Social media is emerging as an extremely effective tool for promoting events and engaging audiences before the event even begins, during the actual live broadcast and even after it has already taken place. However, the technology and the way audiences are leveraging this medium is constantly changing.

Currently the most popular social network tools are Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter, but others are emerging including Google Wave, Augmented Reality and more. Join this webcast and hear from industry experts as they discuss upcoming technologies that are going to impact marketers and event planners. Attend this online-only event and learn first-hand what is coming down the pike and will ultimately change everything from audience acquisition to the registration process to event engagement and community building

Objectives of the panel:

1. Demonstrate the value of social media to extend the reach to the online community, build value for their organizations and associations, and extend the brand
2. Show how social media can be leveraged for private, corporate events and public tradeshows
3. How a virtual event platform like InXpo’s can provide a platform for integrating the experience for attendees

Webcasts, eseminars, webinars…whatever you want to call it, the fact is that these virtual events are becoming one of the most effective mediums to reach an online audience or community. Organizations are using webcasts for many reasons: to communicate with customers, suppliers, business partners, employees and even for training and education certification. They can be live, pre-recorded or a combination of both. They can be simple and effective as streaming audio with synchronized PowerPoint slides or be more robust encompassing video and interactively tools including audience polling, question and answer, real-time Internet navigation and even testing.

But regardless of the form or the audience there are unique principles and best practices that organizations should follow to maximize their webcast strategy and drive value to their audience.

Elliot Markowitz, Programming Director at InXpo and 20-year content-development expert will take you through the 7 main principles critical to navigating through the webcast content development maze.

This presentation will highlight the new and innovative ways InXpo provides Virtual Learning, including our "Breakout Room" Video Chat capabilities

In this session we will tour XpoCast, InXpo’s new rich media webcasting service. Learn how to turn ordinary slides into engaging presentations enabling your audience to interact with the presentation not just watch it.

Speaker self-service control over the creation, recording and editing of their presentation combined with audience interactivity makes XpoCast the Speakers Dream Tool.

XpoCast is the must see product !!!!

The Virtual Edge Institute is proud to present its popular Roundtable Keynote session, featuring top executives from all top virtual event platform /producer firms.In this thought-provoking and interactive session, hear directly from those in the corner offices about where the virtual events / virtual meetings industry is in 2010, and where it is heading. What are the near-term offerings to improve attendee experience, reduce complexity, drive lead-gen, add interactivity, and create even more compelling peer-to-peer communications.Also, find out how customers are using virtual events today, and what improvements users are asking these providers for in the future.We'll also ask top execs some of the questions you're dying to ask:

• What are the trends across your platforms?
  
• Will virtual events become a core part of the marketing mix?
  
• Could training and learning be the killer app?
  
• What will virtual event cost structures look like?
  
• What will the range of solutions look like?
  
• What will the UI look like?
  
• What are you doing to make it easier for me?
  
• What will drive interaction at my events?
  
• Can my agency create a totally unique look and feel?

And, for those questions we've forgotten, no worries. We'll have an open mic.

This presentation will draw on research from the Virtual Worlds @ Work initiative at Strategic Business Insights (SBI), a spinoff from SRI International (formerly Stanford Research Institute). Questions and issues that will be addressed include the following:

• What types of developments can we expect to see from virtual worlds players in the next few years based on market dynamics we saw in the last couple of years?
  
• What will the impact and implications be of emerging open source virtual-worlds platforms?
  
• Which types of applications can best benefit from the unique affordances offered by virtual worlds?
  
• Will we see significant improvements in usability of virtual worlds and what kinds of mashups may emerge to create higher user engagement and better user experience?

The presentation will also discuss international developments and research projects that may have implications for what we will see on the virtual-worlds front in the next few years.

This session provides guidelines and best practices for how to introduce virtual or hybrid events into your organization. Discussion of why corporations are exploring virtual solutions to help solve business issues. Outlining what platforms are available and best applied to achieve a specific business purpose. Will answer the following questions:

• How do I decide which events should be physical, virtual or hybrid?
  
• How do I convert a physical event to a virtual event?
  
• How do I use virtual events to extend a physical event?
  
• What is the best way to introduce virtual events into my organization?
  
• What if we've already tried a virtual event and we've not had a good experience?
  
• What are some successful case studies?
  
• What are some unsuccessful case studies?
  

David has been employed by InXpo since the summer of 2004. He has been an Exhibitor Recruitment Expert, Account Executive,  Virtual Event Strategist, and played various other roles. Currently, David is the Virtual Sales Director with responsibility to manage and expand InXpo's inside sales team. Ask him anything about Virtual Events, InXpo, or InXpoLive. Prior to InXpo, David spent 11 years as President and CEO of a cutting edge multimedia and software deveopment company call Echo 3 New Media.

Markowitz is a 20-year editorial/publishing venteran with deep experience and expertise in digital events. Most recently he was Editorial Director of Nielsen Web Seminars and Digital Events responsible for the content of all web seminars across Nielsen's publications and brands. Previously he was Editorial Director of Ziff Davis Media eSeminars where he helped to build the company's eSeminar business and launched its award-winning Virtual Tradeshow concept.

