About Miguel de Icaza
Miguel de Icaza, co-founder and CTO of Ximian, is one of the foremost luminaries in the Linux development community and one of the world's most prominent advocates for Free Software. Before co-founding Ximian, Miguel was instrumental in the development of Linux for SPARC systems and the Midnight Commander file manager. Miguel is the founder and President of the GNOME Foundation. He was also the first recipient of the prestigious MIT Innovator of the Year award in 1999. Miguel has galvanized Ximian's efforts to make Linux accessible and available to the average computer user, and continues to reach out globally by working with international organizations such as eMexico to introduce affordable technology alternatives, like Linux, to other nations.

About Bob Zurek
Bob Zurek is CTO and VP Product Management for Infobright a leading open source data warehouse company. Before joining Infobright, Bob was CTO and VP Products at EnterpriseDB, Bob has also been Director of Strategy with IBM Information Platform and Solutions division. While at IBM, he had the responsibility for driving and executing the technical strategy for IBM's Information Server as it related to software, hardware, services, vertical industries, and emerging markets. Zurek has also founded or co-founded several technology startups and has also been VP Technologies and Fellow at Sybase and VP at Powersoft. Zurek is a frequent speaker on topics of middleware technologies and was VP of Product Management and Advanced Technologies at Ascential Software prior to the acquisition of Ascential by IBM.

About Kevin Bedell
Kevin Bedell, one of the founding editors of Linux.SYS-CON.com, writes and speaks frequently on Linux and open source. He is the director of consulting and training for Black Duck Software.

About Sam Greenblatt
Sam Greenblatt, senior vice president and chief architect for CA's Linux Technology Group, is responsible for the company's cross-brand integration of Linux technology. He joined CA in 1994 and has held senior management positions in cross-platform product strategy and development. Prior to CA, Greenblatt was chief technology officer and vice president of research and development at Candle Corporation. He has also held management positions at ARCO, Commodore International, and Arthur Andersen.

About Dave Thomson
Dave Thomson was one of the founding employees of Object Technology International (OTI), a company IBM acquired in 1996 and which has become the foundation for IBM's Ottawa Lab and many of the technologies underlying IBM's tool products. Prior to OTI's integration with IBM Dave served as VP Development at OTI. Dave led the teams that delivered the underlying IDE technology in many of IBM's award-winning products including: VisualAge for Smalltalk, VisualAge for Java, and the Eclipse platform. Dave was the principal architect behind the transition of IBM's internal workbench development effort into the open source project we now know as Eclipse. Dave is an IBM Distinguished Engineer and is responsible for IBM's Eclipse Development team, and serves as a director on the board of the Eclipse Foundation.

About Margo Seltzer
Margo Seltzer is Chief Technology Officer of Sleepcat Software. A co-founder of Sleepycat Software and one of the original authors of Berkeley DB, Seltzer directs the company's technology innovation. She has more than 20 years of industry experience in applications, databases, transaction processing, storage systems, and hardware design at firms that include Sequoia Systems, Stratus Computer Systems and Kendall Square Research. As Herchel Smith Professor of Computer Science and Associate Dean for Computer Science and Engineering at Harvard University, Seltzer is globally recognized as an expert in operating, database and transactional storage systems. She holds an AB degree in Applied Mathematics from Harvard/Radcliffe College and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley.