Speakers for the 2008 Architect Tutorials and Design Previews

Rob Steward, Vice President, DataDirect R&D

Rob Steward

Rob Steward is Vice President, DataDirect Research and Development at DataDirect Technologies. He has over 14 years of experience developing database access middleware, including .NET Data Providers, ODBC drivers, JDBC drivers, and OLE DB providers. Rob has presented on various data access topics at VS Live!, WinDev, Devscovery, Microsoft PDC, and Microsoft Tech Ed and has also published articles in DM Review and DotNet Magazine. He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science from North Carolina State University.

Speaking at the 2008 DataDirect Design Previews in Palo Alto, CA and Boston, MA. Speaking at the 2008 DataDirect Architect Tutorials in Seattle, WA, St. Louis, MO, and Toronto, Canada

Jason Bloomberg, Managing Partner, Zapthink

Jason Bloomberg

Jason Bloomberg is Managing Partner at Service-Oriented Architecture industry analysis and advisory firm ZapThink LLC. Mr. Bloomberg has a diverse background in eBusiness technology management and industry analysis, including serving as a senior analyst in IDC’s eBusiness Advisory group, as well as holding eBusiness management positions at USWeb/CKS (later marchFIRST) and WaveBend Solutions (now Hitachi Consulting). He co-authored the book Web Page Scripting Techniques (Hayden Books, 1996), and in association with ZapThink founder Ronald Schmelzer, contributed the chapters on Web Services to XML and Web Services Unleashed (SAMS Publishing, 2002). Messrs. Bloomberg and Schmelzer’s book, Service Orient or Be Doomed! How Service Orientation Will Change Your Business (John Wiley & Sons, 2006), was released in February, 2006.

Mr. Bloomberg has Masters’ Degrees in Mathematics and History & Philosophy of Science from the University of Pittsburgh, and a BA in Physics from Pomona College.

Speaking at the 2008 DataDirect Architect Tutorials in Seattle WA, St. Louis MO, and Toronto, Canada

Ron Schmeltzer, Managing Partner, Zapthink

Ronald Schmelzer

Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst and founder, is a well-known expert in the field of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Web Services, and XML-based standards. Ron has been featured in and has written for periodicals, and has spoken at numerous industry conferences and in front of some of the largest busineses in the world.

Ron Schmelzer was the lead author of XML And Web Services Unleashed (SAMS 2002) as well as co-author of Service-Orient or Be Doomed (Wiley 2006) with Jason Bloomberg, due to be released in 2006. Ron has served as the chair of the RosettaNet Cluster 1 Workgroup, working group member of CPExchange, member of the UDDI advisory group, and was a member of the CompTIA Electronic Commerce Standards Board (ECSB). Prior to ZapThink, Ron was founder, CTO, and "ePostle of Partners" of ChannelWave Software, as well as founder and President of VirtuFlex Software, and founder and CEO of VirtuMall, one of the first online eCommerce sites in 1994.

Ron was named "Geek of the Week" in Internet Magazine and was listed in Boston Magazine’s Internet Top 40. Ron received a B.S. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Speaking at the 2008 DataDirect Architect Tutorials in Seattle WA, St. Louis MO, and Toronto, Canada

Eric Samson, CTO Data Services, DataDirect Technologies

Eric Samson

Eric co-founded LIBeLIS (now Xcalia) in 2000 in order to solve a complex business problem surrounding the gap between a sophisticated object oriented development approach and a simple database structure. Prior to co-founding Xcalia, Eric steered his own company, Allware Concept, a high-level consulting company focusing on object-oriented programming (Smalltalk, C++ and others), relational databases, Corba, rich user interfaces, 4GLs, Upper Cases and modeling tools and object-oriented design and analysis. Allware Concept was later acquired by Business & Decision, a business intelligence consulting company. Eric remained at Business & Decision as the Manager of New Object Technologies business unit and as Technical Director for two years and then joined Versant, an ODBMS vendor, as the Technical Director for Southern Europe. At Versant, Eric was responsible for managing the pre-sales, support, consulting and training technical teams in South EMEA and worked with customers such as France Telecom, Bull, Alcatel, Nortel, Lucent, Sagem, BNP Paribas and Thalès. Eric has held other positions at Alcatel TITN, Elf and Air France.

Eric is one of the world’s foremost experts on database access and the JDO standard, which has emerged as the preferred response to data access issues. Eric serves on several international committees such as JSR 12 (JDO1), JSR 243 (JDO2), JSR 220 (EJB3) and JSR 235 (SDO) within the JCP and also works on Service Data Object (SDO 2) with IBM, BEA, Oracle and SAP.

Eric has a PhD in Computer Science from Paris 6th University where he graduated second in his class specializing in Distributed Artificial Intelligence. He also has a Masters of Sciences specializing in Operating Systems, Computer Graphics algorithms, and AI.

Speaking at the 2008 Design Previews in Boston MA, and Palo Alto CA.
Speaking at the 2008 Architect Tutorials in Seattle WA, St. Louis MO, and Toronto Canada.

Ivan Pedruzzi, DataDirect Program Management Team

As senior XML program manager at DataDirect, Ivan Pedruzzi is responsible for the overall strategy and direction of the XML products group including DataDirect XQuery, DataDirect XML Converters and Stylus Studio.

