Jim Brennan
Sr. Product Marketing Manager for Red Hat Security Products
Jim Brennan serves as Sr. Product Marketing Manager for Red Hat's security products. In this role, he is responsible for the market strategy and positioning of Red Hat Enterprise IPA, Directory Server, Certificate System and Virtual Directory. Jim has over 11 years of experience in the development, management, and marketing of technology products. Prior to joining Red Hat, Jim spent eight years with Internet Security Systems (now part of IBM), where he held positions in research and development, product management and product marketing for various information security products and technologies. Prior to Internet Security Systems, Jim held positions with EMS Technologies and the United States Department of Defense. Jim holds a Bachelors Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a Masters in Business Administration from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University.

Michael Tiemann
Michael Tiemann is a true open source software pioneer. He made his first major open source contribution over a decade ago by writing the GNU C++ compiler, the first native-code C++ compiler and debugger. His early work led to the creation of leading open source technologies and the first open source business model. In 1989, Tiemann's technical expertise and entrepreneurial spirit led him to co-found Cygnus Solutions, the first company to provide commercial support for open source software. During his ten years at Cygnus, Tiemann contributed in a number of roles from President to hacker, helping lead the company from fledgling start-up to an admired open source leader. Tiemann serves on a number of boards, including the Open Source Initiative and the GNOME Foundation. Tiemann also provides financial support to organizations that further the goals of software and programmer freedom, including the Free Software Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Daniel Risacher
Data Strategy Leader, Office of Secretary of Defense, Network Information and Integration (NII)
Daniel Risacher is the associate director for Information Policy and Integration in the office of the Department of Defense CIO. Dan is a member of the DoD CIO's staff of "net-centric evangelists" advocating the net-centric transformation of the Defense Department for improved information sharing and collaboration. The staff of policy analysts promotes community implementation of the DoD's Net-Centric Data and Services Strategies to make information visible, accessible, and understandable, as well as promoting the use of service-oriented architectures across the DoD enterprise. Dan's particular focus has been on the issues relating to use open source software and open source software methodologies in the DoD. Previously, Dan was an active-duty officer of the United States Air Force, and holds two degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in electrical engineering and computer science.

John M. Scott
Project Leader, Open Technology Development Roadmap
John M. Scott is the Director of Open Integration & Open Source Software at Mercury Federal Systems (subsidiary of Mercury Computing, www.mc.com). John is a technologist with deep expertise in engineered systems and bridging the gap between decision-makers, scientists and engineers to develop policies for acquiring and deploying new technologies in the Department of Defense and US Government. John currently leads the Defense Department's Open Technology Development initiative, which lays the groundwork for streamlined adoption of open source methodologies within DoD, which includes both the adoption of private sector open source software and the formation of internal communities of interest around DoD systems, including classified systems. He has focused his career on investigating and developing ideas for how large organizations design, construct and evolve extremely complex systems to meet National Security needs. Previous work as a consultant to DoD includes the development of new design and testing methodologies for military networks, and the development of complex systems modeling applications for distributed systems.

John Weathersby
Founder and Director of the Open Source Software Institute
John Weathersby is the founder and executive director of the Open Source Software Institute, a U.S.based nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote adoption of open source software solutions within government IT environments. Weathersby currently serves as an adviser on open source issues to a number of federal government entities including the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), and the Department of the Navy, office of the Chief Information Officer. He also serves as an adviser for technology to The University of Southern Mississippi's Office of Technology and Economic Development. Weathersby is a member of the International Advisory Panel for Enterprise Open Source Magazine, and the Free Standards Group, (now The Linux Foundation). He is also a founding executive board member of the National Association of Call Centers (NACC).

Chris Wells
Product Marketing Manager, Red Hat
Chris Wells is a high-tech veteran with over 10 years of experience in technology training and product marketing. Chris came to Red Hat from Quest Software, where he managed over fifty of their key enterprise products. With his easy delivery and clear communication style, Chris is constantly in demand for presenting challenging technology ideas in a consumable fashion to Red Hat customers and partners.

Michael Howard
Chief Engineer USMC Expeditionary C4I, SSCC
Michael Howard: Michael Howard is the Expeditionary C4I Chief Engineer for SPAWAR Systems Center Charleston (SSC-CH) where he oversees system engineering and integration across all Marine Corps programs. He joined SSC-CH in May 2003 and has held multiple roles from developer to integration manager. He has been recognized for his efforts in Service Oriented Architectures (SOA), Master Data Management (MDM), System of Systems (SoS) Engineering, and SoS Integration. In his current position, he is responsible for transitioning USMC C4I systems to an open source Service Oriented Environment. As one of the leading Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) authorities at SSC-CH, he is currently leveraging an open source SOA approach as an enterprise integration enabler within the Command and Control (C2) department. Mr. Howard holds a BS in Computer Engineering from the University of South Carolina.

