Deborah Bryant Public Sector Communities Manager |
Deborah Bryant is Public Sector Communities Manager at Oregon State University’s Open Source Lab (OSU OSL), where she creates collaborations between public, private and academic concerns in pursuit of the successful adoption of open source technology and models and is internationally recognized for her expertise. She directs the annual Government Open Source Conference (GOSCON), the preeminent event and platform for collaboration amongst government IT management at all levels of government. She speaks frequently on open source and government collaborative and the use and adoption of open source in government operations. Most recently she facilitated a national round table discussion on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security, gathering state and local public safety practitioners and industry along with senior DHS personnel to consider the use of the collaborative model for information sharing. Bryant’s government service included consultation with the Oregon State Legislature during the Year 2000 legislative session and continued at Oregon’s Department of Administrative Services for five years where she served as Manager of Enterprise Strategic Planning and Policy in the Office of the State CIO and also as Deputy State CIO. During the Year 2002 legislative session she represented the State’s Executive Branch position on proposed Open Source legislation and earned a reputation for an open, constructive approach to working with diverse and often conflicting views. Her interest in open source software and its implication for government is also reflected in her civic involvement; she serves as a Board Director for DemocracyLab.org; as an Advisor for the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation (OSDV.org); and on the Oregon Statewide Distance Learning Advisory Council. She is also an elected official, serving as Commissioner in a local special services district and is known for her advocacy of transparency in government. Prior to entering the public sector, she held management positions in several emerging technology areas; parallel and high-speed computing and commercialized internet and web applications in the 80s, commercial wide area networks, advanced telecommunications and data/voice convergence in the 90s. |
Alan Clark Strategic Advisor for Industry Initiatives & Standards |
Alan Clark focuses on Industry Initiatives and Emerging Standards for Novell. To facilitate the awareness and adoption of open source and open standards, Clark participates on several industry forum board of directors, steering committees, technical committees and work groups.
With 20+ years of experience as a Software Engineer and Engineering Management, a principal portion of Clark’s career has been devoted to the research and development of operating systems and distributed multi-platform server services. His experience is with file systems, Directory Services, LDAP Services, Object Databases, Security, Developer Interfaces, Web Services, Network Protocols and more. |
Chris DiBona Open Source & Public Sector Programs Director |
Chris DiBona is the open source and public sector programs manager at Mountain View, CA based Google. His team oversees license compliance and supports the open source developer community through programs such as the Google Summer of Code and through the release of open source software projects and patches. In the public sector space, he looks after Google Moderator, the polling locations API. Additionally, he is on the board of Our Good Works, a non-profit that looks after the volunteer matching website Allforgood.org.
DiBona is an internationally known advocate of open source software and related methodologies. He occasionally appears on the This Week in Tech and Cranky Geeks podcasts. He is a visiting scholar at theMIT Sloan School of Management and has a masters in software engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. Additionally, he serves on the advisory board of imeem, a San Francisco, CA based social networking firm. |
Kane McLean Strategy & Communication Group |
Kane McLean is part of the Strategy & Communications Group at BRTRC Technology Research Corporation and currently works supporting the Under Secretary of the Army at the United States Army Office of Business Transformation. An Open Source advocate, evangelist and strategist, Kane works to find the right solutions to clients’ challengesâ€â€more often than not Open Source solutions provide the best-fit and prove to be the most flexible long-term solutions. In addition to creating the strong solution strategies, Kane is works to tout the business case for Open Source adoption. Prior to joining BRTRC, Kane led a company that helped corporations and organizations develop their online presence, enhance their strategic communication and improve their collaboration capabilities by adopting open source web-based technologies. Kane is a former entrepreneur having founded two companies, the last of which he sold in 2008 before becoming a defense contractor. Kane also serves on the Steering Committee of Mil-OSS, a Department of Defense Open Source community. |
John Scott President Selection Pressure, LLC |
John Scott is a Senior Systems Engineer and Open Technology Lead for RadiantBlue Technologies, Inc. with deep expertise in engineered systems and bridging the gap between decision-makers, scientists, and engineers to develop policies for acquiring and deploying new technologies in the Department of Defense and US Government. He has focused his career on investigating and developing ideas for how large organizations design, construct, and evolve extremely complex systems to meet National Security needs. Scott led the Defense Department’s Open Technology Development (OTD) initiative, sponsored by the Office of Secretary of Defense Advanced Systems & Concepts. OTD lays the groundwork for streamlined adoption of open source methodologies within DoD, which includes both the adoption of private sector open source software and the formation of internal communities of interest around DoD systems, including classified systems. The impact of these shifts in policy and business process include not only increased agility for the U.S. military, but also an enhanced ability to securely share capabilities with allies and bring both data and technology to bear in disaster response and humanitarian assistance operations. Previous work as a consultant to DoD includes the development of new design and testing methodologies for military networks, and the development of complex systems modeling applications for distributed systems. In tandem with his work for OSD, Scott serves as the chairman of the National Defense Industrial Association’s Command, Control, Communications and Computers (C4) division and is a member of the Editorial Board of the DoD SoftwareTech Journal. |
John Weathersby Founder and Executive Director |
John Weathersby is the founder and executive director of the Open Source Software Institute, a U.S.-based non-profit organization whose mission is to promote adoption of open source software solutions within government IT environments. Weathersby currently serves as an adviser on open source issues to a number of Federal government entities including the Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate, the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), and the Department of the Navy. He also serves as an adviser for technology to The University of Southern Mississippi’s Office of Technology and Economic Development. Weathersby is a member of the International Advisory Panel for Enterprise Open Source Magazine and a founding executive board member of the National Association of Call Centers (NACC). |