Before Ziff-Davis, he was the Editor-in-Chief of CRM Magazine and the destinationCRM.com website and related live events. Before CRM Magazine, he was Business Editor at TechTV, responsible for helping to manage the TV station's website as well as conducting live on-air interviews with key industry executives.

Markowitz also spent 11 years with CMP Media's award-winning weekly newspaper Computer Reseller News (CRN), where he held many key editorial positions including News Editor, Business Editor, and Senior Executive Editor. In 1999 he was named Editor of CRN, responsible for the entire editorial operation of the newspaper and in charge of coordinating its redesign and re-launch in June 2000. Early in his career Markowitz was a news reporter on Long Island for the Massapequa Post.

He holds a B.A. in journalism from Hofstra University and is a graduate of the Stanford Professional Publishing Course.
Gordon T. Hughes II
J. Jainschigg, B. Reeves, John C. McKnight, G. Fisher, Dr. L. Heinrichs
John Jainschigg
Director
Ziff Davis Enterprise's Internet and Community Laboratory
As Executive Director of UBM Metaverse, John created the virtual worlds consulting business for United Business Media and founded Life 2.0 Summit. A veteran of online software development and media, John's career spans roles as print and/or online Editor in Chief of award-winning CMP B2B technology publications such as Teleconnect, Computer Telephony, Communications Convergence, and Dr. Dobb's Journal, with stints in online software development and custom media and market consulting for diverse clients in telecommunications, networking and online. A forceful advocate of business use of virtual worlds, and pioneer developer of technologies for integrating virtual worlds with the web, John has consulted on virtual world technology and business best-practice for IBM, Sun Microsystems, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft and others. He is chairman of the advisory board for World2Worlds, a leading virtual event and immersive-experience agency.

Byron Reeves
The Paul C. Edwards Professor in the Department of Communication
Stanford University
Byron is also Co-Founder and Faculty Co-Director of the H-STAR Institute (Human Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research) and its industrial affiliate program, Media X. He is an expert on the psychological processing of media in the areas of attention, emotions, learning, and physiological responses, and has published over 100 scientific papers about media and psychology. His research has been the basis for a number of new media products for companies such as Microsoft, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard, in the areas of voice interfaces, automated dialogue systems, and business process simulations. He is currently working on the application of multi-player game technology to behavior change and the conduct of serious work, and is Co-Founder of Seriosity, Inc., a company building enterprise software inspired by game psychology. Byron is co-author (with Leighton Read) of Total Engagement: Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete (Harvard Business Press).

John Carter McKnight
Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law-Arizona State University

Glenn Fisher
Director of Business Programs
Linden Lab
Glenn Fisher is the Director of Business Programs at Linden Lab. He joined Linden Lab in July 2006 to build a Solution Provider program, which has grown to over 200 companies with over US$70M in revenue developing Second Life content and experiences. He is currently developing a business program for Second Life to provide information and support for businesses entering Second Life.

Prior to Linden Lab, Glenn managed the developer program at Tellme Networks and Openwave. At Apple Computer, Glenn made performance part of Apple's product development and marketing, including keynote demos; launched and marketed Apple's internet suite; was responsible for subscriber acquisition for Apple's online service (eWorld); and developed an education training program.

Dr. LeRoy Heinrichs
InnovationInLearning, Stanford University
Jeff Casey
Jeff Hurt - Velvet Chainsaw, Kymberlee Weil - introNetworks, John Gibb
Jeff Hurt
Director of Education and Engagement
Velvet Chainsaw Consulting
Jeff Hurt has worked in events/nonprofit arena for more than 20 years including Keep America Beautiful as a consultant/ trainer/writer; Keep Texas Beautiful as Education Coordinator; Professional Development Manager for Meeting Professionals International; Professional Development Manager for Promotional Products Association International; and Director of Education and Events for the National Association of Dental Plans. He has also served on several board of directors for several North Texas, state and national charities and organizations. He blogs about the convergence of Web 2.0, social media, meetings, events and education.

Kymberlee Weil
President
Intronetworks, Inc.
An internationally recognized expert on Adobe Flash technology, Kymberlee has authored two books that have shaped the way people use this complex and powerful technology. She was also the Director of the Flashforward Conference, where she saw first-hand how an innovative combination of Macromedia technologies could dramatically improve networking potential.

Kymberlee is an experienced technical writer, working on projects that include international conference manuals and software training materials. While earning her MBA at Pepperdine University, her passion for business was sparked and continues to grow stronger each year. She is currently a nationally recognized speaker, presenting at national and international conferences and leading universities.

John S. Gibb
Principal
JSG Consulting
Most recently with Gartner, John is a marketing professional with over a decade of strategic experience that is recognized as visionary in the area of integrated event marketing management, branding and communications. John’s career has spanned various capacities and levels of marketing leadership, including Gartner, The Conference Board, Global Business Research, The National Retail Federation and Government Executives Network. John has strategically and tactically driven successful new attendee acquisition, business development and legacy marketing campaigns in the US, Latin America, EMEA and APAC. John has a BA in Journalism from New York University and an MBA from the University of Connecticut.


