Brooke Aker is the CEO of Expert System, a leading semantic technology firm, and is a long standing speaker and writer in the areas of Competitive Intelligence, Knowledge Management and Predictive Analytics. Mr. Aker has worked with over 130 of the Global 2000 in the formation and operation of successful intelligence, KM or analytics units at such companies as Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson and Petrobras. He has conducted numerous workshops and given speeches at SCIP, Knowledge Management and Strategy conferences. His technology development of intelligence/analytics systems have been recognized by and won awards from IBM, Strategy Magazine, and Fuld & Co. Mr. Aker earned a MA in Economics from Boston University and a BA in Economics from the University of Vermont.

Follow Brooke on Twitter: @brookeaker

Bell has been involved in the software industry since 1998 helping build organizations focused on desktop training, search, automated metadata extraction, taxonomy creation, knowledge management and semantic technologies. He has an extensive background helping grow software companies including Teach.com, Autonomy, APR Smartlogik and Concept Searching. Bell has developed and executed sales, OEM and VAR strategies, reseller programs and other business development initiatives for a variety of companies across multiple industries at crucial points in their maturation processes. As the VP of Enterprise Solutions, Bell is responsible for building a commercial direct sales team and developing a network of new partnerships with OEM’s, value added resellers, system integrators and distributors to increase the worldwide adoption of semantic technology within the global enterprise.

Founder of hakia, Dr. Berkan is a nuclear scientist by training with a specialization in artificial intelligence and fuzzy logic. He is the author of several articles in the area of reactor control and diagnostics, including the book Fuzzy Systems Design Principles published by IEEE in 1997. Between 1990 and 2000, Dr. Berkan worked for the US Government and handled multiple Lockheed Martin Energy Systems and Westinghouse projects. In 1997, Riza Berkan has received the Gold Award in Charleston International Film Festival in the documentary film category for his production "Southern Applachia." Riza Berkan holds a B.S. in Physics from Hacettepe University, Turkey and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Tennessee with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence.

Scott Brinker is the co-founder and CTO of Ion Interactive, a leading provider of software for post-click marketing and conversion optimization. A long-time marketing technology advocate, he publishes the blog Chief Marketing Technologist, where one of his key topics has been how marketers can and should embrace the semantic web (and vice versa). Scott has an MBA from MIT Sloan and a BS in Computer Science from Columbia University.

Follow Scott on Twitter: @chiefmartec

Ms. Connors has extensive experience in taxonomy, ontology and metadata design and development. Prior to forming TriviumRLG Ms. Connors was the global director, semantic technology solutions for Dow Jones, responsible for partnering with business champions across Dow Jones to improve digital asset management and delivery. In that position, she managed a worldwide team responsible for the development of taxonomies, ontologies and metadata that are used to add value to Dow Jones news and financial information products. Prior to joining Dow Jones, Ms. Connors was a knowledge architect at Intuit, where she was responsible for introducing semantic technologies to online content management and search. And before that, she was a Metadata Architect at Raytheon Company and Cybrarian at CEOExpress Company. At Raytheon Company she oversaw knowledge representation and enterprise search, delivering large-scale taxonomies, metadata schema and rules-based classification to improve retrieval of petabytes of internal information via a multivendor retrieval platform. Ms. Connors is a certified Six Sigma Specialist, and is a member of both the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) and the Special Libraries Association. Christine is Organizer of the Philadelphia and Princeton Semantic Web Meetups, and Assistant Organizer of the New York Semantic Web Meetup.

Duane Degler is a partner in Design for Context, a Washington DC/Baltimore-based usable design consultancy. He has designed numerous web and semantics-based applications and sites, backed by 25 years consulting experience in knowledge management and business performance. He has led software projects for commercial and government clients in the US and Europe – his specialty areas include designing for large-scale search capabilities and semantic-driven interactive applications. Along with his client consulting work, Duane curates the DesignForSemanticWeb resource website, co-organized the Semantic Web User Interaction workshop series, and is the strategy and technology advisor to the UPA Usability Body of Knowledge project.

