WCS 2011 Speakers

Speakers will include the Liferay Leadership Team, Liferay Partners, and special guests from the Liferay Community.  

Please stay tuned as we add more speakers to our lineup in the weeks to come!

SPECIAL GUEST SPEAKER

Dana Blankenhorn, Business Journalist

Dana Blankenhorn has been a reporter for over 40 years and began covering technology in 1982. He was one of the first reporters hired for Newsbytes, a pioneering online news service, and launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of Internet business, in 1994.

His work has been seen in dozens of magazines and newspapers, he's written a half-dozen books, launched a weekly newsletter on e-commerce, and now offers his views at Danablankenhorn.com and Seeking Alpha. Raised on Massapequa, NY, he graduated from Rice University and Northwestern University and now lives in Atlanta with his wife, a computer programmer, and two cats.

Liferay Leadership

Brian Chan, Founder & Chief Software Architect

Brian Chan, Chief Software Architect and founder, created Liferay Portal in 2000 to provide non-profit organizations with an open source solution to facilitate collaboration on the Internet. He has since steered Liferay to become a worldwide leader in innovative open source enterprise solutions. With a strong foundation in software architecture and economics, Brian has solidified open source as a viable and high performance option for the enterprise with business benefits beyond cost savings.

Brian holds a dual B.S. degree in Economics and Computer Science from the University of Chicago. He is also a sought after speaker at major industry events such as JavaOne, JAX Asia and Europe and his thought leadership has gained him seats on the JSR-286 and JSF-314 specification committees.

Bryan Cheung, Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Bryan Cheung steers Liferay's strategic direction and worldwide business development efforts as one of the founders serving with the company since its inception in 2004. With technical experience to balance a strong commitment to end user experience, Bryan leads Liferay in meeting its commitment to deliver focused and effective business solutions to its customers and its community. Most recently, Bryan divides his time between Liferay's US and European headquarters and oversees Liferay's continued growth in its two largest markets. Bryan graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science.

Paul Hinz, Chief Marketing Officer

Paul Hinz leads Liferay's product positioning, marketing and sales strategies. Paul comes to Liferay with over 20 years of engineering and product strategy experience in startup, government and Fortune 500 companies. He has unique experience in the fostering of open source communities which is supported by both investors as well as free and open source software advocates alike. Before joining Liferay, Paul led strategies for Java EE, the GlassFish Portfolio product lines and was Sun Microsystems' strategist for portals and collaboration while additionally coordinating with the MySQL team for open source marketing and sales. Prior to Sun, Mr. Hinz held multiple positions including Sun-Netscape, OSI, Hewlett-Packard and for the California Department of Transportation Research Laboratory. Paul holds a B.S. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from California State University, Sacramento and a Masters of Business from the University of Maryland.

Brian Kim, Founder & Chief Operating Officer

Brian Kim, Chief Operating Officer and a founding partner, leads the company's Professional Services Organization and orchestrates the ongoing operations of a fast-growing global organization. He is also managing the strategic growth of the company's partnership network. Prior to Liferay, Brian worked alongside upper management at HubbardOne on internal company operations. He is also an alumnus of Accenture where he worked with marquée clients within the financial services sector. Brian holds a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Chicago.

Michael Young, Founder & Chief Technology Officer

Michael Young, Chief Technology Officer and founding partner, steers product development alongside Brian Chan with focus on maintaining Liferay technology's ease of development and integration. One of the company's leading technologists, Michael manages all integration and technology partnerships and has lead the development of core features such as WSRP and Spring Framework integration. His technical prowess and experience has earned him seats on the OASIS WSRP and CMIS committees. Michael holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego.

Featured Speakers

Joshua Asbury, Sales and Account Manager, Liferay, Inc.

Josh Asbury is Liferay's Sales and Account Manager for North America. Josh comes to Liferay with over 13 years of experience in software engineering, development, and product strategy. Josh is known to be a fearless advocate for Liferay and is instrumental in fostering Liferay and other open source technologies as the chosen solutions at previous employers. As Liferay's Sales and Account Manager, Josh draws on his experience in deploying portals and open source software to ensure that customers are positioned for success with Liferay. Josh has been with Liferay since 2009 and works with many of Liferay's strategic customers.

Before joining Liferay, Josh held positions at SDRC, Hillenbrand Industries' Batesville Casket Company division, and his own company, Hinutech. Josh graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio with a B.S. in Systems Analysis.

Raymond Augé, Senior Software Architect, Liferay, Inc.