Jeff Hurt, Michael McCurry, and Samuel Smith
Moderator: Elliot Markowitz, Director of Content, InXpo

Elliot Markowitz is the Programming Director at InXpo. He is responsible for working with the sales team and their clients on the programming/content quality of their webcasts, offering professional moderating services and relations to third party speakers and experts. He will also be working closely with the webcast production team as it grows to ensure continuity and best practices.

Markowitz is a 20-year editorial/publishing veteran with deep experience and expertise in digital events. Most recently he was Editorial Director of Nielsen Web Seminars and Digital Events responsible for the content of all web seminars across Nielsen's publications and brands. Previously he was Editorial Director of Ziff Davis Media eSeminars where he helped to build the company's eSeminar business and launched its award-winning Virtual Tradeshow concept.

Jeff Hurt, Director, Education and Engagement, Velvet Chainsaw Consulting Jeff Hurt has worked in events/nonprofit arena for more than 20 years including Keep America Beautiful as a consultant/trainer/writer; Keep Texas Beautiful as Education Coordinator; Professional Development Manager for Meeting Professionals International; Professional Development Manager for Promotional Products Association International; and Director of Education and Events for the National Association of Dental Plans. He has also served on several board of directors for several North Texas, state and national charities and organizations.
He blogs here about the convergence of Web 2.0, social media, meetings, events and education.

Michael McCurry, Strategic Account Manager, Experient Mike McCurry is currently a Strategic Account Manager with Experient, and is responsible for oversight of the relationship between Experient and numerous corporate and association clients. He has been an active member of the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) since 1993 and was 2009 President of the Greater Midwest Chapter.

Mike has a special affinity for technology and has become a strong social media advocate. In addition to his passion for writing, Mike is an avid Harley rider, Musician/Songwriter/DJ, loves gadgets and enjoys professional sports.

Samuel Smith, Editor, Interactive Meeting Technology Blog Sam has been working with technology professionally for more than 13 years and international events in Europe since 2006. He worked at Ford Motor Company, 3M, GT Urological and Shockfish SA (creator of Spotme). At Shockfish, Sam was the Regional Sales and Marketing Director and Spotme Marketing Manager.

Most recently, Sam has been using his experience and talent to help events identify interactive event technologies that are the best fit for their event objectives and budgets. If you contact him, he will be happy to help you, too. Also, Sam contributes content to EventCoup, a web 2.0 and social media blog and Engage365, an event social media community.

In addition, Sam has been active in the European meetings industry as a member of Meeting Professionals International. In the past, he has been a member of SITE, ICCA and the Meeting Support Institute. As a Board Member of the Meeting Support Institute, Sam made several presentations on technology and how it benefits events.
John Barber - Immersa Marketing, Eric Olsen - Active Events, John Grosshandler
John Barber
Vice President, Digital Strategy
Immersa Marketing
Immersa’s Digital Strategy Practice engages with global brands, including Cisco Systems, and with industry trade associations to create digital strategies and select, integrate and implement emerging online technologies for community building and event marketing. Prior to Immersa, John consulted on product design for uShow, an online social video tagging and sharing platform tightly integrated with Twitter and Facebook. At BDMetrics (now Three Stage Media), John was SVP Audience & Media, helping develop the first online, SaaS-based search, personalization, and agenda-planning platform for the event industry used by more than 3.5M attendees and over 100 leading trade shows.

Eric Olsen
Active Events

John Grosshandler
Director of Virtual Events
Maritz Travel
In 2004, John launched a virtual trade show called eComXpo. Held twice each year, it has become the highest-grossing, longest-running virtual trade show and achieved the #1 listing on Google, out of 6 million results, for the keywords virtual trade show. In 2008, John completed the first-ever sale of a virtual trade show by selling eComXpo to Worldwide Business Research. While still running eComXpo, John was hired by virtual event platform provider InXpo (eComXpo was InXpo’s first customer) to help sell and implement InXpo’s technology to firms including IBM, ATT, SAP, Procter & Gamble, Monster.com, Sun Microsystems, Agilent and Cognos. John now works for the leading physical meeting and events provider Maritz as their Director, Virtual Events. In this role, John overseas a cross functional team responsible for helping corporations host virtual events that are more effective, easier and safe.


John Jainschigg, Jim Sink, Bruce Joy, Greg Nuyens
John Jainschigg
Director
Ziff Davis Enterprise's Internet and Community Laboratory
As Executive Director of UBM Metaverse, John created the virtual worlds consulting business for United Business Media and founded Life 2.0 Summit. A veteran of online software development and media, John's career spans roles as print and/or online Editor in Chief of award-winning CMP B2B technology publications such as Teleconnect, Computer Telephony, Communications Convergence, and Dr. Dobb's Journal, with stints in online software development and custom media and market consulting for diverse clients in telecommunications, networking and online. A forceful advocate of business use of virtual worlds, and pioneer developer of technologies for integrating virtual worlds with the web, John has consulted on virtual world technology and business best-practice for IBM, Sun Microsystems, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft and others. He is chairman of the advisory board for World2Worlds, a leading virtual event and immersive-experience agency.

Jim Sink
CEO
Avatar Reality
Jim is the developer of the next generation high definition virtual world Blue Mars. Previous to his work at Avatar Reality, Jim managed business development and partner acquisition at Microsoft's Xbox Live division as well as managing business and game concept development at Foundation9, the world's largest independent game developer.

