Joel Cohen is an Emmy award-winning writer and associate producer of The Simpsons. He started his career with an MBA working in sales. Through a job with Turner Broadcasting, he found his way into writing on the sitcom Suddenly Susan. From there, he moved on to The Simpsons, the longest-running primetime animated series. It has won a Peabody, 18 Emmys, a Golden globe nomination, and many other awards, largely thanks to its team of consistently creative writers like Cohen.

Dr. John Halamka is the CIO of Harvard Medical School and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He has an undergraduate degree in public policy with a focus on technology issues and has been a columnist for Infoworld as well as technical editor of Computer Language magazine. His career has focused on the intersection of medicine and technology, including creating systems for online medical records and medical education. His research while at Harvard has centered on security and confidentiality, scalability, and implementing information exchange standards.

President and Chief Executive Officer, Red Hat

Whitehurst joined Delta Airlines in 2002, serving in various roles, most recently as Chief Operating Officer, responsible for Operations, Sales and Customer Service, Network and Revenue Management, Marketing and Corporate Strategy. Prior to joining Delta, Whitehurst served as Vice President and Director of The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and held various leadership roles in their Chicago, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Atlanta offices.

A native of Columbus, Ga., Whitehurst graduated from Rice University in Houston, Texas, with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Economics. He also attended Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen, Germany, holds a general course degree from the London School of Economics and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Executive Vice President, Engineering

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.

CTO and Vice President, Engineering

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.

General Manager, IBM Enterprise Systems Division

Jim Stallings is General Manager of Enterprise Systems Division in IBM Systems and Technology Group, where he is responsible for delivering large systems and storage offerings to IBM's largest enterprise customers worldwide. He provides strategic direction to a global organization and drives business execution to this client segment team. While focused entirely on the challenges facing customers running global I/T operations, Jim brings to the market an integrated set of solutions that spans IBM's hardware, software and services offerings.

Jim previously served as General Manager of Linux where he led the transformation of Linux from an emerging opportunity to a multibillion dollar business encompassing IBM's server software and services business units. In addition to his leadership advancing the worldwide adoption of Linux, he directed IBM's Strategic Growth business unit overseeing the delivery of integrated solutions that leverage innovative technologies such as: Grid Computing, Deep Computing and Virtualization technology, to further enable on demand business transformation.

Intel General Manager, Server Platforms Group Marketing

Boyd Davis is General Manager, Intel Server Platforms Group Marketing, Digital Enterprise Group. In this capacity, Boyd is responsible for product marketing and customer technical support for all of Intel's server and workstation platforms and initiatives. Boyd has overseen the market introductions of several generations of Itanium and Xeon processors, helping to establish Intel's leadership in the areas of energy efficiency, virtualization, and high performance for the enterprise. In addition to his marketing role, Boyd leads Intel's overall effort in the fast growing workstation segment, with responsibility for products, enabling, and market engagement.

Prior to his current position, he was the Director, Americas Marketing Group. In this role, Boyd integrated and expanded Intel's marketing capabilities in the Americas. Since joining Intel in 1990, Boyd has held positions in a variety of sales and marketing, market development and account management roles. Boyd graduated from Purdue University with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering.