John Gallant
President and Editorial Director
Network World

Gallant is president and editorial director of Network World Inc., and sets the strategy for the newsweekly, which serves over 170,000 readers in corporate network IT. Gallant also guides the content and business development for Network World online (www.networkworld.com), as well as Network World's seminars and events programs. Gallant is highly visible in the marketplace and frequently speaks at industry conferences. He has been named by Technology Marketing magazine as one of the most influential people in computer journalism, and was cited as one of the "most visionary editors-in-chief" by Press Access. Gallant is executive producer for VORTEX, an invitation-only executive conference for the enterprise IT industry, and was cited as Best Conference Host by Conferenza for his Vortex work. Gallant's 20 years of expertise in covering the technology industry has been tapped by top-tier television media outlets, including CNN, CNNfn, CNBC, NPR and Bloomberg. He often hosts roundtable discussions on technology and other topics for a wide variety of organizations, including leading vendors, IT buyers and industry associations. Gallant also serves on the executive committee of the Boston College Technology Council.

Paul Desmond
Events Editor
Network World

Paul Desmond, Events Editor, Network World Paul Desmond has been involved in the trade press since 1988. He is currently president of PDEdit, an IT publishing and consulting firm he founded in 2002. He began his IT publishing career at the industry news weekly Network World, where during his 11 years he served as news editor and features editor. Under his leadership, Network World’s features department took home a number of editorial excellence awards, including a 1996 Neal Certificate of Merit Award from the Business Press Association and two 1998 awards from the American Society of Business Press Editors. He has also served as editor of Redmond magazine and was the founding editor-in-chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine, which earned a Neal Award for Best Startup publication of 2005.

Andreas Antonopoulos
SVP & Founding Partner
Nemertes Research

Andreas M. Antonopoulos (CISSP, MSc CS) is a Sr. Vice President & Founding Partner with Nemertes Research. He develops and manages research projects, conducts strategic seminars and advises key clients. For 14 years, Mr. Antonopoulos has advised many businesses on how to harness new processes to leverage rapid developments in telecommunications. He is a noted expert in computer security and has led large teams on multi-million-dollar projects for Fortune 100 companies, designing large and complex secure networks.

Before joining Nemertes, Mr. Antonopoulos was the Security Practice Director at ThruPoint Inc, where was responsible for a global team of security consultants who deliver solutions to multinational clients.

Johna Till Johnson
President & Sr. Founding Partner
Nemertes Research

Nemertes Research founder and president Johna Till Johnson has spent nearly 20 years working closely with IT professionals. She sets the strategic research direction for Nemertes and designs and develops reports. Her background includes expertise in business, engineering, research, consulting, and particle physics. She is a member of the IEEE and the ACM, and has participated in the Internet Engineering Task Force. She is widely published and sought after as a speaker and conference chair.

Irwin Lazar
Principal Analyst & Program Director, Collaboration & Convergence
Nemertes Research

Irwin Lazar is a Principal Research Analyst & Program Director, Convergence & Collaboration at Nemertes Research, where he develops and manages research projects, conducts strategic seminars, and advises clients. His background is in network operations, network engineering, voice-data convergence, and IP telephony. Mr. Lazar is responsible for benchmarking the adoption and use of emerging technologies in the enterprise in areas including VOIP, unified communications, and collaboration.

Since 1992 Mr. Lazar has been a consultant and analyst, serving a variety of global enterprises and government agencies. Mr. Lazar led efforts to develop security architectures and convergence road-maps, as well as enterprise network architectures, for numerous clients in the health care, pharmaceuticals, banking & finance, energy, government, and retail sectors.

Mr. Lazar has conducted numerous strategy planning workshops, vendor evaluations, and RFI/RFP-process development/management projects. Mr. Lazar's technical expertise includes network security, large-scale IP network design and routing architectures, voice over IP and IP telephony, presence and unified communications, IP video conferencing, and wireless and mobility.

A sought-after speaker and author, Mr. Lazar is a regular columnis for Business Communications Review and is a frequent contributor to Network World. He is a frequent resource for the business and trade press and is regular speaker at events such as Interop, VoiceCon, and Enterprise 2.0.

Prior to joining Nemertes, Mr. Lazar served as a senior analyst at Burton Group and previously ran Burton Group's network & telecom consulting group. Prior to Burton Group, Mr. Lazar served in a variety of network engineering and operations consulting roles for organizations including The Discovery Channel, SAIC, and various federal and state government agencies.