Greg Nuyens
Chief Executive Officer
Teleplace
Greg Nuyens has more than twenty-five years experience as a high tech entrepreneur, including founding and executive roles at both private enterprises and large public companies. He has served as CEO of Devicescape (backed by Kleiner Perkins and August Capital) CTO of Neomar (now part of Motorola), and chief technologist at Inktomi. Earlier roles included co-founder at Ilog (now part of IBM), director at Sun Microsystems and researcher at Xerox PARC and Xerox AI Systems.

Greg holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Carleton University.

Bruce Joy
Vast Park

John Leahy - Director, Product Management
John Leahy is the Director of Product Management at InXpo.
K. Sulgit, M. Vargo, S. Wilson, M. Schwartz, K. Visser-May, A. Yuzzi
Kathleen Sulgit
Director of Corporate Events
Cisco Systems
Kathy leads a team of world-class event managers who are responsible for managing Cisco’s portfolio of strategic and innovative virtual events, customer-facing proprietary conferences, advisory boards, and product launches in support of marketing campaigns across Cisco. She also leads a team of technology experts who provide solutions and tools to expertly manage physical and virtual events.

Kathy consults with groups across Cisco to integrate key Cisco technology into physical and virtual events, enabling Cisco to lead the industry in delivering innovative events. A veteran in the high technology arena, Kathy has held management positions at Apple Computer and Hewlett-Packard where she led teams in the development of strategic alliances, small business marketing, product marketing, channel and field marketing.

Michael Vargo
Corporate Events
The Walt Disney Company
In this role, Michael works with Disney corporate departments including Investor Relations, Corporate Finance, Corporate Legal, Corporate Responsibility, Corporate Alliances, Corporate Governance, and other executive offices to execute various meetings, conferences, and events throughout the year.

Michael joined Disney in 1992 and soon advanced through a series of positions of increased responsibility within various departments including Disneyland Entertainment, Disneyland Television Productions, Walt Disney Special Events Group, and Disney Live Family Entertainment.

Stephanie Wilson
Virtual Events Program Manager
Intel Corporation
Stephanie has worked for Intel for 12 years, as an instructional designer, evaluation specialist, manager, knowledge management consultant, and virtual events program manager. Stephanie holds an MS in Instructional Design and an MBA.

Martha Schwartz
Vice President, Group Sales for InformationWeek and TechWeb Network
United Business Media
Martha drives the TechWeb strategy for virtual events, hosting 20 virtual trade shows annually, 22 concierge sites and the growth and development of more interactive, immersive products. Under Martha’s leadership, InformationWeek was the winner of the 2009 Mins’s Best of the Web Awards ” Best Virtual Tradeshow”. Martha is responsible for directing and implementing the complete product sales strategy for InformationWeek and the Business Technology Network, including InformationWeek , Network Computing, Global CIO, DDJ, Byte and Switch, Dark Reading, Internet Evolution, Plug into the Cloud, InformationWeek Government, Intelligent Enterprise, bMighty and Contentinople. Martha manages sales for the largest group within TechWeb, while working with the Content, Marketing, Audience Development and Performance Marketing teams.

Kathy Visser-May
Microsoft

Annie Yuzzi
Director, Global Events
SAP
As Director of Global Events in North America at SAP, Annie is responsible for managing the event marketing initiatives for internal, corporate, sponsored and customer focused events in both physical and virtual environments. A 20+ year veteran in event marketing, Annie is passionate about driving strategic events that focus on insight, innovation, demand generation and creating unique customer experiences.

Prior to joining SAP, Annie held positions with Business Objects, Vertical Communications and Key3Media in a variety of areas including business development, strategic marketing and operations.
Kathy Doyle - Cisco, Dannette Veale
Dannette Veale
Global Strategist, Cisco Live and Networkers Virtual
Cisco
As the Global Cisco Live and Networkers Virtual Manager at Cisco, Dannette Veale lives and breathes new media. Dannette currently focuses on producing hyrbid events to support global Cisco Live and Networkers conferences. When she’s not traveling the (real) world evangelizing and enabling the use of a central shared virtual platform to a global audience, you’ll find Dannette engaged in such varied hobbies as producing streaming media, designing Web sites, or watching classic films such as Blade Runner. Outside of her daily immersion with collaborative media, Dannette’s also been known partake in such real world activities as gardening, baking, and knitting—while watching cyberpunk anime, of course.

Kathy Doyle
Director, Global Cisco Live & Networkers Conferences
Cisco
A senior-level event marketing executive with over 20 years experience producing and managing large-scale global customer conferences for Hewlett-Packard, PeopleSoft and Cisco. Kathy is a best practice leader in event strategy, event marketing, program development, exhibit sales, event operations, and virtual and hybrid events. She has proven success in building strong high performing teams with strategic vision and the ability to create & execute programs establishing the highest level best practice standards while continuing to grow revenue and profit.
Kelly Graham, Helaine de Tomasi
Kelly Graham
Manager
Virtual Event Strategy and Innovation, Cisco Systems
Virtual events and meetings have become an integrated component of Cisco Systems’ global events portfolio. Kelly Graham leads virtual event strategy and innovation across Cisco. Currently, her team partners with internal teams across Cisco to explore the future of virtual events. Current accomplishments include Cisco’s Virtual Event Center, Hybrid Cisco Expo, Virtual Partner Summit and Virtual Earth Day. Graham has been with Cisco for 10 years, evolving the online/virtual marketing business, and is well known for her vision and leadership in this area.

