Alex Miller is a Senior Engineer with Revelytix, building federated semantic web query technology. Prior to Revelytix, Alex was technical lead at Terracotta, an engineer at BEA Systems, and Chief Architect at MetaMatrix. His interests include Java, concurrency, distributed systems, languages, and software design. Alex enjoys tweeting as @puredanger and blogging at http://tech.puredanger.com. In St. Louis, Alex is the founder of the Lambda Lounge group for the study of functional and dynamic languages and the Strange Loop developer conference.

Brian Blanchard is a highly accomplished professional successful in creating vision, identifying opportunities, building organizations, and delivering strong revenues and profits within intensively competitive markets. Mr. Blanchard's strengths include anticipating industry changes, and driving the introduction of new products, services and best practices to improve market positioning and strengthen bottom-line financial performance.

As a Geek by trade & Executive by occupation, Mr. Blanchard is highly skilled at partnering with clients, teams, vendors and management to guide the architectural design, development, and delivery of innovative technology solutions with high ROI. In addition to executive leadership, Mr. Blanchard actively maintains an extensive array of hands-on technical skills including Architecture, Agile Project Management & Coaching, Cloud Development, Product Development, and Software Development in four languages (including C#, LAMP, Java, and C++).

In addition to his core responsibilities, Mr. Blanchard has long been seen as a thought leader featured as a speaker at industry events and published repeatedly in magazines and trade-specific publications. One of Brian's strongest passions is the support of entrepreneurs & engineers. In the last year alone, Brian has appeared in more than 10 speaking engagements & written articles for 3 separate magazines with a focus on educating and/or supporting these two groups.

Brian currently serves as an Interim CIO & Executive Consultant for a number of clients throughout the US. However, he is entertaining project or permanent placement opportunities in Saint Louis, Austin, and Silicon Valley.

Scorch Agency
http://www.scorchagency.com

Chris Buehler
Chief Executive Officer

Chris has spent the past twelve years developing award-winning
interactive and marketing campaigns for some of the nation’s most
recognized brands such as Budweiser, Coca-Cola, Grolsch, Miller Lite,
and NASCAR. A seasoned creative professional and marketing strategist,
Chris has a proven track record in sales promotion, brand development
and interactive strategy.

One of the original speakers on the St Louis Social Media Club and a
panelist on the St. Louis Interactive Festival, Chris has first hand
experience in starting a business from the ground up. Chris is
effectively using social media and networking as a means of building
his own brand’s success. In 2009 Chris realized a longtime dream and
started Scorch Agency, a full-service marketing agency where piping
hot creative fuels brand activation. Scorch specializes in strategic
brand positioning, robust technology solutions, and customized
interactive marketing programs. For more information, visit
www.scorchagency.com <http://www.scorchagency.com>

Architect Evangelist

Microsoft - St. Louis, Missouri

Although educated as a Mechanical Engineer, Clint has spent his entire 17 year career in software development preparing for his role as an Architect Evangelist. His experiences span many industries including utilities, education, call centers, construction, and beer brewing. When not delivering in depth discourses on software development, he enjoys studying game design and 3D game engine architecture.

Dan Curran, President and Founder of NGAGE Digital, an agency model based on the marriage of Digital Brand Marketing and User Experience.  NGAGE clients include Hardees, Scottrade, Hanes, O'Charley's and Save a Lot.  Prior to NGAGE, Dan was the founder of Drive Agency, a leading experiential agency which Dan sold in 2006.  Dan is also a board member of several non-profit organizations including;   The St. Louis Ad Club,  Children's Home Society of Missouri and  EO - Entrepreneurs Organization.

Danielle has over 10 years of experience in a multitude of user research and usability analysis methods utilized on a wide variety of applications, including hardware, Windows, web, telephone, and mobile. Her successful designs have been implemented at both large and small, public and private companies in many industries ranging from pharmaceuticals to car rental to financial services.

