Following successful public offerings in 1999 and 2000, Red Hat has developed global partnerships with Oracle, IBM, Dell, Intel, and HP to deliver technology based on open source technology. Today, Red Hat is the leading provider of Linux and open source technology to the enterprise and is positioned to be the defining technology company of the 21st century.
Szulik is passionate about improving the educational opportunities for students worldwide through open source, and he is a spokesperson to industry, government, and education leaders on open source computing.
Szulik is the Chairman of the Science and Technology Board for State of North Carolina's Economic Development Board. He is past Chairman and an Executive Director of the North Carolina Electronics and Information Technologies Association.
David Pakman is President and CEO of eMusic, the world's largest retailer of independent music and the second largest digital music service after iTunes. Pakman has been a pioneer and entrepreneur in the digital media space for more than 15 years, focusing on developing music industry business models which exploit the efficiencies of the internet and other technologies.
Prior to joining eMusic, Pakman was senior vice president of corporate development and public policy for BeMusic, a division of Bertelsmann, after selling Myplay, Inc., a company he co-founded, to Bertelsmann's eCommerce Group in 2001. Pakman was president of business development and public policy at Myplay, the broadband application services company that introduced the "digital music locker" in 1999 and pioneered the locker category. Before Myplay, he was Vice President at N2K Entertainment, which created the first commercially-viable secure digital download service. Pakman also was an early principal force and co-creator of Apple Computer's Music Group, co-founding the Macintosh New York Music Festival and co-producing the then-largest industry webcast to-date, the 1997 GRAMMY Awards.
Pakman is a former board member of DiMA (Digital Media Association), has testified before Congress and the NTIA about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and has spoken at literally hundreds of conferences and public events. He is a current board member of Knitting Factory Entertainment and a frequent resource for journalists on digital music.
Since joining Red Hat in May 2001 as Executive VP of Engineering, Paul Cormier's leadership and experience in enterprise technology has led to the introduction of Red Hat's acclaimed line of enterprise products, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Cormier has been instrumental in forging tight partnerships with many leading technology companies.
Prior to coming to Red Hat, he served as senior vice president of research and development at BindView, helping the company achieve market leadership in 2000. Cormier holds a Master of Science in Software Development and Management from Rochester Institute of Technology.
Alan's background as a software application developer and computer program test engineer for companies like Borland International and Intel Corporation provide a sound foundation for dealing with issues related to voting machine and electoral tabulation software. Dechert helped craft one of the most widely used open source computer programs to remedy the Y2K problem, which was employed by businesses and governments around the world. Alan works full time for OVC educating the public, pressing for needed legislation for electoral accountability and raising funds for programming needed open source voting machine and election tabulation software.
Brian Stevens, CTO and Vice President of Engineering at Red Hat, has over 20 years of enterprise engineering experience in UNIX and Linux technologies, including work as a developer on the first commercial release of the X Window System. Since joining Red Hat's senior management team in 2001, Stevens has been critical to the company's enterprise operating system, storage, and clustering strategies. He now leads the Emerging Technologies group.
Prior to joining Red Hat, Stevens served as CTO of Mission Critical Linux, where he was responsible for corporate strategy, business development, and clustering products. Stevens also spent 14 years at Digital/Compaq as a Senior Member of Technical Staff, where he was responsible for the architecture and development of the Tru64 OS and clustering products, as well as the inaugural release of Digital's TruCluster product. Stevens received his B.S. in Computer Science at the University of New Hampshire and his M.S. in Computer Systems from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Derek Chan is the Head of Digital Operations for DreamWorks Animation. In this role, Derek provides strategic vision and planning for the animation studio's computing infrastructure — which includes Systems Engineering, Systems Operations, Technical Resource Management, Hardware Engineering and Virtual Studio Collaboration development.
Derek joined DreamWorks in 1996 as a pipeline software developer focused on creating the render queue management system that has been used on every DreamWorks Animation film to date. Derek was then promoted to Software Development Manager where he directed a team of developers that focused on 2D and 3D pipeline issues. This team was called upon to develop the first new application, ToonShooter, completely on Linux. This ground-breaking new pencil test system was instrumental in establishing DreamWorks Animation as the industry leader in the use of Linux on the desktop and in the datacenter.
After successfully leading those software development efforts, Derek was asked to focus on Digital Operations. As the Head of Digital Operations for DreamWorks Animation, Derek has been at the forefront of numerous technology initiatives that have enabled the company to reach the unprecedented scale and creative milestones including:
Derek is a member of Advisory Councils for Hewlett-Packard, Advanced Micro Devices, and the Open Source Development Lab. Derek is also a member of the Visual Effects Society and the Science and Technology Council's Task Force on Digital Motion Picture Archiving for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Derek's film credits include: "The Prince of Egypt," "The Road to El Dorado," "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron," "Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas," "Shrek 2," "Shark Tale," "Madagascar," "Over the Hedge" and "Flushed Away."
Derek has spoken at LinuxWorld, Siggraph, the InterMountain Venture Forum and ComputerWorld's Premier 100 IT Leaders conference.
Derek received his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles and his Masters in Computer Science from Stanford University.
Henri Richard, 48, is Executive Vice President, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at AMD. His current duties include oversight of the company's global field sales and support organization, corporate marketing, and go-to-market activities for all AMD customer segments, including commercial, consumer and innovative solutions groups, and AMD's 50x15 Initiative (50x15). Mr. Richard joined AMD in April 2002 as Group Vice President, Worldwide Sales. He was promoted to Senior Vice President in May 2003 and was appointed to his current position as an executive officer in February 2004. Prior to joining AMD, Mr. Richard was Executive Vice President of Worldwide Field Operations at WebGain, Inc., a privately held provider of Java software for Fortune 500 companies. Before WebGain, he was vice president of Worldwide Sales and Support for IBM's Technology Group. Mr. Richard has also held senior executive positions with several notable companies in the U.S. and Europe, including tenures as President of the Computer Products Group at Bell Microproducts, Executive Vice President at Karma International, and Vice President at Seagate Technology/Conner Peripherals.