Navigating the Information World: 
Industry Speaks

This panel session will engage industry leaders in a discussion about their views on current and future trends in the information industry. These industry leaders will share their perspectives from entrepreneurial, social media, and search vantage points. 

Some key questions the panel will address include:

• What new technologies and products are on the horizon?
• What are the growth areas in the information industry for the next decade?
• What are the information challenges that they are having trouble navigating?
• What are the opportunities for industry and academia partnership?

The session will be interactive and the audience will be encouraged to contribute their own thoughts and questions on information trends and the potential impact on researchers and professionals in the field.

Dave Nelsen

Mr. Nelsen is an award-winning CEO who has founded and run several companies including social media pioneer TalkShoe. He has raised more than $70,000,000 in Federal, angel investor, and venture capital funding. Most importantly, as a CEO himself, he has successfully tackled in his own businesses many of the same challenges his clients are now facing. After earning a Masters degree in Operations Research at Stanford University in 1983, Dave spent twelve years at AT&T where he led marketing and product management of the firm’s high-speed InterSpan® Data Services line. Later, he helped networking start-up FORE Systems grow tenfold and become a major player in the Internet backbone.  Mr. Nelsen co-founded and was CEO of CoManage until selling it to Canadian firm Syndesis after seven years. During this period, he was recognized as an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Mr. Nelsen subsequently founded TalkShoe, which immersed him in the emerging social networking and social media phenomenon. During this period, he was recognized as CEO of the Year by the leading US technology trade association.  He has been repeatedly voted as “Most Valuable Contributor” by his CEO peers and now regularly speaks to groups of private company CEOs on the Vistage circuit. Dave is a professional speaker available through the Infinite Speakers Agency, appears on a bi-weekly radio show and writes a monthly column for TEQ Magazine.

Raul Valdes-Perez

Mr. Valdes-Perezl led Vivisimo since co-founding it in June, 2000 until June 2009, when he became executive chairman. During his tenure, he was recognized as a 2007 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (North Central Region), top ten reader favorite for Entrepreneur of the Year by Inc. magazine, twice a CEO of the year finalist by the Pittsburgh Technology Council, CEO Communicator of the Year by the Public Relations Society of America (Pittsburgh chapter), and an Outstanding Alumni Career Achievement by the University of Illinois at Chicago. Before Vivisimo, Raul was on the Carnegie Mellon University computer science department faculty, where his research on new methods and applications of knowledge discovery led to publishing nearly 50 journal articles in natural, social and computer science. He has been a principal investigator on seven grants (one active) from the National Science Foundation, served on its advisory committee for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences, and was an action editor of the journal Machine Learning. He currently serves on the boards of directors of the Pittsburgh Technology Council and the Pittsburgh World Affairs Council. Raul received a Ph.D. in computer science at Carnegie Mellon in 1991, where his adviser was Herbert A. Simon (Turing Award 1975 and Nobel Laureate 1978) and B.S. and M.S. degrees in information engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago.  

Razi Imam

Mr. Imam is an innovator, an entrepreneur and an author. He has a proven track record for successfully launching companies, repositioning them, defining new sales strategies and building world-class high-performance teams. He is the founder of a fast growing software company called Landslide Technologies that is receiving rave reviews from customers, analysts and press. His company has been named ‘visionary’ three years in row by the leading analyst firm – The Gartner Group. He has also recently founded 113 Industries, an incubator for next generation material science companies. The goal of this incubator is to help breakthrough discoveries in Nano technology coming from our universities become viable commercial products. In recognition of his entrepreneurial success, Carnegie Science Foundation has presented Razi with their prestigious 2010 Startup Entrepreneur Award which honors innovation in science and technology.  Razi is also the author of "Driven" (2010), a John Wiley and Sons publication,