Prior to moving to the program manager position Ivan served as senior engineering manager responsible for the Stylus Studio and XML Converters engineering groups. Before to joining DataDirect Technologies, Ivan served as senior software architect of Stylus Studio at Progress Software. Before joining Progress Ivan worked at eXcelon Corporation as senior software engineer in the XML tools group where he architected the foundation for the Stylus Studio IDE Framework. Prior to that, he served as lead engineer in the tools group at Object Design, Inc. where he was responsible for the strategy and development of a variety of visual tools for ObjectStore. Ivan began his software development career at ViVi Software, where he was responsible for the design and development of the first public Italian library for educational software, in strict collaborating with the Institute for Educational Technology (ITD-CNR).

Ivan brings more than 15 years of experience in enterprise-level software design and development, and has been invited speaker about XML technologies at a variety of events worldwide.

Speaking at the 2008 Design Previews in Boston MA, and Palo Alto CA.

Gregg Wilhoit, DataDirect Program Management Team

Gregg Wilhoit provides technical leadership for DataDirect’s mainframe based Shadow products, including z/Services, z/Direct and z/Events. He has architected and developed a wide variety of commercially successful, systems software products including; DBMS Catalog Management tools, MVS and DB2 performance monitors (the first XA/DTP product for mainframe data.) Greg is also the co-developer of Shadow Direct, the first commercially successful ODBC-to-mainframe data product for DB2, IMS, VSAM, CICS, ADABAS, used daily in many of the largest and most active mainframe database environments in the world. Prior to joining DataDirect, Greg served as Chief Software Architect for Neon Systems (acquired by DataDirect in 2006).

Speaking at the 2008 Design Previews in Boston MA, and Palo Alto CA.

Jonathan Bruce, DataDirect Program Management Team

Jonathan Bruce is a Program Manager for DataDirect Connect for ADO.NET. In addition, his responsibilities include DataDirect for XQuery APIs for Java (XQJ), .NET and Windows platforms, while continuing to fuel adoption of XQuery in the market place. Jonathan joined DataDirect after seven years at Sun Microsystems where he served as the JDBC Specification Lead and Architect for the Java platform. A technical and specification architect with significant experience in leading industry standards such as Java, J2EE and SQL, Jonathan led four Java specification request efforts that have contributed to the J2SE and J2EE platforms, and has generated a number of important patents.

Jonathan’s background includes business development and sales support, as well as inbound and outbound licensing consulting for the Java platform and database-dependent components of Sun’s Java Enterprise System. He is co-author of the book JDBC API Tutorial and Reference, Third Edition, and a frequent speaker at industry conferences. His most recent publications include Java Developers Journal and DevX.com, while regularly maintaining his popular blog dotNET-Connection.com, syndicated on Java.net and O’Reilly.

Jonathan holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering and a Master of Science in Mathematics from the University of Dublin’s Trinity College in Ireland.

Speaking at the 2008 Design Previews in Boston MA, and Palo Alto CA.
Speaking at the 2008 DataDirect Architect Tutorials in Seattle, WA, St. Louis, MO, and Toronto, Canada

Carlo Innocenti, DataDirect Program Management Team

Before joining DataDirect as Program Manager for XML technologies, Carlo Innocenti (aka; Minollo) served as Principal Software Architect of Stylus Studio at Progress Software and eXcelon Corporation. While at eXcelon Corporation, Minollo managed an engineering group responsible for the overall tools strategy of the XML Database division, overseeing product design and development. Previously he served as Development Manager for Tools at Object Design, Inc., an object database company. Minollo began his software development career at ViVi Software, an Italian company he co-founded and that was recognized by the European community for successful and innovative software products. Minollo holds a Master of Science in Computer Science and a Ph.D in Robotics from the University of Genoa, Italy.

Speaking at the 2008 Design Previews in Boston MA, and Palo Alto CA.

Jesse Davis, DataDirect Program Management Team

As Program Manager for DataDirect’s Connect for JDBC line, Jesse is responsible for defining the future direction and functionality of DataDirect’s comprehensive JDBC product development initiatives. Since joining DataDirect Technologies in 1997, Jesse has been instrumental in leading development efforts for DataDirect Connect for JDBC, Connect for ODBC, and Connect for ADO.NET DB2 drivers, and has developed core modules for the Connect for ODBC and Connect for JDBC product groups. Prior to leading the development team for DataDirect Connect for JDBC, Jesse served as Technical Engineering Lead for JDBC development.

In addition to his management and development duties, Jesse is an enthusiastic blogger, hosting JDBC-Connection.com, which is broadly syndicated and increases readership each month. Jesse holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University.

Speaking at the 2008 Design Previews in Boston MA, and Palo Alto CA.

Mark Biamonte, DataDirect Program Management Team

Mark Biamonte is Program Manager for DataDirect’s Connect for JDBC product. He is responsible for defining the functionality and future direction of JDBC product development. With more than 20 years of experience designing computer hardware and software, Mark is currently an active member of the JDBC Expert Group; defining the next version of the JDBC specification. Prior to assuming the Program Manager position Mark developed the Connect for ODBC and Connect for ADO XML driver, and developed core modules for the Connect for JDBC drivers.

Mark has held software and hardware design and development positions with Eastman Kodak Company, Raytheon and Applied Research Associates. He holds a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Worchester Polytechnic Institute in Worchester, Mass and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Vermont in Burlington, Vt.

Speaking at the 2008 Design Previews in Boston MA, and Palo Alto CA.