Raymond Augé is a Senior Software Architect focused on feature development and innovation. Since joining Liferay in 2005, his goal has been to increase ease of development without compromising creativity. Recently, he has prototyped and placed into production, a remote publishing, workflow-driven staging implementation complete with in-context preview, page versionning, website branching and rapid data modeling for application development. He has driven numerous improvements in areas such as permissionning, dynamic data models and meta-data support, WCM, and Import/Export. He leads the charge for upcoming implementations of wRAD in Liferay. Raymond holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Laurentian University.

Danny Ayers, Global Online Marketing Communications Manager, Sensus

Danny Ayers is the Global Online Marketing Communications Manager at Sensus, a worldwide leader in smart grid utility infrastructure systems and metering. In his role with Sensus, he is responsible for all digital systems, strategy, and online marketing. Danny has 12+ years managing interactive / online media and web systems in the telecommunications, media, and energy industries. He holds a Bachelor of Science & Technology degree in Digital Media and is currently pursuing an MBA at Colorado State. Danny, his wife, and two children reside in Raleigh, NC.

David Becerra, VP Strategy & Business Development, MeLLmo

David Becerra has responsibility for developing and executing MeLLmo business development and partner programs. In this role, he engages with the MeLLmo management and development teams to build lasting partner relationship that maximize US and International business opportunities. David comes to MeLLmo from Cake, a commercial editorial company, and has worked at the top interactive media agencies throughout Los Angeles. He brings a cutting-edge design aesthetic to the corporate world of business intelligence. David holds a Bachelor of Science for Interactive Media Design from the Art Institute of California, San Diego and attended the Launching New Ventures Executive Education Program at the Harvard Business School.

Deep Bhatia, Director of System, Programming, & Support, Daiichi Sankyo Inc.

Deep Bhatia is Director of System, Programming, and Support for Daiichi Sankyo Inc. (DSI), a US subsidiary of a global pharmaceutical innovator. He has over 18 years of experience in various industries such as Pharmaceuticals, Telecommunication, Mobile Communication, and Finance. He oversees disciplines like Enterprise Content Management, eMarketing, Mobile Computing, and various web based business applications and portals. In addition to that, he is also accountable for application architecture, solution architecture, systems support, system upgrades, customization, and enhancements for multiple business systems, websites, and portal solutions.

Deep Bhatia holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Delhi Institute of Technology.

Brian Bohnet, Senior Project Engineer, Union Pacific

Brian Bohnet began working in IT as a web developer in the late 1990's migrating into java and j2ee development. Having gained experience with linux and application server administration over the years, he joined Union Pacific as a technical product manager, supporting web application software. Brian currently manages 3 portal solutions, including Liferay, and as in the process of moving all portal content to one solution... Liferay Enterprise Edition.

Nate Cavanaugh, Director of User Interface Engineering, Liferay, Inc.

Nate Cavanaugh is the Director of User Interface Engineering for Liferay, in which he helps guide not only the interface for end user products, but also the interface for different development methodologies. Nate currently heads up Liferay's latest UI project, AlloyUI. He has a passion to help users at different levels to be more productive and get work done. He loves to create, whether it be beautiful interfaces, a piece of art, or just a small essay. He tends to be hyperbolic, and loves a good debate.

Edwin Chung, Director of Business Development, Liferay, Inc.

As the US Director of Business Development, Edwin Chung is responsible for business strategy execution and also leads the US and Asia Pacific sales teams, as well as setting overall sales goals and processes for Liferay's worldwide offices. Ed has been with Liferay since 2005 and has managed many of Liferay's strategic accounts. His work has included development of enterprise portal strategy, business process analysis, and business process re-engineering. Ed also has extensive experience around the overall design, development and implementation of internet, intranet, and extranet solutions. Ed joins Liferay with over 12 years of consulting and product management experience. Prior to Liferay, Ed's experience included providing portal solutions to Global 1000 companies. Ed holds a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Minhchau Dang, Consultant, Liferay, Inc.

After joining the company in 2007, Minhchau has worked with enterprise clients to implement backend integrations between Liferay and third-party search engines, collaboration suites, identity management systems, and customer relationship management tools. Along the way, he has also transitioned client customizations between almost all major and minor releases since Liferay 4.3.

Minhchau holds a B.S. in Information and Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine.

Manish Dixit, Co-Founder, SocialEkwity, Inc.

