Robert W. Merry, publishing executive and author, is President and Publisher of Congressional Quarterly Inc., the Washington-based publishing company that specializes in news and information on Congress, politics and public policy. He is the author of Taking On the World: Joseph and Stewart Alsop -- Guardians of the American Century, published by Viking in 1996. The New York Times called the biography a “rich and fascinating book … a sensitive portrait, executed with … critical acumen.” The book won an Ambassador Award from the New York-based English Speaking Union. His latest book is due out in two weeks, and it’s called Sands of Empire: Missionary Zeal, American Foreign Policy and the Hazards of Global Ambition.

Paulo Lemgruber
General Manager, Variety.com
Wednesday Morning Keynote

Paulo Lemgruber is the General Manager of the Variety Online Group, a business unit of Reed Business Information ("RBI"), a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. In April 2004, he assumed his role to oversee the operations of the following online properties: Variety.com, VarietyCareers.com, MultichannelNews.com and BroadcastingCable.com. Mr. Lemgruber is responsible for developing the vision and strategy and managing the revenue efforts of the division. In 2001, Mr. Lemgruber joined America Online as Executive Director of International Interactive Marketing, where he managed the company's international business development efforts. In 2003, Mr. Lemgruber was promoted to oversee the development of marketing strategies for AOL's key audiences.

Marjorie Scardino
Chief Executive, Pearson plc
Wednesday Luncheon Keynote (held jointly with SIIA's Ed Tech Industry Summit)

Marjorie M. Scardino is chief executive of Pearson, the international media group whose primary business operations include Pearson Education (incorporating businesses such as Scott Foresman, Prentice Hall, Addison Wesley and educational testing, data and software operations); The Financial Times Group; the Spanish media group Recoletos and Penguin Group. Pearson also owns a 50% stake in The Economist Group.

Malik AboRashid
Director, Business Development & Sales, iParadigms

Malik AboRashid is the Director of Business Development & Sales for iParadigms, LLC the developers of Turnitin and iThenticate. In his current role, Malik is responsible for sales and business development partner programs involving the use of iParadigms technology and its indexed archive of the internet. Before joining iParadigms, Malik worked as a business development consultant and has work for Fortune 500 companies such as Adobe Systems, Wind River Systems and Gulf Syndicate in a variety of roles involving sales and business development, including Worldwide Sales Anti-Piracy Programs Manager, Strategic Sales Royalty Compliance Manger and Director of International Business Development. Malik holds a bachelors of Arts degree as well as a Professional Certificate in International Business Management from the University of California at Berkeley, and has previously served as a member of the US Armed Forces.

Bruce Antelman
President, Reviews.com

Bruce Antelman has been active in scientific publishing for over 20 years. His first company, Information Express developed a commercial Web presence in 1994 and continues to be a leader in fulfilling requests for scientific and technical documents, supporting corporate and academic institutions worldwide. In response to IE's customers, and the amount of scientific and academic information being published, Reviews.com was formed to help readers gain access to the best literature in a particular field. Computing Reviews is reviews.com's first offering and was developed in partnership with the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery).

Stephen Baker
Head, Emerging Applications and VP, eBusiness, Fast Search & Transfer, Inc.

Stephen Baker is Head of Emerging Applications and Vice President of eBusiness for Fast Search & Transfer (FAST). In this role, Baker leads FAST’s initiatives in providing powerful search solutions to eCommerce sites and Retailers, Yellow Pages and newspaper publishers, portals and media properties, and other online consumer-oriented businesses. Mr. Baker joined FAST in 1998 with responsibility for the Company’s Web Search business unit, including its public search site, AlltheWeb.com. As an innovator in the Web search space, FAST Web Search was the search technology behind many of the Web’s leading destination sites, including Lycos, InfoSpace, and T-Online (Deutsche Telekom).

Corilee Christou
VP, Online & New Media Licensing & Development, Reed Business Information

Corilee Christou, Vice President, Licensing Operations, Reed Business Information, has been directly involved in the information industry for close to twenty years. Prior to working at RBI, Corilee spent seventeen years at Lexis-Nexis, where she held positions in the Content Acquisition area for both United States and Non-US markets. She also directed the product and marketing support for the corporate library sector and was responsible for establishing the Information Professional Support Team for the Nexis division.

Ed Colleran
Director, Publisher Relations, Copyright Clearance Center

Edward Colleran, Director of Publisher Relations at Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), focuses on the development of content licensing solutions and new revenue-generating initiatives for the CCC's participating publishers. Colleran is also involved in the advancement of the organization's digital rights management services and speaks extensively on copyright issues in the digital environment. Colleran has spoken at the Software Information Industry Association (SIIA) 2003 Annual conference, the Association of American Publishers Professional/Scholarly Publishing Divisions Annual Meeting, the Society of Scholarly Publishers Annual Meeting, and Online Information 2001-2003. He serves on the Content Division Board and chairs the Content Management Committee of the SIIA and the Education Committee on the Society for Scholarly Publishing.

