Speakers

Senior Vice President & Group Executive
IBM Software Group

In this capacity, he is responsible for shaping IBM's overall software strategy and directing IBM's software business. IBM's software business contributes about $18 billion to IBM's revenue, including one-third of its profits. IBM's industry-leading middleware products power the on-demand infrastructures of virtually every mid- to large-size company in the world and IBM holds the number one or two position in all major software markets in which it competes, according to industry analysts. Mr. Mills is leading the next phase of IBM's software strategy including the development and marketing of new industry-specific offerings and the alignment of IBM's 13,000-person software sales force along technical and industry lines.

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Co-founder and former CEO of Tesla Motors
Electrical Engineer and Entrepreneur

Extensive technical research convinced Eberhard that electric cars were indeed the most efficient, least polluting alternative to gasoline-powered cars, however, their makers tended to be idealists who hoped to create a car for every American with their first model, thus an electric car affordable for everyone but desired by nearly no one. If you can’t compete on price, Eberhard figured, then compete on performance, and let the price fall where it may. And along the way, re-invent the electric car, making it highly desirable, even if not affordable to all. With this philosophy, the Tesla Roadster was born: beautiful, unbelievably quick, and yet the most energy-efficient car on the road. Eberhard built the breakthrough Tesla roadster, a high-tech, eco-conscious two-seater that can go from zero to 60 in four seconds, powered entirely by lithium-ion batteries. It reaches over 130 mph, and goes more than 200 miles on a single charge. Eberhard was ranked among the top 24 innovators of 2007 by Fortune Magazine. Also in 2007, Business 2.0 Magazine ranked Eberhard number 32 of the 50 people who matter now.

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General Manager
Global Consulting Services and SOA
IBM Global Business Services

Robert LeBlanc is general manager, Global Consulting Services and SOA, IBM Global Business Services. In this capacity, he has global responsibility for IBM's core consulting practice, including developing and maintaining alliances with ISVs and the performance of the six global service lines. In addition, Robert is the leader of the company's SOA efforts, directing the strategy around industry IP, skills and enablement.

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Founder of Wikipedia.org
Internet entrepreneur

Wales started Wikipedia.org, the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit in January of 2001. In 2004, Wales co-founded Wikia, Inc. which also allows people to contribute information and opinions on any topic, in any language. As part of his work at Wikia, Wales is developing a human-powered search engine called Search Wikia that is based on the same open, transparent, community-driven principles of Wikia and Wikipedia. He was appointed a fellow of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School in 2005 and in 2006 and joined the Board of Directors of the non-profit organization Creative Commons. Recently, The World Economic Forum recognized Wales as one of the "Young Global Leaders" of 2007. He also received the "Time 100 Award" in 2006 in which he was named one of the world's most influential people in the "Scientists & Thinkers" category.

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General Manager, WebSphere Software
IBM Software Group

Tom Rosamilia is General Manager of the WebSphere Software Division for IBM Software Group. He leads an organization of more than 8,000 software development, marketing, services, and sales professionals spanning more than 25 locations worldwide, and is responsible for IBM's WebSphere portfolio and other strategic middleware technologies, including Web application servers, transaction and messaging systems, business integration technology, e-commerce servers, and industry-oriented middleware solutions.

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Award-winning comedian
Actor and Producer

The award-winning comedian serves as host of "Power of 10," Sony Pictures Television's new primetime game show for CBS and the new of host of the long running gameshow, The Price is Right, also on CBS. Carey is a stand-up comic turned actor and producer who is best known for having two hit shows simultaneously: "The Drew Carey Show" and "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" He co-created and executive produced the "The Drew Carey Show" which ran for nine seasons on ABC. He was also a producer and host of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" Both shows continue to air in syndication.

Carey was honored with a People's Choice Award for "Favorite Male TV Performance" in 2000 and in 2001 for his work on "The Drew Carey Show". In May 2000, Carey starred in his first television movie as the title character in "Geppetto" for ABC's "Wonderful World of Disney". Carey returned to his stand-up comedy roots in July 1997 when he hosted HBO's "Mr. Vegas' All-Night Party." In January 1991, Carey landed a spot on HBO's "14th Annual Young Comedians Special." He also had his comedy dream come true and did "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson in November of 1991. From Carson, Carey landed his own Ace Award-winning television development deal at Disney. While in the Marine Reserves, his military buzz cut and black wide-rim glasses became part of his trademark look.

