Steve Olshansky has more than 20 years of business and technology experience. His focus has been on online trust technology & policy, security, privacy, digital identity, federated identity and access management (IAM), and enabling and enhancing collaboration and knowledge management within and between organizations. His experience includes developing technology strategies in support of business goals, Internet-based business applications, large-scale website and corresponding information architectures, knowledge management and electronic performance support systems (EPSSs), online communities and social networking, and online training and education.

He has focused his career on integrating and aligning technology with business processes — providing support to organizations large and small. He has worked extensively in the public and private sectors, improving efficiency and productivity. He has successfully managed large IT consulting and software development projects, as well as high-visibility web development efforts, from initial design through deployment.

He worked for the Internet Society from 2014 to 2023, and was Director of Trust Technology, Policy, & Strategy. He worked on and led a variety of initiatives and advocacy projects focused on security, privacy, trust, identity & access management (IAM), and the Internet of Things (IoT), among others. This included outreach and community engagement, and cultivation of productive relationships with numerous stakeholders across industry, government, and academia. The Internet Society is a global non-profit organization dedicated to promoting an open, globally connected, secure, and trustworthy internet for all. It plays a crucial role in shaping internet policies, standards, and protocols through its various initiatives and engagement with stakeholders. It was founded in 1992 by the “fathers of the Internet” and has since been at the forefront of efforts to ensure that the internet remains a global public resource. It is also the organizational home for the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the premier standards development organization (SDO) for the Internet. 

From 2001-2014 he was with Internet2, the U.S. Research and Education (R&E) advanced networking consortium, serving as the consulting program manager for their next generation security and federated identity and access management (IAM) initiatives. In 2011 he joined the staff of Internet2 as Director, Federated Technologies. He was working on a variety of projects focused on the development and deployment of next-generation federated identity and access management infrastructure, aimed at reducing the friction inherent in secure cross-domain collaborations and resource access for both public and private sector institutions.

Much of the work at Internet2 was under the umbrella of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Middleware Initiative, and later the NSF Software Development for Cyberinfrastructure program. In addition, he was working on developing the potential of client certificates into real deployed intra- and inter-domain services (e.g. VPNs, authentication and multifactor authentication, signed documents, signed email). 

Steve holds a M.S. in Telecommunications from the University of Colorado at Boulder.  His experience also includes:

• Consultant for a boutique eBusiness/Telecommunications strategy firm, providing strategic advisory services focused on applications of information technology, competitive positioning, and emerging technologies, for clients ranging from G2000/F500 to startups.

• Technical editor for the HP Security Handbook (2005).

• Content and Business Development for U S WEST’s Data Services Division (!nterprise), including due diligence and negotiating best-of-breed content partnerships for U S WEST’s IP-enabled services and platforms. In addition, he performed technical evaluations of submitted business plans for the U S WEST Business Development group, in search of investment opportunities in line with U S WEST’s strategic business goals.

• Led key projects for Digital Creators, a developer of Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS) and online corporate training and education. Developed the specification and requirements definition, design, and prototyping of an enterprise Knowledge Management / Electronic Performance Support System (EPSS) for a Fortune 150 client; the specification, design, prototyping, and production of an automated CD-ROM/Web hybrid Ability/Skills Assessment tool; managed the design, production, and deployment of an interactive, on-line, multimedia corporate training and education project.

• Program manager for the early design, development, and expansion of the official State of Colorado government website and developed associated training programs for state agency staff.

• Long-time active participant (since 1994) and member of the founding board of directors of Boulder Community Network, recognized worldwide as one of the earliest and leading example of thriving online local communities.  

With a passion for innovation and change, Bert Bruns has over 30 years of experience in the field. Cooperation with your organisation and where needed external parties is the secret to success. His business engineering, large-scale change management programs and management consulting have brought businesses forward in sectors like financial institutions, airlines, Internet companies and start-ups.

Bert has held senior positions with IT architecture and business strategy consulting firms such as KPMG, Nolan & Norton and Gartner Consulting. Currently he runs Bridges2Beyond, a management consulting company focusing on sustainability, innovation and strategic initiatives.

David Carlson is an experienced researcher, developer, author, instructor, and eBusiness consultant. He is a frequent contributor to several technical journals, and has been a speaker at recent OOPSLA and XML conferences. In addition, he has taught graduate level courses in knowledge-based systems and computer architecture, and was a Sun-certified instructor for Java 1.0. During his 20-year career, Dr. Carlson’s focus has been on creating practical applications of leading edge technology, including application modeling and XML vocabularies. He earned his Ph.D. in Information Systems from the University of Arizona and is the author of two books: Modeling XML Applications with UML: Practical e-Business Applications (Addison-Wesley, 2001) and Eclipse Distilled (Addison-Wesley, 2005). 

George Deriso has an abundance of experience in business as an executive, entrepreneur, consultant and professor. He has worked with companies of all sizes in different countries and industries.

Before founding his consulting company, Cosmos Partners, he worked for Falcon Venture Partners, a private equity firm in Colorado. He has been instrumental as an executive or founder in 9 technology startups and worked for global companies AT&T, Apple, and Gartner. He has lived and worked in Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific region.