Active in the field of Human-Computer Interaction, she was the founding Vice President of the Boston chapter of the Usability Professionals Association and served as Panels chair and Experienced Practitioner co-chair for the 2007 and 2008 Usability Professionals' Association Annual Conferences, respectively. She has a BE in Biomedical and Electrical Engineering from Vanderbilt University and a MS in Human Factors in Information Design from the Elkin B. McCallum Graduate School of Business at Bentley University in Waltham, MA

Dave Blankenship is a Senior Programmer/Analyst with seventeen years experience in full life cycle software development (mainframe, client/server, web). He’s worked in a host of Small and Large Businesses and these days provides "Advice Only on IT" from Information Agent (

).

Dave is a consultant helping organizations of all sizes to develop applications more quickly (and have more fun doing it) with Grails. Dave has been involved in enterprise software development for the past 15 years. He has worked as a developer, architect, project manager, mentor and trainer. Dave has presented at user groups and national conferences. He is also the founder of the Gateway Groovy Users in St. Louis, MO, and the author of Grails: A Quick-Start Guide, published by the Pragmatic Programmers.  

David Strom is one of the leading experts on network and Internet technologies and has written and spoken extensively on topics such as VOIP, convergence, email, network management, Internet applications, wireless and Web services for more than 20 years. He has had several editorial management positions for both print and online properties in the enthusiast, gaming, IT, network, channel, and electronics industries.

A resume can be found here. Clips and links to his various publications can be found here. Extended Bio can be found here.

"People need an attorney who will truly get to know them and be as passionate about moving their business forward as they are."

Dennis Donahue is an experienced, highly effective intellectual property attorney, manager, and business advisor, practicing in all areas of IP law, both in a corporate law department and law firms.

Dennis works closely with his clients to help them prioritize their intellectual property (IP) needs while reducing their IP risks. He counsels clients on business strategies in the protection and enforcement of all IP matters.

• Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, Trade Secrets
• Searches & Legal Opinions on IP Rights
• IP Development, Licensing & Sales Agreements
• Portfolio Management & Due Diligence Evaluations
• Software & e-Commerce Contracts
• IP & Export Control Compliance Programs

Decades of Experience
Dennis started his career with McDonnell Douglas in 1989 as an engineer in Research & Development and moved onto production aircraft programs. He continued at McDonnell Douglas in Litigation Support on the T-45 Goshawk while attending law school and then entered McDonnell Douglas’ Law Department as an attorney in the Patent Law Group. After the merger with Boeing, Dennis took on a business role as a Licensing Portfolio & Marketing Manager and then entered private practice in 1999.

In addition to serving his clients, Dennis had been the Risk Management Partner for Intellectual Property at a large firm and became the Co-Chair of the Intellectual Property Department when the firm grew through a merger to over 650 attorneys. In 2009, Dennis founded Dennis Donahue & Associates where he focuses his practice on entrepreneurial clients, including clients that Dennis has worked with since the first year that he ventured out into private practice!

Dennis has also served as an Adjunct Professor at St. Louis University School of Law, where he taught a self-created class entitled "Anatomy of a Patent." Dennis taught students how to interpret claims using the prosecution histories of patents and prior art references, as well as how to draft a patent application.

Greg Christoffel is a Partner in the law firm of Green Jacobson P.C., where he specializes in business formation and development. Previously he was President of Brooks Investments, a tech/telecom venture capital fund. His business experience includes serving as President and Chief Operating Officer of Brooks Telecommunications International, where he was responsible for development of advanced telecom projects in China.

Greg’s previous legal work included positions as General Counsel of Diveo Broadband Networks, Inc., a telecom startup that developed wireless broadband networks in Latin America, Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Brooks Fiber Properties, Inc., a publicly traded competitive local exchange carrier that was acquired by WorldCom, and General Attorney, Mergers & Acquisitions and International Business of SBC Communications, Inc.

Greg is Chair of the Board of Boys & Girls Town of Missouri, a statewide social services agency that provides a broad range of residential and community-based services to children and families. He is also a board member of the St. Louis County Industrial Development Authority and participates in the mentoring programs of Innovate Venture Mentoring Service and the IT Entrepreneur Network. His other interests include playing bass for the Bluegrass Ensemble of the Folk School of St. Louis and with the Ambassadors of Swing Big Band.