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Vice President, SOA & WebSphere Strategy
Channels and Marketing, IBM Corporation

Sandy is responsible for driving IBM's cross-company, worldwide SOA marketing initiatives. In this role, she helps oversee the company's SOA strategy across software, services and hardware, sets the company's SOA marketing direction, and directs SOA messaging and content, while leading a global team in driving customer demand. She has helped to identify SOA acquisition targets and ensure the successful integration of these organizations into the IBM SOA portfolio. Sandy's efforts have driven the WebSphere Family to sustain four consecutive quarters of double-digit growth, while the brand has won 7 industry awards. She has helped IBM's SOA initiatives earn third party validation and analysts' leadership rankings. Sandy is fluent in 8 programming languages, and is the author of the SOA book from IBM, "The New Language of Business: SOA & Web 2.0."

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Leading Business Futurologist and Trendspotter

Ray Hammond is Europe's most experienced and most widely published Futurologist.

For over 25 years he has researched, written and spoken about how future trends will affect society and business. As Global Warming and the threat to the Environment continues to occupy a priority position in the World’s agenda. Ray is one of a few commentators who are equipped to communicate how these massive challenges will affect our futures, the way we do business and the far reaching implications both socially, economically and politically.

Before becoming a futurologist, Ray founded and led highly successful magazine publishing and advertising businesses in the UK, Europe and the USA before selling them advantageously. He is now a globally published novelist (Macmillan) whose four recent high-tech futuristic novels have won world-wide critical acclaim. His latest book 'The Cloud' (published March 2006) is a dazzling vision of life set in the year 2065. For the last 25 years he has written and spoken about the future.

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General Manager, Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Software
IBM Corporation

Mike Rhodin was named General Manager, Workplace, Portal and Collaboration (WPLC) Software, in August 2005. He leads a team responsible for developing IBM's collaborative technology and solutions, which integrate people, data and business process to create the "human side" of IBM's On Demand Strategy. Previously he served as Vice President of Development and Technical Support for WPLC, working to transform the front-end of computing. Mike has a passion for simplifying the way people work, improving organizational performance, and helping IBM customers maximize their return on IT investment.

Before joining Lotus in 2003, Mike led IBM's development efforts for Pervasive Computing from November 1999. This included development of the WebSphere Everyplace family of offerings, WebSphere Portal and WebSphere Voice offerings in addition to new embedded software componentry. Mike also served as Director, IBM Server Solutions within Software Group.

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General Manager, Tivoli Software
IBM Corporation

General Manager, Tivoli software, in July 2004. Responsible for the strategic direction and ongoing operations for the Tivoli software brand, which enables on demand computing environments by providing customers the ability to manage resources and risks, optimize human capital and manage service levels and business processes. Tivoli offers solutions in six key service areas: Availability, Security, Storage and Optimization, Orchestration, Business Service Management and Provisioning. Previously, Al was general manager, eServer iSeries, where he was responsible for the executive leadership of the iSeries server product line and for leading the strategy and plans for IBM servers and storage in the Global Small and Medium Business marketplace.

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IBM Fellow, VP, WebSphere CTO
IBM Corporation

Gennaro (Jerry) Cuomo is an IBM Fellow, VP and CTO for the WebSphere brand of products. He is one of the founding fathers of WebSphere and has spent 20 years at IBM splitting his years between IBM Research and Software Group. Jerry is a breakthrough innovator of solutions in the areas of high-performance transactional systems, middleware appliances, enterprise application virtualization and web 2.0 technologies. In 2008, Jerry and team are focused on adding an extra touch of agility to the WebSphere product line by expanding the Datapower appliances, adding Dynamic Scripting to the WebSphere portfolio and aligning IT and Business users with scalable Business Event Processing technology.

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Vice President & Chief Information Officer
Harley-Davidson, Inc.

Jim Haney joined Harley-Davidson in June, 2005 as Vice President and Chief Information Officer. In this position, Jim will oversee worldwide information technology and systems for Harley-Davidson Motor Company, Buell Motorcycle Company, and Harley-Davidson Financial Services. Jim brings to Harley-Davidson over 25 years of experience in information management and technology.

Prior to joining Harley-Davidson, Jim held various positions at Whirlpool Corporation during his fifteen-year career there. His most recent position was Vice President, Architecture and Planning. Jim also served as Chief Technologist and oversaw teams responsible for strategic IT planning, integrated networked home appliance solutions, information security and privacy, internet development and vendor partnerships. Jim also held an earlier position as Whirlpool’s Director of Global Network Services. Jim participates in several global councils which help steer networking capabilities around the world for multi-national companies. He also participates on several industry boards to help guide technology directions.

