Steering Committee Members

Deborah Bryant

Deb Bryant

Deborah Bryant

Oregon State University, Open Source Lab

Public Sector Communities Manager & GOSCON Director - Oregon State University, Open Source Lab

Deborah brings the perspective of twenty years management experience in high tech and IT including both private and public sectors. Production of this years fourth annual Government Open Source Conference is a high priority for Deborah in her current role as Public Sector Communities Manager at Oregon State University’s Open Source Lab.

Deborah’s government background started 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 sometimes conflicting views.

Prior to entering the pubic sector, Deborah 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.

Curt Pederson

Curt Pederson

Oregon State University

Vice Provost for Information Services & Chief Information Offficer - Oregon State University

Curt Pederson has served as the Vice Provost for Information Services and Chief Information Officer for Oregon State University (OSU) since 1997. In 2004 the responsibilities of Chief Information Officer for the Oregon University System (OUS) were added.

Despite resource restraints, both OSU and OUS have successfully reorganized, improved and expanded many services and continued to support sound information technology infrastructure in support of research, teaching, and learning.

Curt has supported the open source movement through the Open Source Lab and GOSCON, both focal points for collaboration and innovation. The Lab has grown rapidly and currently hosts many of the world’s largest open source projects. GOSCON has become the pre-eminent international government open source conference.

Before joining Oregon’s higher education community, Curt served as Oregon’s first state Chief Information Officer and as Associate Director for the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries and in a variety of positions for Snohomish County PUD, the 12th largest publicly owned electric utility in the United States.

Andy Stein

Andy Stein, City of Newport News VA

Andy Stein

City of Newport News, Virginia

Director of Information Technology - City of Newport News, Virginia

Andy Stein is Director of Information Technology at the City of Newport News, Virginia. Using Open Source as a best practice model for collaborative software development, the City of Newport News is engaged in shared projects with other localities. The City of Newport News has developed a strategy to replace legacy applications through a collaborative ecosystem with public entities and through public-private partnerships.

In addition to his current work in Government, Andy’s professional background includes management and operation of large scaleable computing environments at Capital One, as well as work in application development, relational database and systems architecture in IBM’s consulting practice. Andy designed and implemented the RISC chip on the IBM team in the mid 1980’s.

Most recently, the city's Open eGov application suite won a prestigious innovation award for local government.

Bernard Golden

Bernard Golden

Navica

Founder & CEO - Navica

Navica's founder and CEO, Bernard Golden, is a recognized authority on open source software. Called “a renowned open source expert” (IT Business Edge) and “an open source guru” (SearchCRM.com), he is regularly featured in magazines like Computerworld, InformationWeek, and Inc. His blog “The Open Source” is one of the most popular features of CIO Magazine's website. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences like LinuxWorld, the Open Source Business Conference, and the Red Hat Summit. He is the author of “Succeeding with Open Source,” (Addison-Wesley, 2005, published in four languages), which was described as containing “some of the most valuable, practical advice I have seen on how to transform use of open source software from an accidental process into a powerful strategy for gaining an edge on the competition” (Terry Bollinger, IT Analyst, The MITRE Corporation, and author of “Use of FOSS in the United States Department of Defense”).

Shay Dakan

Shay Dakan

Oregon State University, Open Source Lab

Director - Oregon State University, Open Source Lab

Shay Dakan has provided effective leadership and administrative services to the University since 1996. Her expertise has been instrumental with strategic and tactical planning; financial, technical, and usage forecasting, engineering, and all necessary operations requirements for maintaining the integrity of both voice and data networks.

As current Director of OSU Network Services, Shay administers the following work units: Telecommunications, Network Engineering, Inter-institutional Converged Exchange Network Operations Center (iNOC), and the Open Source Laboratory. Together, these teams provide a wide range of network and computing services to the entire OSU community, both on-campus and at off-site locations.

Ben Berry

Ben Berry

State of Oregon CIO Council

Chief Information Officer - State of Oregon CIO Council

Mr. Ben Berry serves as ODOT’s Chief Information Officer providing overall leadership, planning, development, and delivery of information technology services for ODOT and several other non-transportation organizations. As CIO for one of the largest state agencies and Chair of the State’s CIO Council, Mr. Berry supports Intelligent Transportation Systems, e-Government and major systems change and is responsible for systems supporting highways, bridges, rail service, right-of-way determinations, DMV and Motor Carrier Commercial Trucking inspections and licensing throughout the state. He is the former Chief Technology Officer of Providence Health System Oregon supporting a Service Area of 7 hospitals and 33 clinics. Mr. Berry has held executive and management positions in industries such as State and Local government, healthcare, telecommunications, aerospace/defense and airport transportation.

He received his M.B.A. from UCLA and a B.S. in Life Science - Biotechnology from the University of Portland. He has 25+ years in computer software program management and operations, computer applications development and design, and systems development for public and private sectors both in the U.S.A. and the Middle-East. In addition, he has facilitated business process improvement for the automotive, aerospace, healthcare industries and is the Winner of the Public Sector 2007 Oregon IT Executive of the Year, as chosen by the Society of Information Management (SIM).

Bob Devyldere

Bob Devyldere

Oregon Water Resources Department

Director - Information Services group, Oregon Water Resources Department

Bob DeVyldere leads the award winning Information Services group at the Oregon Water Resources Department. During the past 15 years Bob has been responsible for strategically delivering high quality and quantities of information to both internal and external customers. An early adopter of Open Source and Internet tool sets, he has directed an organization that leads all Western States in delivering water resource information to customers. He is active in several statewide groups developing data standards for Geographic Information Systems that encourages data sharing between State, Local and Federal agencies. He has also led other state agencies in developing their long term information management strategies and currently serves as Chair of the Sate CIO Council's Open Source Community of Practice.

Mr. DeVyldere received a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Willamette University and is a certified Oregon Project Manager.

Linda Brackett

Linda Brackett

Linda Brackett

Connor Bates, Inc.

President - Connor Bates
 
Linda Brackett is the founder and president of Connor Bates, a strategic business consulting firm that works hand-in-hand with executives who intend to make a difference in their industry.   She has more than 20 years of experience in applied voice-of-the-customer research, strategic and tactical planning, and program execution for entrepreneurial Fortune 1000 and emerging-growth companies.

Linda has actively participated in industry and professional organizations, including the Health Information Management and Systems Society (HIMSS), state Software Associations, and the Oregon Entrepreneur Network.  As HIMSS Oregon Chapter president, Linda introduced innovations in Board structure and programs, resulting in expanded reach and Chapter growth.

Linda graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and continued her graduate studies at l’Institut de Sciences Politiques, Paris, France