Helaine de Tomasi
Virtual Program Manager
Cisco
Helaine de Tomasi is the Virtual Program Manager at Cisco producing virtual trade shows, video webcasts, green screen videos, as well as consulting on strategy for global Cisco Expo, and designing environment templates for virtual platforms. de Tomasi has more than 18 years of global event marketing, brand awareness and corporate communications experience. Prior to Cisco, de Tomasi was a Senior Director of Marketing at Aldon managing global events, PR, marketing communications and pre-sales. Prior to that, she worked for Cyclades Corporation and helped increase the company’s revenue by 120% in two years. de Tomasi has held management positions with several startups in the business process, storage and CRM industries, including a supervisor position with Niehaus Ryan Wong PR managing clients such as Vignette, Deloitte Consulting and BroadVision. She has a B.S. degree in Journalism from West Virginia University and holds a Trade Show Management certification.
Ken Hudson
Ken Hudson
Managing Director, Virtual World Design Centre
Loyalist College
Ken Hudson is Managing Director of the Virtual World Design Centre, Loyalist College, where he creates virtual world environments and experiences for business, education, and government. He has collaborated with dozens of organizations using virtual worlds including Harvard and Brown Universities, US Department of State, US Naval Postgraduate School, University Health Network, Canadian Border Services Agency, and the Government of Canada. Ken launched the use of Second Life at Loyalist College in 2006, making it the first post-secondary institution in Canada to apply this new medium to learning contexts. His Canadian Border Simulation is Second Life demonstrated successful metrics for the use of virtual worlds for applied learning, and is one of the most often cited case-studies illustrating successful virtual world learning. In 2008, Ken's work was recognized with the Colleges Ontario Innovation Award and the Orion Learning Award of Merit.


Kimberly Stone
Kimberly Stone
Manager, Web and Creative Services
Planview, Inc.
With 16 years of experience in helping companies define and implement their Web programs, Kimberly Stone is currently manager of Web and Creative Services at Planview, Inc. in Austin, Texas. Kimberly drives global strategy and execution for social media programs, virtual events, and Web properties while managing a diverse team and developing relationships with key vendors. Kimberly has built her Web expertise at organizations such as the University of Florida, IBM, Lucent, and BMC Software, and has received the Ciber Performance Award and UF IFAS Superior Accomplishment Award. She has been recently featured on NPR Marketplace, Meeting News and the Virtual Edge Institute.
Kristin Beaulieu
Kristin Beaulieu joined InXpo in February 2008 and was initally hired as a Client Service Executive to work with our major publishing clients. I now act as General Manager over our Publishing Division. Prior to InXpo, although it is hard to believe there was life before that, I was with Ziff Davis Media for 8 years. I launched and ran two online event divisions at ZDM; eSeminars and PCMagCast. Prior to ZDM I worked in the dot com space for two start ups so am scared to admit that I have been working exclusively in the online world now for almost 13 years!
Lou DePasquale
Lou has over 20 years experience in Corporate Sales and Sales Management (both direct and indirect) and has extensive knowledge how the sales function operates within a Corporation. Prior to joining InXpo, Lou was President & CEO of an ERP VAR and prior to that was a VP of Channel Development. Lou has been working with the management team of InXpo in three previous companies for over 22 years (we all started together when we were 12).
Lynn Randall
Lynn Randall
Maritz Travel
Malcolm Lotzof
Mr. Lotzof is CEO of InXpo Inc., a Company that let's you easily create your own Business Social Network. Using synchronous communication tools and user generated content, like Webcasts, Virtual Events, Desk Top Sharing, Text and Video chat, companies reach out to their communities from within their own 3 Dimensional Environments to cost effectively Market, Entertain, Educate, Inform, Sell and Prospect, while at the same time building deeper and more meaningful relationships with community members. At InXpo, Lotzof, is responsible for driving the company's vision. Throughout his career Mr. Lotzof has been developing new technology products and related businesses that address paradigm changes in the market. This formula has proven to be very successful for Mr. Lotzof as InXpo is his fourth venture following the above strategy.

Previously, Mr. Lotzof was Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Proamics Corporation, a Professional Service Automation Software Company. While growing the company, Mr. Lotzof was instrumental in formalizing the Professional Automation Market Place. He successfully sold Proamics Corporation to Niku Corporation in 1999. Prior to Proamics, Mr. Lotzof was the Chief Executive Officer and founder of Lotzof & Associates Inc., a Value Added Reseller of ERP Solutions, and Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Cost Management Systems Inc., a Software Development Company for Time & Billing solutions. Both of these companies were sold to Platinum Software Corporation where he became President of the Financial Software Development division, responsible for all Financial Applications. Mr. Lotzof has also worked for IBM, and spent time in Public Accounting.

He is a past member of the Young Presidents' Organization and a current member of the World Presidents' Organization. Mr. Lotzof is also a Chartered Accountant and holds Bachelor degrees in Accounting and Commerce from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Marilou Barsam
Michael Doyle - VEI, Neal Thompson
Michael Kushner
Michael Kushner
Founder
Virtual Media Strategies
Michael Kushner has held various sales and business development positions at companies such as Frost & Sullivan, Forbes, Inc., Freedom Technology Media Group, Reed Elsevier and The Nielsen Company. In these roles, Michael's responsibilities included the development and execution of profitable new business models in such areas as digital events that serve as brand extensions; securing sponsorships for web-based and face-to-face interactive forums; the creation of monthly live webcast series for multiple magazines; developing branded Virtual Conferences and Expos; capturing and repurposing content at physical conferences and trade shows; and working with editorial, sales, marketing and website staff to help pull it all together. He is the founder of Virtual Media Strategies, which specializes in developing and implementing strategies that enable companies and organizations to expand their business across multiple channels, including digital, social media, print, e-commerce and events.
Mike Agron - Webattract, Bret Smith
Mike Agron
Principal and Executive Webinar Producer
Webattract LLC
Mike Agron is a results oriented sales and business development executive with a 25 year history at top technology hardware and software firms such as Apple, Oracle, MapInfo, SeeBeyond and deCarta. Mike has worked in the trenches and as an executive, where he led global business development, channel, and partner sales teams that have contributed significant revenue and profitability while opening up new market segments.

In 2008 he launched Agron Business Development to help top tier technology corporations, start-ups, and mid-sized firms improve sales execution. He is most proud of the recent work he’s done with Directions Media, a leading on-line publisher serving the geospatial community. The creation of the Directions Media Sponsored Webinar series has resulted in a new line of business for Directions Media and has boosted its thought leadership to its advertisers and readers.

Bret Smith
Principal
Webattract, LLC.
Bret is a master of both the science and art of audience recruitment and solution selling. Known for his amazing talent in translating abstract features & benefits into meaningful, laser targeted value propositions, along with his proven prospecting methodology, he has delivered millions of dollars in sales results for companies such as CenturyTel, MapInfo, SANAKO US, and others.

Bret is an active member in the eMarketing Association Network, Email Marketing Roundtable, the B2B Lead Generation Roundtable, the Sales Lead Management Association, Friends of the Funnel, MarketingSherpa, and is the founder of the NON-Permission-Based Marketing group on LinkedIn.
Multiple Speakers
Michael Doyle
VEI

Kevin Carbone
CEO
6Connex
At 6Connex Kevin applies his extensive expertise in the creationg of Application Service Provider (ASP) and licensing business models, acquisition and business planning. Prior to his role as Presidentt of Design Reactor, he served as VP of Business Development for New Moon Systems, a provider of application management platforms. While there, he negotiated the company's ASP agreements with major software distributors, resellers and integrators. He also served as VP of Internet Alliances at Decide.com, and VP of Business Operations at Castle Cable Services. Kevin served as a Product Director at Pacific Bell Video Services and as a consultant for the Boston Consulting Group. He holds a BA in Political Economy of Industrial Societies from the University of California, Berkeley and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Malcolm Lotzof
CEO & Co-Founder
InXpo
Mr. Lotzof founded Lotzof & Associates, a Value Added Reseller of ERP Solutions, and co-founder of Cost Management Systems, doing time and billing software. Both companies were sold to Platinum Software where he was President of the Financial Software Development division. Mr. Lotzof is a Chartered Accountant and holds Bachelor’s degrees in Accounting and Commerce from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Chris Meyer
Senior Vice President Client Services Worldwide and General Manager
George P. Johnson
Chris Meyer oversees US West Coast & Asia Pacific Sales and corporate Digital Strategy for George P. Johnson, as well as all of its Northern California operations. He works with Chief Marketing Officers and senior marketing and sales executives at premier brands worldwide to develop integrated marketing programs. Chris also drives the development strategy around GPJ’s unrivaled Technology offering, a suite of software and mobile offerings designed to serve clients in event execution and audience management, portfolio performance and integrated marketing management. Under his stewardship, the agency’s profile within the IT market specifically has grown steadily, adding premier brands such as Cisco Systems, Oracle and Sun Microsystems to the GPJ client roster.

Jim Parker
President and CEO
Digitell, Inc.
Digitell is a company specializing in the digital development of conference products and services. Mr. Parker is a 30 year veteran in the conference industry and a nationally popular on a variety of topics including the marketing and distribution of educational materials, “Going Green” initiatives and virtual technology. Mr. Parker is known throughout the conference industry for pioneering numerous products and services, including the first multi-media conference CD-ROM, the first conference digital multimedia library and his latest product release, avatar- based virtual business environments. Digitell provides services to over 80 leading organizations as well as servicing the world renowned Chautauqua Institution for the past 24 years.

Tom Wieser
VP Virtual Solutions
CGS VirtualEvents365
Tom Wieser is a veteran professional in sales, marketing and business development and a long time leader in the Virtual Event market. Since joining CGS in 2007 Wieser has increased the adoption and growth rates of CGS Virtual Events 365 and has been responsible for jumpstarting its sales.