Mr. Lazar serves as the conference director for FutureNet (formerly MPLScon) since its inception in 2000. He is also an advisory board member for SearchNetworking.com, VoiceCon, and the Enterprise 2.0 conference. He maintains MPLS Resource Center and his personal "Real-Time" blog, and he is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

Mr. Lazar holds a bachelor's degree in Management Information Systems from Radford University in Radford, VA, and a Master's of Business Administration (MBA) from George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. He served in the U.S. Army Reserve Ordnance Corps as an officer from 1992-2001. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP).

Craig Mathias
Principal
The Farpoint Group

Craig J. Mathias is a Principal with Farpoint Group, an advisory firm specializing in wireless networking and mobile computing. Founded in 1991, Farpoint Group works with technology developers, manufacturers, carriers and operators, end users, and the financial community. Craig is an internationally-known industry and technology analyst, and serves on the Advisory Boards of four industry conferences. He is the author of numerous articles on mobile and wireless topics, and a columnist for Computerworld.com, unstrung.com, and SearchMobileComputing.com.

Jim Metzler
President
Ashton Metzler & Associates

Dr. Jim Metzler is widely recognized as an authority on both network technology and its business applications. Over the course of his 28 years in IT, Jim has assisted vendors refine their product and service strategies, and helped enterprises evolve their network infrastructure.

Jim has worked in many positions in the IT industry. This includes serving as a compiler writer for a branch of the US intelligence community; creating software tools to design customer networks for a major IXC; serving as an Engineering Manager for high speed data services for a major Telco; managing networks at two Fortune 500 companies; directing and performing market research at a major industry analyst firm; and running a consulting organization.

Joel Snyder
Senior Partner
Opus One

Joel Snyder is an internationally known expert in the area of telecommunications and networks, with an emphasis on security. He is currently a Senior Partner at Opus One, a consulting firm, in Tucson, Arizona.

As a consultant with over two decades of experience, Snyder has designed and implemented information systems for clients as small as a two-person brokerage house and as large as NASA; written firewalls and network software; built network systems for clients on six continents; assisted software and hardware vendors in design, review, architecture, development, and testing of products; and served on ANSI, IEEE, ISO, and CCITT working groups developing telecommunications standards.

Snyder has also held full-time positions with CompuServe, Inc. (at their Research and Development Center) and with the University of Arizona (in the College of Business).

Snyder’s clients include organizations throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia, including Apple, AT&T, Cisco, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, Daimler-Benz, Fidelity Investments, Hoffman-La Roche, Juniper, Honeywell, MCI, Motorola, Nokia, Schlumberger, State of California, the Swiss Stock Exchange, Thomson Financial, the UN, Visa, Xerox, the White House, and World Bank.

Snyder has written hundreds of articles, has been published in over a dozen different journals and industry magazines in the US, UK, Russia, Germany, Australia, Portugal, Denmark, Japan, Spain, Italy, and France. His product testing work in network and telecommunications products is well known and respected in the field, and his published reviews have received several awards for editorial excellence.

Dr. Snyder has also written three books and edited two journals.

Jeffrey Young
Senior Analyst
Burton Group

Mr. Young has worked in the Information Technology and Telecommunications industries for 20 years. His experience spans both the end-user/enterprise and the service provider industry. Most recently, Mr. Young held positions within Alcatel as the Chief Technical Officer of the IP Division (building switches and routers) and as the Vice President of Architecture and Engineering for the Fixed Services Division responsible for System Integration of Microsoft IPTV and related Alcatel network equipment. Throughout his career, Mr. Young has worked for large providers, enterprises and entrepreneurial firms.

Prior to Alcatel, Mr. Young was most recently CTO of Spectrum Access, Inc., a provider of wireless communications infrastructure to government and industry in the Washington, DC area. He served as the Vice President of Technology Development at Conxion Corporation where he brought up a national IP backbone network and helped the company introduce various network hosting based products into the Conxion portfolio.

Prior to joining Conxion, Mr. Young was the Vice President of Engineering for Cable & Wireless. As the lead engineering executive for C&W, Mr. Young successfully led the effort to create facility-based networks in North America, and to integrate and build facility-based networks in the UK, Europe and Japan. Mr. Young was the lead engineering executive to come to C&W from MCI during the acquisition of MCI's Internet assets in September 1998. He spent four years with MCI and joined prior to the privatization of the Internet infrastructure in 1994 by MCI and others. While working for MCI, Mr. Young pioneered new technologies for internetMCI like the Real Broadcast Network, Multicast Backbone (MBONE) and a Content Delivery network.

Mr. Young is a graduate of Marquette University with a degree in Electrical Engineering. He has participated in advanced education programs at Johns Hopkins University. He is a member of the IEEE and has been active since 1990 with the IETF [Internet Engineering Task Force]. Mr. Young lives in the Northern Virginia area with his wife and three young children.