Jørn KS Ellefsen cofounded and has grown Comperio from scratch into an acclaimed search expert internationally with 40 employees and offices in Oslo, Stockholm, Boston. The company’s London office is expected to open this year. Comperio’s global customer base covers three continents. His 15 years of experience in the ICT business includes seven years at Oracle as the company’s sales and strategy director and four years at Computas as a sales, market, and resource allocation manager. Mr. Ellefsen has a master’s degree in economics and business administration.

Kirk Koenigsbauer
General Manager, Office Business Platform Product Management Group, Microsoft

Kirk Koenigsbauer is focused on the worldwide business strategy for SharePoint Products and Technologies, Project, and PerformancePoint. He also is responsible for sales, marketing, and services for FAST, and enterprise marketing for the 2007 Office system. His earlier Microsoft experiences have included responsibility for the MSN.com Product Management team, and product and program management leadership roles. Previously Mr. Koenigsbauer built and ran Amazon.com’s retail software and video games businesses and led the development and launch of Amazon’s Electronics and Auction sites. He began his career as a management information systems consultant with Andersen Consulting (Accenture). Mr. Koenigsbauer earned a B.A. in American Studies from Colby College and attended Seattle University’s Albers School of Business.

Venkat Krishnamoorthy is responsible for the hosted platform development within Thomson Reuter’s Markets division which services the financial services industry. Mr. Krishnamoorthy provides strategy, vision, and implementation leadership in building world-class products and partners actively with Product Management and the Business in establishing the vision for the near- and long-term future. Combining a deep domain knowledge in portfolio analytics and financial data along with a strong technical background, he constantly is looking to deliver more innovative capabilities in Thomson Reuters products such as search, content entitlements, and analytics. Prior to this role Mr. Krishnamoorthy had over 15 years of experience managing architecture and development for financial applications at Reuters, Multex, and CIBC World Markets.

Charlene Li is an independent thought leader and analyst on emerging technologies, with a specific focus on social technologies, interactive media, and marketing – topics which she discusses in her blog at charleneli.com. Ms. Li is one of the most frequently quoted industry analysts, and has appeared on 60 Minutes, The McNeil-Lehrer NewsHour, and ABC News. Most recently, Ms. Li was a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research. She also coauthored Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. Ms. Li is a graduate of Harvard Business School and Harvard College.

Bjørn Olstad, Ph.D., serves as the chief technology officer of FAST and is a Microsoft Distinguished Engineer. Before joining FAST, Dr. Olstad held key positions within General Electric Medical Systems, including director of research and development for Cardiac Ultrasound. He has served as a professor in computer science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), where he was awarded the youngest
professorship ever.

Daniel W. Rasmus, director of Business Insights for the Microsoft Business Division, guides the research process that allows Microsoft to envision how people will work in the future. Mr. Rasmus analyzes trends in technology, society, education, labor, and economics to devise scenarios used by Microsoft in developing products for tomorrow’s workforce. Before joining Microsoft in 2003, Mr. Rasmus was an analyst with Forrester Research where he invented conceptual frameworks for enabling the future of work, including adaptive work spaces and intelligent content services. He attended the University of California at Santa Cruz and received a certificate in intelligent systems engineering from the University of California at Irvine.

Valentin Richter is managing director and founder of Raytion, an internationally operating consultancy for information management and corporate communications focused on enterprise search. Prior to consulting Global 100 companies he worked for Trinkaus & Burkhardt, a private bank which is now owned by HSBC. Mr. Richter has studied mathematics and information sciences.

Clay Shirky is a provocative voice on all things Internet: economics and culture, media and community, and the open source movement. He divides his time among consulting, teaching, and writing on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. Mr. Shirky’s consulting practice is focused on the way network technologies provide new ways for groups to get things done, including collaboration tools, social networks, peer-to-peer sharing, collaborative filtering, and open source development. His new book, Here Comes Everybody, explores the effects of open networks, collaboration, and user-created and disseminated content on organizations and industries. Mr. Shirky’s writings are archived at www.shirky.com.

Walton Smith is one of Booz Allen’s thought leaders in social media. Through his visionary approach, Mr. Smith led an internal corporate strategy engagement for Booz Allen’s entire Knowledge Management and Information Sharing Program, a cross-team effort to improve the flow of information through IT technologies including social networking and search. He was also responsible for the successful implementation of the firm’s first social networking platform called Hello.bah.com. Mr. Smith has a proven track record of providing outstanding results for clients in the public and private sectors. Currently he leads several client-facing initiatives to roll out Enterprise 2.0 solutions.

Jared Spataro is the director of enterprise search at Microsoft. His professional career has focused on software, and before joining Microsoft he worked for a leading enterprise content management vendor. Mr. Spataro earned an M.B.A. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management and a B.S. in Computer Science from Brigham Young University.

Don Tapscott is an internationally renowned authority on the strategic value and impact of information technol­ogy and chairman of nGenera Innovation Network. A researcher and author,  Mr. Tapscott currently is working on his latest book, Grown Up Digital: How the Net Genera­tion is Changing the World, which explores how the first genera­tion to grow up with the Internet is redefining today’s work­place, marketplace, schools, family, and government. Based on a multi-million dollar research project, Grown Up Digital has an indispensable message for all organizations that seek to turn the NetGen’s talents and world view into competitive advantage.

Pekka Viljakainen is an executive vice president of Tieto and the Head of Customer and Market Operations and Tieto International. The company develops innovative IT solutions that realize and digitalize the visions of its customers. For many years, Mr. Viljakainen has analyzed the fundamental change in consumer behavior and its implications for corporate strategies in information-intensive businesses. He is involved in promoting the necessary preparations for a true revolu­tion of services and the deep strategic role of digitalization across Europe. Prior to joining Tieto in 2000, Mr. Viljakainen had established Oy Visual Systems in 1986 and studied engineering at the University of Technology in Lappeenranta.