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Keynote Speakers

  
   

    Dr. Sam Pitroda, born in Titlagarh, Orissa, is an inventor, entrepreneur and policymaker. Currently chairman of India's National Knowledge Commission, he is also largely considered to have been responsible for India's communications revolution. He is the Chairman and CEO of World-Tel Limited, an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) initiative. He holds many key technology patents, has been involved in several startups, and lectures extensively around the world on the implications of communications and information technology. He is also the founder and CEO of C-SAM, Inc, Inc, and serves as a director on the board of Jet Airways. He has served as an advisor to the United Nations and in 1992, his biography was published, and became a bestseller.


    Mr. Ashok Soota, Chairman and Managing Director of MindTree Consulting, Co-Founded the company in August 1999 along with nine other industry professionals. Prior to co-founding MindTree, Soota was president of Wipro Infotech from 1984 to 1999. A leader in the IT industry, Soota was the president of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) during 2002-03, and has served on the Indian Prime Minister's task force for development of the IT industry. Also, he is currently a member of the Advisory Council of World Intellectual Property Organization, Geneva. In recognition of his invaluable contributions to the IT industry, Soota was named the Electronics Man of the Year in 1992 by the Electronic Component Industries Association, IT Man of the Year in 1994 by Dataque

  



    Shri. M. M. Pallam Raju, Minister of State for Defence, Government of India & currently Member of Parliament (14th Lok Sabha). Shri Raju, an Electronics & Communications Engineer from Andhra University, obtained his MBA from Temple University, Philadelphia, USA. He has considerable work experience in the field of information technology working in various countries like Philadelphia and Boston in US and Oslo in Norway. A successful entrepreneur in the field of Information Technology, Shri Raju served on the boards of a few very successful Public Limited Companies until his induction into the Union Council of Ministers. He has served as Director on the boards of Indian Airlines and Air India during 1994-1997. Shri  Pallam Raju has represented the Country in the United Nations General Assembly at New York,  USA in October 2004 and at the SAFMA Conference in Pakistan in May 2005. The Institution of Electronics & Telecommunciations Engineers (IETE), New Delhi, has recently conferred a ‘FELLOW’ on him.





    Mr. Jimmy Wales, Founder and Chair of the Board of Trustees of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, set up in 2003 to support Wikipedia and its sister projects such as Wikibooks, Wikinews, and others. He is also founder of the for-profit company Wikia, Inc. Wales setup the Wikipedia project in early 2001. The project has now grown into the largest freely available online encyclopedia and is available in more than 100 languages. Wales is the Wikimedia Foundation's President and Chairman of the Board. Wales was appointed as fellow of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School in 2005. Wales joined the Board of Directors of Socialtext, a provider of wiki technology to businesses. In 2006, he joined the Board of Directors of the non-profit organization 'Creative Commons'. In May 2006, Wales was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people. The Electronic Frontier Foundation awarded him a Pioneer Award on May 3, 2006   

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   Prof. Leif Edvinsson, Professor of Intellectual Capital, at Lund University, Sweden, inspirator and CEO of Universal Networking Intellectual Capital, Winner of the prestigious Brain of the Year award for 1998. Leif follows in the footsteps of illustrious former winners such as Prof. Stephen Hawking. He is listed in the Top 10 of the most admired Knowledge Leaders in the world. He is on the Board of Directors, Swedish Brain Research Foundation as well as the Center for Molecular Medicine at Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden. A key contributor to the theory of IC and recognised with awards from the American Productivity and Quality Centre, USA and Business Intelligence, UK, Lief is the author of the books - 'Corporate Longitude and Intellectual Capital for Communities' (with Ahmed Bounfour).


   


    Prof. Peter Johan Lor, Secretary General, IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations) Netherlands and served as Professor Extraordinary at the Department of Information Science, University of Pretoria, South Africa. He was the National Librarian and Chief Executive Officer of the National Library of South Africa, In addition, he has served on the boards of directors of SABINET (the South African Bibliographic and Information Network), the Foundation for Library and Information Services Development (as its Executive Director), and the Book Development Foundation. He serves as a consultant editor or editorial adviser to several international journals, including Alexandria, International information and library review,and others. He has been consultant for the General Information Programme of UNESCO.