Jim Tyrrell
JBoss Solutions Architect, Red Hat
Jim Tyrrell is a JBoss Solutions Architect for JBoss a Division of Red Hat. Jim has over 12 years of Java experience delivering enterprise applications and instruction for many different diverse clients: including JBoss, Oracle, BEA and many others. Jim has taken that experience and presents to you a hands-on lab session with Red Hat Developer Suite and Seam.

Kevin Unthank
Product Manager Security Solutions, Red Hat
Kevin Unthank is Product Manager for Red Hat's security management solutions which include Directory Server and Certificate System. Kevin has a rich background across many aspects of information technology including customer support, IT operations, and product development. Prior to joining Red Hat 2.5 years ago, Kevin worked at Sun Microsystems for 12 years where he was responsible for the deployment of their employee Smart card based digital identity card and card management system.

Ed Hammersla
Chief Operating Officer, Trusted Computer Solutions
Ed Hammersla is Chief Operating Officer of Trusted Computer Solutions (TCS) a leading supplier of Cross-Domain Solutions for industry and government. In this role, Mr. Hammersla applies over 30 years of industry experience to implement strategies to assist the company in providing the highest quality security and cross-domain solutions to government and industry organizations. Working side-by-side with cross-domain leaders, Mr. Hammersla is considered an industry thought leader in how to deliver information securely and quickly to those that need it the most. Mr. Hammersla has established working relationships with government leaders by applying commercial best practices to unique and complex problems facing the DoD and the Intelligence Community. As a frequent contributing speaker at technology conferences, Mr. Hammersla has played a key role in evangelizing the need to share information across multiple security domains long before it gained widespread public attention. Government leaders in information sharing such as the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the United States Coast Guard (USCG) and others, utilize his company's technology and expertise to support their missions on a daily basis. To support his vision of helping government organizations better share information securely and cost-effectively, Mr. Hammersla played a key role in the development and bringing to market of a trusted version of Linux now known as Red Hat Enterprise Linux v.5, (RHEL 5). This is the world's first commercially available mainstream Linux operating system evaluated under the internationally recognized Common Criteria Evaluation and Certification Scheme (CCEVS) with an Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) and Protection Profiles (PPs) that qualify it as a "trusted" operating system. This coordinated, worldwide Linux community effort has brought a new level of security and low cost platform choice to both government and commercial markets. Mr. Hammersla serves on a number of government committees, industry association working groups and boards of directors. Currently he sits on the Board of Directors for the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association, Washington, D.C. Chapter (AFCEA DC) and the United Services Organization for Metropolitan Washington (USO Metro). Mr. Hammersla began his career with ten years at IBM where he moved from engineering to marketing and then on to various management positions. Prior to joining TCS, he held leadership positions with Sterling Software, Informix Federal and NEC. He has also worked in the Venture Capital Community as CEO of multiple startups and served as an investor and adviser for other companies. He holds a B.A. in Business Administration and Biblical Archeology form Principia College in Elsah, Illinois. He resides in Washington, D.C.

Rob Cardwell
Vice President of JBoss Enterprise Middleware
Rob Cardwell, Vice President of JBoss Enterprise Middleware at Red Hat, has over 20 years of software development and information management experience, primarily in the healthcare, financial services, and government sectors. He joined Red Hat through the May 2007 acquisition of MetaMatrix, where Rob was CTO from 2002-2007. Prior to MetaMatrix, he was vice president of R&D for InnaPhase (now ThermoElectron), leading the software development organization and directing product strategy. He was also the CIO of HCIA (now a division of Thomson), which provided outsourced data warehousing and information services for the healthcare industry. Prior to HICA, he also held management and engineering positions for several consulting organizations, including Accenture and IBM. Cardwell graduated from Johns Hopkins University and currently resides in Baltimore, MD.

Kevin Sherry
Amentra Program Manager
Kevin Sherry: Mr. Sherry is a Program Manager for Amentra, a Red Hat Company focused on delivering enterprise SOA and BPM programs to Federal, State and Local entities. Mr. Sherry has a diverse background working within both the Government and Commerical sectors and an extensive track record helping customers successfully migrate to enterprise SOA solutions. He also serves as Amentra's Business Process Management (BPM) Practice Lead.

