Red Hat Training Partner Conference EMEA

Agenda Friday 30 September

Agenda Saturday 1 October

Speakers at Red Hat Training Partner Conference EMEA
 

Karl-Heinz Wimmer
Vice president, Services, EMEA

Karl-Heinz Wimmer joined Red Hat in Summer 2003 with a successful history in working with international IT companies and managing pre-sales and professional consulting services for state of the art software products for enterprise customers. At Red Hat, Karl-Heinz leads and manages Red Hat's Pre-sales as well as Consulting and Learning Services in EMEA. With Karl-Heinz's leadership the team grew rapidly and the scope is constantly adapted to new product lines and technologies and to the fast increasing business. Karl-Heinz's current team consists today of more than 200 Solution Architects and Consultants to support the EMEA business in pre- and post-sales phases either direct or in close co-operation with our partners. A main focus area is to align the organization to the changing market demands and to new technologies around middleware, virtualization and cloud. Key customer served by Karl-Heinz's organization belong to the top global 500 with a major focus on FSI and Telco industry among others. Besides serving customers in direct engagements a major strategic focus is to get closely aligned with our partners and System Integrators to support them in their projects and make the collaboration a win-win-win for customers, partners and Red Hat.

Ken Goetz
Vice President, Global Learning Services

Ken Goetz is Vice President of Global Learning Services at Red Hat, where he is responsible for building a community of outstanding and enthusiastic users of Red Hat products. Prior to Red Hat, Ken held many different roles in the IT education industry, including selling training, teaching classes, developing content, and managing back-office functions globally. He built and implemented a number of education programs from scratch and pioneered innovative solutions to grow the adoption of new learning formats and modalities. At Oracle, Ken led the integration of over 80 different acquired training businesses spanning the full spectrum of the technology stack, including SaaS and on-premise horizontal/vertical applications, hardware solutions, and middleware/database/cloud technologies. Ken lives in Raleigh, North Carolina and is a two-time Ironman triathlete. He received his MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Jens Ziemann
Director, Global Learning Services, EMEA

Jens is responsible for the commercial success of Red Hat's Training and Certification Services Business in EMEA. Jens is not only one of the founding members of Red Hat EMEA, but also the longest serving employee in the EMEA region. Jens started working with Linux and Open Source Software in 1992 while studying computer science and economics at the University of Stuttgart. By 1994 he was running his own Linux Software and Services company (delix) in Germany. Before the acquisition of delix by Red Hat in mid 1999, delix developed and maintained its own Linux distribution called "DLD - Deutsche Linux Distribution" and served as the market leader in Germany for many years. After the acquisition by Red Hat the development of the DLD and the developer team was integrated into the Red Hat Development team and are still part of the "Core OS" Team.

Since Red Hat's expansion into EMEA, Jens has been responsible for growing the training business, first with a focus on Central and Eastern Europe and later for the complete EMEA region.

Jan Wildeboer
Open Source Evangelist at Red Hat, EMEA

Jan Wildeboer works at Red Hat as the EMEA Evangelist. Travels across EMEA to talk, discuss and convince his audience that Open Source, Knowledge, Standards etc. are the better way to go. Ever since he found Linux in 1993, Jan Wildeboer has been a fierce fighter for more Open on every level. As a developer of Open Source projects, as a lobbyist and as an activist. But it’s not only software. He also runs a 3D printer at home, is a transnational immigration officer and a known speaker at various conferences and events.

Randy Russell
Director of Certification

Randy Russell is the Director of Certification at Red Hat. He has overseen the development of the industry-leading Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) and Red Hat Certified Technician (RHCT) performance-based exams, as well as the performance-based Certificates of Expertise exams that lead to the Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA), Red Hat Certified Security Specialist (RHCSS), and Red Hat Datacenter Specialist (RHCDS) credentials. He also oversaw the development of Red Hat's training curriculum until 2007, at which time he had the opportunity to focus on certification. Prior to joining Red Hat in 1999, Randy was a system administrator, programmer, and economist at an environmental economics consulting firm.

Pete Hnath
Director of Curriculum

Pete Hnath holds the title of Director of Curriculum Development for Red Hat and is responsible for over 30 courses in the product portfolio. Key projects he's led include the roll-out of a comprehensive curriculum development process, restructuring the coursebooks to be adult learning centered, and the creation of an open source based virtual training platform. His team recently launched Red Hat Online Learning, an innovative, hands-on, self-paced training program running in the Amazon cloud. Previously, Mr. Hnath co-founded Red Hat University and led the creation of Red Hat's Sales College. In this position, he launched a 40+ hour elearning curriculum and sales certification program. Earlier in his ten-year Red Hat career, he led the company's partner marketing efforts. Mr. Hnath holds a Master of Business Administration from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill and a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Florida.

Karl Reynolds
Training Director, North America

Karl is Red Hat's director of training for North America. He manages all aspects of the training business in the United States and Canada. Karl has nearly 20 years of IT training experience. In his career, he has delivered, developed, sold, and managed a variety of training programs. Karl is a graduate of Virginia Tech.

Franz Meyer
Vice president, Strategic Business Development, EMEA

Franz Meyer joined Red Hat in 2001 and is based in the Paris office. For the first 12 years of his career at Red Hat, Franz held responsibility for the development of Red Hat’s business opportunities in Western and Southern Europe, Middle East and Africa. He now leads a strategic initiative to accelerate new business opportunities and the adoption of new products in Red Hat’s portfolio (Middleware, Virtualization & Cloud, Storage) across the EMEA region.Franz has over 20 years experience in the European IT market. After completing his degree at the French engineering school ENSAM, Franz Meyer started his career in software with Sage in 1988. More recently he worked for BMC Software as Sales Director for France. He has also worked as Sales Manager with SDRC (Structural Dynamic Research Corp), where he developed the Product Data Management unit.

Morten Rohlfes
Head EMEA, Business Development Middleware

Morten Rohlfes leads the Middleware and Openshift business for red hat in EMEA. He has lead the application business at CSC in Dach and the application management business at Capgemini in Germany in previous stations of his career. Morten brings hands on knowledge for cloud engagement through his previous project lead and outsourcing experience with clients in the manufacturing and insurance. He has been a guest speaker at the German Bitkom. He has a Master in Computer Engineering from University of Karlsruhe and a Master in Business Administration.

Mike Dowsey
Executive, CEdMA Europe Limited

Mike has a PhD from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne on the subject of computers in education. He then joined IBM where he spent 27 years, largely in the training business. He was awarded an Outstanding Innovation Award for introducing education products into Europe, both before and when the IBM PC was introduced. After IBM, he spent 5 years as the European Training Manager for JD Edwards. For the last 11 years, Mike has run CEdMA Europe whose members are the training departments of hardware and/or software companies. We share experiences, both good and not-so- good, in a non-competitive environment with two conferences and four workshops a year.

Awards

At the conclusion of the 2016 conference, we'll host our annual awards dinner. We'll recognize the Red Hat fiscal year 2016 achievements of both our training partners and instructors.