Keynotes & Speakers

Fritz Nelson

Fritz is senior VP and editorial director of the InformationWeek Business Technology Network and executive producer of TechWeb TV, the multimedia production and broadcast arm of UBM Tech. Fritz has direct responsibility for 12 editorial brands, including InformationWeek, Dark Reading, and Dr. Dobb's, and their associated web sites, in-depth research reports, digital and print magazines, and live and virtual events. As an industry expert, Fritz writes about myriad technology issues—from software to mobile to cloud to social business—and meets regularly with CIOs and business leaders of the major technology companies. Fritz is a sought-after on- and off-camera personality and commentator, featured in video, broadcast, and event programs, including as host of the InformationWeek 500 Conference and Awards. Rounding out his diverse background, Fritz has been deeply involved in the development and transformation of UBM Tech's strategy, having led the acquisitions of Light Reading, Black Hat, Interop, and other key event businesses. Before joining UBM Tech, Fritz worked with Lockheed Martin's Computing Standards group, a team that tested and evaluated technology and whose objective was to set corporate computing and networking standards. Fritz was a technical writer for USBI, a subsidiary of United Technologies that manages parts of the solid rocket boosters for the space shuttle program. Fritz graduated magna cum laude from the University of Maryland with a bachelor's degree in journalism.

Bill Schlough

Bill Schlough oversees a team of dedicated professionals that provide day-to-day technical support while collaborating with internal clients to set the technological direction for the organization. Since his arrival in 1999, the Giants have enhanced the fan experience through innovations such as the "Double Play Ticket Window," universal gift cards, contactless payment systems, "SplashTix," pervasive Hi-Definition video displays, "Digital Dugout," and the first 100-percent wireless venue in professional sports. Schlough's IT team has also implemented an array of revolutionary systems to create a competitive advantage on the field.

An Olympic enthusiast, Schlough is a board member of the Bay Area Sports Organizing Committee (BASOC) and served as a technology lead for San Francisco's bids to host both the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games. His event experience includes assignments at the 1994 World Cup along with Olympic Games in Atlanta, Salt Lake and Torino, Italy. Previously, he worked as a consultant with Booz-Allen & Hamilton and Electronic Data Systems, supporting a diverse collection of clients including AMD, Northrop Grumman and General Motors. He also serves on the board of Junior Achievement of Northern California and is a strong supporter of the Giants Community Fund.

A San Francisco native, Schlough holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from Duke University and an MBA from the Wharton School. He is an Ironman triathlete and was named to Sports Business Journal's 2010 "Forty Under 40" class of the most respected young executives in the sports industry.

Stefan Groschupf

Stefan Groschupf is the co-founder and CEO of Datameer, the only end-to-end data integration, analysis and visualization platform for big data analytics on Hadoop. One of the original contributors to Nutch, the open source predecessor of Hadoop, Stefan has been at the forefront of the Hadoop and Big Data market and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences.

Prior to Datameer, Stefan was the co-founder and CEO of Scale Unlimited, which implemented custom Hadoop analytic solutions for HP, Sun, Deutsche Telekom, Nokia and others. Earlier, Stefan was CEO of 101Tec, a supplier of Hadoop and Nutch-based search and text classification software to industry-leading companies such as Apple, DHL and EMI Music. Stefan has also served as CTO at multiple companies, including Sproose, a social search engine company.

Kelly Stirman

Kelly Stirman is the Director of Product Marketing at 10gen, the MongoDB company. Kelly works closely with customers, partners and the open-source community to articulate how MongoDB is quickly becoming the world's most popular database. For over 15 years he has worked at the forefront of database technologies. Prior to 10gen, Kelly served in executive and leadership roles at Hadapt, MarkLogic, PeopleSoft, GE, and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

John Bungert

John Bungert is a member of MetLife’s Enterprise Architecture team. He currently serves as the Tech Lead for “The Wall” -- a proprietary big data application that consolidates US customer, policy and transaction data across product lines. As Tech Lead, John has guided and coordinated strategic decisions and designs across the Engineering, Application Development and Security teams within Global Technology & Operations.