Jon Collins
Valeo Intellectual Property, Inc.

Jon Collins has been the Director of Corporate Licensing with Valeo Intellectual Property from the beginning of the Enterprise Licensing program, working to bring legal Internet usage of copyrighted materials to the global corporate client. Before joining Valeo IP, he spent two years as CEO of an educational software company. Prior to that, Jon spent 15 years in general management and sales management positions for a global data delivery company and a national data communications company. Jon Collins has a master’s degree from Gordon-Conwell.

Wes Crews
President & CEO, Infotrieve

Mr. Crews joined Infotrieve as President in November 2001 and became Chief Executive Officer in May 2002. Mr. Crews brings over 15 years of online services and publishing experience to the company. Most recently, he served as COO at the Gale Group, a subsidiary of media conglomerate The Thomson Company, with responsibility for developing strategic plans and new business initiatives, and managing operational implementation to achieve growth strategies. While at Thomson, he led the integration of the three companies that formed the Gale Group with annual revenues of $350 million and a combined staff of over 1,600 employees. As COO at Gale, Mr. Crews directly managed key operational functions, including the editorial, online publishing, technology, customer service and fulfillment groups.

Peter Cunningham
President, CEO, and Founder, INPUT

As President, CEO, and founder of INPUT, Peter Cunningham has led the company in a continuous cycle of innovation and growth, enabling INPUT to become the leading provider of government market intelligence. Under his guidance, INPUT has developed into the global leader in delivering information services, market research, consulting, software and events related to public sector technology to many of the worlds foremost IT companies, government organizations and institutions of higher education.

Jeffrey Dearth
Partner, DeSilva & Philips

Jeffrey Dearth has wide experience in traditional publishing and new media. He was president and COO of the Magazine Group of Mecklermedia Corp., and founder and CEO of The Electronic Newsstand, Inc. (Enews.com). The latter was one of the first successful e- commerce Internet ventures. In the magazine sphere, he was president and publisher of The New Republic, where he also helped guide the successful launch and subsequent sale of The Journal of NIH Research. Mr. Dearth spent three years with Smithsonian magazine and seven years with Time magazine in New York, London, Amsterdam and Paris. He has been a member of the board of the Magazine Publishers of America, serving on its new media and small magazine advisory committees. Mr. Dearth sits on the board of several new media companies and has been a featured speaker at numerous publishing and new media conferences. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina where he was a Morehead Scholar.

Deborah Eastman
Executive Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Biz360

As Executive Vice President at Biz360, Deborah is responsible for many of the company's client facing functions including marketing, sales & professional services. Working day-to-day with clients, Deborah guides the product direction and manages the account teams during the decision process and post sales support. In addition, Deborah's marketing responsibilities include product marketing, marketing communications and field marketing. Deborah's experience in building teams, focus on client satisfaction and delivering profitable growth are driving growth for Biz360.

Ezra Ernst
VP of Business Development, Medical Research Division, Wolters Kluwer Health

Ezra Ernst is the Vice President of Business Development for Wolters Kluwer Health, Medical Research Division, including Ovid Technologies and LWW. Mr. Ernst established the Business Development group to grow and manage electronic product lines that leverage the full range of medical research content, tools and services from both Ovid and LWW. The group's mission is deliver online workflow solutions targeting the user segments of clinicians, information managers, medical and student researchers and society publishers. Mr. Ernst has more than 14 years of publishing and information content expertise ranging from rights and permissions to traditional print publishing to new media. In his current role, Mr. Ernst leverages his expertise in print and online publishing to deliver best-of-breed solutions to meet the needs of information managers and publishers of medical research.

Paul Gerbino
Vice-President Content Licensing, Thomas Industrial Network; Publisher, Product News Network

Gerbino joined Thomas Publishing in 1995 as Publisher of the American Export Publishing Group and is now Publisher of Product News Network (PNN). In 2001, PNN launched one of the most comprehensive sources of timely new industrial product news. Today, PNN supplies the latest product news to over 200 web sites, e-marketplaces, news aggregators and print publications that serve the industrial marketplace. He has fourteen years in the publishing industry, working in the hospitality & travel and railroad industries. He has spoken at major industry events including the American Society of Association Executives Annual Meeting, Corporate Travel World and several SIIA events including the Annual Content Forum.

Ed Keating
Vice President, Content Division, SIIA

Ed Keating is Vice President of the Content Division for the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA). Keating has over 15 years of experience in the information industry as both an internal manager and a consultant. He has led marketing, product management and sales organizations at both startup and established information companies. His work to enhance product processes and organizational effectiveness has helped numerous companies enter unfamiliar markets and launch new products.

