Conference Materials 2008

About the Speakers

This year we are honored to present the following speakers and panelists (their bios will be posted soon):

Alec Sharp, Keynote Speaker
Alec Sharp is a world renowned author, consultant, and speaker. He has managed his own consulting and education business, Clariteq Systems Consulting Ltd., for 25 years, serving clients in locations as diverse as Northern Ireland, Central Illinois, and Southern India. Alec's expertise includes facilitation, application requirements specification, data modeling, and of course, business process improvement. Alec is the principal author of "Workflow Modeling" (Artech House, 2001) which is currently the best-selling book in the area. In 2004, Alec delivered a "legendary seminar" at the Red Hook in Woodinville. It was full of humor, high content, and a simple approach. Ever since then, he has been the most sought after speaker by members of our network. Alec has generously diverted his travel from Paris to join us in Manzanita.

Ben Hodson, Keynote Speaker
Ben Hodson has founded several companies over the last 8 years. He was co-founder and CTO of Venafi, Inc. (2000 -2005), a security software company focused on encryption technologies for enterprises including 8 fortune 100 customers. While at Venafi, he assisted in raising over $8 million in funding as well as designed and architected all Venafi products. He directly managed the engineering, quality assurance, and support teams (20+ individuals) and participated as a director on the board. More recently, he co-founded Auction Trust Network, Inc. (2006) a software plug-in for eBay and other ecommerce sites to facilitate trust and social commerce. As the CTO of Auction Trust Network, Ben managed all engineering, support, and development of the ATN products. ATN was quickly acquired by MediaFORGE & HammerTap and is enjoying tremendous success. Ben is also a musician and has recorded several albums. He is passionate about music and still buys a couple of records a week. Ben holds degrees in both Business Administration and Computer Science from the University of Washington - Bothell.

George Northcroft, Panelist

George Fletcher, Panelist