Conference Advisory Board

Charles C. Byers
Technical Leader and Platform Architect
digital Media System's Business Unit
Cisco

Charles C. Byers is a Technical Leader and Platform Architect with Cisco's Digital Media System's Business Unit. He works on the architecture and implementation of high definition video and signal processing equipment for telepresence, multimedia, and digital signage applications.

Before joining Cisco Systems, he was a Bell Labs Fellow at Alcatel-Lucent. During his 22 years in the telecommunications networking industry, he has made significant contributions in areas like voice switching, broadband access, converged networks, VoIP, multimedia, and platforms. He has also been a leader in several standards bodies, including serving as a founding member of PICMG's AdvancedTCA, AdvancedMC, and MicroTCA subcommittees, and on the SCOPE Alliance.

Mr. Byers received his B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He holds 42 US patents.

Von Campbell
Strategic Planning Manager
Modular Products Operation
Electronic Measurements Group
Agilent Technologies

Von joined Agilent Technologies (Hewlett-Packard) as a development engineer in 1982. Today, he manages Strategic Product Planning for the Modular Products Operation and also oversees Agilent’s involvement in multiple industry consortia; IVI, LXI, VXI, AXIe and PXISA. Von is the President of the LXI Consortium.

During his 26 years with the company, Von has been led several of Agilent’s Marketing and R&D programs (organizations) focused on general-purpose instruments, data acquisition, manufacturing test systems, connectivity software and common instrument infrastructure.

Von holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University and a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Brian Carr
Strategic Marketing Manager
Emerson Network Power Embedded Computing

Brian Carr is a Strategic Marketing Manager for the Embedded Computing business of Emerson Network Power, with a particular focus on communications servers and building blocks based on open standards such as AdvancedTCA, Carrier Grade Linux and Service Availability Forum. Brian brings together customer and application trends with next-generation technology advances to guide the company’s strategic ATCA roadmap.

Carr joined Emerson with its acquisition of Motorola’s Embedded Computing Group in January 2008. His 21 years experience in the telecom industry began in R&D at BT Labs, where he helped develop a network embedded voice services platform and was technical lead on several related application deployments.

Carr holds masters degrees in Engineering from Cambridge University and in Information Technology from Essex University.

Heiko Koerte
VP and Director Sales & Marketing
N.A.T

After having been Head of Software Development with N.A.T. for almost a decade, Heiko was appointed his current position in 2000 with the responsibility for N.A.T.’s world wide sales and marketing activities. Due to his strong background in engineering he still is personally involved in the definition of all strategic hardware and software products at N.A.T..

Heiko holds a diploma degree in High Energy Physics from the University of Bonn where he has worked for the OPAL collaboration at CERN.

RJ McLaren
Sr. Systems Architect
Pentair Electronic Packaging - Schroff

RJ McLaren is the Sr. Systems Architect for Schroff NA, a division of Pentair Technical Products, and has over 10 years of experience in the electronic manufacturing industry. He supports customers in the early stages of product development for system enclosures based on PICMG and VITA industry standards like xTCA, cPCI, VME, VPX, etc. He has presented standards based training materials and whitepapers at various industry tradeshows and events. RJ has worked previously as the Systems Product Manager and Communications Segment Manager for Schroff NA. Other roles have included Application Engineering, Program Manager and Systems Project Engineering. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering and a Masters in Business Administration from NNU.

"The AdvancedTCA Summit has been the premier event for system integrators to learn how they can use AdvancedTCA to develop their next generation products and see the latest product innovations all in one place. Schroff continues to invest strongly in developing next generation AdvancedTCA equipment for use in Telecom and other market segments. We continue to see a high level of interest and adoption of ATCA with customers and continued growth in the Market. With the addition of MicroTCA, integrators have new options to utilize AdvancedMCs which is used in both AdvancedTCA and MicroTCA. This has significantly increased the overall interest in these products due to their broad application usage."

Eric M. Mantion
Corporate Innovation Evangelist - Embedded & Communications Group
Intel Corporation
Member of Advisory Board for Embedded System Conference

Eric Mantion is a Corporate Innovation Evangelist in charge of conducting training of and coordinating promotions for the new Intel® Corporate Product Catalogue – which has a web front-end that can be found at ARK.intel.com.  Prior to that, Eric was a strategic marketing manager responsible for competitive intelligence which included gathering information about competing companies and their products, analyzing the data, and presenting out strategic recommendations to our long-range planning activities as well as training various internal and external groups as to how Intel could be the most competitive in the Embedded Market Segment.  Before joining Intel in 2005, Eric had worked as a senior and then principal analyst for market research firms such as In-Stat and ABI Research.  This was after he had spent 2 years at a small communications-focused semiconductor company working as a product marketing engineer.