SocialEkwity, Inc. was co-founded by Manish Dixit, an industry veteran of Silicon Valley and the mobile and enterprise space, with over 15 years architecting and deploying large-scale services. Prior to co-founding SocialEkwity, Manish was the Director of Engineering at Oracle for the WebCenter Connect project, which integrated social connections with enterprise portals. Manish joined Oracle through their acquisition of Sun Microsystems, where he led the Engineering team in the development of web portal products. Manish also served as the Chief Technology Architect for the Pixo Mobile Messaging Platform, which was an early innovation in Mobile Application Storespace. Manish was one of the key contributors to Sun Microsystem's acquisition of Pixo. Manish has also held engineering and management positions at Nokia. Manish received his Bachelors of Engineering from MNIT (REC) in Bhopal, India. He, along with his co-founders, have assembled a team of engineers and product professionals who have launched high volume mobile and enterprise platforms together prior to joining forces at SocialEkwity.

Tommy Doerr, Jr. Project Engineer, Union Pacific

Tommy Doerr joined Union Pacific in June 2011 to assist with the enterprise deployment of Liferay Portal. Tommy worked in information technology for the defense industry and academic research institutions before being hired by UP. He holds a B.S. in Geography from the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Alaaeldin El-Nattar, Principal Architect, Rivet Logic Corporation

Alaaeldin has more than 14 years of enterprise IT software design and development experience, including certified expertise in open source platforms from Liferay, Alfresco, and JBoss. At Rivet Logic since 2006, Alaaeldin has led the architecture and implementation of numerous Liferay projects ranging from enterprise-wide intranets to large-scale public websites and communities. Alaaeldin is also a certified Liferay trainer, regularly conducting both public and pricate Liferay certified trainings courses throughout North America.

Alaaeldin earned a B.S. in Computer Science from American University and an M.S. in Computer Science from George Mason University.

James Falkner, Community Manager, Liferay, Inc.

James Falkner oversees the 35,000-strong open source Liferay Community.  In this role, James provides information, education, and leadership development, while constantly encouraging participation and growth of the community.  James has over 14 years of experience in technology, and he blends his strong technical background with a passion for open source.  James has been involved with enterprise web development and the Liferay Community since 2008.
 
Prior to joining Liferay, James led development of several key technologies in Oracle's Web Center stack, including its collaboration and social networking services.  James is also an alumnus of Sun Microsystems, where he was the principal architect for Sun's portal technologies and participated in several open source projects such as OpenPortal, GlassFish, and Community Equity.  James holds a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Florida.

Michael Han, Director of Operations, US and APAC, Liferay, Inc.

Michael Han brings his background in capital markets and more than 12 years of technology management and architecture experience to Liferay. As Liferay's Director of Operations, US and Asia, Michael oversees Liferay's operations in Asia (both in China and Southeast Asia) as well as Liferay's support and training operations in the US. Michael also manages strategic client relationships in the high-tech and financial industries. Finally, Michael leverages his expertise in large-scale distributed systems to guide the benchmarking and performance management of Liferay's product lines. Prior to Liferay, Michael served as Chief Architect for Bank of America Global Foreign Exchange and as Managing Director for a proprietary trading firm. During his career, Mr. Han has specialized in leveraging Agile practices to deliver high-performance financial systems in distributed, multi-shore development models. Michael holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US.

Jeff Handa, Senior Training Consultant, Liferay, Inc.

Jeff Handa wears several hats for Liferay. As a Sr. Training Consultant, Jeff contributes training material and leads both public and private training courses. Jeff also serves as a Project Manager, where his expertise and leadership drive several key projects. Recently, he leveraged Liferay Meta Data to implement Liferay comments in a custom portlet for a collaboration project involving one of the nation's leading networking equipment manufacturers and largest retailers. Mr. Handa has over 10 years of technology consulting experience in various industries including the higher education market, where he implemented portals at colleges and universities for several years. Jeff holds a B.S. in Biological Engineering from Mississippi State University and a M.B.A from DePaul University.

Gail Hernandez, Senior Software Engineer, Liferay, Inc.

Gail has just joined Liferay in March, and has been working in the defense industry for the past decade. There, she developed the eclectic collection of experience and worked on various diverse projects. Her experience has included developing C3I systems for unmanned aircraft and working on Open Road Tolling systems, as well as developing mobile command center systems for first responders and working on GPS systems.

Gail holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Cal Poly Pomona and a M.S. in Software Engineering from Cal State Fullerton.

Dennis Ju, Software Engineer, Liferay, Inc.

Dennis Ju is the primary developer for the OpenSocial portlet at Liferay. He is responsible for implementing a lightweight gadget framework for users to quickly build portlet-like applications as well as integrating Liferay's existing social model with OpenSocial's. Prior to joining Liferay, Dennis was an SDK developer at a data historian software company. Dennis holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Olaf Kock, Senior Consultant, Liferay Germany

After being an active part of the Liferay community for two and a half years, Olaf Kock has joined Liferay GmbH as a Technical Consultant and Trainer. After several years of software development experience in various, mostly server-side projects, Olaf now supports client teams in the architecture, implementation and development of solutions using Liferay Portal.

