Speakers
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Ralph de la VegaPresident and CEOAT&T MobilityRalph de la Vega is President and CEO—AT&T Mobility, a position he has held since 2007. He is responsible for the company's largest growth engine. Today, AT&T is the industry's mobile broadband leader and number-one smartphone provider. From October 2008 to January 2012, Mr. de la Vega served as President and CEO-AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. In addition to the company's wireless business, he led the company's local consumer wireline operations, including U-verse TV® which has received numerous industry awards. Prior to becoming head of AT&T's Mobility organization, Mr. de la Vega served as group president-Regional Telecommunications and Entertainment, with responsibility for overall leadership in AT&T's regional wired business, including consumer and regional business sales and network. He was appointed to that post in January 2007, after the close of the AT&T-BellSouth merger, which consolidated ownership of Cingular. From 2004-2006, he served as chief operating officer of Cingular Wireless, with responsibility for technology planning, network operations, marketing, sales and customer care. Before joining Cingular in January 2004, he served as president-BellSouth Latin America, with overall responsibility for BellSouth's operations in 11 countries: Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Nicaragua, Brazil and Guatemala. Earlier, he served as BellSouth's president of Broadband and Internet Services. In this position, he had overall responsibility for the deployment, marketing and operations of broadband services. In addition, he had responsibility for BellSouth Internet Services and BellSouth's rapidly growing data support groups. Mr. de la Vega started his career in 1974 with BellSouth (then Southern Bell) as a management assistant. He has held numerous positions of increasing responsibility in Network Planning, Consumer Services, Engineering and Operations — including a rotational assignment at Telcordia (Bellcore) — and was responsible for all BellSouth Telecommunications Network Operations in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Mr. de la Vega serves on the boards of New York Life Insurance Company, the Georgia Aquarium and the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. He is extensively involved in nonprofit and community organizations, serving as chairman of Junior Achievement Worldwide and chairman of Hispanic initiatives for the Boy Scouts of America. He was inducted into the Hispanic Scholarship Fund’s prestigious Alumni Hall of Fame, which honors select Hispanics for their personal achievements, contributions and service to America. Mr. de la Vega has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Florida Atlantic University (FAU) and a master’s degree in business administration from Northern Illinois University. He completed the Executive Program at the University of Virginia and received an honorary doctorate from FAU. He is also the author of the best-selling book Obstacles Welcome: Turn Adversity into Advantage in Business and Life (Thomas Nelson, 2009). A native of Cuba, Mr. de la Vega and his family live in Atlanta, GA. |
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Beth MynattExecutive Director, IPaTGeorgia TechElizabeth D. Mynatt is the Executive Director of the Institute for People and Technology, and Professor in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research program Everyday Computing examines the human-computer interface implications of having computation continuously present in many aspects of everyday life. Her research contributes to ongoing work in personal health informatics, computer-supported collaborative work and human-computer interface design. Named Top Woman Innovator in Technology by Atlanta Woman Magazine in 2005, Mynatt has created new technologies that support the independence and quality of life of older adults "aging in place," that help people manage diabetes, and that increase creative collaboration in workplaces. Mynatt is a member of the SIGCHI Academy, a Sloan and Kavli research fellow, and serves on Microsoft Research's Technical Advisory Board. Mynatt is also a member of the Computing Community Consortium, an NSF-sponsored effort to engage the computing research community in envisioning more audacious research challenges. |
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Blair MacIntyreAssociate Professor, School of Interactive Computing, College of ComputingGeorgia TechBlair MacIntyre is an Associate Professor in the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He directs the Augmented Environments Lab, which includes the Argon AR Web Project and the AR Game Studio. His research focuses on the design and implementation of interactive mixed-reality and augmented-reality software, games and experiences, aimed at understanding the potential of AR as a new medium for games, entertainment, education and work. He has been doing research in augmented reality since 1991. He is actively involved with numerous conferences and workshops, and is Program Chair for ISMAR 2012 (International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality) at Georgia Tech. He has been a Program Committee Chair for ISWC 2000 (International Symposium on Wearable Computing), ISMAR 2003, and UIST 2003 (The ACM Symposium on User-Interface Software and Technology). He has served on the editorial boards of The International Journal of Human-Computer Studies and the journal Virtual Reality. He also served as the guest editor of a "Mixed Reality" special issue of IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications. He is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award. |
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Bruce ThomasDirector, Wearable Computer LabUniversity of South AustraliaProfessor Thomas is the current the Director of the Wearable Computer Laboratory, Director of the UniSA Holodeck Laboratory, Director of the Human Embedded Research Group, Deputy Director of the Advanced Computing Research Centre at the University of South Australia. He is currently a NICTA Fellow, and visiting Scholar with the Human Interaction Technology Laboratory, University of Washington. Prof. Thomas is the inventor of the first outdoor augmented reality game ARQuake. His current research interests include: wearable computers, user interfaces, augmented reality, virtual reality, CSCW, and tabletop display interfaces. His experience includes working at the School of Computer and Information Science, University of South Australia since 1990. He has run his own computer consultancy company. He was a Computer Scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and a software engineer for the Computer Sciences Corporation and the General Electric Company. |
