Keynote Speech - Technology, Government and the Transparency Age

Stuart McKee
National Technology Officer
U.S. Public Sector
Microsoft Corporation

In June 2004, Stuart joined Microsoft as the U.S. National Technology Officer. He is responsible for driving a comprehensive set of technical and business strategies for the U.S. Public Sector State and Local segment. As NTO he has both an internal as well as an external focus – shaping and articulating Microsoft's technology vision and strategy.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Stuart served as the Director of the Washington State Department of Information Services (DIS) on Governor Gary Locke’s executive cabinet. As the DIS Director, McKee served as Chief Information Officer for the state and managed an internationally recognized agency which provides technology leadership and infrastructure for government organizations across Washington State.

Stuart also worked as the VP of Global Internet Operations for the Walt Disney Company where he directed operations for a number of the Internet’s most visible sites including ESPN.com, Disney.com, ABCNews.com and GO.com. His background also includes strategic planning and operational management of enterprise-wide systems for companies including Starwave and Infoseek.

Stuart holds an MBA from Gonzaga University in Spokane Washington and a BS in Business Administration / Management Accounting from Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho.

Download Stuart's PowerPoint Presentation Here.

Session 1 - Cloud Computing Roundtable

Todd Sander
Deputy Director
Center for Digital Government

Todd Sander serves as Deputy Director for the Center for Digital Government. Todd has enjoyed a long and diverse experience in the public sector and with technology. His background will greatly support his responsibilities at the Center where he will be driving the development of local government initiatives and programs.

Sander has worked extensively with federal, state and local government since the early 1990s to improve public service though the use of information technology. He has served as Chief Information Officer/Assistant City Manager for the City of Tucson, Deputy CIO for the State of Washington and worked as a consultant in support of the Department of Defense, national intelligence communities and multi-state law enforcement agencies. He has received several national honors including the 2003 National Public Technologist of the Year by Public Technology Incorporated.

Kevin K Crawford
Assistant General Manager
Information Technology Agency
City of Los Angeles - Google Apps SaaS E-mail & Collaboration System

Kevin is an Assistant General Manager for the Information Technology Agency of the City of Los Angeles. He is the executive over the Infrastructure, Strategy and Public Information Bureau. Kevin has established a Strategic Initiatives Group, a PMO, and a Customer Support services Team. He also oversees the Citizen focused 311 Call-Center, the City’s mainframe environment and City-wide technology infrastructure. Current initiatives include optimizing 30+ technology support groups throughout the City and moving to the Google Apps SaaS E-mail & Collaboration system.

Before joining the City of Los Angeles, Kevin spent five years as the Chief Information Officer for the Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority (Sound Transit), in Seattle, Washington. Kevin was hired to design, build and implement a centralized Information Technology Organization for Sound Transit. Sound Transit quickly moved from trailing edge to leading edge in technology. A cornerstone of which was the creation of a 5-year Strategic Technology Plan.

Prior to his tenure at Sound Transit, Kevin was the Chief IT Architect and Senior Technology Manager at the Port of Seattle. His initiatives built new web-based infrastructures, Quality Assurance, Change Management and a technology security plan. Other professional accomplishments include managing technology support and implementation at Weyerhaeuser Company for seven years as the Regional Support Manager for the US & Mexico and serving as an Officer in the US Air Force for 9 years.

Kevin holds bachelor’s degrees in Psychology & Political Science from the University of Washington and a master’s degree in Computer Information Systems from Boston University.

Rick Scherer
Senior Virtualization Specialist
EMC Corporation

Rick Scherer (VCDX, VCP, vExpert) is a Senior Virtualization Specialist based out of Temecula, CA for EMC Corporation with its worldwide headquarters in Hopkinton, MA. Considered a virtualization veteran he has been working with virtualization technologies such as VMware for close to 10 years and has design, deployed and managed environments of all sizes. Over the past years Rick has been the author and editor of many virtualization focused books such as Mastering VMware vSphere 4 and VMware VCP410 Study Guide, including maintaining his own blog site VMwareTips.com which receives over 100,000 visitors each month.

