Tony Shaw
SemTech Founder and Program Co-Chair

Steve Ardire
'Merchant of Light' for disruptive software startups

Active advisor ( competitive strategy, business development, marketing & sales ) to disruptive software startups enabled with semantic technology. I shape serendipity by interrogating reality, critical thinking with conviction, provoke learning to enrich relationships, and tactical execution with passion to close deals.

Ian Bailey
Lead Ontology Developer, IDEAS Group

Ian Bailey specializes in enterprise systems, focusing on ontologies to support enterprise architecture. He is the lead ontology developer for the IDEAS Group (www.ideasgroup.org) and developed the meta-model for the MOD and NATO Architecture Frameworks (MODAF and NAF). Ian is the founder of Model Futures, a company specializing in enterprise architecture software and services.

Sarah Berndt
JSC Taxonomist, NASA Johnson Space Center, ITAMS Contract

Sarah Berndt has a background in education and content management as well as interface development and design. She holds a Master of Science degree from Indiana University in Library Sciences focusing on information architecture and information systems. Since becoming the JSC Taxonomist, her work is driven by process refinement for effective information dissemination. In 2010 she was presented the JSC Power of One Gold Award for her work on the JSC Taxonomy from Center Director Mr. Michael Coats.

Walter Chang
Principal Scientist, Adobe Systems

Walter joined Adobe’s Advanced Technology Labs in 2004. He is currently the principal investigator in two areas of research: advanced data analytics for online recommendation systems, and the semantic understanding of multimodal content. In his role as the architect and project manager of a content intelligence system, their focus has been the development of hybrid symbolic and statistical algorithms to perform deeper semantic analysis of text, audio, and video content for advanced search, content organization, automatic metadata extraction, the synchronization of temporal metadata, and metadata inferencing.

Frank Chum
Research Analyst, Chevron

Frank Chum is a research analyst in Chevron.  He has been working in applying semantic technologies to enterprise solutions for a number of years.  He has co-chaired the W3C Workshop on Semantic Web in Oil & Gas Industry in 2008 and contributed to the W3C Semantic Web Education and Outreach Interest Group.  His current research interests include semantic technologies for computational linguistics and optimization problems, pattern recognition and machine learning for upstream oil and gas applications. 

Kendall Clark
Founder & CEO, Clark & Parsia LLC

Kendall Clark is CEO and Founder of Clark & Parsia, LLC. Kendall was previously a researcher at the University of Maryland’s Mindswap, a well-known Semantic Web research lab. Kendall has served as Chair of the W3C’s Data Access Working Group, which is responsible for SPARQL, an RDF query language and data access protocol. He is the Editor of the SPARQL Protocol specification. He also edited DAWG’s Use Cases & Requirements and co-edited Serializing SPARQL Query Results in JSON.

Christine Connors
Principal , TriviumRLG

Christine Connors is the principal of a TriviumRLG, an information consulting firm based in Pennsylvania. Ms. Connors has extensive experience in taxonomy, ontology and metadata design and development. Prior to forming TrivimRLG Ms. Connors was the global director, semantic technology solutions for Dow Jones, responsible for partnering with business champions across Dow Jones to improve digital asset management and delivery. Prior to joining Dow Jones Ms. Connors was a knowledge architect at Intuit, where she was responsible for introducing semantic technologies to online content management and search.

Joe Devon
Independent Consultant

Joe Devon is a 20 year veteran developer. He has been involved in Internet technology since the mid 90's. He has worked on projects spanning Search Engine technology, Performance Management, scaling Wide Area Networks, performance for Internet backbone providers, Investment Banks & Telcos.

Bob DuCharme
Solution Architect, TopQuadrant

Bob DuCharme is a Solution Architect at TopQuadrant, the leading provider of software and solutions for modeling, developing and deploying semantic web applications. He has been writing and speaking on semantic web technology since 2002, and co-chaired the 2008 Linked Data Planet Conference in New York City. Earlier in his career he did software development and data and systems architecture at Moody's Investors Service and LexisNexis. Bob is the author of the O'Reilly book "Learning SPARQL" and several books on XML-related technology for publishers such as Prentice-Hall and Manning.