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Chris PenroseSenior Vice President, Emerging DevicesAT&T MobilityChris Penrose is Senior Vice President of AT&T’s Emerging Devices Organization. Penrose leads a team that is responsible for connecting AT&T’s wireless network to consumer electronics including tablets, computers, tracking devices, eReaders, mHealth and portable navigation. With more than two decades of experience with AT&T and its predecessor companies, Penrose has expertise in strategic planning, new product development, sales, marketing, distribution planning and customer service. Prior to this role, Penrose was Vice President/General Manager of AT&T’s South Texas Market, where he had complete P&L responsibility for both wireline and wireless products. He held a similar position with AT&T in Virginia and West Virginia. Penrose earned a Bachelor in Science in Marketing and a Masters in Business Administration from Indiana University. He is active in the community, having served on the boards of directors of Junior Achievement, the University of Texas at San Antonio, the North Texas Chamber of Commerce and the San Antonio Sports Foundation. |
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Jay WrightVice President, Business DevelopmentQualcommJay Wright is responsible for developing and driving Qualcomm's augmented reality commercialization strategy. In this role, he manages the Company’s partnerships with innovators in industry and academia, and leads Qualcomm's efforts to enable augmented reality within the mobile ecosystem. Wright brings nearly 20 years experience in developing software and services for mobile and wireless devices to his role at Qualcomm. Prior to joining the Company, Wright was CEO of SingleTap Inc., a company focused on simplifying the discovery, purchase and installation of software directly from Windows Mobile and Palm OS devices. Through his leadership, SingleTap established partnerships and product distribution deals with a variety of leading consumer and automotive companies, allowing them to distribute personalized mobile applications and content to thousands of consumers and employees. Previously, as founder and CEO of Wright Strategies Inc., Wright led the development of tools and software infrastructure that enabled Windows solution providers to develop and deploy PDA applications capable of synchronizing data with enterprise data sources. Under his strategic direction, the company’s FormLogic software platform was used to deploy tens of thousands of devices for name-brand consumer products companies. An inventor and software engineer, Wright holds three patents – two of which encompass data synchronization between mobile devices and have been regarded as landmark patents in the field of wireless email. Wright earned a Bachelor of Arts in quantitative economics and decision sciences from the University of California, San Diego. |
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John AveryEngineering Group ManagerPanasonic Innovation CenterJohn Avery, Engineering Group Manager at Panasonic Innovation Center, develops next generation information and entertainment devices and services for automotive use. He spent over 25 years developing many wireless products from embedded software/hardware to scalable server-side software. Avery holds a patent on a Spread-Spectrum protocol developed for LXE, and a patent for a search algorithm for Amazon.com. He founded and served as CTO of Convergence Corp which sold to Amazon.com in 1999, and Mobliss which sold to Index Corp in 2004. Avery was the chief architect for the web-to-wireless transcoding engine used by Convergence Corp. He designed and implemented both the SMS Gateway engine and vote counting application used by Mobliss to handle the high volume SMS vote counting for the TV show American Idol. |
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Thad StarnerAssociate Professor, College of ComputingGeorgia TechThad Starner is an Associate Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Interactive Computing. Thad was perhaps the first to integrate a wearable computer into his everyday life as an intelligent personal assistant. Starner's work as a PhD student would help found the field of Wearable Computing. His group's prototypes and patents on mobile MP3 players, mobile instant messaging and e-mail, gesture-based interfaces, and mobile context-based search foreshadowed now commonplace devices and services. Thad has authored over 100 scientific publications with over 100 co-authors on mobile Human Computer Interaction (HCI), pattern discovery, human power generation for mobile devices, and gesture recognition, and he is a founder and current co-chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Wearable Information Systems. |
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Eric GilbertAssistant Professor, School of Interactive ComputingGeorgia TechEric Gilbert is an Assistant Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. He joined the Georgia Tech faculty in 2011 after finishing a Ph.D. in CS at Illinois. Dr. Gilbert leads the *comp.social* lab, a research group that focuses on building and studying social media. His work is supported by grants from Yahoo!, Google, the NSF and DARPA. Dr. Gilbert has also founded several social media sites reaching nearly a million people, and his work has received three best paper awards and two nominations from ACM's SIGCHI. His research has recently been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, MIT's Technology Review and on CNN and NPR. One of his favorite activities in life is drinking coffee while hanging out on the internet. |
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Laurie BairdStrategic Advisor Media and EntertainmentGeorgia TechLaurie Dean Baird is an innovative thought leader in the media and entertainment industry focusing on emerging technology, social practices and business models in the changing media landscape. She has over 20 years of experience in corporate strategy, business development and R&D in digital media and frequently speaks on the changing industry. She has provided technology insights to ESPN, Public Media International and the Time Warner family, including Turner Broadcasting, HBO, Warner Brothers, Time Inc, AOL and Time Warner Cable. She is a research fellow at the Futures of Entertainment and a strategic advisor at the Georgia Tech - Institute for People and Technology. Particularly areas of interest include: media synergies, audience engagement, digital media, social media, transmedia, two screen and companion applications, interactive viewing, personalization, data analytics, cloud services and future of storytelling. Baird advises several domestic and international organizations. She is a board member of the MIT College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, the Georgia Tech GVU Center, Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT) Southeast, GlobalEXECWomen and Startup Chicks. She was named one of the “Most Powerful Women in Cable Technology” by WICT and CableFax Magazine and named a finalist for Women in Technology – Woman of the Year. She is a patent holder and has been recognized by the National Science Foundation and NASA for her development of innovative technologies. Baird earned a BS in physics and BA in sociology from St. Lawrence University, and a SM (MBA) from the MIT Sloan School of Management. She can be followed on Twitter @LawD. |
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