Workshops

Joe joined ATIS as Vice President and Chief Technologist in October, 2011. In this newly created position, he is responsible for leading the development and support of ATIS' technology strategy, as well as management of a staff organization that operates and administers ATIS' more than 20 technical and operational committees.

Prior to ATIS, Joe held various technical and executive management positions during a 25-year career at Verizon Communications. As an Executive Director and Senior Fellow at Verizon, he led the Information Technology (IT) organization that helped shape Verizon's cloud business and technology strategy. Earlier, Joe led a re-engineering effort that significantly improved a major Verizon customer care division. As part of its Network Research and Engineering organization, he spearheaded the deployment of Bell Atlantic's first voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) network and was awarded a patent for web control of multimedia devices.

Joe received a Bachelor's Degree in Telecommunications from Temple University and completed graduate studies in computer science at St. Joseph's University.

Douglas Smith is Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and Vice President of IT Systems for NTT America. In his role as CISO, Mr. Smith is responsible for ensuring the confidentiality and reliability of corporate data, proprietary information, physical security and intellectual property. In addition, compliance with U.S. and Japanese data security and integrity laws and regulations are a top objective. As Vice President of IT systems, Mr. Smith oversees all information technology functions for NTT America and is responsible for establishing technical priorities, standards, and procedures and ensuring sufficient systems capacity for organizational needs. He contributes to business planning and strategy development regarding technology and systems required to maintain company operations and competitiveness in support of numerous domestic business units and works collaboratively with multiple international affiliates on global business system solutions. In this role, he also serves as the top level contact to assist business partners in determining IS requirements and solutions. During his tenure with the company, Mr. Smith has served in a succession of increasingly important roles including Manager of IT, Director of IT Development, and Vice President of Product Development. Mr. Smith earned a B.S. in Information Systems from the University of Texas at Arlington, and has previously held positions with Verio, IXC Communications and Software Architects.

Joe Weinman is responsible for leading Telx’s fast-growing cloud services business development and strategy. He joined Telx® with over 30 years of experience in executive leadership positions at AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, and Bell Laboratories, in areas such as corporate strategy, business development, product management, operations, and R&D.
Named a “Top 10 Cloud Computing Leader” by TechTarget, Weinman is a frequent keynote speaker, blogger and the founder of Cloudonomics, a rigorous, multidisciplinary analytical approach leveraging economics, behavioral economics, statistics, calculus, computational complexity theory, simulation, and system dynamics to characterize the sometimes counter-intuitive multi-dimensional business, financial, and user experience benefits of cloud computing and other on-demand, pay-per-use business models. He is the author ofCloudonomics: The Business Value of Cloud Computing, available from John Wiley & Sons in summer, 2012.

Banerjee focuses on service provider IT, including all aspects of telecom software research. Banerjee examines the breadth of software used by communications service providers in customer, business, service, and infrastructure management. His area of focus includes all aspects of BSS, OSS, SDP, digital commerce, revenue assurance, service assurance, and elements that span both the infrastructure and network software markets, such as data warehousing, analytics, and business intelligence. Prior to joining Heavy Reading, Banerjee was the VP of Next Generation Software Systems at Yankee Group, leading and overseeing all aspects of their telecom software research. He also worked for the billing and customer care division at Lucent Technologies, and subsequently the global software and services group at CSG Systems. He has worked for utility companies in Asia and Europe in a number of business development and technology functions. Banerjee speaks regularly at leading communications industry events. He holds a B.E. in electronics and communications from Manipal Institute of Technology in India and an M.S. in computer information systems from Bentley College. He also holds an M.B.A. from the University of Glasgow Business School.

Christopher "Kip" Turco serves as Senior Vice President of Data Center Operations for Windstream. In this role, he is responsible for overseeing data center operations and engineering for Windstream's data centers nationwide.

A seasoned executive with a successful track record leading operations in high growth environments, Turco previously served as chief operating officer at Hosted Solutions, which was acquired by Windstream in 2010. During his tenure there the company more than doubled in revenue and sold for $310 million after only two and a half years. Prior to that, Turco was the senior vice president of operations and engineering at Motricity, a leading provider of mobile data solutions. While at Motricity, Turco restructured all engineering and operations elements to successfully scale the business from $35 million to over $100 million over a two-year period. Prior to Motricity, he was a general manager for SunGard Availability Services, a provider of information availability solutions. As general manager with SunGard, Turco was responsible for P&L, regional sales and marketing, providing data center and managed services.

A graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, Turco was commissioned as an Infantry Officer and later became a platoon leader and rifle company commander with the United States Army for the 10th Mountain Division and 25th Infantry Division respectively.

Dwayne is an IT and telecommunications professional with over 22 years of experience and has extensive knowledge in multiple communications platforms, networks and enterprise solutions.

He has collaborated with and for several very large businesses worldwide with a manufacturing, operator, software development and professional services prospective.

Dwayne holds 7 engineering certifications in multiple wireless communications technologies. He is well versed in the areas of general business, application and solutions architecture and service integration for WAN, LAN, WLAN, Voice, Mobility, Conferencing and Collaboration solutions.