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    Mr. Rory L. Chase, Founder of Teleos - the company that conducts the internationally recognized Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise (MAKE) program. He is an advisor, author and researcher in the development and implementation of knowledge management strategies and approaches. He is active in both formal and informal knowledge networks. He is the Founding Editor of the Journal of Knowledge Management and the Journal of Intellectual Capital. He has served in several publishing companies in management positions, including Managing Director. He is the author of Creating a Knowledge Management Business Strategy and the Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises Report.


    Ms. Shoba Purushothaman, CEO & Co-Founder, The NewsMarket, Inc. Head-quartered in New York, the Company with operations in Europe and Asia, is a web-based platform that aggregates, markets and distributes video content. With 20 years of experience in the news and public relations industries in Asia, Europe and the U.S. The company she co-founded, The NewsMarket, launched its platform in 2003 to leverage the emerging digital technologies that are transforming how the marketing industry interacts with the news media. She is a frequent speaker and interviewee on the future of the media industry and successful global entrepreneurship. More than 7,500 newsrooms in 140 countries including CNN, BBC, and others source broadcast-standard video content from NewsMarket.


  





    Dr. N. Seshagiri, Former Director General, National Informatic Centre, New Delhi. He obtained his Ph. D. in Computers and Telecom from Indian Institute of Science in 1964. He was a scientist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay, from 1966 to 1971. In 1971 he joined as Director of Information, Planning and Analysis Group (IPAG) of the Electronics Commission, Government of India. He founded the National Informatics Centre (NIC) in 1975 and was its Director-General till 2000, while simultaneously holding the post of Additional Secretary to Government of India in the Department of Electronics since 1984, Special Secretary in the Planning Commission since 1993 and Special Secretary in the Ministry of Information Technology since its formation. Currently, he is Emeritus Scientist in the CSIR Centre for Mathematical Modeling and Computer Simulation at Bangalore, Chairman of Research Council of National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources of CSIR, and Technology Adviser, HCL Infosystems Ltd. He is Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, Indian National Academy of Engineering, The Institution of Electronics and Telecom Engineers and the CSI. He has authored 8 books, edited 8 other books and authored 85 research papers. The President of India awarded to him 'Padma Bhushan' in 2005


 

 


    Dr. Prabuddha Ganguli, Advisor, VISION-IPR, Mumbai. He obtained his M.Sc. in Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology (Kanpur), Ph.D in Chemical Physics from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, and completed his Post Doctoral Research in Germany and Canada. He was a Visiting Scientist at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in 1981 before joining Hindustan Lever, Ltd. as a Research Scientist. Professor Ganguli is a member of the International Editorial Board of the IPR Journal "World Patent Information" published by Elsevier Science Limited, UK. His book titled Gearing Up for Patents - The Indian Scenario was published by Universities Press (an associate of Orient Longman in India) in January 1998. His second book titled "Intellectual Property Rights - Unleashing the Knowledge Economy" was released on March 28, 2001, the foreword of which was written by Dr. Kamil Idris, Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

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   Mr. J. K. Suresh, Principal Knowledge Manager and Head of the Knowledge Management Group at Infosys Technologies Ltd. He has several publications in aerospace engineering, application performance testing, software engineering methodologies for web-based systems, and knowledge management. He obtained his B.Tech and M.S. (Engineering) from the Indian Institutes of Technology at Kanpur and Madras respectively, and Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

 


   Dr. S. Yegneshwar, Ph.D. (Computer Science and Engineering) from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He has rich experience working with Tata Engineering and Locomotive and the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He joined Infosys in 1993 in the Education & Research (E&R) department. He has directed various knowledge management applications deployed in the organization. Dr. Yegneshwar also served as a faculty member at the Infosys Leadership Institute focusing on leadership development. His research interests include software development methodologies, learning models for organizations, managing technical teams, and leadership development methodologies. Dr. Yegneshwar has published papers in the areas of learning models, software engineering & management, and leadership development.