Follow Duane on Twitter: @oddapproach

Michael S. Dunn directs all of Hearst's enterprise technology initiatives, manages the enterprise Program Management Office, performs venture related technology due diligence and coordinates all strategic technology relationships. He is actively involved in Hearst's strategic investment activity, identifying and conducting technical due diligence on new investment opportunities as well as providing ongoing technical support to the companies within the HIM portfolio. Dunn is responsible for technology oversight of all HIM wholly owned properties and oversees and coordinates Hearst's sponsorship of the MIT Media LAB and the partnership Hearst has with Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, related to technology initiatives. Prior to Hearst, Dunn had been chief technology officer at Encoda Systems and spent much of the last decade in CTO roles including Time Warner, where he was the Corporate CTO and also lead technologist for the Time Warner Digital Media Investment Fund, and was the founding CTO of Dell's online division.

Follow Mike on Twitter: @glemak

Lee Feigenbaum brings his expertise to his role as Cambridge Semantics' VP of Technology and Client Services, where he is responsible for applying the Anzo product suite to rapidly solve customers' data collection, data reporting, and data collaboration challenges. Prior to co-founding Cambridge Semantics, Lee spent over five years as an engineer with IBM's Advanced Internet Technology Group. For over three years, Lee helped architect and develop successive iterations of a semantic application architecture, culminating in the 2006 open-source release of the IBM Semantic Layered Research Platform. Now, Lee applies his expertise in semantic middleware and applications to the technologies and customers of Cambridge Semantics. Along the way, Lee has become an active member of the W3C Semantic Web standards community, and currently serves as the Co-Chair of the W3C's SPARQL Working Group, leading the design of the semantic-data query language, SPARQL. Lee is also the developer of Glitter, a SPARQL query engine designed specifically to meet the challenges of integrating heterogeneous data scattered across an enterprise. He writes about Semantic Web technologies at his blog, TechnicaLee Speaking.

Follow Lee on Twitter: @leefeigenbaum

Eric is currently the VP Community for Semantic Web at WebMediaBrands' SemanticWeb.com. Prior to that, Eric spent over a decade with Wilshire Conferences, and its sister company, Semantic Universe. As VP of both organizations, he worked to raise awareness and explain the usage of semantic technologies in business and consumer settings. A lifelong learner and teacher, Eric is frequently called on as a consultant, coach, and trainer around complex technical topics. He is an advisory committee representative with the World Wide Web Consortium and an Affiliate Analyst with Guidewire Group.

Follow Eric on Twitter: @ericaxel

Rob has been involved in Semantic Technologies for 7 years, first as a software engineer in IBM's Advanced Internet Technologies group, then as a Product Manager with Endeca focusing on their graph-based database responsible for running half of the top 100 Internet Retailers' browsing experiences, and more recently as the Senior Product Manager for Cambridge Semantics. This array of experience has given him familiarity both with the semantic technology value proposition and competitive distinction in the marketplace, which is all about end user empowerment, as well as with the core technical characteristics that distinguish its value. Cambridge Semantics Anzo Suite is targeted at line of business analysts, researchers, risk managers, and other knowledge workers, rather than being aimed at IT. Its core value proposition is in taking the tech out of technology, and enabling end users to have access to views on data when and where they need it most.

Follow Rob on Twitter: @chirping_gonzo

Martin Hepp is a professor of general management and e-business at Universität der Bundeswehr München in Germany, where he heads the e-business and Web Science Research Group, and the CEO of Hepp Research GmbH. His key research interest is in using structured, linked data on a Web scale for e-business, in particular matchmaking and product data reuse. As part of his research, he developed the GoodRelations and eClassOWL ontologies, now widely used by companies like BestBuy and Yahoo for describing offers on the Web. Also, he was the organizer of more than fifteen workshops and conference tracks on conceptual modeling, Semantic Web topics, and information systems and member of more than sixty conference and workshop program committees, including ASWC, ESWC, IEEE CEC/EEE, and ECIS, and is an associate editor of the International Journal on Semantic Web and Information Systems (IJSWIS). More information and publications are available at http://www.heppnetz.de/.

