Some interesting speakers at this week's Connect 2007 Conference in Boston

The first of the Connect 2007 conferences is this week in Boston (subsequent events in China in two weeks and in Spain in five weeks).  Last year's conferences provoked some really interesting controversy, uncovered some interesting (bizarre?) mobile applications, had fun and highlighted some western vs. Asian approaches.

I'll be moderating the panel "Increasing Service Velocity" on Tuesday afternoon and presenting "IMS: Lessons Learned" at the end of the day on Wednesday afternoon.(hopefully a few will stick around,,,).

Here's the list of speakers for day one:

Industry Overview Session

Andrew Bud, Executive Chairman & Co-founder, mBlox
Prior to Executive Chairman, Andrew was the CEO of mBlox, the world’s leading mobile transaction network, which he co-founded in 1999 and led to profitability. Andrew was head of mobile technology for Olivetti SpA in Italy. He became the founding technical head of Omnitel (now Vodafone Italia). He led the European development of DECT (the predecessor of WiFi), and launched Europe's first wireless LAN system. He was a Director at Connect Communications Group, and was the Group Marketing Director with Azlan plc, the £200m European distributor of internet technology. Earlier he was in mobile technology R&D with PA Technology. Andrew is a Board member of the global Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF), which he helped found in 2001. In 2005 he was appointed to the Board of ICSTIS, the UK regulator of premium-rate telecoms services. Andrew is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the IEE, and is a graduate of the University of Cambridge.

Hassan Ahmed, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer and Chairman, Sonus Networks
As chief executive officer and chairman, Hassan Ahmed is responsible for the strategic direction and management of the company. Prior to joining Sonus Networks as president and CEO in 1998, Dr. Ahmed was executive vice president and general manager of Ascend Communications’ Core Systems Division, which grew under his direction to a $1 billion business. Before Ascend’s acquisition of Cascade Communications, he served as Cascade’s chief technology officer. Previously, Dr. Ahmed was president and founder of WaveAccess, a pioneer in high-speed wireless network products. Additionally, he has held the positions of product engineering manager, Analog Devices, and director, VSLI Systems, Motorola Codex. He was also an associate professor at the Graduate School of Management, Boston University. Dr. Ahmed holds a BSEE and MSAE from Carleton University and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University.

Seamus McAteer, Co-Founder & Chief Product Architect/Sr. Analyst, M:Metrics
As co-founder, chief product architect and senior analyst at M:Metrics, McAteer determines how services are shaped to match client needs. He is also the company's primary evangelist. McAteer has been analyzing the wireless industry since its inception and has been assisting clients in the wireless and portable computing sectors since the early 1990s. Most recently, McAteer was managing partner at Zelos Group, a boutique advisory services firm focused on wireless and voice applications. Prior to founding Zelos Group, McAteer was a director and research fellow with Jupiter Research, where he headed Jupiter's coverage of new technologies and services. Before joining Jupiter, McAteer focused on wireless services and pervasive computing as a senior analyst with SRI International.  McAteer is frequently sought as a speaker and expert commentator. He has been quoted in numerous international media outlets, including: the New York Times, USA Today, Nikkei Weekly, Wired Magazine, the Associated Press and a variety of trade journals. He has made frequent TV and radio appearances, commenting on technology issues for CNN, Fox News, NPR and TechTV. McAteer often speaks at prestigious industry events. He received an undergraduate degree at Trinity College Dublin, and a Diploma in Advanced Marketing Techniques from the Dublin Institute of Technology.


Application Innovation Session

Gianluca Ferranti, Director of Marketing, Reitek S.p.A.
Gianluca Ferranti has over 14 years of experience in the ICT industry. He has proven track records in marketing and sales of complex solutions and services through diverse channels and vertical markets. Gianluca is an adept at building and maintaining customer relationships and exceeding company sales and revenue objectives. Earlier, he spent his career at the head of a strategic business unit part of an international business, providing telecom building blocks to OEM and VAR customers like Nokia, Marconi, Siemens, Lucent, Tektronix, and Cisco. Early in 2000 Gianluca joined Reitek S.p.A.  Gianluca holds an MBA from MIP—Business School of Politecnico di Milano; he is now president of Alumni MIP Association.