Jason Cooper works as a Developer Programs Engineer in Google's Developer Relations organization, based out of Google's offices in the San Francisco Bay Area. Over the past 3 years, Jason has supported several Google developer products and technologies, including the Google Mashup Editor, orkut's OpenSocial-based application platform, and Google App Engine, helping developers big and small get up and running quickly and work through any implementation issues. In his free cycles, Jason maintains several small open source projects including both the OpenSocial client library for Java and the Google Technology User Groups website at http://www.gtugs.org.

Mr. Brasunas has 28 years of entrepreneurial, management, marketing and sales experience with technology-based companies. He has been involved with numerous start-up ventures, including telecommunications, information technology, retail, manufacturing and a number of non-profit organizations. Since 2006, he has served on the board of the St. Louis IT Coalition.

Since April of 2008, Mr. Brasunas has served as Director of the Information Technology Entrepreneur Network (ITEN). ITEN is part of Innovate St. Louis. ITEN serves innovative IT start-up enterprises in the greater St. Louis region by providing connections to needed support including expert mentoring, early stage technology adoption by larger companies, focused networking events, and preparation for angel and venture funding.

From 2003 to 2006, Mr. Brasunas was the President of the Technology Entrepreneur Center, a business incubator in St. Louis. He was responsible for directing all of the activities of TEC, including day to day management, mentoring the incubating companies, fundraising, and positioning TEC within the community. He secured funding from public and private sources and built TEC into a regional center for start up companies focused on information and communications technology. He forged important links between TEC and local universities, governmental entities and community leaders.

In 1999, he became the CEO of Partner Communications, a broadband company that provided 802.11b wireless internet services to apartment communities in the Midwest. Partner raised $15M from local and regional investors. During that time, he also served on the Board of Directors of Intira Corporation, a Silicon Valley-based web hosting company originally founded in St. Louis as Digital Broadband Networks (DBN).

Mr. Brasunas joined Brooks Fiber Properties at the inception of the company in early 1994 as Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, and served in a number of senior executive positions until the successful sale of the company for $2B+ in 1998.

Prior to joining Brooks Fiber, Mr. Brasunas held various management positions during an 11-year career with Nortel Networks. From 1989 until 1993, he pioneered the development of leading edge technology and innovative financing solutions for the emerging Competitive Local Exchange market. Earlier, he was instrumental in providing Nortel's switching, data, and transmission products to the Department of Defense and other agencies of the Federal Government, including winning the largest telecommunications contract ever awarded by the US Air Force at that time.

Mr. Brasunas is a founding board member of both the Missouri Incubation Association (MOINC) and the Mitrata-Nepal Foundation for Children.

Mr. Brasunas holds a Bachelor of Science degree from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He pursued graduate studies in psychology and innovative management at the Institute for Comparative Studies, Gloucestershire, England.

Joe Frank is Subcenter Director at the Eastern Region Missouri Procurement Technical Assistance Center (MO PTAC) in St. Louis, Missouri. Joe has extensive experience in St. Louis local government, having served in various positions with the Greater St. Louis Regional Empowerment Zone, St. Louis Development Corporation and various City of St. Louis agencies.

Joe holds a Level II (Associate Contracting Assistance Specialist) certification from the Association of Procurement Technical Assistance Centers. He is a board member for the St. Louis Metro Area Public Purchasing Association (STLMAPP).

Joe, a lifelong resident of the St. Louis area, resides in the City of St. Louis. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from Washington University in St. Louis, and a B.S. in public policy administration from the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Josh Jeffryes is an expert in UX, Flash and interactive design, and is fluent in 3 languages; client, design and development. He's very active in the St. Louis design and innovation world, and is the leader of the St. Louis Design Meetup, one of the largest design Meetups in the nation. He's currently focused on application design as Creative Director for BusyEvent. His favorite typeface is Caslon, he draws cartoons and sarcastic info graphics in his spare time, and enjoys long walks on the beach while discussing the ramifications of mobile touch interfaces on current design trends.

