Speakers

Keynote Speakers
André V. Mendes
Chief Technology Integration Officer, Public Broadcasting Service
André Mendes is responsible for developing and implementing technology strategy in both the Broadcasting Engineering and Information Technology divisions of the Public Broadcasting Service. He also oversees the daily operations of PBS’s entire technology infrastructure. With more than 20 years experience through positions he held at Pluvita Corporation, General Health, SatoTravel and USASSIST, Mr. Mendes has also consulted as a subject matter expert in information technology and medical laboratory environments with such companies as Amoco, Arco, AT&T, Ford Motor Company, IBM, Pacific Bell and Procter & Gamble. His expertise encompasses large scale computational and analytical environments, sophisticated Web-based data collection and dissemination systems, and computer systems security, as well as complex bioinformatics systems. Mr. Mendes was named one of the “Premier 100 IT Leaders” in the U.S. by Computerworld magazine in May 2001, and, more recently, earned a “2005 Technology Leadership Award” by Broadcasting & Cable Magazine. He is a co-author of the critically acclaimed CTO Leadership Strategies from Aspatore Books.

James A. Thomas
President, ASTM
James A. Thomas has served as President of ASTM since July 1, 1992. Thomas has also served as Vice President of the Standards Development Division and Executive Vice President of ASTM. Thomas serves on the Board of Directors of the American National Standards Institute and the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute and he has contributed to the development and revision of the National Standards Strategy for the United States. He received his B.S. degree in industrial relations in 1976, and his master’s degree in organization management in 1990, both from LaSalle University.

Master of Ceremonies
Maryfran Johnson
Editor in Chief, TechTarget, Inc.
Maryfran Johnson brings more than two decades of journalistic experience to her role as Editor in Chief at TechTarget’s newly established CIO Media Group. Previously, she served as Editor in Chief of IDG’s Computerworld, playing a prominent leadership role in Computerworld’s signature executive event, the Premier 100 IT Leaders Conference. In her five-year tenure as Editor in Chief, Computerworld’s editorial team won more than 100 awards. In 2004, American Business Media honored Johnson with the inaugural Timothy White Award for editorial courage and integrity. Johnson lends her expertise on IT management to executive education programs at UCLA and The Ohio State University, and for the past decade has served as a keynote speaker and panel moderator at numerous industry events and user conferences.

Speakers
Robert Barr
Executive Director, Berkeley Center for Law & Technology
Robert Barr joined BCLT as the Executive Director from Cisco Systems, where he was the first Vice President of Intellectual Property and Worldwide Patent Counsel. He started Cisco’s patent program in 1994 and built a portfolio of over 2000 issued patents and over 3000 pending patents. Robert has degrees in Electrical Engineering and Political Science from MIT and a JD from Boston University School of Law. Robert is a frequent speaker on patent reform and he testified twice at the Federal Trade Commission hearings on Competition and Intellectual Property Law and Policy in the Knowledge-Based Economy. The Daily Journal named him one of the top 25 intellectual property attorneys in California (2003) and one of the top 10 in-house intellectual property lawyers in California (2004).

Michael B. Spring
Professor, Department of Information Science and Telecommunications, University of Pittsburgh
Dr. Michael Spring is Professor in the Department of Information Science and Telecommunications at the University of Pittsburgh. His research involves the application of technology to the workplace with particular attention to distributed collaboration systems and document processing. This work entails visualization, intelligent agents, security, and web services. He received his Bachelor’s from the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA, and his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. Spring has authored numerous articles and book chapters in the areas of text and document processing, visualization, collaboration, and information technology standardization. He is the author of two books entitled Electronic Printing and Publishing: The Document Processing Revolution and Hands on PostScript.

Richard P. Suttmeier
Professor of Political Science, University of Oregon
Richard P. Suttmeier is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. He received his A.B. from Dartmouth College and his Ph.D. from Indiana University. Suttmeier has served as a Senior Analyst at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, a consultant to the World Bank and the UNDP, and the Director of the Beijing office of the Committee for Scholarly Communication with China. He was a member of a team, organized by IDRC of Canada, that conducted a review of China’s science and technology reforms for the State Science and Technology Commission and has worked with the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology in a review of its policies for international scientific cooperation. Suttmeier’s current research includes US-China relations in science and technology (with Cao Cong) and a study on Chinese approaches to the management of technological and environmental risks entitled “Is It Safe to be Modern?”.

Paul H. Vishny
Of Counsel, Seyfarth Shaw LLP
Paul Vishny is Of Counsel in the Chicago office of Seyfarth Shaw LLP. He has more than 45 years of experience in U.S. and international corporate, securities and telecommunications law and has negotiated and structured transactions involving the laws of more than 20 countries. Vishny works with trade associations and selling groups, including the largest and leading association of telecom manufacturing companies and the largest association of companies manufacturing corrugated paper products. Vishny also chairs the telecom association’s intellectual property rights working group, which is responsible for setting the intellectual property-related policies for the association’s published standards and attends Finance Committee meetings. He holds a JD from the University of Illinois; DePaul University College of Law.

Mr. Yuen Pau Woo,
Representative for the Standards Council of Canada (SCC)
Mr. Woo is vice-president, research, and chief economist for the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, a national think-tank on Canada-Asia relations. He is also chair of the Canadian National Committee for the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) and Director of the APEC Study Centre in Canada. Mr. Woo is on the advisory boards of the University of Victoria's Centre for Asia Pacific Initiatives (CAPI) and the Centre of Excellence for immigration research at Simon Fraser University and t! he University of British Columbia.