ACTS Speakers Bureau

Specialty Areas: Leadership, Business Strategy, Technology, Customer Satisfaction, Cost Reduction, Trends, Futures

Rely on proven professionals to make your event a success!

Call for a free consultation (434) 933-2287, or inquire about any of our speakers.

Bill Carico

Title:

President, ACTS Corporation

Bio:

Bill presents his topics with unique insights to help explain and demystify the technical and business challenges facing today's professional.

Bill has worked in the IT industry since 1973. He is co-founder and president of ACTS. Bill has lectured on IT strategy and industry trends at courses and conferences all over the world. Before founding ACTS, Bill worked for both Intel and IBM, giving him a unique perspective from which to understand the technical and marketing dynamics of the computer industry.

Topics:

  • Various Motivational Topics
  • Technology Futures
  • (Blockchain, AI, Cloud, IoT, & Quantum Computing)
  • The Zero-coding Paradigm Shift
  • Criminal Justice Reform - Who Can You Trust?
  • The Red Teaming Phenomena
  • Winning Political Strategies
  • The World of Cyber Warfare
  • How to Improve Critical Thinking
  • Business Continuity Planning
  • Downsizing, Rightsizing, and Fantasizing
  • What CEO's need to know about Technology
  • Aligning Business and IT
  • Cost Reduction Strategies That Work
  • Straight Talk about Solution Selling
  • Verdana, Microsoft vs. Open Source
  • Automated Operations
  • Distance learning
  • Online Assessments/Exams
  • Customer Satisfaction

Previous Events:

  • ACLI Executive Summit for CEOs, Naples (4 events)
  • AFCOM Conference
  • Amdahl Users Group
  • Automated Operations Conference, London
  • CMG
  • HDS CIO Conference
  • IBM VM/VSE Conference in Belgium, Germany, Atlanta, and Orlando
  • IBM Technology Conference for Business Partners
  • Nastec (3 events)
  • SALT Education Conference
  • Technology in Government in Ottawa (2 events)
  • Xephon Futures Conference, London
  • zVM Workshop (2 events)
  • Lead instructor for the Technical Awareness Seminar series for over two decades.
  • Numerous internal presentations to management and sales reps for companies/organizations like Nynex, Progressive Insurance, Federal Reserve, Texas Instruments, BMC Software, HDS, and Computer Associates
  • plus has been a guest speaker at over 50 IBM customer events and sales classes.

Audience:

CEO's, Top Executives, CIO's, IT Managers, Sales Reps

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Fred Moore

Title:

President, Horison Information Strategies

Bio:

In 1998, Fred Moore founded Horison Information Strategies, an information strategies consulting firm in Boulder, Colorado, that specializes in strategy and business development for emerging IT and storage networking companies. Fred began his 21-year career at StorageTek as the first systems engineer and concluded as corporate vice president of Strategic Marketing. Fred serves as Editor of Storage for West World Productions. He is a 1989 recipient of the Distinguished Alumnus Award and a 2002 recipient of the Scholar-in Residence award for Geography at the University of Missouri where he received a bachelor's degree in mathematics and a master's degree in computer applications in physical geography. Fred completed the Berkeley Executive Program in 1997. He currently serves on a few select boards in the storage networking industry. Fred is a sought-after motivator and IT speaker worldwide and has published numerous papers and reports for the data-storage industry.

Topics:

  • Future Technologies
  • Storage Networking
  • Trends and Directions
  • Consumption Trends
  • Disk
  • Tape
  • Storage Management

Previous Events:

  • CA world
  • StorageTek Forum
  • CMG (over 40 events worldwide)
  • SMW Europe
  • Share
  • 7X24 Exchange
  • Xephon Futures Conference
  • Roadshows for Backbone software (over 15 events)
  • StorageTek (over 40 events)
  • EMC
  • Quantum
  • IBM
  • Breece Hill
  • Peak Data
  • Copan Systems
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John Kirschner

Title:

Principle Engineer

Bio:

John Kirschner is a storage technology specialist and a member of the ACTS advisory board. John has over 35 years experience in IT. He has worked for Lockheed Martin and IBM as a I/T architect, systems engineer, systems programmer, instructor, and as a consultant. He is a certified IT security specialist and helps establish US government security policies in regard to new technologies. John is a certified I/T architect, certified business manager and certified large systems specialist. John is the author of numerous white papers on systems architecture, enterprise alignment, performance, and modernization.

