John Frederiksen - General Manager of the Response Point business for Microsoft. He leads the Response Point team’s Product Development, Marketing, and Business Development organizations with a charter to deliver effective and efficient SMB focused telephony solutions to businesses world-wide.  He is a 15 year Microsoft veteran with broad experiences in Product Management and Services. John directed Microsoft Services Product Management and Marketing groups, delivering the marketing needs of Microsoft’s 15,000 employee-strong Enterprise Support and Consulting Services business. He also has managed the microsoft.com website, one of the world’s busiest online properties. Earlier in his career he owned Product Management for Windows Client, the Windows Server businesses and lead launches of Windows XP and Windows 2000 Server.John holds a BSEE from Lehigh University and an MBA from the Darden School at the University of Virginia.

My Session:  Coming Soon

George Sierchio BusinessSpeak Chair - George Sierchio, also know as The Consultant’s Coach, is an electrical engineer by formal education and a serial entrepreneur by nature. Before founding Action Business Partners, Inc. (actionbusinesspartners.com) in 2003, George had over 11 years of experience owning and operating several successful businesses in a variety of technical and non-technical consulting and service industries. George has personally started 5 businesses from scratch as well as bought and sold businesses for himself and clients. He is an accredited Small Business Advisor and a seasoned entrepreneur growing one of his businesses to the million dollar mark in just 4 years time. Besides his coaching/advisory work, George is an accomplished speaker, guest university lecturer, frequently contributes to a variety of publications, and has a recently published book entitled B.Y.O.B- Build Your Own Business, Don’t Be Your Own Boss: Insider Information to Building a Technology Consulting or Service Business Your Successful Competitors Don’t Want You to Know.

Jeff Middleton - SBSmigration.com has been established by Jeff Middleton in response to overwhelming IT Pro demands for better concepts in SBS migration and recovery situations. Jeff has been recognized worldwide by SBS consumers and resellers as a trusted authority on SBS, and by Microsoft as a Small Business Server - Most Valuable Professional since 1999.

My Session: Migration Techniques for 2008 Platforms

Ben Yarbrough - Ben Yarbrough, a practicing business attorney for over 14 years, has counseled numerous companies of all sizes in all phases of growth. While practicing law, Ben has regularly assisted clients with general contracts, mergers & acquisitions, equity and debt financings, public securities offerings, partnership arrangements, entity formation, employment matters, leases, etc.  Ben has taken the plunge into the SMB IT world as CEO of Calyptix Security and brings a unique blend of legal and IT experience to the table. 

My Session: Everything Legal, Take 2

Grant Thompson - Grant Thompson founded MG Technology Group in 2003. MG Technology Group is a leading technology company that provides hosted solutions, software development, business intelligence, system integration, SharePoint architecture and customization and consulting services. The company also offers a wide range of products designed to empower people and automate administrative functions. MG Technology Group — The Solution to Business Evolution ™. 

My Session: How To Get SaaSy! Software as a Service (Hosted)

Todd Colbeck - Todd Colbeck, MBA, is an industry   veteran and business coach. He specializes in helping business owners grow their practice by increasing client loyalty and getting clients to actively promote their business. He uses OneNote 2007 extensively in his own practice.He coaches every business owner he works with on using OneNote to massively increase revenues and reduce workflow time in their business.

My Session: Total Small Business Management Using OneNote 2007

 Dana Epp - Dana Epp researches software security and focuses on strong authentication and identity assurance solutions at Scorpion Software Corp. As a serial entrepreneur and computer security software architect, Dana has spent the last 18 years focusing on developing and commercializing software with a particular emphasis on security engineering for small and midsized businesses.  For the past 4 years, Dana has been honored with the award and distinction as a “Security MVP” by Microsoft for his work and expertise in computer and software security.