George recently concluded 18 years teaching entrepreneurship to undergraduate and MBA students at the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business in Boulder, Colorado, and at GEA College in Ljubljana, Slovenia as a visiting professor. He has been a board member, advisor and master mentor for high-impact ventures and enterprises around the world. 

David Keaton has over 20 years of experience in computer and telecommunications technology, business, and standards. He is accomplished at leading geographically dispersed multidiscipline teams to deliver leading-edge products. He has developed parallel processor architectures that range from supercomputers to small embedded< systems; provided planning, analysis, and technical development of software, hardware, and network infrastructure; developed international standards; and provided training for diverse groups of technical and nontechnical people.

David is currently working on an extension to the C programming language to provide better mechanisms for preventing buffer overflows, a method typically used by hackers to exploit flaws in computer and router software. He has tested part of this work at Cisco with astonishingly good results. Soon, it is likely that all vendors will be required to certify their products to be free of buffer overflows, similar to the “Y2k-ready” campaign.

Another recent project involved creating a new scheme for selective encryption of MPEG-2 video at 10 times the efficiency of the Sony Passage system. This allows content producers to provide free distribution of videos that are either unusable or low quality until customers unlock them by purchasing a decryption key.

David continues to expand his areas of expertise and is conducting ongoing research in computer architecture and studies in new telecommunications developments such as software radio. He holds a BS in Computer Science from New Mexico Tech and is currently pursuing graduate studies in Telecommunications and Computer Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He serves on the international standardization committee for the C programming language (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG14) and on the Information Infrastructure Standards Panel (ANSI IISP). 

Cathleen Wharton has over 20 years of experience in telecommunications, high-tech, and academia. Her career has spanned the Storage, Internet, and Telecommunications, and Healthcare industries – all with an emphasis on software. She is an experienced business leader and technical contributor who has successfully designed, delivered, and managed numerous customer-facing solutions, products, and services for the market. She has broad product development experience for the consumer and small business markets as well as significant consulting experience within the education and large business markets. Dr. Wharton also has experience with and knowledge of Fortune 500 companies’ product development and operations teams, IT organizations, enterprise architectures, operational support systems, integration issues, process reengineering, and change management.

Cathleen provides business and technical, executive management and hands-on, consulting services to businesses, governmental agencies, educational and non-profit institutions. Her consulting and industry experience is in business processes and business development, e-business and marketing solutions, educational and training solutions, new product development, program and project management, software engineering and application integration, user experience and human factors engineering, and technology strategies. To her clients’ engagements she brings outstanding client communications and management skills, proven end-to-end software solution delivery expertise, broad business development experience, continuous excellence as a top-of-the-line “bridge” person between business and IT organizations, and strategic negotiation and contractual skills with partners, vendors, and internal organizations.

During her career, Cathleen has held a variety of positions. For example, she has extensive industry experience in key management and project delivery roles as a Senior Software Engineering Manager (Sun Microsystems), Assistant Vice President of Business Systems (Great-West Healthcare), Vice President (BoldTech Systems, Inc.), Chief Technology Officer (e-Trinsic, Inc.), Director of Content and Business Development (U S WEST !nterprise) and Member of Technical Staff (U S WEST Advanced Technologies). Dr. Wharton has also worked at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, California, AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey; and taught at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and at the University of Pittsburgh.

Cathleen holds a United States patent, has published extensively in the computer science and human factors communities, and has achieved worldwide recognition for her co-development of the Cognitive Walkthrough usability inspection method. Dr. Wharton holds a B.S. in Psychology, a Certificate in Cognitive Science, and a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Computer Science. Her undergraduate degrees are from the University of Denver and her graduate degrees are from the University of Colorado at Boulder. 

James is a strategic communications leader and reputation specialist. With more than twenty years of experience in driving change through high-impact communications, he has advised a range of big brand clients, disruptive start-ups, business leaders, and CEOs across the political, corporate, and non-profit sectors. James knows how to separate signal from noise and helps clients articulate their vision to key stakeholders to achieve their objectives.

Most recently, he served as Chief Communications Officer and Vice President Corporate Communications at global non-profit the Internet Society, where he had overall responsibility for corporate reputation, brand development, and the organisation’s internal and external communications strategy. In this role, he ran integrated communications programmes and directed a range of government-focused public affairs and policy advocacy campaigns designed to address complex global and regional Internet related issues.

His work at the heart of the Internet technical community helped strengthen the resilience of the Internet through policy change, advance the deployment of Internet infrastructure around the world, and provided new means of access to those who need it most.

Prior to this, James spent ten years at AxiCom, WPP’s only technology focused B2B public relations firm in the UK and Europe. There, he led accounts across the broadcast, telecoms, and IT sectors for some of the world’s best known tech brands including Dell, Nokia, Panasonic, and telecoms equipment manufacturer ZTE. He also established the agency’s policy and governance arm, where he provided strategic counsel for the International Chamber of Commerce’s BASIS initiative in support of its participation in United Nations multi-stakeholder Internet Governance Forum events. 

James holds an M.A. in Area Studies and Arabic from the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London, and a B.A. in Modern European Languages from the University of East Anglia.