Eric received a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from the US Naval Academy with a focus on Quantum Mechanics and Nuclear Engineering.  He has fully completed the US Navy’s graduate-level but classified Nuclear Engineer Program and has been certified by the federal government to be the lead engineer of a nuclear facility.  He spent 3 years on a fast-attack submarine (USS Santa Fe – SSN-763) and two and a half years attached to a SEAL Team in Hawaii responsible for many of their maintenance functions and large scale construction projects.

"AdvancedTCA Summit is one of the purist tradeshows in the technology industry that remains laser focused on all sides of the PICMG 3.0 effort – if you are involved with ATCA or any of its related specifications (µTCA, AdvancedMCs, etc.) then you need to be at this show." 

Dr. Asif Naseem
President and COO
GoAhead Software

Dr. Asif Naseem is president and chief operating officer of GoAhead Software, Inc. in Seattle, WA. He has more than 20 years of experience in the computer and communications industry.

Prior to joining GoAhead in 2004, Asif served as vice president, Business Operations at Iospan Wireless, a broadband wireless company, where he headed all engineering, marketing and sales operations. Iospan Wireless was acquired by Intel and L3. Before joining Iospan, Asif spent five years with Motorola where he was the general manager, Internet Connectivity and Services Division (ICSD), EMEA, based in the UK. Asif started his career with AT&T Bell laboratories where he held a variety of engineering and management positions. At AT&T he oversaw the development of LifeKeeper family of products, subsequently spun out as an independent business.

Asif is a frequent speaker at industry and academia events, and publishes regularly on computer and communication related topics. He has an MS in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Computer Engineering from Michigan State University

"Our customers look to GoAhead Software for highly available, application-ready platforms that are based on open standards, so they can ensure flexibility, focus on revenue-generating applications and reduce project risk. With its efficient form factor and cost effectiveness, we are excited about MicroTCA. We look forward to The MicroTCA Summit as the premier venue for equipment providers to learn about MicroTCA, get answers to challenging questions they are facing, and understand how they can take advantage of this promising platform.”

John P. Sahlin, PMP
Chief Engineer
Defense and Maritime Systems Division
SAIC

Mr. Sahlin is currently the Chief Engineer of the Defense and Maritime Systems Division of SAIC supporting the Space and Naval Warfare (SPAWAR) Tactical Networks Program Office (PMW 160). He has a unique blend of over 18 years’ Systems Engineering and Program Management expertise in both federal government and commercial markets.

Mr. Sahlin specializes in the design and development of distributed, variable rate computing environments to solve complex business problems using the Managed Service Provider (MSP) model of providing distributed infrastructure systems on an outsourced basis. His commercial experience includes the development and sustainment of large scale distributed systems for clients such as HP, Hershey Foods, Samsung Semiconductor, and DMX Music.

Mr. Sahlin’s expertise in the MSP market was critical in SPAWAR’s need to radically redesign the Tactical Networks baseline. He introduced a variety of server consolidation and virtualization techniques, resulting in significant savings in shipboard space, weight, power, and cost associated with Tactical Networks, supporting the Navy’s Deputy Chief of Information Dominance direction to the reduce Enterprise Data Centers by 25% and increase the use of server virtualization by 50%.

The space and cost savings realized by Mr. Sahlin’s design efforts provided real-world justification for SPAWAR’s CANES PoR. Mr. Sahlin currently serves as the Systems Engineer for CANES Future, Shipbuilding and Conversion, and Network Migration for PMW 160, designing the future capabilities roadmap for the CANES PoR, as well as designing migration paths for migrating shipboard networks not currently supported by PMW 160 (e.g., DDG 1000, LCS, LPD 17, Coast Guard, Military Sealift Command) to the CANES PoR.

Mr. Sahlin holds a Master’s of Science in Systems Engineering from the George Washington University, a Master’s of Arts in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland, and a Bachelor’s of Science (with Merit) in Political Science from the United States Naval Academy. He was awarded a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from the Project Management Institute in 1998.