Colm Healy, CEO, XIAM
Colm, 42, co-founded Xiam Technologies in 2004. A frequent speaker at industry conferences, he has over 7 years experience in the mobile marketing and content industries. A seasoned executive, Colm previously held senior positions with Price Waterhouse Coopers and the Bank of Ireland in Dublin, New York and London.  Colm holds a Masters Degree in Management Science (first class honors) and a Bachelor of Commerce Degree from University College Dublin and is a graduate of the Stanford University Leadership 4 Growth program.

Stan Reiss, General Partner, Matrix Partners
Stan Reiss, a General Partner in the Waltham office, joined Matrix Partners in July of 2000. Prior to Matrix Stan was a manager in McKinsey & Company's electronics practice, where he led teams that advised technology companies on strategy and operational issues. He also brings to Matrix experience that he gained designing chips with National Semiconductor's Local Area Network Group.  Stan holds a BSEE with distinction from Cornell University as well as SMEE and SMOR degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where his research focused on optical communication networks. He also holds an MBA with high distinction (Baker Scholar) from the Harvard Business School. Stan serves on the boards of 4th Media, Intelliden and Noble Device Technology.

Sunil Vemuri, Co-founder and CPO, QTech Inc.
Sunil oversees product development at QTech and contributes to the company’s product vision. Prior to QTech, Sunil worked at France Telecom and Apple Computer. Sunil’s interests include Human Memory Assistance, Information Retrieval, Information Extraction, Information Visualization, Knowledge Acquisition, Organizational Memory, Speech Recognition, and Interface/Interaction design. He has three patents and his research has been extensively covered in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Newsweek, CNN, and MIT Technology Review. He received his Ph.D. from MIT’s Media Lab, his Masters Degree in Computer Science from Stanford University, and his Bachelors Degree in Cybernetics from UCLA.

The User?

Dean Bubley, Founder, Disruptive Analysis
Dean Bubley is the Founder of Disruptive Analysis, an independent technology industry analyst and consulting firm. He primarily specializes in mobile, wireless, networking, and telecoms fields, with further expertise in certain aspects of the software, semiconductor and IT hardware sectors. He is the author of the Disruptive Wireless blog at: disruptivewireless.blogspot.com. Formerly, he was an equity analyst, with the UK arm of investment bank Robert W. Baird. Prior to that, he spent eight years at the UK research firm Datamonitor, where he co-founded the company's Technology business unit and held the titles of Chief Analyst and Director of Consulting. Mr. Bubley has extensive experience in both published analytical research and bespoke consultancy, and has regularly spoken at industry conferences and events. He holds a BA in Physics from Keble College, Oxford University.

Edwald Anderl, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President, Kirusa
Anderl brings to Kirusa more than 20 years of leadership and executive experience in the telecommunications industry, with a proven track record of building teams that deliver innovative solutions to market. Prior to joining Kirusa, Mr. Anderl led the software and customer care teams at Xebeo Communications in developing and delivering state of the art software releases into successful trials. Mr. Anderl served at Avaya as development director, where his team successfully engineered and deployed an innovative class of Internet communications applications. Previously, he was Chief Technical Officer for the IP Business Applications Group. Mr. Anderl has had an extensive career at Bell Laboratories and AT&T — where he headed development teams specializing in data networking software for voicemail and unified messaging systems, as well as other applications and system level products. He holds several patents for Smart Card technology that were invented during his tenure at AT&T Bell Laboratories.  Mr. Anderl holds both a BS and an MS in Electrical Engineering from Rutgers University.

John Puterbaugh, Founder & Chief Strategist, Nellymoser
John Puterbaugh, Ph.D., founder and Chief Strategist of Nellymoser, Inc. has over 15 years experience in creating and developing interactive multimedia solutions for IP networks, mobile phones and other consumer products. Before Nellymoser he was CTO of Reelworks, which provides voice technology solutions for the film and entertainment industry. He was also part of the early team and held a number of senior management positions at Voxware, Inc., one of the first companies to provide Internet voice chat and real-time streaming solutions for companies such as Disney, Microsoft, Nokia and Netscape. He holds patents in wireless voice platforms, voice analysis and synthesis, user-generated ringtones, and in sound transformation. Educated at Princeton University, Dartmouth College and Oberlin College, he has taught courses and lectured on interdisciplinary topics related to music, computers and cognition. John is a frequent speaker at industry events including the CES, CTIA, Game Developers Conference, Digital Music Forum, 3GSM on a wide range of topics such technology roadmaps for Mobile TV, on-deck and off-deck strategies, and business models for mobile music.