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Head of Project Management
AMB Generali

Thomas Liese is currently the Head of Project Management Department and Project Manager for "Standard Customer Services" at AMB Generali. He has held several positions at AMB General and other companies including Assistant to CIO and various project management roles. He has a Master of Computer Science and a Master of Business Informatics.

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Vice President, WebSphere
IBM Corporation

Craig Hayman is Vice President, WebSphere, in the Application and Integration Middleware Software Division of IBM Software Group where he is responsible for the WebSphere portfolio. Craig leads a worldwide team of over 6,000 employees across 25 locations. He assumed this position in January 2007. Previously, Craig was Vice President of Development and Technical Support for Lotus where he oversaw the reinvention of the collaboration portfolio of products including WebSphere Portal, Lotus Sametime, Lotus Notes, Lotus Quickr and Lotus Connections.

From 2003-2005 Craig was Vice President, Worldwide Solutions Development, responsible for delivering IBM’s Industry Solutions, RFID, Client Technology and Voice products. In 2002 he was named Vice President of Strategy, IBM Software Group, with responsibility for software strategy across the WebSphere, Lotus, Tivoli, DB2 and Rational product lines. In January 2000 Craig was named Director WebSphere development where he led the product development and support of the WebSphere Application Server driving increases in customer satisfaction and standards adoption while achieving double-digit marketplace growth.

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Vice President, Marketing and Strategy, Enterprise Systems
IBM Corporation

Rich Lechner was named vice president of marketing and strategy for Enterprise Systems in January 2008. In this role, he addresses IBM’s large enterprise customer base and market opportunity by bringing to market a unified set of systems, software and services designed to optimize large-scale IT infrastructures. Mr. Lechner is also responsible for defining and driving two key cross IBM initiatives for delivering value to clients of all sizes: IBM's Service Oriented Data Center strategy and Project Big Green.

Prior to this role, Mr. Lechner served as vice president of the IT Optimization business unit where he oversaw an extensive portfolio of solutions that combine hardware, software and IBM services to help IBM customers simplify, better manage and do more with their existing infrastructures. Mr. Lechner has held a number of other leadership positions at IBM in the areas of Virtualization, Storage Systems and Enterprise Servers such as System z, System p and System x. He has also held leadership positions in IBM's Software Group.

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Vice President and CIO
PepBoys Auto

John is currently the VP and Chief Information Officer for PepBoys Auto. John has been with PepBoys for over three years. Prior to joining PepBoys, he was with Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse for 9 years where he gained experience with retail store systems and merchandising systems. Prior to Lowe's, John was with EDS for 10 years providing services to General Motors and the State of Vermont.

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CFO and VP of Finance and Information Technology
Delaware Electric Cooperative, Inc.

Gary D. Cripps is CFO/V.P. Finance & Information Technology at Delaware Electric Cooperative, Inc., a member-owned Distribution Cooperative serving 79,000 active meters. In addition to finance and accounting responsibilities, Gary has been actively involved in IT Strategic Planning and the coordination and deployment of technology across the enterprise. He is a frequent speaker within the Cooperative utility sector regarding business strategy and technology enablement. Prior to joining the utility industry in 1999, Gary held various management positions in the food distribution and retail industry.

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Chief Information Officer
Spotlight Pty Ltd.

She currently holds the position of Chief Information Officer at Spotlight Pty Ltd covering a number of businesses including Spotlight Stores in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong as well as Anaconda (adventure) Stores Australia wide. During her career she has gained international experience, including in the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, China, Singapore and Canada. Anne McDiarmid commenced her career in retailing at the Coles Group one of Australia's largest retailers. She has a strong business background gained in roles in Information Technology, General Management, Project Management, Change Management, Strategic Planning and Business Development in large blue chip organizations across multiple industries, including Retailing, Logistics, E Commerce and Health.

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Chief Architect for the SOA Foundation
IBM Corporation

Rob High is Chief Architect for the SOA Foundation. He is an IBM Distinguished Engineer and member of the IBM Academy of Technology. He has 28 years of programming experience and has worked with distributed, object-oriented and component-based transaction monitors for the last thirteen years, including IBM SOMobjects® Server, Component Broker, and most recently, IBM WebSphere®. He helped to define, and then later refine the basic concepts of container-managed component technology, which is now intrinsic to the EJB specifications implemented by WebSphere and other J2EE™ application servers.

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