Dwayne has held senior positions in sales, marketing, business development, system engineering product management and service delivery at companies such as General Electric, Ericsson, Cincinnati Bell and HP.

Entering his fourth year at BT, Dwayne is the CTO for Alliance Partners in the Chief Architect's office for BT Global Services focused on driving results for BT and value to the partners and mutual customers.

His demonstrated capabilities at BT include organizing detailed plans that are executable and practical from a business and delivery point of view. Understanding current and future technologies and their application in various industry verticals such as Consumer Packaged Goods, Healthcare, Manufacturing and Education.

Bob Gessel has 28 years of experience in the Telecom, Communications and Software Development industries. He has been with Ericsson for 17 years and currently head Technology and Strategy Development driving vision, strategy, planning, and technology evolution for Ericsson in the North American market, focusing on new business areas in Cloud, Connected Devices, and Communication Services.

His other roles at Ericsson included Senior Director of Business Development in Multimedia and Systems Integration, Principal Solutions Consultant / Senior Architect in Multimedia and IMS systems and 11 years in R&D as Business Innovation Manager, Operations Manager and Principal Engineer and Inventor (including 4 patents and numerous solution innovations).

In 2003, Gessel founded SceneScape, Inc. to deliver WiFi based localized interactive and multimedia services for users of internet hot spots. In 2001 he founded MobileStream Wireless, Inc. targeting the mobile entertainment market focused on delivery of multimedia content and services into sports and entertainment venues. Gessel has worked as solutions consultant in areas of IMS, Multimedia Applications, Mobile Networks, RFID, and multimedia marketing. He also has a combined seven years in software R&D with Siemens and Northern Telecom.

Gessel holds a B.S.E.E from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

Daniel Saks is the Co-CEO of AppDirect, which he founded in 2009 with Nicolas Desmarais. Daniel plays a key role in the growth and development of AppDirect, from attracting a leading team to nurturing relationships with customers and partners. Daniel’s presentation at Under the Radar conference in the spring of 2011 resulted in AppDirect winning "Best in Show,” earning coverage in Wall Street Journal. Since then, Daniel has spoken at numerous industry conferences and events—such as CeBIT, the Cloud Computing World Forum, and CloudFair—and has had numerous articles published in a range of industry and general interest publications, including Inc., Forbes, the Guardian.co.uk, Cloud Computing Journal, and more. Daniel received a bachelor’s degree from McGill University and a master’s degree from Harvard. Prior to AppDirect, Daniel worked at Viant Capital, a boutique tech investment bank. In his free time, Daniel enjoys traveling, attending hockey games, and studying contemporary architecture and impressionist paintings.

Peder Ulander is Vice President of Product Marketing, Cloud Platforms Group at Citrix. He is passionate about new, disruptive markets and has a strong track record of bringing new, market defining open source technologies to market. Prior to its acquisition by Citrix, Ulander was CMO at Cloud.com, and has more than fifteen years of marketing and sales strategy experience.

Throughout his career, Ulander has held a number of senior management positions at leading technology companies including Sun Microsystems where he was senior vice president of marketing responsible for open-sourcing the Java platform, building a growth business with OpenSolaris and establishing Sun as a leader in the open source enterprise software market.

Karen Sage is vice president of Alliance, Cloud, Service Provider & Industry Solution Marketing at CA Technologies. She is responsible for cross-product solution marketing in key market segments and innovative solutions that represent cutting edge, physical, virtual, cloud and hybrid environments. Prior to her current role, Karen worked at Cisco Systems where she led Industry Solutions Marketing for one year and served as the head of marketing for the Network Management Technology Group for several years. Karen was responsible for defining NMS/OSS market strategy, directing network management product release marketing, solution marketing, field and customer training and worldwide channels. Karen’s earlier contributions at Cisco began in a more technical vein. She led Cisco’s Optical Control Plane design and GMPLS standards and served as the principal representative to the Optical Interoperability forum. Karen held the position of chief architect of OSS solutions for the Service Provider Business Unit at Cisco for a couple of years. She had received company-wide recognition of her successful creation and market delivery of the IP VPN Solution Center. The IP VPN SC was one of the first products in the industry to adequately address the automated provisioning of sophisticated IP services and continues to be one of Cisco’s most important technology assets. Karen began her career in network management having invented the NETSYS Performance tools. NETSYS Technologies, Inc. was acquired by Cisco in 1996. Karen's pioneering research in the performance analysis and design of large-scale communication networks at the University of Virginia continues to be the foundation of analysis and design tools on the market today. Karen is the author of several articles and technical papers, including in IEEE Communications Magazine and Communication News. She’s an avid presenter of how virtualization and cloud computing are transforming IT.

Wilson has covered the telecom industry for more than 24 years, including 14 years at Telephony, eight of those as Editor-in-Chief. She was a founding editor of Inter@ctive Week and founding Editor-in-Chief of The Net Economy, both for Ziff-Davis Media, and also co-founded a news and information Website, Broadband Edge. In addition to covering telecom, Wilson has written about higher education, business, politics, the arts, and sports for newsletter and newspaper companies. Her work has been recognized by the Computer Press Association, the American Society of Business Press Editors, the Jesse H. Neal Awards of the American Business Media and the North Carolina Women's Press Association.