Speakers

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Knowledgeable, respected and engaging experts from the breadth of the industry will present & interact with GOSCON attendees. Please check back as we add new speakers.

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Tom Rabon	Tom Rabon Executive Vice President, Corporate Affairs redhat Tom Rabon brings more than 25 years of experience working in government and the private sector to lead Red Hat's government affairs and public policy initiatives. He worked extensively with governments around the world to create market opportunities in emerging markets such as China and South America. Rabon recently served as vice president of Global Government Affairs at Lucent for six years. He led a team of government professionals in the US and other countries who were responsible for representation of Lucent with all local, state, federal, and international governments. Prior to that, he spent 13 years as a state vice president of Law and Government Affairs at AT&T, and also served in the North Carolina State Legislature. Rabon received a BA in political science from the University of North Carolina.

Larry Augustin	Larry Augustin, PhD Chief Executive Officer MedSphere Larry Augustin is one of the most recognized names in the software industry. Prior to joining Medsphere, he was a Venture Partner at Azure Capital Partners specializing in software, systems, and related IT infrastructure technologies. Prior to Azure, he founded VA Linux (now VA Software), where he served as CEO and led the company to an initial public offering (IPO) that set the record for the largest first day gain ever in an IPO. In 2000, Worth Magazine named him as one of the Top 50 CEOs in America. Known as one of the early innovators in bringing open source technologies to the commercial market, he helped coin the term "open source". He serves on the board of directors for VA Software, the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), Linux International, and the Linux Mark Institute. He holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Notre Dame.

Stuart Cohen	Stuart Cohen Chief Executive Officer Open Source Development Labs Stuart Cohen is Chief Executive Officer of Open Source Development Labs (OSDL). OSDL is a global industry consortium with more than 70 members. Its activities support the adoption of the Linux® operating system and open source software in the enterprise. OSDL is headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon. Stuart is also a regular contributor to Business Week online magazine. With more than 22 years of international sales and marketing experience, Stuart most recently served as vice president and corporate officer at RadiSys Corporation where his responsibilities included strategic partnership development with other industry leaders including IBM, HP and Dell. Prior to RadiSys, Stuart was vice president of worldwide marketing and a corporate officer at InFocus Corporation. Stuart spent 17 years with IBM, where he held senior positions in the US sales & marketing division, and the IBM Personal Computer Company and Networking Division, with international business development responsibilities in Europe, Southeast Asia and China." Stuart holds a B.S. in Quantitative Business Analysis from Arizona State University.

Daniel D. Frye	Daniel D. Frye Vice President, IBM Linux Technology Center IBM Systems & Technology Group Daniel D. Frye us the head of IBM’s Linux development team and is responsible for overseeing IBM’s Linux technical strategy and IBM’s participation in the open source Linux development community. The mission of the LTC is to help the global open source Linux community make Linux better, to ensure Enterprise-level Linux support for IBM’s Hardware, Software, and Services brands, and to help expand the reach of Linux into new markets. LTC engineers are trusted, valued members of dozens of open source communities and contribute broadly to open source in many respects. Prior to his current responsibilities, Dr. Frye was a member of IBM’s Emerging Technologies and Business Opportunities team where he worked on company-wide technical strategies that predicted future trends and transitions in the IT industry. It was during this time that Dr. Frye co-authored the original IBM corporate strategies for Linux and open source. Since then, Dr. Frye has been a key participant in both the IBM-wide Linux and open source core teams that have overseen the adoption of Linux and open source as key strategic initiatives for IBM. Dr. Frye has an M.A. in Physics from The Johns Hopkins University (1982) and a B.A. in Physics from the University of Idaho (1979). He also received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Atomic Physics from The Johns Hopkins University (1985). Dr. Frye is a member of multiple Linux and open source industry groups.

Bernard Golden	Bernard Golden Chief Executive Officer Navica Bernard Golden is Chief Executive Officer of Navica, a consulting firm offering open source strategy, implementation, and training services. Bernard is a well-known authority on open source, particularly regarding enterprise adoption and use of open source. He writes a regular column on open source software for CIO Magazine, and is the author of “Succeeding with Open Source” (Addison-Wesley, 2005), as well as the forthcoming “Open Source Best Practices.” Contact him at bgolden@navicasoft.com.