Hugh Martin, IT Consultant for Honda Manufacturing of Alabama

Hugh Martin has been in the Information Technology field for over 25 years. During that time, he has focused on IT infrastructure planning, implementation, and project management. Since 2003, Hugh has been working with Honda Manufacturing of Alabama (HMA) in their Technical Services and Planning groups and is the technical lead for HMA's intranet implementation.

James Min, Senior Consultant and Sales Engineer, Liferay, Inc.

James Min is a Senior Consultant and Sales Engineer with Liferay, Inc. and has been with the company since 2006. James has worked with premium Liferay clients such as AAA, ADP, State University of New York at Albany, AutoZone, AT&T, City of Los Angeles, Columbia University Law School, Deutsche Bank, Domino's Pizza, Dun & Bradstreet, EA Mobile, Intuit, Louisiana State University, Lufthansa Airlines, Raytheon, Swisher, Unisys, Volkswagen, and more. His work includes strategy development, business process analysis, advanced developer training, specialized engineering projects & POCs, architecture reviews, deployment & integration strategies, and performance tuning & scaling consultation. Having worked with every major release of Liferay since v3.6, he comes with a deep knowledge of the Liferay Portal product in addition to strong systems engineering skills within a portal environment. James has worked in the hi-tech industry for over 14 years, specializing in enterprise web applications with numerous Fortune 500 companies in the Silicon Valley and around the world. James holds a bachelor's degree from UC Berkeley, and has lived and worked for Liferay out of the Los Angeles office HQ, New York City, and the Frankfurt,Germany office.

Derek Nerenberg, Portal and Enterprise Solutions Architect, XTIVIA

Derek Nerenberg is a Portal and Enterprise Solutions Architect for XTIVIA out of Austin, TX. Derek has extensive experience implementing enterprise scale Portal, Content Management, and Collaboration solutions across healthcare, financial services, and energy verticals since he began working with web technologies in 1996. He has deep and broad skills in implementing Liferay based solutions. Derek holds a B.S. in Information Systems Programming and Internet Development from Denver Technical College, a division of DeVry University.

Jonathon Omahen, Software Engineer, Liferay, Inc.

Jonathon Omahen joined Liferay in 2009, after leaving a small Japanese software company in Hawaii. He has an extensive background in linguistics and education, and seeks to improve and promote internationalization and localization in technology. As a consultant, he has worked on projects for Cisco, and has contributed to training materials and taught numerous Liferay training sessions. A lifelong participant in open source adoption and an ardent free software advocate, he strives to bring knowledge of Liferay to the masses.

Mitesh Panchal, Solution Architect, CIGNEX

Mitesh Panchal, Solution Architect, has over 9 years of proven experience in leading, designing, developing, and delivering J2EE technology based solutions. His experience spans multiple application domains. Accomplishments include architecting and delivering Enterprise Content Management and Portal solutions for Fortune 500 companies. He holds Masters and Bachelors degrees in Computer Engineering.

Jamie Sammons, Web Portal Architect, CDS Global, Inc.

Jamie Sammons is a Liferay evangelist with 8 years experience supporting portal technology. During that time, he has helped launch a successful web portal used by almost every employee and client at CDS Global. In 2009, Jamie orchestrated the move from a proprietary web portal solution to Liferay Portal. He was also an early adopted on the Liferay Social Office product, which is used by various groups across the organization. As an active member in the Liferay Community, Jamie has recently joined the Bug Squad in an effort to help improve the overall quality of the next Liferay release.

Barrie Selack, Senior Software Engineer, Liferay, Inc.

Barrie joined Liferay in 2010 after working with Liferay for two years at an enterprise client. Since coming to Liferay, he has worked on new and upgrade Liferay installations with clients, as well as assisting with training materials development and on-site training. He has completed several architecture, design, and code reviews for clients and partners. Barrie's background includes working at various Fortune 500 companies, as well as several startup companies. His expertise and experience include WebSphere, JBoss, Tomcat, DB2, Oracle, and MySQL.

Rich Sezov, Knowledge Manager, Liferay, Inc.

Rich Sezov is Liferay's Knowledge Manager, and is the author of the Liferay Portal Administrator's Guide. He has contributed much of Liferay's training material and has led several Liferay training courses. Rich has been working with portals since 2003 and brings 16 years of extensive enterprise computing experience to Liferay. Rich has a strong background in open source technologies, having used many throughout his career.