Justin Miller is a software developer for a medium sized utility solutions cooperative. After graduating with his Master's degree from the Missouri University of Science and Technology, he worked for a while as a software engineer in embedded systems. Moving back to the St. Louis area gave him an opportunity to return to object oriented software development. His current programming interests include Android software development and functional programming. His research interests include artificial intelligence and its applications to knowledge discovery and data mining.

Ken Sipe is the Technology Director for Perficient, Inc. in St. Louis.  He is the president and owner of CodeMentor, an S-Corporation software service company and an Buckingham Place LLC which owns and manages 6 units of apartments .  He is one of the founders of CuraHealth a St. Louis startup company in 2001.  He was also a limited partner in the creation and ownership of a carwash in Hazelwood.   Ken is an author and international speaker on the subjects of software architecture and development, receiving last year the honor of the JavaOne 2009 Rockstar award.  Ken is an instrument rated private pilot and enjoys flying, camping, SCUBA diving and writing code!

Kevin Grossnicklaus is a software architect with over 10 years experience designing and writing custom software throughout a number of industries. He is currently the President of an archtictural consulting and training firm called ArchitectNow. Previously, Kevin spent 10 years as the Chief Architect of SSE, a St. Louis based technology firm, where he was responsible for assisting development teams in designing, architecting, and building enterprise scale, distributed applications built on the Microsoft .NET platform. Kevin is also an instructor at the Center for the Application of Information Technology (CAIT) at Washington University in St. Louis. At CAIT, Kevin provides training and mentoring on Microsoft .NET technologies to students from Boeing, Anheuser-Busch, and many other of St. Louis' Fortune 500 companies.

Lisa Rokusek - ARG is an independent recruiter who has supplied talent to both nationwide and local companies for almost 15 years. ARG uses an agile, results-oriented model for staffing and recruiting enabling successful recruiters to do what they do best: find and deliver essential talent to their client companies. This model creates inherent flexibility and market awareness. Recruiters are responsive to the needs of both candidates and companies. Clients get talent, candidates get respect, everybody wins.

Lisa works with companies who recognize the importance of hiring the right person. She focuses on companies engaged in technology-related product development – often things that have not yet been done. She specializes in high-impact individual producers and exceptional managers/executives, in areas as varied as software and hardware development, human resources, or sales and marketing. Lisa provides direct-hire employees, project-based consultants, or whatever blend her clients require (see agile results oriented and responsive, above). She has been an agency recruiter in St. Louis for almost 15 years.

Though Lisa works nationally she is passionate about the St. Louis area, and about helping to foster a thriving technology/business community. She is committed to local technology and entrepreneurial efforts, and likes nothing more than helping her client companies (and the people who make up the companies) be successful.

Mark Cummuta is an accomplished IT Executive with nearly 25 years of IT, business, startup, corporate enterprise and consulting experience, after serving our country as a US Marine. Having led a number of startup firms in CIO, CTO and VP of IT, Applications and Research & Development roles, successfully grown consulting divisions with full P&L authority, and built award-winning products and teams for over 10 years, he started his own successful CIO Advisory Services firm seven years ago specifically to assist startups and SMBs with IT management, and IT and social media strategies.

Mr. Cummuta is currently the CIO for JobAngels, a non-profit startup organization using Web 2.0, social media and innovative interactive technologies to link millions of US job seekers with over 42,000 volunteer mentors, “Job Angels” willing to assist them in the skills and tasks in finding new employment.

Mr. Cummuta is a frequent conference speaker on BPM (Business Process Management), Lean Six Sigma, startup / innovation strategies, data warehousing, program / project management and numerous other technologies and methodologies, and has been quoted in The Wall St. Journal, Crain’s Chicago Business, Aberdeen Research, and others.

Mark’s role at JobAngels fits perfectly with his passion for helping others, especially startups and job seekers. Mr. Cummuta is co-author of the book, “Ignite Your Passion!”, and can be found on Twitter (as @TriumphCIO) and writes for CIO Magazine's online resource website, CIO.com on executive job search skills and strategies. In addition to his technology speaking, Mark also volunteers as a mentor and speaker on job search skills for numerous organizations, such as Marine For Life, Wounded Warriors Brigade, Pay-IT-Forward, Tech Execs, TLA, Career Renewal and others.