Eric Franzon
VP Community for Semantic Web, WebMediaBrands

Eric is currently the VP Community for Semantic Web at WebMediaBrands (http://www.SemanticWeb.com).  Prior to that, Eric spent over a decade with Wilshire Conferences, where he explored the world of enterprise data. As VP of Semantic Universe, he worked to raise awareness and explain the usage of semantic technologies in business and consumer settings.  He is an advisory committee representative with the World Wide Web Consortium (http://www.w3.org) and an Affiliate Analyst with Guidewire Group (http://www.guidewiregroup.com)

Craig Hanson
Director, Innovation and Architecture, Amdocs

Craig Hanson came to Amdocs with the acquisition of DST Innovis in July of 2005. Mr. Hanson joined DST Innovis in 1987 and has held a variety of positions Including CTO and VP vice president of the Advanced Technologies. Mr. Hanson is currently responsible for vision, architecture and implementation of new products in Amdocs. His current focus is Intelligent decision engines leveraging semantic technology to create smart applications. Considered a computer industry expert in software architecture and system scalability, Mr. Hanson has published papers regarding Broadband Data Services, Building Web Applications, Human Factors, and Software Performance, and he has been a speaker at several middleware and technology conferences. He was a recipient of the William J. Mullen award for his technical presentation skills. Mr. Hanson has done keynote speeches on technology trends. Mr. Hanson graduated with honors from Buena Vista University and was twice selected as NCAA Academic All American.

Ivan Herman
Semantic Web Activity Lead, World Wide Web Consortium

Ivan Herman joined the W3C Team as Head of W3C Offices in January 2001. He served as Head of Offices until June 2006, when he was asked to take the Semantic Web Activity Lead position, which is now his principal work at W3C. Before joining W3C, Mr. Herman worked in quite different areas (distributed and dataflow programming, language design, system programming), but he spent most of his research years in computer graphics and information visualization.

Eric Hoffer
Co-founder, Second Integral, LLC

Eric Hoffer is a connector who aligns people, technology, and business needs. He co-founded Second Integral, LLC in 2006, to provide product and business strategy consulting for information-based products and services, and uses a value network approach to uniquely connect ideas to create value. Prior to Second Integral, he spent 20 years in the information industry, sixteen of which were dedicated to the creation, delivery and servicing of financial information products. He brings expertise from the perspectives of producer, consumer and analyst, for broad strategic consideration around structuring, manipulation, presentation and utilization of information – as well as keen appreciation for multi-dimensional motivations of the human and business elements.

Bernadette Hyland
CEO, 3 Round Stones, Inc.

Bernadette Hyland brings a strong background in commercial and federal government data management strategies, coupled with expertise in leading high-growth software organizations. She is committed to articulating the pragmatic use of Linked Data to corporate and government decision makers. Bernadette is a chapter author in peer reviewed books focused on real world deployments of Linked Data including Linking Enterprise Data and Linking Government Data (David Wood editor, Springer, 2011. Bernadette co-chairs the W3C Government Linked Data Working Group and is a member of the Semantic Web Coordination Group. She was co-founder of three profitable early stage Internet companies delivering enterprise products which pioneered Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects, including the Mulgara Semantic Store, Persistent URL (PURLs), Freemix and the Callimachus Project.  

Kevin Lynch
IT Fellow, Chief Knowledge Architect, Raytheon

Kevin is an IT Fellow and Chief Knowledge Architect for Raytheon where he focuses on semantic infrastructure for enterprise application integration and information visualization, and an associate at TriviumRLG where he has done work for BioBlitz. Prior to Raytheon, Kevin was the project manager and database architect for COPLINK, a novel data warehousing project integrating law enforcement databases for intelligence sharing.

Brian McBride
Consultant / Developer, Epimorphics Ltd

Brian McBride is a consultant and developer at Epimorphics Ltd specialising in the analysis and development of linked data applications in a variety of domains including publishing government educational data and publishing supply chain sustainability data. Brian was previously a senior researcher at HP Laboratories in Bristol Uk. Whilst there he co-chaired the W3C RDF Core working group which produced the current Resource Description Framework (RDF) and RDF Schema recommendations. He also began the development of Jena, a leading java library for supporting the development of tools and applications using Semantic Web technology. He then went on to work an a number of Semantic Web applications including the development of a multimedia content exchange, a semantic web based web portal and applications to support the legal process of e-discovery.

