We are very proud to present three distinguished invited speakers at ICIQ 2009. Jeff Jonas will hold the opening keynote for ICIQ on Saturday; Niels Weigel will open Sunday with his keynote talk; and Richard Wang will give a dinner speech at the conference banquett.

	Jeff Jonas Chief Scientist, IBM Entity Analytics IBM Distinguished Engineer

"Macro Trends in Data and Sensemaking"

Jeff Jonas is Chief Scientist, IBM Entity Analytics Group and an IBM Distinguished Engineer. The IBM Entity Analytics Group was formed based on technologies developed by Systems Research & Development (SRD), founded by Jonas in 1984, and acquired by IBM in January, 2005.

Prior to the acquisition Jonas lead SRD through the design and development of a number of unique systems including technology used by the Las Vegas gaming industry. One such innovation played a pivotal role in protecting the gaming industry from aggressive card count teams. The most notable known as the MIT team featured in the book “Bringing Down the House”, and recent movie “21.” Today, possibly half of the casinos in the world use technology created by Jonas and his SRD team. This work is frequently featured in documentaries appearing on, the Discovery Channel, Learning Channel and the Travel Channel.

Following an investment in 2001 by In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the CIA; SRD began playing a role in America’s national security and counterterrorism mission. One such contribution includes an analysis of the connections between the individual 9/11 terrorists. This link analysis is now taught in universities and has been widely cited by think tanks and the media, for example, an extensive one-on-one interview with Peter Jennings that aired on ABC PrimeTime.

Jonas designs next generation technology that helps organizations better leverage their enterprise-wide information assets. With particular interest in real-time “sensemaking” these innovative systems fundamentally improve enterprise intelligence which makes organizations smarter, more efficient and highly competitive.

Jonas is also somewhat unique as a technologist in that he frequently engages with the privacy and civil liberties community. With responsible innovation in mind, Jonas invented technology which enables organizations to discover records of common interest (e.g., identities) without the transfer of any privacy-invading content. This cryptographic-based technique known as “Anonymous Resolution” delivers new levels of privacy protection in areas of critical interest like; clinical health care research, bio-surveillance, aviation safety, homeland security, fraud detection and identity theft.

Jonas’ work has received wide media attention from the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, to Fortune Magazine, MSNBC and National Public Radio. A highly sought after speaker, Jonas travels the globe discussing innovation, national security, and privacy with government leaders, industry executives, leading global think tanks, privacy advocacy groups, and policy research organizations, including the Center for Democracy and Technology, Heritage Foundation and the Markle Foundation. He is a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Jonas periodically testifies on privacy and counterterrorism in such venues as the White House before the President’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee, and other federally convened commissions.

Jonas was briefly a quadriplegic in 1988 following a car accident. Today, he competes in Ironman triathlons around the world. He raised three wonderful children as a single father.

Jeff Jonas blogs at: jeffjonas.typepad.com

Niels Weigel Senior Solution Manager Enterprise Information Management, Data Quality SAP AG

"Lean and Agile Enterprise Information Management" (slides as pdf)

Over the last decades information management has grown up from a small departmental initiative of individual tasks, such as documentation of database systems, re-active data cleansing, etc., to a broader rocket science of data governance aspects, such as data definitions and shared business vocabulary; metadata management; data modeling, data integration; data quality; data security; master data management; content management; and taxonomy design and maintenance. The growing amount of data and applications in an enterprise; multiple ways of information representation (structured and unstructured); more complicated business processes, where most of them need to be compliant with federal laws; global extension of business; and new local requirements are just some of the drivers to be mentioned to develop an information management strategy that covers all data, all applications, and all process of an enterprise.

Suddenly, during the last year with the financial markets crisis many things changed. It is still obvious to everybody that especially now it is the time to invest into one of the most valuable assets inside an organization, the data and the management of the data. But the pictures of enterprise-wide deployment of information management strategies are really bright in a tunnel that is limited by pressures of cost efficiency and reduced expenses. It is now essential to walk through the tunnel in smaller steps with defined milestones that produce additional value to the organization already during implementation steps. That said, it is time for a Lean and Agile Enterprise Information Management deployment!

Bio

Niels Weigel is Senior Solution Manager at SAP for Data Quality in the Enterprise Information Management Division. Working for about 15 years in several Software Vendor organizations, he has a broad experience on the market demands and requirements for solutions as well as project frameworks to solve the Enterprise Information Management challenges.

After studying Aerospace Engineering at the University of Stuttgart, finishing with his diploma thesis on “Fuzzy logic for adaptive position control and guidance of a solar airship”, he identified new challenges in the area of International Data Quality Management at FUZZY! Informatik AG. After initial work in design and development of software solutions, he was leading the Consulting Services organization. As Head of Business Development he was responsible for the Product Management and was also setting up the FUZZY! DataCare Process, a methodology for successfully implementing Data Quality projects within an organization. After the acquisition of FUZZY! Informatik AG by Business Objects in 2007 he joined the Solution Management Team for Enterprise Information Management at the SAP BusinessObjects division and took over responsibility for SAP’s International Address Cleansing solutions.

He is member of the board of the German Society for Information and Data Quality (DGIQ) and has successfully completed the IQ-2 Certified Information Quality Professional course at the MIT, Boston. He appeared on several international Information Quality Conferences (ICIQ, AusIQ), the German SAP User Group Conference DSAG and spoke at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in the series "Distinguished Lecturers In Information Quality"

Richard Wang Founder of ICIQ Director of TDQM, MIT Chief Data Quality Officer, US Army

"Challenges in Advancing Information Quality"

Bio

Richard Y. Wang is the Chief Data Quality Officer of the U.S. Army, on leave from MIT Information Quality (MITIQ) Program. He also holds an appointment as University Professor of Information Quality, University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Before heading the MITIQ program, Dr. Wang served as a professor at MIT for a decade. He received a Ph.D. in Information Technology from MIT.

Dr. Wang is the recipient of the 2005 DAMA International Achievement Award. Previous recipients of this award include Codd for inventing the Relational Data model, Chen for the Entity Relationship model, and Inman for data warehousing.

Dr. Wang has extensive interactions with industry and government, serving as an expert consultant, principal investigator, and advisor to execute enterprise data quality, data warehousing, and data governance projects.

Wang has put the term Information Quality on the intellectual map with myriad publications. In 1996, Prof. Wang organized the premier International Conference on Information Quality, which he has served as the general conference chair and currently serves as Chairman of the Board. Wang’s books on information quality include Journey to Data Quality (MIT Press, 2006), Information Quality: Advances in Management Information Systems (M.E. Sharpe, 2005), Introduction to Information Quality (MITIQ Publications, 2005), Data Quality (Kluwer Academic, 2001), and Quality Information and Knowledge (Prentice Hall, 1999).

Prof. Wang has been instrumental in the establishment of the Ph.D. and Master of Science in Information Quality degree program at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, the Stuart Madnick IQ Best Paper Award for the International Conference on Information Quality, the comprehensive IQ Ph.D. dissertations website, and the Donald Ballou & Harry Pazer IQ Ph.D. Dissertation Award.