Thomas Lee MD
VP Product Management, Epocrates

Michael Magoulias
VP Sales & Marketing, FDC Reports (an Elsevier Company)

Michael Magoulias oversees sales and marketing activities for the news and business intelligence publisher FDC Reports. For the past 15 years he has held roles in editorial, new product development, and business development for publishers transitioning from traditional to digital media, including Gale, Chadwyck-Healey, Encyclopaedia Britannica and Elsevier. A main focus of his activities at FDC has been managing the growth of the company's site license business in the pharmaceutical industry and related markets. Michael holds a BA and MA from Merton College, Oxford.

David Mandelbrot
VP Search, Yahoo! Inc

As Yahoo!'s Vice President of Search Content, Dave Mandelbrot manages Yahoo!'s Content Acquisition Program. Through this program, Yahoo! partners with leading content rights-holders to better enable Yahoo! to create the best online search product. Before joining Yahoo!'s Search team, Dave was Yahoo!'s VP of Media and Entertainment where he managed Yahoo!'s Movies, Games, Finance, News, Sports, TV, Health and Yahooligans properties. Before joining Yahoo!, Dave was in legal and business development roles at Netscape Corporation and Electronics for Imaging. Dave holds a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley and a J.D. from the Duke University School of Law.

Janice McCallum
Senior Analyst, Shore Communications, Inc.

Janice McCallum is a senior analyst and consultant at Shore Communications. Over the past 20 years, Janice has led product management and business development groups for several pioneering information companies, including Dialog, Individual, Inc., and DeepCanyon Company (an H-P company). Building profitable new channels of distribution has been core to her role in all of these companies. In 1985 she established her own consulting practice and joined Shore in 2003. Janice has an MBA from the University of Chicago and a BA from Simmons College.

Mike O'Donnell
Founder & CEO, iCopyright

O'Donnell has 20+ years of experience in the high-tech industry, the last seven of which have been focused on establishing Internet business models. He led the team that designed, built, and launched CompuServe SPRYNET, one of the first national Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and winner of PC Magazine's Editor's Choice for best ISP. O'Donnell was the Founder and CEO of Ask-Me Multimedia Corp., a pioneer of multimedia applications and a recipient of the National Small Business Innovation Award from Nations Business Magazine and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He has served as Chairman of the e-Business Division of the Software & Information Industry Association and is on the board of directors of the Northwest Entrepreneur Network. He has authored several industry-sponsored white papers, including ESD and the Electronic Commerce Value Chain and RiP this Content: A New Model for Publishing on the Internet.

Jean O'Grady
Director of Research Services, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr

Jean P. O'Grady is the Director of Research Services at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, a leading international law firm with offices in 12 cities around the world. Jean negotiates worldwide licenses that balance workflow, information access and cost/benefit criteria. She is a recognized leader in the field of legal information with over 20 years of experience working in law firm and academic libraries and was profiled in the March 2004 issue of EContent. She is a past president of the Law Library Association of Greater New York and has been an advisor and consultant to several major information providers, including Thomson West, LexisNexis, the Conference Board and Factiva. In addition, Jean is an attorney admitted to the New York State Bar and is currently enrolled in the Intellectual Property LLM program at George Washington University, where she is focusing on digital licensing issues.

Skip Prichard
Senior VP, Global Sales, ProQuest Information & Learning

Skip Prichard is Senior Vice President of Sales for ProQuest Information & Learning, a leading electronic publisher of proprietary content and information solutions. Appointed in 2003, Skip is responsible for sales of all print, microform and electronic products to academic, public, and corporate libraries. Prior to joining ProQuest, Skip worked for LexisNexis and served as Vice President of Global Enterprise Sales. While there, he designed the national accounts program for Nexis and helped launch the first Reed Elsevier global accounts program. Skip is a licensed Maryland attorney and enjoys complex negotiations.

David Meerman Scott
Author of the book Cashing in with Content (coming summer 2005), principal / creative director of Freshspot Marketing LLC, and Contributing Editor, EContent Magazine

David M. Scott believes that the distance between how information is marketed and how information is sold needs to shrink and he created Freshspot Marketing to make it happen. The foundations Freshspot Marketing can be traced to proprietary work begun by David in 1998. David began working with select clients in 2002 and Freshspot Marketing LLC was formally established in 2003. In senior marketing positions at Thomson and at Knight-Ridder, David M. Scott has focused on building creative, integrated marketing platforms that link directly with sales — all with measurable revenue results. In his most recent corporate position, David was vice president of marketing at NewsEdge.