Dave McComb
SemTech Founder and Program Co-Chair / President, Semantic Arts, Inc.

Dave McComb is a co-founder (with Tony Shaw) of the Semantic Technology Conference and Semantic Universe. He is the author of the book Semantics in Business Systems (Morgan Kaufman), which was (probably) the first book to introduce and explain semantic concepts in the context of enterprise computing. Dave has over 30 years of experience with enterprise level systems and in particular his current interests focus on applying semantic technology to enterprise architecture.

Paul Miller
Founder, The Cloud of Data

Paul Miller delivers consultancy services to customers around the world, as they grapple with understanding the potential of semantic technologies and cloud computing in moving their business forward.

Jay Myers
Lead Web Development Engineer , bestbuy.com

As a Lead Web Development Engineer at Best Buy, Jay has been active in promoting Semantic Web and Linked Data for use in business. He has spoken at industry conferences like Search Engine Strategies Chicago and SemTech 2010, and has been a guest lecturer for the Linked Data Ventures course taught at MIT Sloan. Jay has a passion for merging semantic technologies together with retail business and ecommerce to produce results that benefit both consumers and the enterprise. He has been an active supporter of the GoodRelations vocabulary for ecommerce, utilizing it in real world business scenarios to model consumer products, stores and services in RDF/XML and RDFa.

Marco Neumann
CEO, KONA

Marco Neumann is an Information Scientist and CEO & Founder of KONA, an Information Consulting and Semantic Technology Company based in New York City. KONA provides knowledge organization and network analysis services and technologies to the emerging Semantic Web market. Marco works with Semantic Web technologies for web-based data management in collaboration with media, technology and research organizations. His current interests are: distributed information syndication, contexts for the Semantic Web, cultural and natural heritage management, and dynamic schema evolution in structured data. 

David Newman
Strategic Planning Manager Enterprise Architecture , Wells Fargo

David Newman serves as a Senior Architect in the Enterprise Architecture group at Wells Fargo Bank. He has been following semantic technology for the last 4 years and has developed several business ontologies. He has been instrumental in thought leadership at Wells Fargo on the application of Semantic Technology and is a representative of the Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC) on the W3C SPARQL Working Group.

Natasha Noy
Senior Research Scientist, Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research

Natasha Noy is a Senior Research Scientist at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research. She is a principal member of the Protégé group, where she works on tools for ontology management, including versioning, mapping, and modularization of ontologies. She is currently involved in the design of the next-generation Protégé system that will support collaborative development of ontologies. She also leads the computer-science research at the National Center for Biomedical Ontologies, where she works on community-based approaches to ontology evaluation, review, and alignment. Dr. Noy is the President of the Semantic Web Science Association, a member of editorial boards for several leading journals, and was the General Chair for the 11th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2011). http://www.stanford.edu/~natalya/

Ina O'Murchu
Founder, Social Web Strategy

Ina is the founder of Social Web Strategy, a consultancy which specializes in Web 2.0 (Social Web) and Web 3.0 for marketing and business intelligence. She graduated from the Digital Enterprise Research Institute in Galway Ireland, where she completed her research on connecting local community groups with Semantic Web technologies. Her interests lie in the Social Semantic Web. In Online Communities, Social Networks and Social Web data in particular.

Stewart Quealy
Director of Content, Events/Conferences, mediabistro.com

Stewart joined the mediabistro.com team in 2010 and currently curates the live events and conferences. Previously, he played a leadership role in running the Search Engine Strategies (SES) events as part of the original content team at Incisive Media. Prior to that, Stewart worked with Jupitermedia and was responsible for launching emerging technology events such as the Jupiter/IAB Advertising Forum, Plug.IN, Game Market Watch, Enterprise Linux Forum and ClickZ Online Video Advertising. Stewart has also worked closely with the open-source Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the IT Service Management Forum (itSMF), and the Object Management Group (OMG), an international not-for-profit computer industry consortium. Earlier in the dot-com bubble, Stewart worked with 101 Communications and SIGS Publications, overseeing their object-oriented programming portfolio of events, including Java DevCon, XML ONE and C++ World.

