notorious card-counters in the world, getting to taste the lifestyle of the Las Vegas high roller upon arrival. While writing Ugly Americans, he visited exclusive 'Japanese Only' underground sex clubs in Tokyo and juggled roadblocks and run-ins against the Japanese mafia.

Now, Mezrich is Hollywood's next big thing. The Accidental Billionaires has been adapted by Sony Pictures via Trigger Street Productions and Scott Rudin, with Aaron Sorkin as screenwriter. Kevin Spacey, Dana Brunetti and Mike Deluca produced along with Rudin. Kevin Spacey also produced and starred in the Sony production of Mezrich's NY Times Best Selling book, “Bringing Down the House,” titled 21 (Spring '08), which was the number one movie in the country for two weeks, as well as a huge international hit. Both of Mezrich's other New York Times Bestsellers, “Ugly Americans” and “Rigged,” have been optioned for the big screen, by 2929 and Summit respectively.

Mezrich has appeared often on TV, including a stint on Court TV with a series titled 'High Stakes with Ben Mezrich.' The show utilized his unique contacts to explore the culture of young, highly educated millionaires and their clandestine hobbies. Mezrich also hosted the World Series of Blackjack for GSN and has several scripted and non-scripted TV projects in the works.

Merv Adrian, Research Vice President, Gartner

Merv Adrian is a Research Vice President at Gartner, where he covers database, data warehousing, and adjacent technologies. Prior to joining Gartner, he was the principal at IT Market Strategy, an independent consultancy he founded after three decades in the IT industry. Merv was a Senior Vice President responsible for Forrester Research’s technology coverage following Forrester’s acquisition of Giga Information Group. Earlier, he held strategy, marketing and AR positions at database and BI companies. He began his career building systems as a consultant, following programming roles at Shearson Lehman Brothers and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Merv is a graduate of Baruch College, part of CUNY in New York.

David Birmingham, author of Netezza Underground and Senior Principal Consultant, Brightlight 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.

Eric DeSimone, Solutions Engineer, Northeast Region, MicroStrategy

Eric DeSimone has been with MicroStrategy for 18 months and is a Solutions Engineer responsible for pre-sales activity in the Northeast Region. His focus is the Telecommunications and New Media industries. Previously Eric spent more than 20 years at Comcast Corporation, most recently as the Senior Director, Business Intelligence where he oversaw the development of the Comcast Data Warehouse and architected the roll-out to 100+ cable systems and call centers encompassing twelve million customers and twenty million homes. Mr. DeSimone holds a BS in Mathematics and Finance from Carnegie Mellon University, and an MBA in Finance from Lehigh University.

Matt Dorison, Senior Business Analyst, REI

Matt Dorison is the Senior Business Analyst focused on Business Intelligence at REI (Recreational Equipment, Inc.), a national outdoor gear and apparel retailer. As a member of the Business Intelligence leadership group, Matt is helping REI to drive towards its Enterprise Business Intelligence Vision. Prior to coming on board with REI, Matt led the Business Intelligence group at The Seattle Times. Matt holds a degree in English from the University of Georgia.

Dr. Usama Fayyad, Former Chief Data Officer at Yahoo! and CEO of Open Insights

Dr. 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 which processed over 25 Terabytes of data per day. Fayyad also founded and managed the Yahoo! Research organization with offices around the world and which became 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, a data mining and data strategy consulting and technology company that was acquired by Yahoo! in 2004. In early 2000, he co-founded and served as CEO of Audience Science (originally Revenue Science/digiMine, Inc.), a data analysis and data mining company that built, operated and hosted data warehouses and web analytics for some of the world's largest enterprises in online publishing, retail, manufacturing, telecommunications and financial services. The company today specializes in Behavioral Targeting and advertising networks. Fayyad's professional experience also includes five years spent leading the data mining and exploration group at Microsoft Research and building the data mining products for Microsoft's server division. From 1989 to 1996 Fayyad held a leadership role at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where his work in the analysis and exploration of scientific databases gathered from observatories, remote-sensing platforms and spacecraft garnered him the top research excellence award that Caltech awards to JPL scientists, as well as a U.S. Government medal from NASA.