Follow Martin on Twitter: @mfhepp

Michael A. Lang, Sr. is Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Revelytix, Inc., a semantic technology company that has developed an ontology based collaboration framework for vocabulary development and community knowledge management. Prior to founding Revelytix, Mr. Lang co-founded MetaMatrix, an Enterprise Information Integration company that was sold to Red Hat in 2007. Earlier on, Mr. Lang was President of NSSI, a CAD software company purchased by Network Imaging. Prior to NSSI he worked in the financial information industry for Bridge Information Systems and Reuters Information Systems, where he ran strategy for financial information and analytic products. He is a noted consultant in the areas of data integration, information management and semantic technologies.

Michael joined Revelytix in 2007 as a Semantic Solution Specialist, where he was responsible for project management, overseeing all aspects of the ontology development, including developing best practices for collaboration between ontologists and subject matter experts. Over the last three years, Michael has developed highly specialized techniques to efficiently build ontologies based on a given use case. His other responsibilities have included product management, technical support, pre-sales consulting, and promotional marketing. In September of 2010, Michael was promoted to VP, Director of Ontology Engineering Services. Michael is now leading all consulting engagements as Senior Staff Ontologist and Project Manager. Michael's deep understanding of OWL/RDF/SPARL and the principals of ontology architecture have brought him numerous invitations to speak on the topic, along with the recognition of his industry peers as a thought leader in ontology architecture and development.

YY brings strong operational leadership and experience to her position at FirstRain. She leads engineering, product marketing, and professional services in the US and India. Under her guidance, our teams develop new software capability and provide professional services to our customers. YY was most recently vice president of worldwide services at Cadence Design Systems, leading that business into profitability. Prior to that, she co-founded the software company Aqueduct. After successfully building that business, the company was acquired by NetManage, which she joined as a director of engineering. She has also worked at Bell Labs, Integrated Information Technology (IIT) and Synopsys. YY earned an A.B. in mathematics from Harvard University.

As a Content Strategy Lead at Razorfish, Rachel Lovinger is interested in connecting users with the quality content they want and need. She uses her experience in online content production and publishing to help develop processes, best practices and innovative ideas for Fortune 500 companies looking to use digital content in more meaningful ways. Rachel is the author of Nimble, a Razorfish report on publishing in the digital age. Rachel started Razorfish's Semantic Web Affinity Group, and she’s interested in relevance, findability, signification, and inherently funny words. Rachel was doing Content Strategy long before she realized it was an actual field.

Follow Rachel on Twitter: @rlovinger

Bernard is a serial entrepreneur, business leader, writer and adviser to start-ups. He is currently Managing Director ITRS America Inc and Co-Founder of CapitalMarkets.com and is fascinated by the disruptive impact of technology on financial services Bernard is based in New York, was born in Berlin, has lived in and started companies in Asia and Europe as well as America; he is comfortable with globalization. He has written for and worked for Read Write Web and SemanticWeb.com and loves the "bleeding edge of technology".

Follow Bernard on Twitter: @bernardlunn

As a Lead Web Development Engineer at Best Buy, Jay has been active in promoting Semantic Web and Linked Data for use in business. He has spoken at industry conferences like Search Engine Strategies Chicago and SemTech 2010, and has been a guest lecturer for the Linked Data Ventures course taught at MIT Sloan. Jay has a passion for merging semantic technologies together with retail business and ecommerce to produce results that benefit both consumers and the enterprise. He has been an active supporter of the GoodRelations vocabulary for ecommerce, utilizing it in real world business scenarios to model consumer products, stores and services in RDF/XML and RDFa. Jay holds a BA in Communication Studies from the University of Minnesota.

Follow Jay on Twitter: @jaymyers

Marco Neumann is an Information Scientist and CEO & Founder of KONA, an Information Consulting and Semantic Technology company based in New York City. KONA provides knowledge organization and network analysis services and technologies to the emerging Semantic Web market. Marco works with Semantic Web technologies for web-based data management in collaboration with media, technology and research organizations since 2000. Marco advocates ontology based data management to enable transparent and efficient information transfer on the web. Marco currently acts as Director of Lotico.com, a Semantic Social Network that represents a community of interest composed of professionals, like-minded researchers and entrepreneurs around the world. He leads the local Lotico efforts in New York City and San Francisco.