My Session: Leveraging Windows Essential Server Solutions to Enhancing Remote Productivity

 Jeff Connally - 30 years of leadership experience in sales, marketing, business development and general management experience. He has served in a wide range of roles from Field Sales Representative to President  & CEO in companies ranging from technology start-ups to the Fortune 10.  His leadership style creates a focused dedication and keen sense of urgency to the business’ key success factors.   Major Career Milestones: IBM, GlobalSoft, Founder of UpLink Golf, Founder of Gener8Biz , President & CEO CMIT Solutions, Founder of LifeTeam
Mr. Connally was chosen, because of his entrepreneurial success and leadership expertise, to join the teaching staff of the MBA program at the Acton School of Entrepreneurship.

 Eric Steinberg - The idea of providing fixed fee network administration services became the obvious choice for Eric and his regular clients back in 1986.  Though hampered by technical limitations, it provide critical to the success of his “bootstrapped” business.  Eric was then tapped by Microsoft as one of the first  25 MCSEs in Windows NT 3.1.  Combining his technical and business knowledge he provided a CIO perspective for early adopters.  As head of professional services for Citrix’s largest specialty distributor he shifted his focus to the virtualization revolution.  There, he developed a series of presentations that demonstrated its business value.  Today he focuses on developing MSP solutions for clients and is involved in a start-up company that delivers the first true peer-to-peer SMB social lending network.

Scott Barlow - Scott Barlow - Scott has been a channel leader in the SMB space for the past 10 years, developing go-to-market strategies leading to strong alliances and rapid market expansion. At Reflexion Networks, Scott is responsible for worldwide sales of the company’s suite of hosted services for email and web security, email archiving, discovery and recovery, and business continuity, and has grown the company’s partner community to over 750 resellers and distributors in 50 countries. He also serves as Product Manager for Reflexion Total Control, the company’s flagship email security offering, ensuring that all development work is squarely focused on addressing solution provider and end-user requirements. Prior to joining Reflexion, Scott was Director of Business Development at start-up Virtual Access Networks, a leader in operating system migration and remote access that was acquired by Symantec. Previously he worked at Cambridge Technology Partners, where he developed a go-to-market strategy for post-ERP implementation services.  Scott holds an MBA and a Master’s of Science in Geophysics from Boston College, and was recently named a 2009 Channel Chief by Everything Channel.

My Session: How To Get SaaSy! Software as a Service (Hosted)
My Session: The Most Powerful Multiplier for Drag-Along Revenue

David S. Schafran -David S. Schafran, President of Transformation Strategies (www.TransStrat.com), is a consultant working with MSPs, IT consulting and support companies to integrate or enhance managed services within their offerings, increase revenue, reduce service delivery costs and position their managed services to scale.

Schafran has developed a strong reputation in the managed services industry as a consultant and speaker through his work with a variety of MSPs and vendors, in managed services sales, marketing, operations and technology.  In 2008 he was named to ‘The MSPmentor 250’, an annual listing of the top 250 executives and leaders shaping the managed services ecosystem.  His approach to managed services has influenced best practices in many aspects of the industry.
Prior to establishing Transformation Strategies in 2007, Mr. Schafran worked for twenty years within IT consulting and support firms as a network and systems engineer, an executive and an owner.  Schafran began focusing on managed services at the beginning of their introduction to IT integrators in 1999 and since 1987 has worked with hundreds of clients, large and small, across the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia, encompassing many vertical markets. 

My Session: Sunday AM Business Panel

Greg Starks - SMB Solutions Program Manager, Hewlett-Packard. Greg has been with HP and Compaq for over 20 years, contributing in the areas of electrical and software engineering, IT management, solution architecture and technical marketing. He is now part of a new team driving SMB Strategy and GTM for the Industry Standard Server division. Greg has presented at 10 SMB Nation events and contributed technical content, including TechTalk videos for Harry’s 2005 - 2007 worldwide workshop tours. He holds MCSE and MCDBA certifications and is a graduate of Purdue University with Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering Technology.