MetLife launched the Wall in three months, demonstrating its ability to rapidly leverage new technology for business application. Since the project’s first release, John continues to support planning efforts and is leading the effort to deploy The Wall to MetLife operations in Asia, Europe and South America.

John joined MetLife as a Systems Analyst after graduating Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. During his time at MetLife, he has held roles in a number of initiatives tied to improving technology and fostering organizational collaboration.

James Markarian

James Markarian serves as executive vice president and chief technology officer at Informatica with responsibility for the strategic direction of Informatica products, including the delivery of the Informatica Platform. He also runs the corporate development group, including acquisitions. Previously, Markarian held the role of general manager of the Data Integration Business, where he led the delivery of both the flagship PowerCenter product and the Informatica Platform. Prior to joining Informatica in 1998, Markarian spent 10 years at Oracle Corporation, where he was architect for the Oracle Tools Division, responsible for cross-product architectural planning and integration decisions. He also served on Oracle's Architecture Review Board. Markarian earned a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Economics and a master's degree in Economics from Boston University.

Amit Singh

Amit Singh is President of Google Enterprise. The mission of the Enterprise team is to enhance Google's consumer products to make them useful for businesses, and help users "work the way they live". In his current role, Amit is responsible for revenue, support, partnerships, customer operations, and product strategy for all Enterprise products including Google Apps, Maps/Earth, Cloud Platform, Search and Chrome.

Prior to joining Google, Amit spent 20 years with Oracle in various product, engineering, sales and strategy roles. He is a graduate of Rensselaer with a master's degree in industrial and management engineering, and a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Delhi College of Engineering. He recently moved from Boston to San Francisco but hasn't lost his love for all things Boston.

James McQuivey

James McQuivey is a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research and the author of Digital Disruption: Unleashing the Next Wave of Innovation. He is the leading analyst tracking the development of digital disruption and develops consumer models to help companies understand the power of digital consumers and strategy models to help companies in every industry prepare to serve those newly empowered consumers. His travels to meet with clients have sent him to Oslo, San Diego, Barcelona, Anchorage, and nearly everywhere else on the planet. No matter the locale he can be found imploring clients to think and act like digital disruptors.

James is in high demand as a speaker, keynoting and contributing to major events like CES, as well as private client events. He comments regularly in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and has contributed bylined columns for sites like Harvard Business Review, The Economist, and Forbes. He also appears frequently on news outlets like CNBC and NPR. He was recently featured in the critically acclaimed documentary Page One about the changes in the newsroom at The New York Times due to digital newsgathering and distribution. He is also a significant contributor to Stay Tuned, a new documentary on the future of TV produced by Julia Boorstin at CNBC.

James came to Forrester from a happy life in academia. He was a graduate fellow at Syracuse University's acclaimed S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications where he earned his Ph.D. He also taught at Boston University. James lives in Needham, Massachusetts with his wife and the four youngest of their six disruptors.

Nooruddin (Rudy) S. Karsan

Nooruddin (Rudy) S. Karsan possesses the rare combination of a strong background in actuarial science with the ability to dream big. So it comes as no surprise that one of Mr. Karsan’s most lofty dreams became Kenexa, which he co-founded in 1987. Kenexa has grown into the largest independent provider in the human capital management space, and thanks to his vision and leadership, is well on its way to becoming a billion-dollar company that is well positioned to realize continued market share gains in the future. Kenexa employs people in 20 countries across the globe and is consistently recognized by industry experts for providing customers with top quality services, solutions and technology that help companies hire the best available talent and maximize the employment experience. In 2011, Mr. Karsan co-authored the New York Times’ bestselling book “We: How to Increase Performance and Profits through Full Engagement.” Before he started Kenexa’s predecessor company, Mr. Karsan led Marketing Actuarial for the Mercantile & General Insurance Company in Toronto. He is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries and has a Bachelor of Mathematics degree in Actuarial science from the University of Waterloo.