Before joining EMC Corporation in 2010 he was a Solutions Architect for San Diego Data Processing Corporation, a non-profit provider of Information Technology services to government agencies like The City of San Diego. While in this position he successfully designed and implemented a virtualization solution for The City of San Diego which removed over 300 servers from the city's datacenter floor, reduced overall CapEx/OpEx costs by over $1m dollars and decreased total deployment time of new servers from 3 weeks down to one hour. This virtualization project also included the migration from physical to virtual for many mission critical applications such as SAP, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL and ESRI ArcGIS.

Today, Rick evangelizes the tremendous benefits of virtualization and cloud computing to companies of all sizes, explaining important integration pieces and assists C-Level executives understand this new wave of computing. He believes that companies migrating to the private cloud can not only experience monetary benefits but also decrease our carbon footprint and provide a better tomorrow for the next generation.

Adrian Gonzalez
Technology Manager
County Technology Office and
Public Safety Group
San Diego County

Adrian has over 29 years experience in Information Technology. Adrian has developed a deep understanding and experience in supporting a broad spectrum of local government service areas including: Accounting & Financial System, Health & Human Services, Permitting, Code Enforcement, Planning & Land Use, Content & Document Management, Public Safety, Asset & Facilities Management, GIS, Mobility and Office Automation. He has enjoyed working on several award winning programs and applications over his career.

As a member of the County of San Diego Technology Office and Public Safety management team, Adrian provides services in strategy development and internal consultancy to solve local government challenges in responding to program operations and service delivery goals.

Session 2 - Municipal Broadband Strategies

W. James Hettrick
Chairman & CEO
ISMS

W. James Hettrick, a global expert on community networks, develops strategic information systems management solutions for municipalities and the private sector. He founded ISMS, Inc. (Information Systems Management Solutions), after an extensive career in local government, and, as Chief Information Officer in the city of Loma Linda, California, was acclaimed for his work in rolling out FTTh broadband for the city. James is an economist, author, technologist and evangelist for connected communities.

Craig Settles
successful.com

Craig Settles' workshops, consulting services and books help organizations worldwide use broadband to cut costs, improve business operations and improve communities. His many in-depth analysis reports and other written works establish Mr. Settles as a prominent thought leader on effective strategies to deploy broadband networks. He is author of Fighting the Next Good Fight: Bringing True Broadband to Your Community, and Co-Director of Communities United for Broadband.

Wayne Gartin
Chief Operating Officer
Novarum

Wayne Gartin has been a high impact part of the high tech industry for many years. He is a technologist, an entrepreneur, a fundraiser, and is actively involved in the community.

He has been focused on wireless broadband since joining the founders of Novarum in 2006. Novarum is the leading advisory team to the wireless broadband market, providing strategic planning, network design and evaluation for companies and communities in the U.S. and Asia. Wayne has been responsible for Novarum’s business development and customer relationships with communication equipment manufacturers, major ISPs, and municipalities around the world.

Most recently, Novarum designed and is building a high performance municipal network for Cleveland, another in rural Kentucky, and has just completed a major strategic initiative for the largest cable provider in the Northeast, and is providing strategic direction for enhancing the 2.4 and 4.9 networks in Minneapolis.

Earlier, He played a lead role in bringing optical communications to the municipal and local access markets. Believing that traditional wire-line communications could not meet the growing broadband requirements of the future, Wayne joined the early makers of tunable lasers, and helped to raise over $100M in funding from major Venture Capital firms, Investment Bankers, and strategic partners. Working internationally with NTT, Wayne was closely tied to the development and deployment of leading edge EPON systems that deliver multiple streams of HDTV, VoIP, and other high bandwidth applications to every home in the urban centers of Japan.

He has had several leadership positions in start-ups and Fortune 100 companies. He was a founder of one of the first successful semiconductor intellectual property companies, pioneering the concept of personal area networking in computers, PDAs, and home entertainment to companies around the world. He joined AT&T Microelectronics prior to the Lucent divesture, and as the Director of the communication and storage markets, tripled sales to over $1B. He started his high tech career with Intel and held positions in marketing, strategic planning, sales, and sales management.

Joe Caldwell
Chief Executive Officer
US Internet Corporation

Joe Caldwell co-founded US Internet Corporation in March 1995, and since that date has served on its board of directors and it's CO-CEO. US Internet Corporation is a privately held technology company that offers internet access, wireless, VOIP, data centers,colo location, cloud computing, application service provider, and email filtering.