Ashutosh Tiwary - Ashutosh is co-Founder and CEO of Doyenz that is building a comprehensive platform (called Automated Virtual IT™) that revolutionizes delivery of IT to the SMB. During his 25 year tenure in the computer industry, Ashutosh has been a successful entrepreneur and has held many technology and business leadership roles in enterprise tools and virtualization. Recently, Ashutosh was co-founder and CTO of Performant, which emerged from his PhD thesis work at the University of Washington. Performant, acquired by Mercury, built enterprise tools for Performance Diagnostics. At Mercury, Ashutosh led the Diagnostics business as its Vice President. Ashutosh subsequently joined Microsoft as the Senior Architect for Visual Studio Team System. At Microsoft, he also created and managed a Product Unit that built Tools for Software Testing.

Joe Schurman - Joe Schurman is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Evangelyze Communications, a Microsoft Certified Voice Specialized Partner of Microsoft Corporation. Joe has provided consulting and research within the Information Technology industry and with Microsoft for the past 15 years. In addition to holding senior roles at IBM Global Services and Accenture, Joe has founded several successful organizations focusing on the research and development of VoIP technologies. Joe was involved in the early stages of Microsoft’s Unified Communications Group in 2002 with the release of Microsoft Live Communications Server 2003 and provided internationally recognized research, publications, and training seminars in each Microsoft region, globally from 2003 – 2006. In 2006, Joe began working with Microsoft Research on the initial launch of Microsoft’s Small Business VoIP product, Microsoft Response Point and has travelled throughout the US and Canada providing training and readiness to Microsoft’s partners and customers. Joe is an award-winning speaker, who has been awarded by the Microsoft TechNet program, having spoken for thousands of attendees at Microsoft events and IT industry focused seminars and webcasts and is a 5-time award winner of the prestigious Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award for his community involvement and contributions to Microsoft’s VoIP products and services internationally. Joe is the author of two other books entitled, “Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005”, published by Wrox Books, and an e-book entitled, “Are you in IT?” Joe is married with three children and resides in Houston, Texas, where he began his career in the IT industry at Compaq Computer Corporation.

Joel Allen - Joel Allen conceived of AllenPort Co. in 2003, and the company began development of the AllenPort service in the summer of 2006. Previously, Joel was President of Site-View Co., a tech visionary company that developed early-stage GPS-based street view automation. Similar 360 degree photo gathering services are now widely adopted by companies including Google’s Street view and other real estate services. Prior to that, he was President of J.E. Allen Management Co. and J.E. Allen Properties. Both companies and their subsidiaries were responsible for the acquisition, management and sale of multi-family buildings, as well as securing multi-family mortgages in the Phoenix, AZ metropolitan area. Joel has broad experience with technology, strategic planning, raising capital, management recruiting, and acquisition identification. In 5 years time, he hopes AllenPort Co. will be recognized as “the company that connected the client to the cloud.”

Eriq Neale - Eriq Oliver Neale is a small business technology specialist based in Denton, Texas. He was the lead author for two books on Small Business Server and a contributor to a number of other technical publications. Eriq has been helping to prepare IT Professionals for supporting Small Business Server 2008 through conference and user group presentations, as well as through the monthly SBS 2008 webinars hosted by Third Tier. Eriq maintains two blogs and has a weekly internet radio program on small business technology that has been running for three and a half years. Eriq has also been recognized as an MVP for Small Business Server since 2006.

Jason Turk - Senior VAR Sales Manager, North America NETGEAR, Inc. - Jason Turk leads NETGEAR’s North American VAR Sales Team.  NETGEAR’s VAR Business unit is made up of more than 18,000 companies from the traditional VAR, National VAR, System Integrator and Tier 2/3 Retail and E-Commerce players.  These companies sell NETGEAR’S Business Class products, including ProSafe Switches, Ready NAS Storage, and ProSecure Security products.

Since joining NETGEAR in 2006, Jason has been instrumental in expanding the breadth of program offerings to our Partners, including Deal Registration, Risk Free Evaluation, free 24 hr. US Based Level 2 technical support, and increased MDF/BDF resources.