Joel Berman
Product Management Director, Red Hat
Joel Berman serves as a Product Management Director at Red Hat and is responsible for Red Hat's Enterprise Linux and virtualization programs. Before joining Red Hat in 2005, Joel spent 33 years at Digital/Compaq/HP in various engineering and marketing positions. Between 1990 and 1998, he lived in Hong Kong and managed Digital and Compaq's APAC UNIX, Linux and HPC markets. Joel's expertise is in enterprise computing, especially high availability, high performance transactional systems. He has worked with many of the world's largest banking and telecoms companies and was very involved in the transitions from Mainframes to UNIX, and now to Linux for robust and high performance systems. Joel completed his undergraduate work at Boston University and he received a diploma in Industrial Management from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Robert Ames
Director and Deputy CTO, IBM Federal & Panel
Robert Ames is Director and Deputy CTO of IBM Federal. Throughout his IBM career, Robert has worked with senior technical leaders from government, Federal Systems Integrators and industry partners to develop solutions that will modernize and optimize the enterprise, while bringing flexibility, agility and efficiency to the IT infrastructure. Through this work, Robert has comprehensive knowledge of the IT strategy and directions in place across government, from the DoD to the Intelligence Community and Civilian agencies. Robert is an expert in the area of Systems Virtualization, Management and Middleware, and is focused on the drive to greener IT. Recently, Robert designed the winning IBM infrastructure in support of the Total Ship Compute Environment for Navy DDG 1000 through Raytheon. This infrastructure represented a new strategic direction for the Navy. The design modernized the ship-board infrastructure, while offering significant gains in space and power efficiency to the Navy and leveraged a significant research development from IBM, Real Time Java.. To ensure that IBM's products will effectively solve his client's problems, Robert has built close relationships with IBM's development organizations, often putting IBM and client engineers together to evaluate product directions and client requirements. Through these collaborations, IBM has been able to design innovative, standard products that meet the unique needs of his clients, often bringing products from research to the forefront to solve a grand IT challenge. Robert joined IBM in 2002 through the acquisition of Pricewaterhouse Coopers Consulting. At PwCC, Robert was instrumental in their strategic data center consolidation project. This project, and the enabling technologies involved gave Robert deep, first-hand knowledge of the benefits of consolidation and ultimately virtualization in building the IT Infrastructure of the future. This practical experience formed the foundation of Robert's career in Information Technology, and provided the inspiration to continue seeking the solution for ultimately efficient infrastructure. Robert has both a Bachelors and Master's degree in Vocal Performance from Rice University, and is a tireless advocate for the relevance of music study to the IT profession. He has performed professionally as an Opera Singer across the United States, including several seasons with the Washington Opera. He lives in Arlington, Virginia with his wife and two daughters.

Bryan Che
Product Manager, Red Hat
Bryan Che is the Product Manager at Red Hat for its Messaging, Realtime Linux, and Grid offerings. In this capacity, Bryan manages the product strategy and direction for Red Hat's high performance distributed computing technologies. Bryan has been involved with open source for nearly 10 years and spent many of those initial years as a developer and committer at projects spanning Apache, ObjectWeb, JBoss, and other communities. More recently, Bryan has worked at the forefront of a number of strategic open source initiatives, including driving Red Hat's acquisition of JBoss, partnership with Exadel to create the JBoss Developer Studio and RichFaces offerings, and a new community grid at Fedora. Bryan graduated with his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Andy Cathrow
Product Manager, Red Hat
Andrew Cathrow is responsible for Red Hat's virtualization products. Previously, he managed Red Hat's sales engineers in the Southeast region of the United States. Before joining Red Hat in 2006, Cathrow worked in product management for a configuration company and also for a software company that developed middleware and messaging mainframe and midrange systems. Earlier in his career, he held various positions at IBM Global Services.

Jason D. James
Chief Architect, Perot Systems at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Jason D. James, MBA is the Chief Architect for Perot Systems at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Suitland, MD. Prior to assuming this position, Jason was a Systems' Administrator for General Dynamics working for the Counter Intelligence Field Agency (CIFA). Jason was also employed with Sun Microsystems in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as a Systems Support Engineer responsible for accounts in the Philadelphia metro area. His professional experience includes systems architecture, administration as well as program planning and development. Jason holds a masters degree in Business Administration with a focus in Technology Management from the University of Phoenix and a bachelor's degree in management information systems from the Howard University School of Business in Washington, DC.