Nathan Shaw, Principal Consultant, Liferay, Inc.

Nathan Shaw is a Principal Consultant with Liferay, Inc. and joined Liferay in 2010 after developing enterprise applications based on the Liferay platform for many years. He has a background in physics but has been applying his analytical skills as a software engineer and architect for over a decade. He is based in the fine state of Ohio and enjoys working directly with key clients and partners in his role with Liferay Consulting. Nathan holds a B.S. in Physics from Hope College and a Ph.D. in Experimental Nuclear Physics from Stony Brook University.

Harpreet Singh, Senior Director, Product Management, CloudBees

Harpreet has 12 years of experience in the software industry in various roles. He came to CloudBees from Oracle where he was a Senior Product Manager in the Application Grid group - he helped onboard GlassFish into Oracle. He was at Sun Microsystems for 10 years in various roles such as Group Product Marketing Manager leading marketing efforts for Java EE 6, GlassFish 3.1 and monetization program for GlassFish Portfolio. He was also the Product Manager for Hudson and launched it as a supported product within Sun's GlassFish Portfolio. In his prior life, he was an engineer in the Java EE RI, GlassFish teams, and was the technical lead for GlassFish 2.1. He has a MS degree in Computer Science from University of Cincinnati and an MBA from Santa Clara University.

Chris Stavros, Technology Strategist, LEVEL Studios

Chris Stavros is a Technology Strategist at LEVEL Studios. As a technical solutions architect with emphasis on enterprise integration, Chris mainly focuses on ERP workflow, intranet/extranet, social collaboration platforms, and portal technologies initiatives. He is a featured subject matter expert in various trade publications like InfoWorld Magazine, speaker and panelist for leading industry special interest groups like JA-SIG Consortium, and the Gilbane CMS Conference. Chris is a regular participant and frequent guest speaker at Liferay events across the United States.

Brett Swaim, Senior Software Engineer, Liferay, Inc.

Since joining the company in 2004, Brett has been the Lead Consultant on a variety of projects including the World Food Programme, Cisco Systems, and the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC). Brett specializes in end-to-end development, commonly leading the entire product lifecycle from the initial architecture and design, to the final release and subsequent support. His current experiences with Liferay integration involve working with Tomcat, Websphere, Oracle, MySQL, DB2, SAP, Stellent Integration, Siebel, and many others.

Brett holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the California State University, Fullerton.

Elliott Torres, Enterprise Architect, BlueCross BlueShield Association

Elliott Torres researches and develops strategies, standards, and technology best practices for one of the largest U.S. health insurance systems. Areas of expertise include software development and technology management. Elliott's previous work has included participating in startups and corporations that created disruptions in the existing corporate and technology systems in the travel, software tools, telecommunications, and financial sectors. These companies include: G2 SwitchWorks, Borland Software, Lucent Technologies, and Sears. He received a bachelor's degree in Math and Computer Science from the University of Illinois Chicago and a master's degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from University of Illinois Chicago.

Vishveshwara Vasa, Enterprise Architect, Deloitte Consulting LLP

Vishveshwara Vasa is an Enterprise Architect specialized in Enterprise Portal Technologies. He helps clients solve complex enterprise problems with portals and collaboration software solutions. He has 14+ years of experience in the IT industry and Open Group Master certified enterprise architect. His focus has been on implementing enterprise portals, system integration, and custom application development projects. Vishveshwara is specialized in cross industry solutions, and presented different solutions at various conferences.

Symposium Snapshot
Date: Sept 21-22, 2011

Early Bird Discount: $349 (ends Aug. 26)
Standard Rate: $399 (ends Sept. 15)
Late/On-Site: $499

Location:
The Crowne Plaza Anaheim Resort
Book your hotel to receive the discounted rate for Liferay

Pre-Symposium Training
Enrich your Symposium experience with a 1-day training on Sept. 20. Choose from Portal Admin Training Express or Building Themes in Liferay
 

Register

Diamond Sponsors

CIGNEX Rivet Logic

Platinum Sponsors

LEVEL Studios XTIVIA Youngsoft

Gold Sponsors

Tandem Seven Unicon

Marketplace Exhibitors

CloudBees OmegaBit Roambi Salsa Dev Terracotta

Questions?

For press and media-related inquiries, contact Liferay's Public Relations team

If you have questions about the Liferay West Coast Symposium or need help registering, please email our Events team

Join the conversation on Twitter using the #LRWCS2011 and #LRunconference hashtags.