Previouslyy, Wieser was Vice President of Enterprise Sales at Unisfair and held various leadership roles at Vanstar, IBM GS contractor, ProActivity, Greenwich Technology Partners, Active Media International and other online media companies where he successfully led sales organizations to success.

Paul Way
Senior Director of Business Development
ON24, Inc.
Paul oversees the webcast and virtual events provider’s global strategic partnership initiatives. In particular, Paul manages the development of a global partner network for ON24, as well as working on new market opportunities in regions like Japan. He spearheads the development of strategic partnerships—both OEM and with regard to ancillary features and services—to augment ON24’s stable of market-leading products, including webcasts, virtual shows and virtual briefing centers.

Paul joined ON24 in 2009 as a veteran of the online media business, having spent 13 years at United Business Media. Among his roles at UBM was the development of that company’s unified streaming media strategy for the US.

Stu Schmidt
Vice President
Global Sales & Services for Unisfair
Stu Schmidt is credited with developing sales methodologies for numerous start-ups and Fortune 50 companies. His career spans 16 years with Digital Equipment Corporation followed by senior sales management roles at two large System Integration companies. Stu was VP Sales then COO of the DSM division of OAO Technologies and was instrumental in their successful IPO in late 1997. Subsequently he was a Senior Partner and co-founder of a sales process consulting firm. Mr. Schmidt joined WebEx in 2004, and developed the WebEx selling methodology currently employed.

Ben Chodor
Founder and President
Stream57
Ben Chodor has spent his career seeking ways to facilitate online marketing and communications in the versatile and rapidly advancing world of interactive & streaming media. Chodor began his career as a principal of an independent production company. Chodor co-founded a streaming company focused on business-to-consumer-to-consumer healthcare called BabyPressConference.com. During his tenure at BabyPressConference.com, Chodor aided in the launch and management of Stream57, an interactive video & streaming media productions company as chief technical officer and leader of sales & marketing, and creative efforts. Chodor’s next step within communications media space was with the launch of Exciting New Technologies (ENT). Chodor is now back with Stream57, working with key industry players to create cost-effective communication applications.
Neal Thompson, Randy Choco, Michael Doyle, Vance McCarthy, Frances Manwaring
Neal Thompson
Director of Strategic Technology

Thompson joined Maritz in 1993 and was the business architect for all internet based technologies. Today he continues his leadership role, responsible for emerging and strategic technologies by combining his technical depth of knowledge with his experience leading client projects focusing on virtual event technologies and services. Neal has a Masters in Human Computer Interactions (HCI) from the University of Maine and is currently an adjunct professor with the Keller Graduate School of Management.

Randy Choco
Group Manager, Digital Events
Microsoft
Randy has more than 15 years’ experience in digital and online marketing communications. He joined Microsoft in 2003 to build out the digital events capability for the US subsidiary, working across the organization on virtual event strategy, innovation and execution. During his tenure, Randy managed the creation of an integrated, virtual event capability that encompasses webcasts, podcasts, virtual labs, simulcasts, test drives and social media.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Randy was Director of Marketing for Intermind, a Seattle-based startup, and Director of Marketing for Attachmate where he oversaw all marketing communication efforts, including CEO Summits and global satellite telecasts.

Michael Doyle
Virtual Edge Institute

Vance McCarthy
iDev News

Frances Manwaring
Founder and CEO
Virtual Expos New Zealand Ltd.
Frances is a highly experienced business and economic development specialist with an international career spanning the public and private sectors and a wide range of industries. London based for thirteen years, early career highlights included roles in international media with Centaur Communications plc and in venture capital with Alan Patricof Associates (now APAX Partners). She moved to New Zealand in the mid-nineties and, for the last decade, has run her own communications and business development consultancy, now based in New Zealand’s capital city, Wellington. Throughout her career, Frances has organised a range of critically acclaimed physical events at venues such as London’s famous Banqueting Hall in Whitehall, and she is a passionate advocate of using new media and technologies to enhance people’s business communications.


Pascal Kaplan - iCohere, John Barber - Immersa Marketing
Pascal Kaplan, Ph.D.
CEO
iCohere
Dr. Kaplan blends a background in education and organizational development with skills as a software designer. Dr. Kaplan works with the leadership of international and national associations, Fortune 500 companies and corporations, and nonprofit and governmental agencies as they seek to create and maintain learning communities and collaborative action networks that integrate the principles of collaboration with the newest online technologies. His special expertise is in helping groups learn how to match the right innovative technology to their needs; and in facilitating the development and integration of attitudes, skills and capabilities needed to support organizational and cultural change. In addition to online and face-to-face presentations and training events, Dr. Kaplan has most recently co-authored the manual, Online Engagement: A Strategic Guide, to accompany his series of educational seminars with America’s Promise Alliance on how to launch, grow, and support online communities and a chapter for The Children of 2020, entitled “The Learning Communities of 2020.”