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, holds over 30 patents, 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 an active angel investor in the U.S. and in the Middle East. He is part of the U.S. Dept of State Delegation on Entrepreneurship in the Middle East and was recently appointed by King Abdullah II of Jordan to lead the OASIS-500, a Tech Stars model incubator, entrepreneurship training program, and angel network that aims to fund 500 Internet and Technology startups in the next 5 years.

Rick Fox, Head of Information Systems, Airwave Solutions Ltd

Airwave provides secure voice and data communications within and between the UK emergency services. Rick Fox joined Airwave in 2005 to design and deliver a BI solution capable of measuring the Airwave service against multiple and complex government contracts. Since then Rick has been developing innovative BI solutions to enhance Airwaves product offerings to the public safety market including GIS and real time decision making tools aimed at operational efficiency and effectiveness.

Christopher Hane Ph.D., Senior Scientist and Director, Ingenix

Christopher Hane, Ph.D. is a Senior Scientist and Director in the Ingenix Innovation Lab. He has 20 years of experience designing and delivering decision support applications in supply chain and health care markets. As a Director in the Ingenix Innovation Lab, Dr. Hane is responsible for design and construction of leading edge analytic applications and services. He focuses on providing the end user with actionable intelligence that combines leading statistical techniques with intuitive interaction.

Edward J. Harney, Finance Director, Beam Global Spirits & Wine

Ed is responsible for managing the National Accounts commercial finance team for Beam Global Spirits & Wine. National Accounts, multi-state retail chain operators, represent an important, fast-growing customer segment in consumer products. Ed started his career at General Electric Capital and has over 15 years experience in consumer products having worked for Quaker Oats, Pepsico, Conagra, and Beam. He has been instrumental in leveraging information systems to increase the effectiveness of financial planning and large account management. Ed graduated from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL with a BA in Economics and DePaul University in Chicago, IL with an MBA in Finance and minor in Marketing.

Richard Herson, Senior IT Business Intelligence Manager, Colt Technology Services

Richard Herson is a senior IT Business Intelligence manager at Colt Technology Services and has been working in the BI space for the past 18 years as a user, developer, designer and architect. As an architect Richard has led a number of BI evaluations, including: reporting and statistics tools, ETL products and databases. His hand-on knowledge of the BI life cycle across Telecommunications, Banking and Insurance industries is extensive.

For fun, Richard has developed his own website that is dedicated to performing analytics on FTSE350 stock movements. His aim is use his years of expertise and knowledge of analytics to outperform the market professionals! I’m sure last year's guest conference speaker, Stephen Baker, would call Richard a real-life "Numerati".

Barry Lovalvo, Principal, Armeta Solutions, Inc.

Barry Lovalvo specializes in the implementation of complex, real-time and near-time analytics for operational and performance management. Although technical by training and experience, Barry emphasizes a business-focused approach that puts technology in the service of business goals. He is a principal at Armeta Solutions, Inc. in Dallas with more than 20 years of experience implementing very large data warehouses in retail, healthcare, energy, and telecom.

Geoffrey Lowney, BI Architect, REI

Geoffrey A. Lowney is currently the BI Architect at REI (Recreational Equipment, Inc.), a national outdoor gear and apparel retailer. In his BI leadership role, Geoffrey is working to define and promote REI's Enterprise BI vision, organization and technology. Most recently Geoffrey led REI's Data Warehouse upgrade from DB2 to Netezza. Prior to his BI role, Geoffrey worked eight years as the Architect and lead developer for REI.com, was heavily involved in REI's recent SAP implementation, and designed REI's Enterprise Service Bus. Before joining REI, Geoffrey spent 12 years at Boeing developing Data Acquisition and Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation systems. Geoffrey has a degree in Computer Science from the University of Washington.