Jud Bowman, Chief Technology Officer, Motricity
Jud Bowman is the chief technology officer and the general manager of media & entertainment for Motricity and is responsible for overseeing the company's technology and product strategy and managing Motricity's efforts serving the mobile businesses for global media and entertainment companies such as MTV, BET, Warner Music and Universal Music. Bowman is a founder and chief architect of one of the industry's leading mobile content delivery platforms, Fuel, that has delivered more than $750 million of mobile content to date, and has been named as one of the world's “Top 100 Young Innovators” by MIT's Technology Review and one of “Tech's Best Young Entrepreneurs” by BusinessWeek in 2007. Prior to being named chief technology officer for Motricity, Bowman was co-founder and chief executive officer of Pinpoint Networks, which merged with PowerByHand in 2004 to form Motricity. Bowman led Pinpoint to a leadership position in the mobile content market providing software and services to mobile operators and raised $20 million in venture capital. Bowman was instrumental in leading the integration of PowerByHand and Pinpoint Networks and raising over $200 million in venture capital for Motricity, and has helped grow Motricity to over 300 employees globally.

Russ McGuire, Strategy, Sprint Nextel
Russ McGuire is a leading strategist and visionary in the telecom industry. As director of strategy for Sprint, he is responsible for developing the strategic vision and competitive strategies for the $40 billion+ telecommunications giant. Mr. McGuire is also the author of The Power of Mobility, a book about how businesses can prosper in the next technology revolution which will be published by John Wiley & Sons in the fall of 2007. His daily weblog on these topics can be read at www.law-of-mobility.com. Mr. McGuire's experience includes 20 years in the telecom industry. Prior to joining Sprint, Mr. McGuire was Chief Strategy Officer for TeleChoice, and prior to that he was vice president of strategic development for Williams Communications. Mr. McGuire has also founded or co-founded two technology start-ups. He began his telecom career as a software developer for Northern Telecom.

Ken Olewiler, Managing Director, PUNCHCUT
Ken Olewiler heads the business practice of Punchcut. Under his strategic direction, Punchcut works with device manufacturers, operators, and major entertainment brands to leverage emerging mobile technologies to enhance and improve mobile user experiences. Ken’s deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities in the mobile sector has allowed him to drive effective user experience design solutions for a range of industry-leading mobile technology companies. Past successes include initiatives and projects with a range of strategic partners including carriers, OEMs and major entertainment brands. Other major brands well-served by Ken’s expertise include Disney, Yahoo!, Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems, The Discovery Channel, and Hewlett-Packard.


Community Goes Mobile Session

Bill Makley, Marketing Programs Director, Nokia Siemens Networks
Bill Makley has more than 25 years experience in high-tech, serving as a marketing and communications consultant and writer at Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Siemens, a host of Silicon Valley startups, and currently Nokia Siemens Networks, where he is Marketing Programs Director. An author of hundreds of client articles, white papers and speeches about technology and its role in human development and social interaction, Bill has a particular interest in human factors and interface design. He has addressed scores of conferences about these same topics. At Apple, Bill led a small skunkworks team that developed the world’s first company intranet in 1991, using the company’s HyperCard software to produce the first point-and-click, hyperlinked browser two years before the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NSCA) released Mosaic, the first popular World Wide Web browser. Bill graduated from Ohio State University with a Bachelors of Science degree in Marketing and Journalism. He is accredited by the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC).

Prakash R. Iyer, Founder and CEO, envIO networks
Prakash Iyer is a co-founder and CEO of envIO networks. Prior to envIO, Prakash led Product Development at Motorola for Push to Talk, IMS and Seamless Mobility. He joined Motorola in 2003 through the acquisition of Winphoria Networks, a pioneer of Mobile Wireless SoftSwitch and Push-to-Talk applications for the wireless market. Mr. Iyer's earlier career includes roles as a Department Head and a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Lucent Technologies Bell Labs. He has authored numerous patents, and has a number of pending patent applications in the telecom infrastructure and applications space.