Follow Marco on Twitter: @neumarcx

Mike has over thirty years of professional experience integrating the technology and marketing disciplines, at companies including Ogilvy Advertising and Scudder. A co-founder of OpenAmplify's parent company, Mike has served as CIO since the company started up, and is the inventor of the OpenAmplify service. Mike is a graduate of Vassar College and resides in Annapolis, Maryland.

Matthew Petrillo is CEO of Ontotext USA Inc., a subsidiary of the Bulgarian semantic technology firm Ontotext AD. Mr. Petrillo has more than 15 years of experience in technology-related ventures. Prior to joining Ontotext, Mr. Petrillo was a technical consultant with Fairview Research, where he led client adoption of text analysis and semantic technologies. Mr. Petrillo began his career as a journalist covering the telecommunications industry and was the Capitol Hill correspondent for Telecommunications Reports. Mr. Petrillo then served as a regulatory consultant for Fortune 500 companies at Compass Rose International, where he regularly participated in international policy forums including the ITU, APEC, CITEL and the OECD. In 2005 he co-founded Sheffield Advisors, a consulting firm helping companies overcome market entry challenges in Afghanistan and other developing economies. While at Sheffield Advisors, Mr. Petrillo led U.S. government and public relations for Afghanistan’s first private telecom company, Afghan Wireless.

After spending the early part of his career at Bankers Trust, Merrill Lynch, and HSBC, Drew Warren was one of the founders of Effective Solutions, Inc. (ESI), which was best known for its Corporate Actions Processing System and its Securities Universe Management System (SUMS), a repository of market data serving the financial services community. Drew was responsible for managing the front-end of the business including sales, marketing, and product/project management. ESI was acquired by SmartStream in 2004. Drew successfully managed the joint SUMS development effort between ESI, Barclays Global Investors, and The Northern Trust Company. With a background in industrial engineering, Drew combines his knowledge and experience of the financial services industry with an understanding of technology and how it can best be leveraged within that environment. It is the combining of unstructured data, market data, and proprietary internal data through the deployment of semantic technologies that is the focus of Recognos Financial.

As Chief Architect and CTO, Dennis is responsible for providing expert guidance and oversight in the design, development, and modification of the federated architectures supporting the Department's Business Mission Area. Dennis is leading the transformation of architecture-driven business systems and services development, and deployment. He has over 25 years of experience in manufacturing, Information Technology, engineering, consulting and training, including extensive experience in business process reengineering and enterprise architecture efforts. His specialty is deriving solutions to effectively move organizations from their "as-is" state of inefficiency to their "to-be" state of achieving strategic and tactical objectives. Dennis is recognized as a creator of the Integrated Definition language, the standard for modeling and analysis in management and business improvement efforts. In addition, he is the author of several books including "DoDAF Wizdom", considered the decisive source within DoD and other government organizations for managing enterprise architecture projects.

Stephen Wolfram is the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, the creator of Mathematica and Wolfram|Alpha, and the author of "A New Kind of Science". His career has been characterized by a sequence of original and significant achievements, including the recent launch of the computational knowledge engine Wolfram|Alpha. As an academic, he made various contributions to particle physics, cosmology, and computer science, and played a founding role in the development of complexity theory.

Follow Stephen on Twitter: @stephen_wolfram

Mills Davis is founder and managing director of Project10X — a research consultancy specializing in next wave semantic technologies and solutions. The firm's clients include technology manufacturers, global 2000 corporations, and government agencies. Mills is a noted researcher and industry analyst. He has authored more than 100 reports, whitepapers, articles, and industry studies. Mills served as principal investigator for the Semantic Wave 2008 study. In addition to his research and consulting practice, Mills is currently directing development of "Alice in Metaland" — a next generation community based collaborative semantic usite and magazine that is dedicated to aggregating, linking, and making sense of all things web 3.0. Mills co-chairs the Federal Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice (SICoP). Mills is a founding member of the AIIM interoperable enterprise content management (iECM) working group, and a founding member of the National Center for Ontology Research (NCOR).

Follow Mills on Twitter: @millsdavis