David McMichael, Assistant Vice President, MetLife Auto & Home

David McMichael manages the Quantitative Research & Modeling team, a unit of the Actuarial Department. The QRM team searches for opportunities where advanced analytics (data mining and statistical modeling) can be combined with business knowledge to help drive better decision making. Recent work includes projects with Pricing, Claims, Underwriting, Marketing, and Compliance.

Prior to joining MetLife, David held various positions within the Research & Development unit at Allstate Insurance Company and the Florida State University Mathematics Department. He holds a Ph. D. in Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. David is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society.

Steve Mills, Senior VP and Group Executive Software & Systems

IBM Steve Mills joined IBM in 1973 after graduating New York’s Union College. He has held various executive leadership positions in IBM since 1989. He has played a leading role in the growth of IBM Software Group since its inception in 1995. In 2000, he assumed the role of Senior Vice President and Group Executive, Software Group. In 2010, he was named to his current position adding hardware and systems to his responsibilities. In this capacity, he is responsible for directing approximately 100,000 employees spanning development, manufacturing, sales, marketing and support professions. IBM's product business contributes $40B of IBM's revenue. IBM's industry-leading products provide critical business integration infrastructure that powers more than 100,000 enterprises around the world.

Vijay Nori, Senior Scientist, Ingenix

Vijay Nori is a Senior Scientist in the Ingenix Innovation Lab. After obtaining his Ph.D. in Operations Research (OR) at the Georgia Institute of Technology, he has worked in multiple domains helping customers make better decisions based on advanced OR concepts. His work involves building mathematical models for real-world systems, solving them for large datasets, understanding the solutions and iteratively improving them so that the solutions can be implemented. Vijay is a critical contributor to the Innovation Lab’s ability to build next generation healthcare products, which use cutting-edge OR techniques, huge amounts of data, and high-end computational power, and contribute to the betterment of human life.

Vipul Patel, Director, Business Relationship for BI and Pricing, Michaels

Vipul Patel is responsible for managing Michaels' overall BI strategy and execution. Over the past five years, he has led the transformation of the BI environment from a single departmental application to an Enterprise service offering. Previously, Mr. Vipul worked at various large Retail organizations such as Kmart, Home Depot, and Garden Ridge, and held various roles in the retail industry. Mr. Vipul has over 20 years of retail expertise and over 12 years of data warehouse experience. He holds an MS in Software Administration from Central Michigan University and holds two other Master's Degrees from universities in India.

Shawn Rogers, Vice President of Research, Business Intelligence, EMA

Shawn Rogers joined Enterprise Management Associates in 2010 as vice president of the business intelligence (BI) practice area. In this role, Rogers delivers comprehensive coverage of the business intelligence and data warehouse technology stack with a focus on database technology, data integration, business intelligence management solutions, reporting, analytics, performance management, as well as emerging technologies such as SaaS BI, embedded BI and social BI.

Shawn has more than 19 years of hands-on IT experience, with a focus on Internet enabled technology. In 2004 he co-founded the BeyeNETWORK and held the position of Executive Vice President and Editorial Director. Shawn guided the company's international growth strategy and helped the BeyeNETWORK grow to 18 Web sites around the world, making it the largest and most read community covering the business intelligence, data warehousing, performance management and data integration space. Today he continues his relationship with the Network in the capacity of Technology Advisor and remains a partner in the firm.

Prior to co-founding the BeyeNETWORK, Shawn was Internet Business Development Director at Thomson Media (now SourceMedia), President of Achieve Communications and a partner at DMReview magazine (now Information Management) – where he was Vice President as well as Publisher and Editorial Director of DMReview.com, a leading business intelligence and data warehousing Web site.

Shawn's passions are rooted in the online world, focusing on analytics, social media, business intelligence, enterprise 2.0, SaaS and open source. He applies his nearly two decades of experience to every client engagement.

Shawn studied fine arts and photography at Columbia College, Chicago Illinois.