Laurianne McLaughlin

Laurianne McLaughlin currently serves as InformationWeek.com's Editor-in-Chief, overseeing daily online editorial operations. Prior to joining InformationWeek in May, 2011, she was managing editor at CIO.com. Her writing and editing work has won multiple ASBPE (American Society of Business Publication Editors) awards, including ASBPE's 2010 B2B Web Site of the year award for CIO.com. Previously, McLaughlin served as a senior editor, online for Business 2.0 and as a senior editor for PC World, where she started her technology journalism career in 1992 as a news reporter. She is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

Nikhil Govindaraj

Nikhil Govindaraj is Vice President of Products at Moxie Software. In this role Nikhil is responsible for all aspects of Product Management and Engineering including strategy, design, development and quality assurance. Nikhil brings Moxie more than 13 years of experience in contact center management. Nikhil joined Moxie Software, then Talisma, in 2000 and has served in several key roles within the organization including Product Management and Sales Engineering. Nikhil earned his MBA in Systems and Marketing from Symbiosis, India.

Nikhil Govindaraj

Nikhil Govindaraj is Vice President of Products at Moxie Software. In this role Nikhil is responsible for all aspects of Product Management and Engineering including strategy, design, development and quality assurance. Nikhil brings Moxie more than 13 years of experience in contact center management. Nikhil joined Moxie Software, then Talisma, in 2000 and has served in several key roles within the organization including Product Management and Sales Engineering. Nikhil earned his MBA in Systems and Marketing from Symbiosis, India.

Stan Swete

Stan Swete is chief technology officer at Workday and is responsible for Workday's overall technology strategy, direction and execution.

Stan was one of Workday's first employees, joining the company in 2005. Prior to Workday, Stan spent 10 years at PeopleSoft in a number of key leadership roles, including head of the products and technology organization that included more than 4,000 employees. He was also manager of tools development, general manager of financial applications, general manager of customer relationship management systems and was responsible for the initial release of PeopleSoft's Internet architecture. Prior to PeopleSoft, Stan spent 10 years with ASK Computer Systems, including management of ASK's VAX product line.

Stan holds a bachelor of science degree and a master of science degree in industrial engineering from Stanford University.

Adam Pisoni

Adam oversees engineering and software development at Yammer, part of the Microsoft Office Division. He is considered a pioneer of the Enterprise Social Network (ESN) category and a visionary in organizational design and transformation. Adam has played a pivotal role in shaping Yammer's iterative and data-driven design approach to product development, which is optimized for rapid innovation, usability and end user adoption. His leadership has helped Yammer achieve remarkable growth and global recognition for its rapidly-evolving cloud service.

Adam has dedicated his career to building Internet companies. Prior to Yammer, he worked at Geni—a genealogy website, where the idea for Yammer was originally conceived. Before Geni, Adam worked at Shopzilla, and helped lead the company to its eventual sale to Scripps Networks. Adam also co-founded and served as CTO of CNation, a web development consultancy with clients such as CBS MarketWatch, BizRate.com, Fox Interactive, Nissan of Japan and Honda. Cnation's work for Honda earned them the 1997 Clio award for interactive design.

Billy Oates

Bill Oates is the Chief information Officer for the City of Boston, Massachusetts. Oates was named to the Cabinet level position by Boston's Mayor Thomas M. Menino in June of 2006. As CIO, Oates is charged with spearheading the City's technology initiatives and is responsible for the delivery of IT services in support of the various city functions.

Under Bill's leadership, the City of Boston has been recognized as a leader in leveraging technology to improve citizen engagement and access to services. In 2011, Bill was recognized as one of the "Top 25 Public Sector Innovators" by Government Technology Magazine and was recently named the New England CIO Innovation Award winner by Mass High Tech. In 2012, Bill was inducted into the CIO Hall of Fame by IDG's CIO Magazine and was also recognized as a finalist for the MIT Sloan CIO Award for Innovation.

Prior to joining the City, Oates served as the Senior Vice President & Chief Information Officer for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. Based in White Plains, NY, Starwood is one of the leading hotel and leisure companies in the world. Named CIO in June, 2000, Bill was responsible for delivery of the Company's global information technology services.