Linda Hamel	Linda Hamel General Counsel Commonwealth of Massachusetts Information Technology Division Linda Hamel, the General Counsel of the Commonwealth’s Information Technology Division, focuses her practice on the intersection of information technology and public sector law. She counsels the Commonwealth’s state government agencies on information technology related legal issues and agreements. Ms. Hamel created the Commonwealth’s Open Source Legal Toolkit” for public sector lawyers, which includes a comparison of commonly used open source licenses, and the essay “Nine Ways to Protect Your State from the Legal Risks Posed by the Use of Open Source Software”. She also managed the Commonwealth’s first open source development project, the Virtual Law Office. Working with the National Electronic Commerce Coordinating Council’s Legal and Policy Workgroup, Ms. Hamel has co-authored its publications on the impact of E-SIGN on state agencies; state employee email use; and digital discovery. She is the founder and former chair of the Commonwealth’s Cyberlaw E-government Advisory Roundtable, and is currently the chair of the Commonwealth’s TechLaw Practice Group. She is the former legislative liaison and chair of the MBA’s Public Law Council. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College and of the School of Law at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Scott Kveton	Scott Kveton Associate Director Oregon State University, Open Source Lab Scott Kveton is currently the Associate Director for the Oregon State University Open Source Lab. After working for several dot coms (amazon\|pdaverticals\|rulespace.com) Scott returned to OSU as the Senior Unix Systems Administrator. After re-engineering OSU's core application infrastructure around Linux and Open Source tools he led the consolidation of all of OSU's Open Source efforts under the newly-established Open Source Lab. The OSU Open Source Lab is tasked with community development around open source and does so by engaging in application development and hosting. The OSL is the home of several large open source projects such as Debian, Gentoo, Freenode and Mozilla with over 20 million unique visitors a day.

Jason McKerr	Jason McKerr Operations Manager Oregon State University, Open Source Lab Jason McKerr is the operations manager and co-founder (with Scott Kveton) of Oregon State University's Open Source Lab. He is responsible for business, technical, and development operations at the Open Source Lab as well as managing relationships with Open Source Lab partners. Jason started his career as an economist before becoming a software engineer. He has worked with private and public sector organizations in understanding the economic and financial models for Open Source in their enterprise, helping them achieve strong returns on their Open Source investment.

Timothy Ney	Timothy Ney Executive Director GNOME Foundation Tim Ney has served as the GNOME Foundation's executive director since 2001, having participated in the foundation's formation as a member of it's Advisory Board. Mr. Ney has a wealth of experience working for non-profit organizations from technology to arts and media. He served as the Executive Director of the Independent Feature Project, an association of independent filmmakers and has produced documentary and feature films, including one shot in Germany. Previously at the Free Software Foundation, Mr. Ney is very familiar with the free and open software community and business model. He has advised governments in Brazil, Chile and Korea. Having joined the GNOME Foundation at less than one year from its inception, Mr. Ney has played a crucial role in growing and developing the Foundation in its formative years. He oversees the GNOME Foundation's legal, administrative, and fundraising efforts, as well as the organization of GUADEC, the GNOME Summit in Boston and Forum GNOME in Brasil.

Andy Stein	Andy Stein Director of Information Technology City of Newport News, VA Andy Stein is Director of Information Technology at the City of Newport News, Virginia. Using Open Source as a model for collaborative software development, the City of Newport News is actively participating in and promoting the use of CORE and GOCC, two software repositories for government organizations. The City of Newport News has developed a strategy to replace legacy applications through a collaborative process with other public entities. In addition to his current work in Government, Andy’s professional background includes management and operation of large scaleable computing environments in the finance industry, as well as work in application development, relational database and systems architecture in IBM’s Consulting practice in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Notably, he designed and implemented the first RISC chip for IBM in the mid 1980’s.

John Weathersby	John Weathersby Executive Director Open Source Software Institute John Weathersby is the founder and executive director of the Open Source Software Institute , a non-profit implementation of open source software solutions within the United States federal, state and municipal governments agencies and academic institutions. Weathersby has served as an adviser on open source issues to a number of government entities including the National Technology Alliance (NTA), the Department of the Navy and to other agencies within the U.S. Department of Defense. Currently he is a member of the International Advisory Panel for Linux World Magazine, LinuxWorld.com and the Linux Desktop Consortium. He is also a founding executive board member of the National Association of Call Centers (NACC). You can contact John at jmw@oss-institute.org.

Bill Welty	Bill Welty CIO State of California Air Resources Board Bill was appointed Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the California Air Resources Board in 1990. As CIO, he has overall responsibility for information technology systems, services, policies and operations. The ARB has been providing public access to air quality data via the web since 1994, relying on open source solutions, like Linux, Apache, PHP, to do so since 1995. Previously, Bill served as the Agency Information Officer for the California Environmental Protection Agency. He also directed the Office of Technology Adaptation and Planning for the California State Controller's Office, introducing innovative uses for desktop computers and office technologies. Bill has over 20 years of experience in applying information technologies to improve employee productivity, leveraging partnerships with clients to develop useful and reliable low cost business systems. Bill has a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Certified Information Systems Auditor and a Certified California Community College Instructor in computer studies. Bill resides in El Dorado Hills, California, with his wife Charlene, where he serves as president of his local community services district.