Panelists


   Mr. Darrell L Mann, President of the European TRIZ Association is a Mechanical Engineer with 15 years of experience at Rolls-Royce in various R & D related positions, and ultimately becoming responsible for the company's long term future helicopter engine strategy. With over 500 systematic innovation-related papers and articles to his name, Darrell is now one of the most widely published authors on the subject in the world. He is a director of Systematic Innovation Ltd, a UK based Innovation Company with offices in the India, Malaysia, Korea, China, Japan, Denmark and Austria. An innovation consultant, with clients from a broad spectrum of industries and global locations, including Lexus, Renault and Volvo. He is the author of over 100 technical papers, patents and patent applications and the book 'Hands on: Systematic Innovation'.

  




    Dr. Lin L. Chase, Director, Accenture’s Technology Lab, India, Dr. Lin Chase manages innovative research, development, and software asset commercialization programs in systems integration and software engineering. Prior to assuming her current role in March 2006, Dr. Chase was a researcher in Accenture’s Technology Lab in Palo Alto , CA , USA , where she led creative and forward-thinking work in semantic data integration, business process modeling, and service-oriented architectures. Dr. Chase has an extensive track record in successful application of emerging technologies to important business problems.  She has held senior management positions in both commercial and technical roles at NeoSpeech, Rhetorical Systems and SpeechWorks International (now both part of Nuance), and The Root Group. Dr. Chase joined Accenture in 2005. She holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science/Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), and a B.S. in Physics, also from CMU. 

 

 






    Mr. Atul Chitnis, Technology Consultant & Senior Vice President (Product, Technology & Strategy), Geodesic Information Systems Ltd. Arguably one of India's best known technologists, Atul has been at the forefront of India's technology evolution since the 1980s, identifying and driving new technology waves such as data communication, networking, the Internet, wireless and mobile computing, and Open Source, among others. He has been described as a "technology market enabler" for his ability to help his clients and audiences understand and adopt new technologies, providing a safety net of knowledge for them, thereby mitigating the risks involved. His focus areas include mobile and hand-held computing, wireless data networks, "appropriate technologies", Linux and Open Source, computing in entertainment technologies and the identification and understanding of future technologies that could impact his clients and technology audiences.

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    Mr. Ajit Balakrishnan, Chairman & CEO, Rediff.com. He founded Rediff.com, India's largest Internet portal, 10 years ago. It has been listed on Nasdaq (REDF) since 2000. It now has 40 million registered users, of which 10 percent come from outside India, mostly expatriate Indians in the US. Balakrishnan was also a co-founder and director of Rediffusion-Dentsu, Young & Rubicam, one of India's largest ad agencies. Balakrishnan sits on the advisory board of WestBridge Capital Partners, an Indian venture capital fund, and serves on the Executive Committee of Nasscom as well as the government committee reviewing the Indian Information Technology Act. He also co-chairs the Confederation of Indian Industry Task Force on eCommerce.






 


    Mr. Amit Dayal, heads the Communities, Communications, and Front Doors business unit at Yahoo! Bangalore. Amit's team is responsible for defining and developing multiple Yahoo! platforms and products including Alerts, Avatars, Rating & Reviews, Message Boards, Blogs, and Polls. Before Yahoo!, Amit was at Motorola in California where he worked on Motorola's next-gen Java/Linux platform for mobile devices. Earlier he was VP of product management at Confluent Software, a Web services management company later acquired by Oblix/Oracle. Amit also co-founded InterKeel, a startup that pioneered the Web services management space. Amit has also held senior technical and marketing roles at Oracle, Sequent, and couple other Silicon Valley startups. Amit holds an MBA from UC Berkeley, and a couple of degrees in computer science.