A graduate of Boston College, Oates is also an attorney and member of the Massachusetts Bar. He received his JD from Suffolk University Law School in Boston and was awarded his LL.M in Global Technology Law in 2005.

Mr. Oates is based at Boston's City Hall. A native of the Boston area, Bill is married with two children.

John McGeachie

John joined the Evernote team in 2010 and has more than 20 years building and managing technology teams in various fields, including security, consumer, and enterprise software firms. At Evernote John is directly responsible for the Sales and Success teams in the Americas and for coordinating strategy for these teams worldwide. Prior to Evernote, John was CTO and VP Engineering for security software company CoreStreet, which was purchased by ActivIdentity in 2009. Majoring in computer science, John holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Dartmouth College.

Erika Jolly Brookes

Veteran technology and marketing executive Erika Brookes is vice president of product strategy for Oracle, working on the Oracle Social Cloud business to help guide product strategy and development. Prior to joining Oracle, she was vice president of marketing and communications at Vitrue, a leading provider of social marketing publishing software for global brands and agencies. Vitrue was acquired by Oracle in May 2012.

Throughout her career she has held numerous executive-level marketing positions with leading technology firms like Oracle, Vitrue, MindSpring, Earthlink and Rackspace.

During her tenure at Vitrue, Brookes oversaw all marketing and communications efforts for the company's SaaS-based social marketing platform including working with its premier partners like McDonald's, Procter & Gamble, NBC Sports and American Express, as well as more than 75 agencies worldwide. The Vitrue SRM platform collectively managed its clients' more than one billion social relationships in more than 100 countries across 4,500 social accounts.

Before joining Vitrue in May 2010, she was the vice president of sales and marketing for Jungle Disk (a division of Rackspace), a cloud-based data backup targeted at small to medium-sized businesses. During her tenure, she re-launched the Jungle Disk brand targeted at small business and doubled customer growth.

Brookes joined MindSpring enterprises in 1995 as director of product marketing, focused on the end-to-end customer experience. From 1997-1999, she was the vice president, product marketing, for MindSpring Enterprises and launched innovative services such as Spaminator and broadband. From 2000-2006, Brookes was vice president, brand strategy and product marketing, and contributed to growing Earthlink's total awareness to 60% of US households and its customers to five million. She led the launch of new product features such as, high speed, Pop Up Blocker and Accelerator. From 2006-2008, Brookes managed the marketing and product as well as revenue forecasting for an EarthLink business unit that generated revenue from value-added product sales, advertising and search. As vice president of marketing from 2008-2009, Brookes ran all aspects of marketing including brand, media, marketing services and loyalty efforts.

Brookes earned a BS in Business Administration from Berry College and has completed post-graduate executive level education in finance and marketing.

Sameer Patel

Sameer Patel is Global Vice President and GM for SAP Social Software. In this position, he has responsibility for SAPs strategy, product and GTM for social software. 

Sameer has spent the last 12 years leading organizations that were responsible for working with well known companies on executing large scale social and collaboration initiatives. Customers have included Ingres, Sun Microsystems, KPMG, McKessonHBOC, WR Wrigley Jr. Co., CA, Nike, Oracle,  The Sabre Group, Grupo Televisa (Mx) and Intel. 

A frequent industry speaker on how to accelerate performance via the use of social and collaborative approaches and technology, Sameer has keynoted events such as the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, The Social Business Forum, Milan, IBM Connect/Lotusphere, SIIA, WebCom Toronto, KMWorld, The Future of Talent, Defrag, GigaOm Net:Work, amongst others. Sameer has been quoted on this subject in publications such as The New York Times, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, CNBC, CIO.com, ZDNet, GigaOM, ReadWriteWeb and other news outlets. 

Previously, Sameer worked at the Sovos Group, SpanStrategies and marchFIRST/USWebCKS. Sameer has a Bachelors in Corporate Finance, Securities and Economics from Babson College in Wellesley, MA and a Masters degree in Management Information Systems (MIS) from Boston University’s School of Management in Boston MA. 

