Featured Speakers 
FEATURED SPEAKERS
BITS 2010 Schedule
Morning Keynote
Jeffrey Wann, Assistant Vice President, IT Operations & Architecture - Erie Insurance
Previous Positions Held At: Edward Jones Investments, IRS and the Federal Reserve
Keynote Title: Storage Virtualization
Virtualization in the IT computing environment is continuing to expand. Now for data storage, the abstraction of the logical address of data from its physical location is being marketed by a number of vendors. Storage virtualization allows for the use of multiple multi-vendor storage devices as a single pool of storage, vastly reducing vendor lock in. It also facilitates the movement of data between different tiers of storage on-the-fly without any application changes. This presentation will cover and overview of storage virtualization concepts, storage virtualization value proposition, an overview of vendors, and Erie Insurance implementation experience.
Keynote Bio:
Jeffrey Wann serves as the Assistant Vice President of Enterprise Architecture in Erie Insurance Group, Erie Pennsylvania. As head of enterprise architecture, Jeff is leading technology modernization efforts of Erie Insurance. His responsibilities include researching technologies, conducting proof of concept pilots, and standing up Centers of Excellence for deploying new technologies. His enterprise architecture duties also involves IT standards, development design patterns, and the development of five year technology roadmaps that are aligned to business strategies.
He has led the creation of an IT lab environment and deployed numerous new technologies. He led efforts to modernize core and applications infrastructures, including server virtualization, storage virtualization, web services infrastructure, VoIP telephony, new call center technologies, migrations to Linux, etc. He joined Erie Insurance in 2007 as Assistant Vice President of IT Operations. In his role in IT Operations he was responsible for 24x7 IT daily operations, systems administration, IT security, database management, and ITILv3 service management functions. In this position Jeff was responsible for over 200 IT staff and contractors.
Before joining Erie Insurance, Jeff served as Sr. Director of Infrastructure at Edward Jones Investments, Director of Business Systems Modernization at the IRS, and Chief Technology Officer in the Federal Reserve. Jeff also had over 15 years of consulting experience, including consulting for many Fortune 1000 companies, before joining the Federal Reserve. He has served on the storage advisory boards of Digital Equipment Corporation, Compaq, and HP, as well as being a member of Cisco and Microsoft executive councils. Jeff has served on numerous boards of directors, including being a board member elect to the Technology Council of Northwest PA.
Luncheon Keynote
Steven Carpenter, Animation Master, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania
Presentation: Animation and Technology - They Go to Together Like Bread and Butter!
The Edinboro University Film/Animation Area is widely renowned, and is consistently ranked one of the top fifteen programs of its kind in the country. The Film/Animation faculty are a diverse group of professionals specializing in a wide range of Cinema areas including documentary film, computer animation, stop-motion, experimental film, traditional and experimental animation. All of the faculty have professional experience with a high profile list of film and/or television credits.
Some of our many successful graduates have worked on such feature films as: Ice Age, Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Coraline, Bolt, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Ratatouille, The Water Horse, Horton Hears a Who, Night at the Museum, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, Ice Age 2: The Meltdown, Robots, The Day After Tomorrow, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Thumbelina, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Mulan, and many others. Other graduates are working in television and commercial production with credits that include Robot Chicken, Wonder Pets, Third and Bird, Jimmy Neutron, Sliders, Reboot, Beast Wars, The Simpsons and The Critic. Graduates also work as independent animators, filmmakers, writers, directors, and producers.
Keynote Bio: Steven Carpenter is an award-winning computer artist with over 15 years of production experience in film, television and commercials. He has worked at such well known studios as Digital Domain and Rhythm & Hues. Mr. Carpenter was part of the 2002 Emmy Award winning visual FX team for “Children of Dune” and lead animator of the Annie-nominated animation “The Groovinians”. He has also worked on commercials for M&Ms and Goldfish Crackers, and TV shows such as StarTrek: Voyager and Starship Troopers. Mr. Carpenter has earned a B.S. in Computer Science, a B.F.A. in Applied Media Arts, both from Edinboro University, and a M.F.A. in Computer Animation from Miami International University. Last year Mr. Carpenter was promoted to Assistant Professor at Edinboro University.