Topics:

  • Enterprise Alignment
  • Systems Design
  • Security
  • Storage Systems
  • Knowledge Management
  • Design for Availability
  • Disaster Recovery
  • Data Center Design
  • Server Technology and Comparisons

Past Lectures:

  • CIA:
    • Terrorist Threat Integration Center Architecture
    • Content Management Solutions
  • NRO:
    • Multi-Level Security
    • Virtual Disk and Tape Architectures and Products
    • IBM zSeries Mainframe Systems Architecture
    • IBM pSeries
    • Systems Architecture
    • SUN E10K Systems Architecture
    • Tape Library Optimization
  • NSA:
    • Disaster Recovery Options
    • Trailblazer Architecture and Systems Scalability
    • Multi-Level Security
  • DHS:
    • Intelligence Information Factory
    • Content Management Solutions
    • Multi-Level Security
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David Hines

Title:

Director, Business Operations and Support Services ( BOSS Organization), Progressive Insurance

Bio:

David Hines manages so many areas at Progressive that its hard to keep count. That is why sound IT strategy is key to staying productive and keeping the organization responsive and nimble. David has proven himself in managing the diverse and complex IT challenges that his company faces daily. He can provide practical tips on how to look at a situation from all sides, then apply a common sense, get-back-to-the-basics approach to almost any issue.

Dave has been in the computer industry 43 years. Most of those years were on the vendor side of the fence; Control Data Corporation, Amdahl, Fujitsu ICL in various Sales, Marketing, and Services functions. After seeing the light, he crossed over to the light side of the FORCE and became a customer. He has a background in Supercomputing (both Vector and Parallel processing), and has run the gamut of working with systems from PC's to mid-range to mainframes.

Topics:

  • Helpdesk/Support Desk
  • Computer operations/Production control
  • Print and mail facilities
  • Software Development of Tools
  • Data center consolidation and replication
  • Business Ethics
  • Just about any management topic.

Past Lectures:

  • TAS Seminars
  • Lakeland College ebusiness forums
  • Several panels on Vector Processing and Parallel Processing at super computer conferences
  • Several Progressive internal lectures (see list of topics)
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In Memoriam - Dr. Gene Amdahl
November 16, 1922 – November 10, 2015

Title:

Director, Business Operations and Support Services ( BOSS Organization), Progressive Insurance

Bio:

Gene Myron Amdahl received his B.S. in Engineering Physics from South Dakota State University in 1948, and earned his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from the University of Wisconsin in 1952.

His early professional career was spent at IBM where he worked on simulation studies and machine designs for character recognition; was initial planner for the IBM 709 and 7030; became Manager of Architecture for the IBM System/360 and in 1965 was named an IBM Fellow during which part of this period he was named Director of IBM's Advanced Computing Systems Laboratory in Menlo Park, California. During the 1960's he implemented a milestone in computer technology: the concept of compatibility between systems. Dr. Amdahl left IBM Corporation in the fall of 1970 to create more innovative mainframe computers.

Dr. Amdahl is perhaps best known for founding Amdahl Corporation, one of IBM's main competitors. Amdahl Corporation was the first successful IBM-compatible CPU manufacturer, opening the door for competition to advance technology. The world's first Large-Scale Integrated (LSI) chips were developed and made possible high performance, air-cooled, rather than water-cooled, CPUs. In the first full year of shipments, Amdahl Corporation shipped $96 million of product, the second full year $190 million, and the third year $320 million. In 1979, he became Amdahl's Chairman Emeritus and a consultant to the company. He retired from Amdahl in August 1980.

In 1980, Dr. Amdahl co-founded Trilogy Systems Corporation to produce fault tolerant wafer-scale chips and a high-performance CPU. The concepts were proven but the cost projections were excessive, so Trilogy acquired Elxsi in 1985 for its principal computer system entry.

Andor International, Ltd. was founded by Dr. Amdahl in 1987 to continue innovations in technology. Andor specialized in the design, manufacture, and marketing of unique IBM-compatible products designed to improve the efficiency, performance, access, capacity, and protection of programs and data.

In 1994, Dr. Amdahl co-founded Commercial Data Services, Inc. (CDS), which built a computer with the power and functionality of traditional mainframe at a comparable size and serviceability of smaller personal computers and network servers.

Topics:

  • Server Architecture
  • Taking on Industry Giants
  • Innovative Computer Design
  • Design Principles that Work
  • History of the Computer Industry

Past Lectures:

  • T Systems Conference for CEOs, CFOs, and CIOs - Austria
  • ACTS Technical Awareness Series (USA, South Africa)
  • IEEE Conferences (3 times)
  • Austrailian Computer Conference (Sydney)
  • Asian Computer Conference (Thailand)
  • DPMA Conference
  • NATO Summer School in France (2 times)
  • Share
  • Special Presentations to the Gov. of China
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