Sameer blogs at Pretzel Logic and is @sameerpatel on Twitter.

Alistair Rennie

Alistair Rennie is General Manager of Social Business at IBM. As general manager, Mr. Rennie oversees IBM's investments in the growing social business market including an extensive portfolio of software and services that help clients optimize their workforce, drive innovation and deepen customer relationships. This portfolio includes industry-leading social software that enables businesses to communicate, collaborate and increase productivity, and software to help organizations design their Web experience with personalized applications. Mr. Rennie is also leading IBM's investments to bring the power of social business to the cloud and mobile devices.

Mr. Rennie is a member of the IBM Integration and Values Team, a select group of executives who provide leadership across IBM on various business and strategic issues, as well as the IBM Technology Team. Mr. Rennie is also IBM Senior State Executive for Massachusetts, providing leadership for IBM in the community statewide.

Mr. Rennie was previously Vice President, Development and Support, Lotus Software and WebSphere Portal, responsible for the strategy and development of IBM's Collaboration Solutions portfolio. He also led the worldwide technical support team dedicated to software client satisfaction. Prior to this role, Alistair led IBM Software Services for Lotus - a global organization consisting of highly skilled technical consultants working in more than 35 countries with clients to optimize value from IBM collaboration software.

Mr. Rennie joined IBM at the Toronto Software Laboratory in 1989 and has held a number of executive roles within IBM Software Group with a primary focus on the introduction of new technologies. Prior assignments include Vice President, Marketing and Channels, Lotus, and Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Pervasive Computing.

Mr. Rennie holds degrees in Economics and Business Administration from the University of Western Ontario.

Matt Tucker

Matt Tucker, co-founder and CTO, is responsible for the long-term technical and strategic direction of Jive's products. Along with Bill Lynch, Matt founded Jive Software in 2001 and has helped build the company from just two people to where it is today. Matt is an active member in open standards communities including having served on the board of the XMPP Standards Foundation.

Prior to Jive, Matt worked as a software engineer at an internet startup in San Francisco called 4charity.

Matt holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Iowa.

Michael Crowley

Michael J. Crowley, Founder and CEO of InfoMotion Sports Technologies, has led the Company's vision and sales growth to date including the successful launch and marketing of its 94Fifty basketball products. As the co-developer of the current product, he is named as an inventor or co-inventor on all of the Company's intellectual property. Mike is considered a pioneer for identifying early trends in the digital sports informatics market, which has become the dominant strategy for the sporting goods and sports broadcast market in the past three years.

Since 1995, Mike has been a founder or co-founder in multiple early-stage business and technology ventures and has helped to secure early and seed-stage equity and debt financing for those firms, including both angel and institutional financing. He has significant experience in managing intellectual property strategy and negotiating intellectual property licensing deals.

As the CEO of InfoMotion, Mike has also developed the international and domestic sales force and marketing strategy which has led the company to expand its sales across the U.S. and four continents. He has also been instrumental in attracting the attention of and leading successful negotiations with key strategic partners for the Company, including its most recent global distribution deal with Spalding Inc.

A 1993 graduate of St. Joseph's College in Rensselaer, IN, Mike began his career as a C.P.A. in Indianapolis, IN. He earned his MBA from the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. He currently resides in Attleboro, MA.

Jason Maynard

Jason Maynard is a managing director and software analyst at Wells Fargo. Specific coverage includes Oracle, salesforce.com, Workday, VMware, NetSuite, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook to name a few.

Prior to Wells Fargo, Maynard was with Credit Suisse from 2005-2009. Bloomberg named Jason its Top Technology Analyst in 2006. Prior to Credit Suisse, he was the global software coordinator and senior software analyst for Merrill Lynch. In 2004, he was the first analyst to articulate the rise of software as a service and launched the On-Demand Index to measure the transformation.

Jason started in research at Wells Fargo (Wachovia) in 2000 after working in the software industry. Maynard co-founded Verix Software, a Java CRM provider, later acquired by Inference in 1999.