    Ms. Waltraut Ritter, Research Director, Knowledge Enterprises, Hong Kong. Ritter has served as information management consultant for the UNDP in Geneva and New York. At the corporate level, she conducts information and knowledge audits, evaluates intangible assets and know-how capital, introduces methods to manage and measure intangible (knowledge-based) assets including intellectual property. She was the Director of the Knowledge Management Practice (2000-2002) with Mindtheme Consulting Group and Visiting Assistant Professor for Knowledge Management at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore (1999).She is a member of the Academy of International Business and the Euro-Asia Management Studies Association. She is also the founding president of the HK Knowledge Management Society, a non-profit association for information and knowledge management professionals.






    

    Ms. Abi Sekimitsu, Editor, Reuters Bangalore. In this role she oversees all news production from the Reuters Bangalore bureau, including U.S. company news, polling of economic indicators from the G7 and other major economies, and the editorial research and reference unit. Her previous position was Energy Editor for the Americas, based in New York, in charge of all Reuters energy market news from North, Central and South America. Prior to that, she spent four years in London as Equities Editor for Europe, Middle East and Africa, overseeing coverage of all equities markets in that region. Since joining Reuters in 1988, Abi has worked as a correspondent and an editor in New York, London, Tokyo and Hong Kong, and has reported on the foreign exchange and commodities markets, as well as general and macroeconomic news. She holds a journalism degree from Northwestern University in the United States.



    Mr. Pawan Bakhshi, General Manager - Knowledge Management, Bharti Airtel Limited, India’s leading Telecom service provider with operations across 23 states. Pawan is responsible for the end-to-end KM delivery in a multi-location, multi-cultural environment. His responsibilities include all aspects of knowledge sharing, reuse and change management. He has led Bharti Airtel to become the only Telecom services provider, globally, to have such an advanced KM practice. Bharti Airtel has achieved recognition for their KM efforts through winning the MIS Asia’s “Best Knowledge Management” Award for 2006 and also becoming a finalist for Indian MAKE 2006. In his earlier assignment, Pawan was a practicing economist with India’s largest private sector organization. He has earned his MBA from IMI, New Delhi and his PhD from Agra.







    Mr. S. K. Palekar, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Eureka Forbes. As Eureka Forbes' CKO for 3 years, he led the team that made Eureka Forbes one of India's most admired knowledge enterprises. He has over 32 years of experience in general management, marketing and knowledge management. His experience is in the domain of branded consumer products with both MNCs and national companies.


    

    Shri N. V. Sathyanarayana, Former Librarian, Information Entrepreneur and Information Services and Products Developer rolled into one. He is the Founder Director of Informatics India Ltd – a leading Information Products and Services Company, established in 1980. Currently, he is the Chairman and Managing Director of Informatics. Informatics pioneered the introduction of International online database access in 1984. He was the first to introduce and market CD-ROM technology products in India in 1988. He served as a member on the "Working Group on Content Creation and Content Industry" of The National Task Force on Information Technology and Software Development set up by the Office of the Prime Minister of India and Member of Programme Advisory Committee (PAC) of the NISSAT sponsored project entitled “Establishment of the Vigyan Server and Internet School at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He is the Recipient of Young Information Scientist award in 1991 by the Society for Information Science (India).  

 


   Dr. R. C. Tripathi, Ph.D from University of Allahabad, is presently Head of the Patents and IPR Division, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communication and IT, GoI. He has published 35 topical reports in the area of ICT-IPRs and has made 45 presentations at various national and international platforms for IPRs and has been member of the many important national and select international Committees promoting culture of Intellectual Property Rights in the ICT sector. In May 2006, he represented India in Provisional Committee on Development Agenda (PCDA) at WIPO, Geneva. His Division has been organizing IPR Clinics at leading R&D institutions, where generating and presenting Technology Trends Analysis and Patent Mapping Reports of their concern has been a key focus.