Nicolas Arauz, Co-founder, Xipto LLC
Nicolas Arauz is the Managing Director and a Co-Founder of Xipto, a unique mobile advertising content solution built around 'Micro- endorsement'. Xipto connects individuals to brands, campaigns, and issues they love, and enables them to share these passions with their friends using their mobile phones. Prior to Xipto, Nick spent more than a decade developing social and community-driven brand strategy and experience design for consumer retail and technology brands, developing projects that leverage real- world experiences, social media and mobile devices as platforms for crowd-sourced marketing, fundraising, and change-forecasting; and advising F500 companies on how to effectively drive marketing efforts through emerging social media. He is also a co-founder of 88bikes, a peer-driven social fundraising project that donates bikes to children in developing countries.

Dan Melinger, Co-founder and CEO, Socialight
Dan Melinger is a co-founder and the CEO of Socialight (http://socialight.com), the platform that lets anyone create communities around location-based content. Socialight users find information and share stories with friends about places they go to. Publishers create, manage, and grow user communities around their location-based content with Socialight’s location-aware mobile and web interfaces. Previously a technology consultant, Melinger has worked with leading global financial institutions, helping them to develop and deploy mobile solutions. He also has experience in radio and television production, working with media outlets including CNBC and Bloomberg. Melinger holds a Master's degree from New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) and a B.A. in Communications from the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1999, his undergraduate thesis explored the potential impacts of P2P before Napster became a dirty word. In 2005, Melinger helped found the New York chapter of Helsinki-based global organization, MobileMonday (http://mobilemonday-ny.com/), a group that fosters NYC's mobile industry.


Mashups: Web Meets Telco Session

Matt Gross, Director, Product Management, uLocate
Matt's path to product management started with writing code and led to a position managing the best-selling mobile application in the US. Matt previously managed MapQuest Mobile, a product which by late 2005 accounted for 20% of US mobile application revenue. While at MapQuest, Matt was also responsible for launching an enterprise mapping platform to handle 2.3 billion transactions annually for customers including Orbitz and Travelocity while retiring 4 legacy products. Previously at ActiveStrategy, Matt directed technical sales of executive dashboards to C-Level staff at Intel and Carlson Companies, and at eCal Corporation launched the first commercially-available XML calendar service for companies including Reuters and Disney. Matt is the co-founder and lead organizer of Mobile Monday Boston, one of the largest Mobile Monday chapters globally. Matt's education includes a B.A. from Swarthmore and coursework at the University of Ghana in West Africa. He keeps people posted on what he's thinking about at his blog, entangledparticles.com.

Kevin Nethercott, Founder, President and COO, LignUp Corporation
Kevin brings over 20 years of experience in international sales and business development, and over 10 years of experience in the Voice over IP (VoIP) industry. As founder and CTO of SkyWave, Inc., a Pulver 100 company, Kevin pioneered the deployment of VoIP technologies, established the first operational VoIP network in Japan, and developed the first real-time VoIP billing engine.  Kevin’s leadership at SkyWave has forged successful strategic relationships with leading IT systems integrators such as Net One Systems, NEC Systems Integration and Construction, NTT-ME, K Solutions (KDDI Group), Sun Telephone and Hitachi Information Technology Co.  As co-founder and Executive Vice President for iCall, Inc., Kevin spearheaded the company’s efforts through two rounds of private financing, directed the acquisition of strategic technology assets, and established strategic alliances with industry leaders Cisco and NEC. As a recognized leader in the VoIP industry, Kevin was also responsible for the creation of the VoIP Forum of Japan and is a member of its board of directors. Kevin is fluent in Japanese, is a regular speaker at VoIP conferences and holds a B.A. in Marketing from Utah State University in Logan, Utah.