Clem Cole
ICR Architect, Intel
Clem Cole is an old school hacker and "Open Sourcer" with more than 25 years of system development experience. He first encountered the early editions of UNIX while a university student, writing a variety of device drivers, kernel enhancements, and microprocessor support tools for the early 4- and 8-bit CPUs and has been developing Operating Systems and Technical Computing Systems ever since. His most recent enterprise at Intel Corporation is leading the Architecture and Development of Intel Cluster Ready. He has degrees in EE, Math & CS from CMU and UCB, with the usual multi-page list of publications and talks to his credit. He helped to write one of the original TCP/IP implementations in the late 1970's, and is also known as one of the authors of the precursor to IM, the UNIX talk program, as well as other more humorous and notorious hacks. And finally, he is honored to be the current President of the USENIX Association.

Paul Smith
Vice President of Government Sales Operations, Red Hat
Paul Smith is Vice President of Government Sales Operations at Red Hat. Mr. Smith joined Red Hat in November 2004 and leads the Red Hat Government business unit with responsibility for sales, marketing, consulting, channels and strategic planning. The business unit is responsible for the U.S. Federal government worldwide and the U.S. State, Local and Education marketplace nationally. Smith brings to Red Hat more than 20 years of experience marketing key technologies to the government marketplace holding various management positions in the sales of software solutions to government agencies and to systems integrators. Before joining Red Hat, Smith was Vice President of Government Operations at VERITAS. During his 5 year tenure, the business unit was the fastest growing vertical at VERITAS increasing from less than $15M to more than $200M. Smith worked at Netscape Communications where he ran sales for their State & Local organization nationwide. Prior to that he ran sales organizations at Oracle in the areas of Public Sector, Aerospace and Defense and the Department of Defense. Before joining Oracle, Smith worked for Unisys Corporation where he held management positions responsible for Federal Civilian Agencies. Smith holds a bachelor of business administration from Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland. An avid golfer, skier, he also enjoys playing competitive lacrosse in an area seniors league. A native of Baltimore, Smith currently resides in a suburb of Washington, DC with his wife and 3 children.

Skip Farmer
Solutions Architect, Public Sector, Symantec
Skip Farmer joined the Symantec Public Sector Organization as a Solutions Architect through the Veritas Acquisition. One of Mr. Farmer’s roles is to design data protection and COOP solutions to handle short term and long term interruptions. Mr. Farmer’s core competency is developing projects from infancy, integrating baseline requirement surveys, scenario reviews and current capabilities assessments to offer a complete solution for an agency. During his 14 years serving public sector organizations, he has worked on key projects that include data protection design and implementation for large Federal, State and Local agencies. Mr. Farmer has spoken about storage solutions for continuity of operations and business optimization at CIO Engagements, Symantec Government Vision, and numerous user group sessions. Mr. Farmer is also the co-author of the currently released book, Digital Data Integrity: The Evolution from Passive Protection to Active Management.

Chuck Mosher
Principal Architect, MetaMatrix Technologies
Chuck Mosher is the Principal Architect for the MetaMatrix Practice within the Global Professional Services Division of Red Hat. He came to Red Hat via the acquisition of MetaMatrix, a provider of innovative solutions for data integration, data service enablement and semantic mediation, where he was the Director of Federal Architecture and Solutions. Mr. Mosher has provided architectural consulting to numerous enterprise software vendors and partners, as well as developed strategy recommendations for senior executives seeking to integrate and extend their systems. At Red Hat he is responsible for designing enterprise integration architectures, consulting on implementations, and responding to customer requirements and feedback. He communicates extensively on product strategy and capabilities to partners and customers via industry events, webinars, white papers, and other channels. Previously, Mr. Mosher was a Staff Engineer with Sun Microsystems, where he created an industry consortium including IBM, Unisys, Oracle, Adaptive, Sun, and other companies to develop a Java API for metadata management to enable model-driven development. The partnerships initiated by this consortium spawned the creation of additional standardization efforts in the areas of data warehousing and data mining. Also at Sun he managed the technical relationships for the software development tools, data warehousing, and data mining industry segments while in the Market Development Engineering Division. Mr. Mosher earned his Masters of Science in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with a focus on computer graphics and imaging. He also earned his Masters of Science in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University, and his Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering from Northwestern University. He is a member of the Association of Computing Machinery, the IEEE, and the Council for Entrepreneurial Development. He has authored or co-authored over 20 papers, and has presented at international conferences such as JavaOne, the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, and the Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics.