About the Presenters


Jim Barnes
Jim Barnes is an internationally-recognized author, speaker, consultant, entrepreneur and educator on subjects relating to marketing and the building of customer relationships. His career, over more than 30 years, has involved the establishment of a successful marketing services company, authorship of eight books, serving as consultant to many international companies, and lecturing at universities around the world. He is a thought leader on the creation of customer loyalty and on delivering meaningful customer experiences. He advises clients in North America and Europe on building customer strategy, customer insight, and the measurement of customer loyalty. He works with companies to help them create more profitable relationships with their customers and clients. He regularly advises sales and management groups around the world, delivering keynote speeches and hands-on workshops.

Jim has been Professor of Marketing at Memorial University since 1968 and served as the first Dean of Business Administration (1978-1988). He has been a visiting professor at universities in Canada, England, Australia, France and Ireland. In 1977, he co-founded Bristol Group, a Canadian full-service marketing services firm that now has 150 employees in five offices, including Qatar. He served as Executive Vice-President and Chairman of Bristol until 2004. Jim established Barnes Marketing Associates, Inc. in 1999 to deliver seminars and workshops internationally and to offer consulting services to selected clients. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and a PhD from the University of Toronto.



Naras Eechambadi
Naras Eechambadi is the CEO of Quaero, a marketing technology and performance management company that works with Fortune 1000 companies in a variety of vertical markets to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their customer management and marketing programs and infrastructure. He is the author of "High Performance Marketing: Bringing Method to the Madness of Marketing", and is on the Advisory Council of CustomerThink one of the leading CRM sites.

Prior to founding Quaero, Naras was a Senior Vice President at First Union (now Wachovia) where he created its Knowledge Based Marketing Group as well as a co-founder of the CRM practice within McKinsey & Company. He served as Associate Director of Marketing Sciences for BBDO Worldwide, Vice President for new product development at The BASES Group (now ACNielsen BASES). He has taught at The University of California, Berkeley. He holds a Ph.D. in Marketing from the University of Texas at Austin and a Masters in Management Science from Northwestern University



Paul Gillin
Paul Gillin is a veteran technology journalist with more than 24 years of editorial leadership. Paul was founding editor-in-chief of TechTarget, one of the most successful new media entities to emerge on the Internet. Previously, he was editor-in-chief and executive editor of Computerworld . Currently, he writes the social media column for BtoB magazine. His critically acclaimed new book,The New Influencers, is about the changes in markets being driven by the new breed of online publishers. Published by Quill Driver Books in spring, 2007, it is in its third printing.

Paul specializes in advising business-to-business marketers on strategies to optimize their use of online channels to reach buyers cost-effectively. He is particularly interested in social media and the application of personal publishing to brand awareness and business marketing.

Paul is an accomplished speaker and media spokesman. He has keynoted more than a dozen technology conferences, including annual user group meetings for IBM, Oracle, Cognos, Business Objects and J.D. Edwards. He has also spoken at scores of other events about technology trends and social media.

His ability to translate complex technology topics into plain English has made him a favorite source for journalists. He has been widely quoted in newspapers and on the airwaves, including appearances on CNN, PBS, Fox News and MSNBC. Paul is a research fellow at the Society for New Communications Research and he chairs the social media cluster of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council. He blogs at www.paulgillin.com.



Paul Greenberg
Paul Greenberg is an internationally renowned expert on CRM and one of CRM's most influential authors. His best-selling book, CRM at the Speed of Light: Essential Customer Strategies for the 21st Century, is now in eight languages and is used as a textbook in over 60 countries and universities across multiple continents. It is called "the number 1 CRM book" by SearchCRM.com. The Asian edition of CIO Magazine named it one of the 12 most important books an Asian CEO will ever read.

Paul has years of experience with both CRM and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). He has built SAP and People Soft practices and, has extremely deep ties into the CRM and enterprise applications communities. He writes regularly for publications like CRM Magazine, SearchCRM.com and CRMGuru. He is a contributor to multiple other national business magazines and newspapers including the New York Times where he is quoted as a subject matter expert. He is considered one of CRM's leading authorities on strategy and on the state of the market. He is a keynote speaker at conferences and seminars in the United States, across Europe, Asia and Australia.

Paul is a founding principal and executive director of BPT Partners, a global CRM consulting, training and research company focused on practical strategies and 'best practice' process, tools and techniques that deliver significant ROI to its clients companies while developing and enhancing the competency of its professionals in CRM Sales, Marketing and Services positions. He is president of the 56 Group, an enterprise applications consulting services firm, focused on CRM strategic services.



Thomas Vander Wal
In Thomas Vander Wal's more than 18 years as a professional in information services and web, he has worked in many industries and in many roles. He has always been the problem solver and the person who can see the big picture and get it accomplished. Thomas coined "folksonomy" in 2004 as part of his interest with how a novel approach to tagging aids a person refinding information and is also used to augment other information structuring methods so to help other people find information. In May 2007, Thomas announced in his blog, "Off the Top", that he has signed with O'Reilly to write a book, initially titled "Understanding Folksonomy". Thomas also presents and trains at many conferences, workshops, and in-house events. Thomas has presented and led discussions across the U.S. and Europe on a broad range of topics including: folksonomy, Personal InfoCloud, social software, information architecture, design, web standards, ubiquitous computing (ubicomp), tagging, and designing for use and reuse of information across devices. He is founder of InfoCloud Solutions, Inc. , a company focused on getting the customers smart on social software, personal and shared information use systems, tagging (folksonomy), and cross platform design and development. He is a member of the Founding Leadership Council for The Information Architecture Institute, and the Steering Committee for the Web Standards Project (WaSP).