Evan Sandhaus
Semantic Technologist, New York Times Company

Evan Sandhaus has been the semantic technologist, for the research and development operations department of The New York Times Company since 2006. In this role, Mr. Sandhaus has developed a semantic technology for identifying key concepts in large text datasets; engineered a patent-pending system for purging template text from Web content; and collaborated with The Linguistic Data Consortium to release and promote The New York Times Annotated Corpus, a collection of 1.8 million richly annotated New York Times articles published from 1987 to 2007. Additionally, Mr. Sandhaus has led the development of a Web-scale web crawler, a Google Earth news layer and multiple search engine optimization toolkits.

Juan Sequeda
Graduate Student, Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin

Juan is a Ph.D student at the University of Texas at Austin and a NSF Graduate Research Fellow. He has been the organizer of the Consuming Linked Data tutorial at the 2009 International Semantic Web Conference, 2010 World Wide Web Conference and 2011 Semantic Technology Conference. He has co-chaired the 2010 and 2011 Triplification Challenge and co-created the Consuming Linked Data Workshop and Linked Data-a-thon competition series. Juan is also an invited expert at the W3C, member of the RDB2RDF Working Group and editor of the RDB2RDF Direct Mapping spec. Juan has been an invited researcher at the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid and the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile. Juan is also the Executive Director of Semantic Web Austin.

Tony Shaw
SemTech Founder and Program Co-Chair

Tony is the co-founder (with Dave McComb) of the Semantic Technology Conference and Semantic Universe. Though the SemTech Conference and publishing assets of Semantic Universe were acquired by WebMediaBrands in September 2010, he remains responsible for directing the educational conference agenda for SemTech, and is a key partner in the expansion of the program into new geographical areas. In addition to his work in the semantic community, Tony is also the founder of Wilshire Conferences, an educational and publishing organization specializing in enterprise data management. Prior to founding Wilshire he started a dotcom in the identity management space (which quickly went the way of most dotcoms), and was the president of Technology Transfer Institute (TTI). He still facilitates the TTI/Vanguard strategic technology forum for CTOs.

Brian Sletten
President , Bosatsu Consulting, Inc.

Brian Sletten is a liberal arts-educated software engineer with a focus on forward-leaning technologies. He is a system architect, a developer, a mentor, and a trainer. Brian has been speaking about REST, the Semantic Web, and other technologies around the world as part of conferences such as NoFluffJustStuff, JavaOne, Jazoon, the Spring Experience, the Rich Web Experience, and Museums on the Web. Brian has written for DevX's Semantic Web Zone, JavaWorld and has contributed chapters to O'Reilly Media's "Beautiful Architecture" and "97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know".

George Thomas
Change Agent, US Department of Health and Human Services

George Thomas is an Enterprise Architect in the Office of the Chief Information Officer at the US Department of Health and Human Services. George leads the Semantic Web and Linked Data team in the US Data.gov Program Management Office, and co-chairs the W3C Government Linked Data Working Group.

Bart van Leeuwen
Architect/Firefighter, netage.nl

Bart van Leeuwen has been the owner of netage.nl for 15 years. He has a lot of experience in "outside the box" thinking to help his customers get to the right solution. For Bart, technology is never the answer to business questions. Technology is an enabler, and should be treated as such. He has a lot of experience with Data management solutions like Lotus Notes, DB2, Postgres and their integration tools. In early 2000, Bart got involved in PHP since it perfectly fit the requirements for what later would become RESC.Info, an enabler platform for Volunteer Fire departments. In the last 5 years he developed FishFood, an XML + XSLT based framework to help abstracting RESC.Info. With the latest release of FishFood he started implementing other projects on top of it. Bart is also co-founder of netlabs.org. In the past years netlabs.org started using semantic web (Web 3.0) technologies to solve real world problems. The upcoming product will be a game changer in the way we interact with information, Bart is one of the masterminds behind this innovative technology.