Dan Vesset, Program Vice President of Business Analytics Research, IDC

Dan Vesset is Program Vice President of IDC's Business Analytics research. Mr. Vesset’s research is currently focused on the business intelligence and analytic applications markets, which encompasses multi-dimensional analysis, end-user query and reporting, data mining and other related business intelligence tools, and supply chain and operational analytic applications.

Mr. Vesset has authored numerous research publications involving business intelligence, analytic applications, and data warehousing. In addition, Mr. Vesset has been published and quoted in numerous business and industry publications, including Forbes, Investors Business Daily, CFO, CIO, DM Review, and Intelligent Enterprise. Mr. Vesset is a frequent speaker at business intelligence conferences and seminars worldwide, and has over 10 years of experience as a user, implementer, and analyst of business intelligence software.

Mr. Vesset comes to IDC from Deloitte Consulting where he was a consultant in the Enterprise Applications practice focusing on PeopleSoft implementation projects. In addition, Mr. Vesset led a team that developed an internal consulting methodology tool to be used with Deloitte Consulting clients in support of their project methodology. He also has experience as a systems analyst at State Street Bank & Trust Co. Mr. Vesset earned an MS degree in MIS and an MBA from Boston University. Follow Dan Vesset on Twitter.

Sam Wagar, Manager of Information Integration, Price Chopper

For the last 3 years, Sam Wagar has been Manager of Information Integration for the Price Chopper chain of supermarkets which is a 128 store regional food grocer in the North East. He has been building datawarehouses and using database technology to integrate information across disparate systems for 16 years. His main focus has been to find and implement enabling technologies to facilitate integration through shared information delivery across multiple platforms. In previous positions he has implemented multiple marketing\sales datawarehouses and applications in Sql Server and Oracle for manufacturing and consumer direct companies.

Ted Westerheide, Chief Architect, Aginity LLC

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

Ted has spent his entire career building big data analytics solutions that primarily focus on understanding and anticipating consumer behavior to enable increased customer loyalty and a bigger share of the customer's wallet.

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 that integrates NPD and Nielsen/Claritas data to measure the online and offline effect of digital advertising across e-commerce and in-store purchasing. Prior to ShopLocal, Ted was Senior Vice President of Loyalty Analytics at market researcher Information Resources, where he built a customer-centric retailing business that allows retailers and manufacturers to collaborate across marketing, merchandising, pricing and promotion. 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.

Todd Wilkes, Vice President, Common Capabilities Strategy and Development, Premier Healthcare Alliance

Todd Wilkes is responsible for the solution architecture and software development for Premier’s common capabilities platform and quality solutions. Premier serves more than 2,500 U.S. hospitals and 73,000-plus other healthcare sites, the Premier healthcare alliance and its members are transforming healthcare together. Approximately 200 hospitals and health systems created and entirely own the Premier alliance. Premier's mission is "to improve the health of communities." The common capabilities platform includes enterprise business intelligence and data warehousing, enterprise service bus (common services, connectivity services, transformations and security), enterprise portal frameworks, enterprise content management, enterprise collaboration, user interface toolkits, user interface controls (charts, grids and widgets) and enterprise identity management. The quality solutions include ClinicalAdvisor™, PhysicianFocus™, QualityAdvisor™, Quality Manager™, and Quality Measures Reporter®.

Richard Winter, Expert in Large Scale Data Management

Richard Winter is an industry expert in large scale data management technology, architecture and implementation with over twenty-five years of experience. As President of WINTERCORP (WWW.WINTERCORP.COM), a consulting firm in Cambridge MA, he advises executives on their strategies and critical projects, focusing on scalability, performance and availability in data warehousing and analytics. Mr. Winter is a frequent author and speaker; and, teaches seminars on scalability management, including the architecture and selection of data warehouse and analytic database platforms. Mr. Winter also has extensive experience in the direction and evaluation of pilot systems; proofs-of-concept; benchmarks; and, other performance measurement and systems engineering projects.