Prior to NETGEAR, Jason was Director of North American VAR Sales for Socket Communications. Before Socket, Jason was the Product Marketing Manager for the LCD Business Unit at Acer during which time Acer’s LCD market share went from 15th in North America to 4th.

He has also held senior positions at Promise Technology, where he was National Sales Manager for ten years and at Synnex Information Technologies as Sr. Product Manager for three years.

Sam Gutmann - Sam Gutmann is Co-Founder, CEO, and President of Intronis Technologies.  In the late 1990s, while working as a small business consultant, Gutmann and his two colleagues found that many of their clients were not properly backing up their data.  In 2000 the three began researching and developing a backup service that would eliminate the need for tapes, disks, and CDs and instead would offer an offsite, secure, and easy to use backup service.  After three years of research, development, software design and testing, the eSureIT product was launched in 2003 and Intronis Technologies was founded. 

As CEO and President of Intronis Technologies, Gutmann is responsible for directing the company’s long-term strategies and partnerships, while also handling the day-to-day operations and bottom-line performance of the eSureIT service.

Prior to Intronis Technologies, Gutmann worked for over 10 years as a small business consultant.  He is a graduate of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute with a degree in Management Information Systems.

Gutmann co-founded Intronis Technologies with Steve Frank and Neal Bradbury in 2003.

Tom McGee - Tom is President of Smart Technology Group, Inc. a St. Louis based consulting company focused on the mobility market. Smart Technology Group is focused on extending the company's core services beyond the desktop and offering engaging services with leading wireless providers, device manufacturers, systems engineering, consulting and services, Tom has designed and deployed solutions for a wide range of customers in SMB market.  His experiences include the sales, support design, implementation, and management and marketing mobility systems.  Prior to starting Smart Technology Group in 1993 he was a senior system engineer for a number of large resellers in the Midwest from 1984-1993.  When Tom isn't working, playing with his electronic gadgets, or riding his mountain bike?he can be found spending quality time with his friends and family He has a BSE in Industrial Technology from Southeast Missouri University

Dave Stufflebeam - Dave brings over 16 years of technical computer experience to the Sales team at StorageCraft. Working for companies like Macromedia, Corel and Novell, Dave has gained an extensive and a diverse technical knowledge. At Macromedia and Corel, he presented to and trained well over 35,000 people and preformed company trainings at companies like Walt Disney World, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Boeing, Wal-Mart and many more.  His passion for technology and technical knowledge give him the edge when working with customers and partners.

My Session: How to Provide Profitable and Simple Disaster Recovery, Data Protection and System Migration Services to Your Customers

Sean Sweeney -  Director Partner Development
With Level Platforms since the early days of managed services, Sean has experienced the evolution of and helped to define the managed services industry. He possesses a wealth of knowledge that he shares with a worldwide community of over 3000 Level Platforms Partners, ensuring that they are maximizing the huge ROI potential of Managed Workplace, the leading RMM platform for MSPs servicing SMBs. Sean continues today to provide direct and personal business support to VARs, resellers and IT service providers who are making the transition to managed services. To his role, Sean brings over 20 years of sales experience, and has owned and operated three multimillion dollar SMB businesses.

My Session:

Wayne Turmel - President, Greatwebmeetings.com
For over 15 years, Wayne Turmel has brought his humor, passion and expertise to people learning to communicate more effectively. After a long career as a presentation and sales trainer working with some of business’ best-known companies, he is now the president of Greatwebmeetings.com, the world’s foremost web presentation training company. He is proud to partner with SMB Nation to support their industry-leading webinar practice.  Wayne’s the author of industry standard, “6 Weeks to a Great Webinar- Generate Leads and Tell Your Story to the World” and countless articles and books

My Session:

Caitlin Buxton - As Director of Channel Sales, Caitlin is responsible for the expansion of AVG channel sales in the Distribution, VAR and Corporate Reseller segments and directs a team of both inside and field sales to support this goal.   Caitlin has over 12 years of channel sales management experience in the malware-protection, security, managed services, and networking markets. Previously Caitlin served as Director of Distribution at Red Condor, Director of Channel Sales at Kaspersky Lab, and held various sales leadership roles at Ipswitch, Inc.