Mr. Cummuta holds a dual MBA from Loyola University of Chicago, has completed one year of law school for Intellectual Property Protection from DePaul University, and is named on several patents and patent applications in online multi-media collaboration tools and global logistics tracking systems.

(For Mr. Cummuta's CIO.com Executive Job Search blog, go to: http://advice.cio.com/blogs/cio_job_search_a_real_life_chronicle.)

(To connect with Mr. Cummuta on LinkedIn, go to: http://www.linkedin.com/in/MarkCummuta)

Muljadi Budiman is a Software Architect for MiTek Industries Inc.; currently leading the effort to create an Enterprise Production Management System utilizing WPF UI, WCF for tier communication and WF to manage entity tracking & processing through the system. He strives to continually keep up with cutting edge .NET technology, while making sure he doesn't forget existing ones.

Niall O’Donnell joined RiverVest® in May 2006 as a Kauffman Fellow. He focuses on biopharmaceutical, diagnostic and medical device opportunities, with an emphasis on anti-inflammatory, immunology and fibrosis.  Prior to joining RiverVest, Niall spent five years as an immunologist at Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development in San Diego, where he was part of a successful cross-disciplinary team of chemists and biologists that drove small molecule anti-inflammatory drugs into clinical trials. As co-author of the first paper validating the newly discovered histamine H₄ receptor (H₄R) as a key regulator of asthma and immune pathologies, Niall helped expand the known influences of histamine on the immune system and highlight the therapeutic potential of H₄R antagonists in allergic conditions.

Steve Lawler is founder of the Lawler Organization. He consults on issues of personal ethics, corporate culture, and organizational values. He partners also with Opinions Incorporated to deliver advanced employee and customer research and serves as their Managing Director of Consulting Services. He is adjunct professor of leadership and business ethics at Washington University in St. Louis and is ordained in the Episcopal Church. He earned an STM from Yale University, an MBA from the Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis, and is a PhD candidate in organizational psychology at Tilburg University, The Netherlands. You can contact him at swl(at)lawler.org.

Tom Niermann Ph.D. has founded 3 venture backed software startups, in 3 different markets in the valley in the first 14 years of his career. Two of those went on to be bought by public companies. At those companies he has been CEO, CTO, VP of Engineering, and briefly CFO and VP of Sales. In that time Tom raised 15 rounds of Venture Capital, Angel Capital, Venture Debt, Corporate financing, and he has invested as an Angel in 5 companies. Tom was most recently the Head of Technology and Program Management for Google’s direct partners worldwide. In that role he oversaw the team responsible for the business plan, pricing and product for the strategic partners of AdSense, YouTube, Mobile, and other products. Tom is an active member of the St Louis Arch Angels, and is currently starting an internet company.

Wesley A. Morgan Morgan is a marketing communications professional with a mission: “Make Good Brands Better and New Brands Known.” Morgan earned his MBA from The University of Miami Graduate School of Business. He also completed his Bachelor’s degree at the University of Miami - a double major (graphic design and creative writing). Wes accepted the challenge of Global Communications Director in 2006 for a publicly traded manufacturer of welding and cutting equipment (Thermadyne) and wrote and implemented systematic marketing communications programs for 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. Previously, he headed up marketing communications for two large successful privately-held firms in St. Louis (HBE and Clayco). He’s also advised countless other businesses – large and small about strategic marketing and branding. Wes has been involved in marketing efforts of a broad range of consumer and business-to-business products and services. He spent the early part of his career in advertising where he contributed to new product development, consumer, professional and trade communications for a variety brands including Heineken, Matchbox Toys, Pepsi-Cola, SkyBox Trading Cards, GameTek Computer Game Software, Campbell Soup Foodservice, and Rich-SeaPak Frozen Foods. Wes is past-president of the American Marketing Association/St. Louis Chapter (two terms) and is also a member of the Advertising Club of St. Louis, the Public Relations Society of America and The Business Marketing Association.