Larry Schwartz
President, Newstex

Larry Schwartz is Co-founder and President of Newstex, an on demand content distributor of premium news, government feeds and emerging content sources-from blogs to commentary. Drawing on over 20 years of entrepreneurial success, Larry is responsible for sales, marketing and product development at Newstex and for developing on demand feeds that are the simplest and fastest way for content distributors, information product companies, and enterprise customers to cost-effectively acquire and integrate premium content. Previously, Larry served as President of Comtex News Network, Inc. (OTC BB: CMTX), and as President and CEO of Auctions.com, which he co-created with the Times Mirror Co. and co-owners Gannett, Knight-Ridder, The New York Times, Tribune Company and The Washington Post. Other notable companies that Larry started or successfully developed include Tickets.com (NASDAQ: TIXX); GFI Group (NASDAQ: GFIG) (broker and market data provider), New Net Companies (e-business solutions), Wizard World (publisher), Patron Technology (technology provider) and Trivial Pursuit® Online.

Herbie Skeete
Managing Director, Mondo Visione Ltd

Rich Skrenta
CEO, Topix.net

Rich Skrenta is CEO and co-founder of Topix.net, an online news aggregator which classifies news by subject and location. Rich brings to Topix.net a background in both business management and technical expertise. In his last position, Rich held a variety of senior roles at Netscape/America Online, including Director of Engineering for Netscape Search, AOL Music, and AOL Shopping. Rich joined Netscape/AOL upon its purchase of NewHoo/The Open Directory Project, where he was Co-founder & CEO. The Open Directory is the largest human-edited directory of the web, currently used by Google, AOL and other major web portals.

Pam Springer
CEO, ECNext

Pamela Springer brings over 21 years of leadership experience in technology-based companies and publishing organizations. Springer's executive management expertise applied to planning, developing and implementing successful go-to-market strategies has consistently produced strong growth for emerging technology companies. A veteran manager in Fortune 500 companies, Springer has also served in executive positions with several emerging growth companies prior to joining ECNext, successfully planning and orchestrating all phases of marketing for high-end technical solutions. During this time Springer has been instrumental in raising multiple rounds of funding and helped guide a number of acquisitions and a successful IPO.

Gary Stein
Senior Analyst, Jupiter Research

Gary Stein is the Senior Analyst for online advertising and marketing for Jupiter Research; he also focuses on the Consumer Packaged Goods industry. Topics that Stein covers include advertising formats, rich-media, media purchasing tactics, marketing strategies, and consumer behavior online. Stein writes a column on marketing for the online journal ClickZ and maintains a Weblog covering online marketing trends. Gary has appeared on CNN, in The Wall Street Journal, and in many newspapers and trade journals. He also teaches a class at San Francisco State on strategic interactive marketing and design.

Sterling Stites
CEO, InfoDesk, Inc.

Mr. Stites has twenty years' experience in information management technologies. He is the founder of InfoDesk, an information management and real-time content delivery company. He served as Vice President of Development at Dow Jones where he was responsible for the development of a state-of-the-art real-time global financial and news information delivery system. Mr. Stites also worked at IBM where he managed the development of key information and electronic commerce products including "World Avenue", one of the first electronic transaction services available on the Internet. He was President and founder of StarWorks, Inc. and has held positions at computer and information companies including Sun Microsystems, AT&T Technologies, and Computer Graphic Laboratory.

Raul Valdes-Perez
Chief Executive Officer & Co-founder, Vivísimo

Before starting Vivísimo, Raul was on the Carnegie Mellon computer science department faculty since 1991; he is now an Adjunct Associate Professor there. His research was on new methods and applications of knowledge discovery. He has published nearly 50 research articles in natural, social, and computer science journals. He has been a principal investigator on six grants from the National Science Foundation, has served on its advisory committee for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences, and is an action editor of the journal Machine Learning. He received a Ph.D. in computer science at Carnegie Mellon, studying under Herbert A. Simon, and holds engineering degrees from the University of Illinois.

Scott Virkler
VP, Business Development, globalSpec

Scott Virkler is Vice President of Business Development for GlobalSpec. He brings years of experience in various aspects of the supply chain. Prior to joining GlobalSpec, Scott was Corporate Manager of Sourcing at GE's Research & Development Center, responsible for all R&D spending as well as leading the GE Corporate Indirect Sourcing Council. While at the R&D center, he was a Master Black Belt, responsible for driving Six Sigma methodologies into the supply chain and financial operations there. Prior to joining GE CRD, Scott worked for several GE businesses and held various Supply Chain or E-Commerce related positions with each.

** Click here to see the complete list of speakers from last year's Content Forum. **

GOLD SPONSORS

SILVER SPONSORS

BRONZE SPONSORS

INDUSTRY PARTNER