Complete Schedule

John Bartlett John Bartlett is a leading authority on real-time traffic, application performance and Quality of Service (QoS) techniques. He specializes in helping enterprises manage voice, video and data application performance. John has engaged with over 50 enterprises and over 20 network vendors to analyze network performance problems, design network solutions, and support network solutions. John has 29 years of experience in the semiconductor, computer and communications fields in marketing, sales, engineering, manufacturing and consulting roles. He has contributed to microprocessor, computer and network equipment design for over 40 products. He has been consulting since 1996. Prior to working as a consultant, John was a founder and VP of Engineering and Manufacturing at Agile Networks, now part of Lucent Technologies. Under his leadership, the company designed and built a high performance Ethernet switch implementing VLANs, and one of the first commercial ATM switches. Both products were successfully introduced to the market and the firm became profitable before it was acquired. Mr. Bartlett also served on the IEEE 802.1 committee during this period, and contributed to the development of the IEEE 802.1P and IEEE 802.1Q standards (priority and VLANs.) He previously worked for 9 years at Encore Computer, Corp. in engineering and engineering management positions designing networking equipment and large scale multiprocessor systems. At the end of this time Mr. Bartlett was managing 70 engineers across 2 geographic sites. John also spent six years with Intel Corporation during the early years of microprocessor design and acceptance into the market. John is a graduate of Dartmouth College, and Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering, where he received the Dartmouth Society of Engineers Annual Prize for the quality of his thesis presentation. John is co-owner of a patent in shared memory multiprocessor design.

Albert Kooiman is a Director in the Microsoft Unified Communications team. He is responsible for the extensibility and APIs of Microsoft?s real-time communications products like Microsoft Office Communications Server and Microsoft Office Communicator. With twelve years of experience in the telephony and speech technology industry, he has been involved in projects encompassing the wide spectrum of speech driven telephony solutions currently in the market: from information systems to personal call assistants, from customer care solutions to value added services voice portals, based on pure telephony as well as multimodal systems, serving customers all over the world. Albert holds a Masters Degree of the Medical Faculty of the University of Amsterdam. After his graduation, where he specialized in Medical Informatics databases, he worked in the field of Hospital Information Systems and Medical Statistics for several years.

Joe Burton is Senior Director of Engineering and CTO of Cisco?s Voice Technology Group. His team is responsible for Cisco's Unified Communications solutions including MeetingPlace voice, video, and data conferencing products, IPVC video conferencing, IP Communicator, Unified Advantage, Cisco Unified Personal Communicator, productivity application integrations, and Cisco Unity Connection integrated voice messaging products. During his career at Cisco, Joe has led the development of media-based applications for Cisco's CallManager team and the Cisco-wide Voice Systems Architecture group that coordinates standards development and architecture for all voice products at Cisco. Previously, he was the Chief Architect for Cisco's messaging products, including the Unity unified messaging system. Before joining Cisco, Joe was the Chief Architect for Active Voice Corporation, a leading provider of voice messaging systems.

As Director of Sametime Worldwide Development in IBM Software Group, David Millen mobilizes a large development team to advance IBM's Unified Communication Strategy. The team is responsible for all aspects engineering, design, and delivery of the Sametime product portfolio. In today's connected world, Unified Communications is at the forefront of business differentiation within organizations of many sizes, across many industries, globally. David has 20+ years of building enterprise class software. He began his IBM career in the mid-1980's, focusing on infrastructure enablement in what was then Lotus Development Corporation. Over the years, he has held a variety of engineering and management positions across IBM. Along with being a Development Manager on 1-2-3, the iconic spreadsheet of the 1980's, he has also held technical leadership roles on Notes/Domino, IBM Workplace, and now as an executive on working on Sametime. David received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts.

Eric Rossman is the vice president of Developer Relations and Technical Alliances at Avaya. He has responsibility for the Avaya DevConnect Program which provides a single, worldwide, integrated partnering framework for third-party relationships. Through this program, ISVs, IHVs, corporate developers, system integrators and service providers can develop, quality test and promote their solutions and services that interoperate with Avaya?s standards based products and solutions in a multi vendor network environment. Avaya currently has more than 8,000 companies registered in the DevConnect program. In addition, Mr. Rossman is responsible for bringing to market Avaya?s alliances and partnerships with industry leading service providers, systems integrators and technology providers. Prior to joining Avaya, Mr. Rossman had held various sales, marketing and information technology management positions at Eastman Kodak, Lucent Technologies, and in the public sector. Eric is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania?s Penn Engineering and Wharton School with a Master?s Degree in Technology Management.

MICHAEL F. FINNERAN, President of dBrn Associates, Inc. is a consultant and industry analyst with over 30-years experience in the specification, design, and installation of communication networks. His specialty is wireless networking and he has held management positions in Sales, Marketing, Product Planning, and Systems Engineering with ITT WorldCom, AT&T Long Lines, and MDS Systems. As an independent consultant, Mr. Finneran has provided assistance to a number of major firms including: IBM, AT&T, Prudential Insurance, McGraw-Hill, and Merrill Lynch. He has appeared on the National Public Radio?s ?All Things Considered?, and been quoted in Business Week and The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Finneran has published over 200 articles and columns for such industry publications as Business Communications Review, Computerworld, The Ticker, and The ACUTA Journal. His column titled Networking Intelligence ran for almost 25-years in Business Communications Review. He recently published his first book titled Voice over WLANs- The Complete Guide for Elsevier. In the training area, Mr. Finneran has conducted over 2000 seminars for vendors and users in the U.S., Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. He served as an Adjunct Faculty member in the Graduate School of Computer Science at Pace University, and taught at the Center for the Study of Data Processing at Washington University in St. Louis. He is a frequent speaker at industry trade shows including InterOp, VoiceCon, Mobile Business Expo, IPComm, and ComNet. Mr. Finneran has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Manhattan College, a Masters Degree from the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, and is a long-standing member of the IEEE.

Blair Pleasant is President & Principal Analyst of COMMfusion LLC and a co-founder of ucstrategies.com, an industry resource on the growing UC arena. She provides consulting and market research analysis on voice/data convergence markets, applications, and technologies, aimed at helping end-user and vendor clients both strategically and tactically. Prior to COMMfusion, Ms. Pleasant was Director of Communications Analysis for The PELORUS Group, a market research and consulting firm, and President of Lower Falls Consulting. With 20 years experience, her primary areas of focus are convergence applications, including Unified Communications, Unified Messaging, the contact center, computer telephony integration (CTI), and voice processing. Blair has authored many highly acclaimed multi-client market studies and white papers, as well as custom research reports, and provides market research analysis and consulting services to both end user and vendor clients. Ms. Pleasant received a BA degree in Communications from Albany State University, and an MBA in marketing and an MS in Broadcast Administration from Boston University.