My Session: AVG’s Value Proposition – 80 million users can’t be wrong!

Robert Cohen - Bio Coming Soon

Dave Bainum, PMP - Dave Bainum is the co-founder of RiteTech LLC (www.ritetech.net), a small IT Consultancy based in the Washington, DC area.  RiteTech is the creator of the www.RPConnect.net suite of Web-based applications for Microsoft Response Point.  In his “past professional lives”, Dave’s amassed over 15 years of progressive IT experience taken from roles ranging from Help Desk, to Systems Administrator/Architect/Engineer, to IT Project Manager, IT Manager, IT Security Administrator, etc..  He’s worked for and in organizations of all types, sizes, and missions – including two telephone companies, a non-profit ISP, a public water utility, technology companies, financial services, as well as two GSE’s.

Michael Bienvenue - As product manager for Autotask Corporation’s popular and affordable IT services management tool Autotask®Go!, Michael Bienvenue manages, directs and oversees all aspects of the product, including customer satisfaction.  In addition, he leads the development of ongoing enhancements.  Autotask Go! gives small IT service businesses the power to manage service issues, customer relationships, contracts, inventory, time tracking and billing.

Prior to joining Autotask, Michael spent 12 years in the trenches as an owner of a successful IT services company.  This experience gave him a practical, real-world perspective on small IT service business models, which he uses to ensure that Autotask Go! is optimized to address the everyday needs of emerging IT shops.

My Session: The Explosion of IT Service Networking, Collaboration, Outsourcing and New Partnerships

Laura DiDio - Bio Coming Soon

Jan Spring -  Jan Spring is VP of Channel Development for eFolder, Inc. Her primary responsibility is developing and supporting the solution provider channel for the company's award winning remote and local backup services and newly released email archiving offering.

eFolder has captured numerous channel accolades, including CompTIA conference awards and CRN emerging vendor designations.
 
Jan has extensive experience in IT solution sales and technology channel building with several organizations. She founded The Chaparral Group in 1992, was VP of Sales at SafeNet, Inc, and served as VP of Sales for Computone Systems.

Sheri Atwood -  Sheri Atwood is Vice President, Global Solutions and Programs at Symantec. She is responsible for driving Symantec solutions strategy, campaigns, competitive strategy, marketing enablement and the Symantec Executive Briefing Program.  Ms. Atwood originally joined Symantec via the Veritas acquisition in 2001 and has held positions in product marketing and product management. Most recently she was responsible for driving Symantec’s strategic solution strategy and launch process.

She holds a Bachelors Degree in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego and an MBA from San Jose State University.

Mark Bartig - Mark Bartig is Sr. Director of Mid Market Field Sales at Symantec, with over 20 years of experience in Sales and IT.  His primary responsibility is to drive the overall field sales execution for Symantec’s North America Mid-Market end-user business through the channel. This includes working closely with partner development, channel marketing, as well as end-user field sales within the Mid-Market and Channel teams.

Prior to this role, Mr. Bartig has held various Sales and Management positions in Channel, Large Enterprise and Enterprise Sales within Symantec.  He has been with Symantec for 7 years. 
 

Stephen Deming - My background is in hardware design and engineering, but through my work I quickly progressed to software training. With almost thirty years of professional computer experience, I’ve spent many years working with businesses to identify and implement effective solutions.

Since joining Microsoft over seven years ago, I’ve worked with our seminar team helping customers and partners understand the benefits of our technology, where that technology is heading in the future, and how to take advantage of the available Microsoft partner programs. My passion is helping people understand technology better so they can make educated decisions. Let me help you too!