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Anchors







    Prof. K. B. Akhilesh, Professor and Academician, Indian Institute of Science and Visiting Professor, Fledging University, USA. He has extensively researched in the areas of Technology Transformations, Career and Reward Management of Professionals, Innovation and Innovativeness, Comparative HRM, Organizational aspects of Technology Management. His areas of interests include Knowledge Management model for teams in the IT Sector, Quality Management and Change Model, Virtual Teams in Global R & D Organizations, Recruitment and Assessment, HR Global Bench Marking and Expertise Transfer.




    Mr. Raj Datta, General Manager, Knowledge Management, at MindTree Consulting. As head of the KM corporate function, Raj has global responsibilities for all aspects of innovation, knowledge sharing, collaboration, and software reuse. He has established KM as a key global strength for MindTree as noted in MindTree's successful assessments at Level 5 in CMMi and also P-CMM, and has led MindTree to become a 2006 Indian MAKE finalist. Prior to assuming this responsibility, Raj was heading the offshore delivery of all US engagements for MindTree's IT Services business.

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    Prof. Rishikesha T. Krishnan, Professor, Corporate Strategy & Policy, IIMB. His research interests are in the areas of strategy, innovation and competitiveness. He has been a consultant to, or conducted management development programmes for, British Telecom, Daimler Chrysler, Wipro, Siemens, Sasken Communication Technologies, the Murugappa Group, the Aditya Birla Group, and Kochi Refineries. He has worked as the General Manager of a small high technology company in the telecom sector and co-founded two software companies. He obtained the M.Sc. degree in Physics (5-year integrated programme) from the IIT Kanpur and the M.S. degree in Engineering-Economic Systems (now Management Science & Engineering) from Stanford University. He obtained his Ph.D from IIM Ahmedabad. He has been a member of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) National Panel on Intellectual Property, R&D, Technology and Innovation. He is an independent Director on the board of D-Link (India) Ltd.
 






   Prof. S. Sadagopan, Founder Director, International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore, a new generation Institute, promoted jointly by the Government of Karnataka and IT industry in 1999. Professor Sadagopan had taught for more than two decades at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, (IITK), considered to be the No. 1 Engineering School for decades and the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, (IIMB), that has in the recent years emerged as the No. 1 Business School in India. Professor Sadagopan got his Bachelor's degree in Engineering from Madras University (that produced the Nobel Laureates Raman & Chandrashekhar) in 1973. After a brief stint at the Consultancy firm M/S Engineers India Ltd., at New Delhi during 1973-1976, he moved to Purdue University, USA for his Master's and Doctoral degree before returning to India to teach at IIT, Kanpur.

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    Mr. Allen J. Mendonca, Journalist & Director, Raintree Media, Bangalore. Allen, a Bangalore-based award-winning journalist with over two decades of experience in reporting and editing for some of the countries major newspapers and magazines is one of the first journalists to begin writing about Information Technology in the mid 80s and is considered an authority on the history of its growth in Bangalore. He has been invited by Industry majors as IBM, Microsoft, Computer Alliance, Sun Microsystems and other technology companies to attend seminars and events in Australia, the UK, Europe, USA and the Far East. In 2003, Allen co-founded Raintree Media, a communications and media BPO with offices in Kuala Lumpur, Port St. Louis and Bangalore. Allen has essayed character roles in two television serials, three plays and the National Award-winning film Stumble. He is also a musician who has composed themes for plays and ad spots.







    Prof. Shalini R. Urs, Executive Director, International School of Information Management (iSIM) and Professor, University of Mysore, Mysore. She has been an UNESCO consultant on several occasions and an invited speaker at many of the International Digital Library Conferences including JCDL and ICADL. She is currently the Vice Chairperson and Elected Chairperson of the Asian Digital Library Steering Committee and Honorary Adjunct Faculty, International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore. She is a Fulbright Scholar and taught at Virginia Tech, USA during August 2000 - February 2001. She is on the Board of Directors, Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD), a global consortium based at Virginia Tech, USA. She is the Director of Vidyanidhi Digital Library and E-scholarship portal. Her areas of specialization include Information Technology Applications, Information Architecture, Semantic Web, and Digital Libraries.