Description

This panel session is intended to provide students with some insight into different  career opportunities available. The panelist range from independent consultant to the Federal Government employee. This is a candid hands on perspective from the people that work at these different careers. There will be an opportunity for questions from the audience.

Attendance is limited and tickets will be provided on a first come first served basis.

Panelists

David Megginson  - Independent Consultant - Megginson Technologies 

Anthony Rizk - Start-up CTO  - Zeebu Mobile

Sylvain St-Germain - Director of Process Improvement and IT  - Macadamian

Jon Alperin - Director, Developer Relations, Avaya, Inc.

Mark – Federal Government

Agenda

6:00 - 6:30 Networking

6:30 - 6:40 Introductios (Tell us about yourself) 2 minutes each 

6:45 - 7:00 Employers elevator Pitch (Tell us about your company) 3 minute each

7:00 - 7:15 Preset Questions (3 questions) 1 minute per panelist per answer

Panelist Bios

David Megginson  - Independent Consultant

David Megginson, principal of Megginson Technologies, has been active within the SGML and, later, XML communities since 1991. He led the original initiative that created SAX, the Simple API for XML, which is now the most widely used streaming API for XML and has been implemented in products by IBM, Oracle, Apache, and Sun, along with many others.

David's work includes consulting and development for many companies and organizations, a large number of Open Source software packages, and two books:Structuring XML Documents (1998) and Imperfect XML (2004).

David formerly chaired the XML Information Set Working Group at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and served as a member of the W3C's XML Working Group and XML Co ordination Group. More recently, he served as chair of the international XML 2006and XML 2007 conferences in Boston, MA, the main industry gatherings.

In Spring 2000, David was proud to receive the Java Technology Achievement Award For Outstanding Individual Contribution to the Java Community from Sun Microsystems and JavaPro magazine.

Outside of information technology, David is an instrument-rated private pilot and a volunteer with Hope Air, and developed and maintains the OurAirports community web site for air travelers and pilots.

Anthony Rizk - Start-up CTO at Zeebu Mobile

Zeebu Mobile is a leading developer and marketer of innovative, smartphone-based educational applications and related proprietary content. Zeebu Mobile is 100% focused on developing mobile applications that entertain, engage and provide an effective learning experience for 0-9 year olds, while giving parents some time to themselves. We put the children first – a philosophy that differentiates us and drives the entire company.

As CTO, Anthony is responsible for the technical vision and direction of Zeebu Mobile, but is just as visionary when it comes to the creative aspects as well. Anthony, whose daughter was responsible for planting the original seed for Zeebu Mobile, is always thinking about how to improve mobile technologies and make them more user-friendly.

Prior to co-founding Zeebu Mobile, Anthony was a successful BlackBerry consultant, founding employee at Rove Mobile and is the author of Beginning BlackBerry Development (Apress 2009).

Sylvain St-Germain - Director of Process Improvement and IT  at Macadamian,

Macadamian,  a software studio that helps companies create winning products. When you have an expert UX design team and a crack software engineering team working in harmony under the same roof, magic happens. Industry leaders like HP, Cisco, Juniper, Ariba, and Adobe turn to Macadamian to develop product strategies, design compelling user experiences, and build quality software. We transform ideas into market-ready products that your customers will love.

Sylvain joined Macadamian in 1998 and is responsible for Macadamian's process improvement initiatives and IT strategy.  He is also currently involved in sales engineering and various lead generation activities.  

Prior to his current, Sylvain led a wide range of projects, including Macadamian’s development of Cognos Corporation’s next generation Business Intelligence software involving Web and XML technologies. He also managed the Living Dictionary project (www.livingdictionary.com), a Web application that won the Technology in Government Week Distinction Gold Medal and the 2001 SCOAP award for Best IT Initiative Resulting in Positive Social or Community Advancement.

Before joining Macadamian, Sylvain was a project leader at Nortel, leading a development team that built installation tools for Unix-based voice recognition software.

When Sylvain’s not building applications on his computer, he’s making music on his guitar or clarinet. He is the only Macadamian who knows how to build an igloo and he can also knit a hammock. Sylvain has a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from Université de Sherbrooke, Québec.

Jon Alperin, Director, Developer Relations, Avaya, Inc.

Jon Alperin is currently Director of Developer Relations for Avaya Inc. (www.avaya.com), a global leader in Enterprise Communications solutions.  After 23 years in high-tech and communications industries, Jon has held roles ranging from application developer to product manager, corporate strategy to alliance development.  In his current role, he oversees developer education, support, testing and marketing programs for over 45,000 members of the Avaya DevConnect program, representing 11,000 customer and partner companies. 

Prior to joining Avaya, Jon focused on partnership development activities for Compaq’s iPAQ handheld division, and led product management and marketing teams at Telcordia, DSC Communications and Intervoice.  He has also spent time as an independent consultant based in Europe, working with pan-European cable TV, ISP and telecom start-ups.

Jon is a founding member of Avaya’s social media marketing team, and can be found on Avaya’s blog (www.avaya.com/blogs) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/devconnect) talking about developer and partner technology issues.  He holds a M.S. in Computer Science from Stevens Institute of Technology, and has several U.S. and international patents pending.

Mark – Federal Government

Mark joined the federal public service in 2002 after working at IBM and as an independent consultant.

With experience in a variety of roles and at multiple departments, Mark has lead teams in application development, service delivery, support, and engineering. Mark is currently managing a team responsible for the network security of a mid-size department.

Mark has over 15 years of experience in IT, is a CISSP, and is pursuing a Masters degree in digital forensics. Mark is an active member of the IEEE's Computational Intelligence Society and the ACM's SIGGRAPH. 

He can be reached online at http://markn.ca or on Twitter @marknca.