John Barber
Vice President, Digital Strategy
Immersa Marketing Immersa’s Digital Strategy Practice engages with global brands, including Cisco Systems, and with industry trade associations to create digital strategies and select, integrate and implement emerging online technologies for community building and event marketing. Prior to Immersa, John consulted on product design for uShow, an online social video tagging and sharing platform tightly integrated with Twitter and Facebook. At BDMetrics (now Three Stage Media), John was SVP Audience & Media, helping develop the first online, SaaS-based search, personalization, and agenda-planning platform for the event industry used by more than 3.5M attendees and over 100 leading trade shows.
Paul Dodd - 6Connex, Ben Chodor - Stream57, Dan Yaman
Paul Dodd
Chief Strategy Officer
6Connex
As CSO of 6Connex, Paul is responsible for securing strategic account relationships for 6Connex. He plays a critical role orchestrating the deployment of 6Connex resources to provide custom virtual technology marketing solutions for key strategic Fortune 500 customers such as HP. Before joining Design Reactor, Paul spent the last 13 years with several Fortune 100 companies including Dell, Sherwin Williams Paint Company, TestChip Technologies and Advanced Micro Devices. At AMD he acted as the Key Accounts Marketing Manager, managing AMD's messaging and strategy, building brand awareness, and developing solutions-based marketing for B-to-B products. As the Large Account Brand and Marketing Manager at Dell, Paul directed business development and marketing programs, servicing many Fortune 1000 companies.

Ben Chodor
Founder and President
Stream57
Ben Chodor has spent his career seeking ways to facilitate online marketing and communications in the versatile and rapidly advancing world of interactive & streaming media. Chodor began his career as a principal of an independent production company. Chodor co-founded a streaming company focused on business-to-consumer-to-consumer healthcare called BabyPressConference.com. During his tenure at BabyPressConference.com, Chodor aided in the launch and management of Stream57, an interactive video & streaming media productions company as chief technical officer and leader of sales & marketing, and creative efforts. Chodor’s next step within communications media space was with the launch of Exciting New Technologies (ENT). Chodor is now back with Stream57, working with key industry players to create cost-effective communication applications.

Dan Yaman
CEO
Live Spark
Dan started his career at age 17 as America's youngest stage hypnotist. As he traveled around the country performing before audiences, he realized that there was a bigger need for helping audiences stay awake during presentations.

As the CEO of Live Spark--a strategic event design company--he developed innovative ways to help clients engage audiences. The Live Spark client list includes: Intel, Pillsbury, American Express, Honeywell, Seagate, and many others, and they’ve captivated over 10 million audience members around the world. Dan’s pioneering methodology combines the “art of theater”, the “science of learning" and the "psychology of persuasion" to create environments where message comprehension and content retention soars. This unique brain-based approach helps his clients put on events that profoundly increase their ROI while making the event more enjoyable, meaningful and relevant for the audience.

Mr. Yaman also founded LearningWare—a company dedicated to making training more engaging and effective through the use of interactive game shows--in 1994. Additionally, Dan co-authored the best-selling training book "I'll Take Learning for 500: Using Game Shows to Engage, Motivate and Train" with Missy Covington.


Paul Salinger - Oracle, Chip Rodgers - SAP, Michael Ray - Intel, Michael Doyle
Paul Salinger
Vice President
Oracle
Paul Salinger joined Oracle in 1999, after working with them from the event agency side, to bring into the marketing organization a resource with a creative and strategic approach to the business. His role is working on strategic messaging to drive pipeline and revenue for the company and to champion sustainability across event marketing. A current focus is to participate in defining and delivering strategies for virtual experiences that combine live and virtual elements into an integrated campaign, taking advantage of many different tools and technologies to identify methodologies and behaviors that meet audience expectations for different kinds of both face to face and virtual environments.

Chop Rodgers
VP and COO for Web 2.0 Communities
SAP
Chip operates the SAP Developer Network (SDN), the Business Process Expert (BPX), and the Business Objects (BOC) communities, totalling more than 1,900,000 individual members interacting around the clock and around the world in 200+ countries and territories.

As COO, Chip is responsible for all SAP Communities core operations including: Formal content generated by SAP solutions and content experts; Collaborative content generated from our community of customers, partners, and SAP employees through blogs, forums, and wikis; TechEd and TechTour events globally attracting over 30,000 attendees annually and Managing financials and business performance of the Community Network team.

Michael Ray
North American Sales and Channel Enablement Manager
Intel Americas, Inc.
Michael Ray leads the Broad Channel Sales Enablement teams at Intel Corporation for North America. His teams are focused on providing technical and marketing training, customer support, industry events, and sales representation for over 15,000 members of Intel’s Channel Partner Program. These customers make up much of the large system builder channel that manufacture and deploy servers, desktop and mobile PCs across North America. Mike has worked at Intel for over 12 years and is based in Salt Lake City, Utah. During his career at Intel he has managed sales and marketing teams in the Integrator Channel team, the Communications Product Group, and the Networking Products Division. Mike came to Intel through acquisition, having worked for Dayna Communications, a small business networking company, for the previous 11 years in various sales, marketing, and finance roles ending as North America Sales Manager.

Michael Doyle
Virtual Edge Institute

Rich Hawkinson

Rich is one of the founders of InXpo and is responsible for Product Marketing, Development and Creative Products. Rich also works with Sales and Professional Services (Production and Consulting) on strategic accounts to assist in winning the business and building the go to market solutions for the clients.