Concept #1: The Agile Enterprise and the Information Society
The information society represents a point of inflection in the way we live and work. Creativity has become the new competitive edge. The agile enterprise converts creative work — knowledge, ideas, experience, skills, business processes — into content as the new dominant asset class.
Be part of the launch of the Techweek.com media website and get a preview of the fresh new NAVTEQ
Network for Developers™ (NN4D) website at the first Techweek Concept Series presented by NN4D.
This event will also provide a kickoff for the 2012 Techweek Conference & Expo, highlight a panel talk on
agile enterprise, and showcase three funded startups and their innovative products.
About the Concept Series
Techweek Concept Series invites tech corporations and tech startups to convene, spotlight the newest concepts in technology innovation, and tackle some of the largest global problems facing our industries. What can tech startups learn from corporate execs, and how can those execs help accelerate tech startups? This revolves around conversations in the implications of an Information Society.
Rod Rakic
Director, Digital Innovation, Sears Holdings
Rod leads the Digital Innovation Group at Sears Holdings, an interdisciplinary team focused on the future of integrated retail. There his work has focused on digital commerce experiences in mobile, social and local contexts. A pioneer in the development of online media, a builder of interactive tools to enhance and manage brands. His career spans 16 years creative, account management and media assignments.
Jason Ulaszek
VP of Experience Design, Manifest Digital
A leader in the user experience design field for 14+ years, Jason joined Manifest in 2007. Publicly, Jason leads the UX practice at Manifest, adjunct faculty at DePaul University, co-founder of UX for Good and consultant to start-ups and small businesses. Privately, he's a crazed evangelist for UX - accosting strangers with sermons on the value of user-centered design in solving business and social problems.
Paul Dittman
President, Pathfinder Software
A CPA, Paul Dittmann began his career as a "Big 8" auditor and has over 30 years of business and technology experience. Paul is currently serving as the President of Pathfinder Software LLC. Pathfinder creates and launches new software products for startups and corporations. Prior to joining Pathfinder, Paul served as a Managing Director in the technology practice of a American ExpressTBS and Checkers, Simon & Rosner. Paul is currently serving as the President of the Chicago Chapter of the Association of Information Technology Professionals.
Iain Roberts
Partner, IDEO
The IDEO Partner, who co-leads the company's Chicago studio, is responsible for leading senior client relationships with Fortune 500 executives. Meanwhile, his willingness to push the intersection of digital and physical media has led to successful experiments in the field of open-sourced innovation with industry up-and-comer BugLabs. Since 2007, Iain has lectured frequently on the topics of consumer-centered design, design-driven business strategies, ethical consumption, packaging design, and open innovation at universities and business conferences in the United States.
Dave Sanders
NAVTEQ
As the Business Planning Manager of the NN4D team, Dave provides industry and market analysis, strategic insights, and process improvement recommendations to drive growth of the NN4D ecosystem. He has over 12 years of professional experience, an MBA from Michigan's Ross School of Business, and a Bachelor's degree in Linguistics from the University of Illinois. Prior to joining NAVTEQ in April 2010, Dave was a technology strategy consultant at IBM.
Zach Smith
Co-Founder, gtrot
Zachary Smith is Co-Founder and CEO of gtrot, a social travel site that helps users share travel plans with friends and collect advice from people they trust. Under his leadership, the company took top prize in the Harvard Innovation Challenge and attracted Series A funding from Lightbank, the Chicago-based VC headed by Groupon co-founders Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell. gtrot was recently named a Top 5 Startup at Chicago Techweek 2011. Zachary was previously a consultant at Bain & Co. in New York. He holds a BA from Harvard College and fell in love with travel while on exchange at Oxford University.
Mark Friedgan
Principal, Hubrix Ventures
Mark Friedgan is an Angel Investor and an advisor to startups. He was an early employee at CashNetUSA and later CIO of Enova Financial. He helped found FundScience, a charity exploring crowd-sourcing as a means of funding research. Mark was named one of the Top 25 CTO's of 2010 by Infoworld and was a member of the CIO magazine Top 100 list. Mark has Bachelor's and Master's Degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon.
Geoff Domoracki
Co-Founder & CEO, Techweek
A philosophy major turned web entrepreneur, Geoff lives in the cross-section of startups, technology, and society. Geoff has spent the past three years providing venture consulting for investment firms such as Lightbank, the venture capital firm behind Groupon. His interests include open data, microfinance, venture capital, and French philosophy.
Ross J. Pettit
Client Principal, ThoughtWorks
Ross Pettit consults, writes, and speaks on running better technology businesses (tech firms and IT captives) and the things that make it possible: good governance behaviors (activist investing in IT), what matters most (results, not effort), how we organize (restructure from the technologically abstract to the business concrete), how we execute and manage (replacing industrial with professional), how we plan (debunking the myth of control), how we pay the bills (capital-intensive financing and budgeting in an agile world), and robustness over optimization (anti-fragility). Ross is a Client Principal with ThoughtWorks. You can read Ross' blog at
rosspettit.com
Justin Massa
Founder & CEO, Food Genius
Justin's work centers around new technologies, open data, and food; he is the founder and CEO of Food Genius. Food Genius is a mobile app that helps you discover and share your next favorite dish. Previously, Justin was the Director of Project and Grant Development at the Metro Chicago Information Center and a co-founder and executive director of MoveSmart.org, an organization that connects housing seekers to neighborhoods of opportunity and diversity.
Jonathan Pasky
Co-Founder & President, Techweek
Jonathan is a patent attorney and principal at Pasky IP, a boutique intellectual property law firm. Previously, he was Chief Legal Officer at FanFound, a Chicago-based music startup. As a member of the Techweek team, Jon delivers legal strategy and business consulting, bringing insight to startup strategy regarding innovation and technology.
NAVTEQ is the leading global provider of maps, traffic and location data (digital location content) enabling navigation, location-based services and mobile advertising around the world. NAVTEQ supplies comprehensive digital location content to power automotive navigation systems, portable and wireless devices, Internet-based mapping applications and government and business solutions.
The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in Chicago. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group, which includes 32 regional and suburban weekly newspapers and Centerstage Chicago.
Sphere Consulting provides custom application development (in Ruby on Rails, .NET, LAMP, Java and iPhone) and business intelligence solutions. They offer all engagement models, including both dedicated team and turnkey product development. Sphere operates four R&D centers: in Chicago and three offshore centers in Eastern Europe: Kiev and Kharkov, Ukraine and St.Petersburg, Russia.
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