Michael Zirngibl, President and CEO, Angel.com
Michael is the Founder and President of Angel.com and is responsible for the company's business, product and technology strategies. A prolific industry speaker, Michael holds numerous voice messaging patents and continues his track record of technology innovation. Driven by his vision to make speech applications as ubiquitous and easy-to-use as the Internet, he established Angel.com - the fastest growing provider of turnkey speech and IVR solutions as a service. To date, more than 1,600 customers have implemented hundreds of voice applications from virtual receptionists and virtual call centers to interactive polls for grassroots activism. Prior to Angel.com, Michael led product management for Microstrategy Inc.'s Broadcaster and Telecaster voice messaging products. In addition, he was the founding partner of Marketing and IT consulting firm in Munich, Germany. He holds a master's degree in business administration from Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich. His master's thesis investigated innovative marketing strategies for new communication networks, such as one-to-one personalization based on real-time analysis of customer behavior.

Alan Quayle, Consultant, Business and Development Services
Alan has 17 years experience in the telecommunication industry, focused on developing profitable new businesses in service providers, suppliers and consultancies. He consults extensively around the world on SDP (Service Delivery Platform), CDM (Content Delivery Management), ODP (On-Device Portal), and IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) with operators such as AT&T Mobility, BT, Etislat, M1, Swisscom, T-Mobile, Verizon and Vodafone; and suppliers such as Adobe, Alcatel, BEA, Ericsson, Huawei, Leapstone (Motorola) and Nokia Siemens Networks. The focus of current projects is identifying opportunities in adopting the emerging service creation methods of the Internet. For more information check out his website, www.alanquayle.com or his Linked-in profile for endorsements from his customers http://www.linkedin.com/in/alanquayle.


Increasing Service Velocity Session

Jouni Welander, Head of New Solutions, US, Nokia Siemens Networks
Jouni is currently heading a solutions business development group called New Solutions for Nokia Siemens Networks in the US. Jouni's team is responsible for defining competitive solutions in the US market turning ideas into business opportunities. His group orchestrates a solution creation process for new service architectures and designs based on customer requirements for Mobile and Fixed operators. He has been working closely with the IMS, SDF, applications and enabler product lines for several years and comes from a telecom and IT background with prior work history with Exomi, Compaq Computer and Logica.

Kjell Johansson, Director of Solutions Management, Multi Media, Market Unit North America, Ericsson

Mr.Johansson has 21 years experience in the telecom industry. Kjell has been with Ericsson since 1985, and has recently been solution responsible for the Ericsson IMS-based product portfolio and professional services, in the AT&T account. In this role, Kjell has worked closely with the AT&T CTO and CMO groups and with select partners to design and align Ericsson solutions with customer short- and medium-term requirements. Kjell has also been responsible for alignment of the Ericsson and AT&T long-term technology requirements & roadmaps within the context of the strategic partnership. Prior to joining the AT&T account, Kjell has held a number of Product Management positions within Ericsson, including one in the HQ organization in Sweden as P&L responsible for our global SS7-portfolio, and one in the Market Unit for North America managing the Ericsson Mobile Core Network portfolio for North American accounts.Kjell has a background in Software R&D and advanced systems design, and served as a principal systems architect within the Ericsson switching division, specializing in call control and subscriber databases.

Doug Tucker, CTO, Ubiquity Software Corporation
Doug has been with Ubiquity since 2004 and has been working to advance Ubiquity’s SIP SOA development strategy. Doug has more than 20 years of research and development experience, including developing one of the first IP telephony products to distribute audio and video over TCP/IP networks. In his varied engineering career, Doug has held the positions of VP Engineering, CTO, and Chief Scientist, working in both visionary architecture roles and core product development in a number of companies, including MCK Communications, Videoserver, ClearOne, PictureTel, and Codex Corporation/Motorola. He has also served as a consultant specializing in VoIP product definition, architecture and development for companies such as Siemens, Microsoft, Intel, and Spectel/Multilink. He holds a Bachelor of Science, Electrical Engineering degree from Fairfield University and is literate in a multiplicity of programming languages, development environments and communications protocols and actively participates in the standards process.

Susan Norris, Communications Industry Advisor, Norport Technology Management
Susan brings more than twenty-five years of diverse telecommunications, business, and education experience to her advisory role in Technology Management. Since 2Q03, she has formally consulted with companies ranging from high-tech start-ups to much larger telecommunications vendors. As preparation for her advisory role, Susan held increasingly responsible positions within the Service Provider arena. Most recently, as Assistant Vice President of Network Systems Development at Sprint, she was responsible for the technical design, development, and implementation of its 2.5G network infrastructure.