Jason is a member of InformationWeek's editorial advisory board, currently serves on the advisory board of a few private technology companies, and provided seed financing for Siperian (acquired by INFA).

Rob Preston

Rob Preston currently serves as VP and editor in chief of InformationWeek, where he oversees the editorial content and direction of its various website, print and digital magazine, Webcast, live and virtual event, and other products. Rob has 25 years of experience in high-tech publishing and media, during which time he has been a senior-level editor at CommunicationsWeek, CommunicationsWeek International, InternetWeek, and Network Computing. Rob has a B.A. in journalism from St. Bonaventure University and an M.A. in economics from Binghamton University.

David Carr

David F. Carr is Editor of InformationWeek Education, covering online education and the technological transformation under way in universities and school systems. He previously led the coverage of social business and collaboration technologies for InformationWeek.com and continues to serve as the social business track chair for UBM's E2 conference. David is a former Technology Editor of Baseline Magazine and Internet World magazine and has freelanced for publications including CIO Magazine, CIO Insight, and Defense Systems. He has also worked as a web consultant and is the author of several WordPress plugins, including Facebook Tab Manager and RSVPMaker. David works from a home office in Coral Springs, Florida. Contact him at david.carr@ubm.com and follow him at @davidfcarr.

Doug Henschen

Doug Henschen is Executive Editor of InformationWeek, where he covers the intersection of enterprise applications with information management, business intelligence, big data and analytics. He previously served as editor in chief of Intelligent Enterprise, editor in chief of Transform Magazine, and Executive Editor at DM News. He has covered IT and data-driven marketing for more than 15 years.

Sanjay Dholakia

Sanjay is responsible for extending Marketo’s product leadership, developing business segments, and establishing a new solution ecosystem to increase the company’s reach. Sanjay joins Marketo from Crowd Factory, where as CEO, he was responsible for the strategic direction and vision of the company. Prior to Crowd Factory, Sanjay was CMO at Lithium Technologies, the leading provider of Social CRM solutions. While at Lithium, he helped achieve dramatic year-over-year growth as well as significantly increasing the company’s valuation. Prior to joining Lithium, he served as SVP and general manager for SumTotal Systems, and was an advisor at McKinsey & Company and Andersen Consulting. Sanjay holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA in strategy and marketing from the Kellogg School of Management.

Brian Halligan

Brian Halligan is CEO & Co-Founder of HubSpot, a marketing software company he co-founded six years ago to help businesses transform the way they market their products. Since its founding, HubSpot has accumulated over 8,000 customers. He is a Senior Lecturer at MIT where he teaches 15.S16 Entrepreneurial Product Development and Marketing. He is author of two books: Marketing Lessons From the Grateful Dead and Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs, which is in its seventh printing, has sold more than 50,000 copies, has been translated into nine languages, and peaked at #17 overall on the Amazon bestseller list. Brian was named an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year 2011 New England award recipient. In his spare time, he sits on a few boards of directors, follows his beloved Red Sox, goes to the gym, and is learning to play guitar.

Jay Wessel

Jay Wessel is responsible for strategy, implementation and management of Technology for the Boston Celtics including IT, Coaching and Scouting, Broadcast, Event, Data/Voice Communications, Audio/Video and Construction. Jay joined the Celtics in 1990 as a consultant and member of the Game Night staff and has been a fixture at the office and courtside ever since.

During the past few years, Jay has transformed the Celtics Infrastructure with Virtualization of servers and storage; modernization of all switching and routing; conversion to VOIP converged Telephony; and various Cloud and SaaS implementations.

In 2001, on loan from the Celtics to TNT, he managed all of the back-end statistics and data flow for the Basketball portion of the Goodwill Games in Brisbane Australia where Team USA, led by Doc Rivers, earned a Gold Medal.

Prior to joining the Celtics, Jay held several engineering, sales and marketing roles in the Boston High Tech corridor and started his career at IBM in Poughkeepsie, NY. Jay graduated from Virginia Tech in 1983 with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering.