Audacious Ventures In AZcentral.com

Check out the blurb on Audacious Ventures in the Innovators Circle section of today’s AZcentral.com.

Make sure you register today for Saturday’s event.

Audacious Panels Announced

AUDACIOUS VENTURES’ aim is to bring together entrepreneurs from both the business community and universities to engage with the real world experience of their peers. Our panels are packing a lot of punch in that regard, don’t miss out on the valuable discussions.

Audacious Case Studies: Startup Leadership Lessons From the Front Lines

Moderator – Anil Jain, Managing Partner, Endeavor Innovation Partners
Craig Ballard – Managing Partner, FINAO Capital
Dirk Beth – Founder & CEO, Mission3
Sai Narasimhamurthy, PhD - CTO & Co-Founder, 4Blox
Sean Tierney - COO, JumpBox

Audacious Case Studies: Positioning & Messaging

Moderator – Bob Wallace, CEO, Zero Hour Marketing
David Eichler – Founder, David & Sam PR
Greg Head – Chief Marketing Officer, Flypaper Studio
Aaron Post – Business Director, Forty
Darren Steele – VP of Marketing, FireSky

Panelist Bio – Sai Narasimhamurthy, PhD, 4Blox

Sai co-founded 4Blox™ at the end of his doctoral work at Arizona State University. During the course of his research work at Arizona State University, Sai has worked on iSCSI protocol performance issues from the early days of iSCSI (2001) and has been looking into iSCSI performance with TCP/IP at very high speeds. Sai also worked with alternative technologies implementing Storage over Ethernet in 2002. His dissertation (2005) deals with a software architecture to improve the performance of existing iSCSI SANs, and also deals with issues of implementing alternate low overhead, reliable transport protocols for future storage networks.

Sai worked with Intel Research and Development and was a contributing participant in the early stages of the RDMA Consortium (formed by IBM, Cisco and Intel) to foster and promote new optimization techniques specifically for IP Storage and the emerging 10GbE architecture. Sai worked on the software design and implementation for one of first software prototypes of the iWARP suite of protocols in 2002. iWARP/RDMA is now one of the best known techniques to optimize end systems based on TCP/IP. RDMA is also used for infiniband.

Earlier in his career he consulted for Nortel Networks through Wipro Technologies, India. He worked with the verification and regression team for Nortel’s SONET products (OC-12, OC-48, OC-192). He was the technical prime for product regression for one of Nortel’s Optera (OC-192) line of products – The Optera Connect LH.

He is also a published author in leading journals and conferences on topics related to storage optimization. Sai received both his Masters and PhD in the field of IP Storage Optimization from Arizona State University and a Bachelors degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Bangalore University, India.

Speaker Bio – Rick Shangraw, Vice President for Research and Economic Affairs, ASU

Dr. Shangraw oversees Arizona State University’s growing annual $225 million research portfolio. He has overall responsibility for research administration, strategic research initiatives, several innovation and entrepreneurship programs, and corporate engagement.

Shangraw’s research interests include policy informatics, large scale project risk and uncertainty, research policy, and managerial decision making. He previously served as ASU’s Associate Vice President for Strategic Research and as the founding Executive Director of ASU’s Decision Theater, a state-of-the-art center using visualization, simulation and modeling, and collaboration tools to address complex public policy issues.

Prior to joining ASU, Shangraw was the founder and CEO of Project Performance Corporation (PPC), a research and technology consulting firm specializing in environmental, energy, and information management issues. During his tenure, PPC received the “Inc. 500 Award” for being one of the fastest-growing, privately held companies in the United States. Before starting PPC, Shangraw held a tenure-track appointment in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and an affiliated appointment with the L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science at Syracuse University. He currently holds a Professor of Practice appointment with ASU’s School of Public Affairs within the College of Public Programs.

He has a B.A., magna cum laude, in Political Science and a Certificate in Environmental Studies from Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania; a Master of Public Administration degree from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University; and he earned his Ph.D. from the Maxwell School with a specialization in Technology and Information Policy and Organization Design.

Panelist Bio – Darren Steele, FireSky

Darren Steele, a veteran of Microsoft, Ethix Media and Access Software, is FireSky’s vice president of marketing.

Darren Steele brings 12 years of experience responsible for the product marketing for more than 30 consumer software brands. He worked for 7 years as a senior marketer at Microsoft, where he led the marketing efforts for a $200 million Xbox games product line and a $300 million segment of the U.S. Windows XP business.

After leaving Microsoft, Mr. Steele joined Ethix Media, where he led the marketing team of a consumer technology start up company through launch of the web application Homeminders as the vice president of marketing. Previously, Mr. Steele worked at Access Software, the creators of the bestselling Links™ golf franchise, where he served as the director of marketing prior to the company’s acquisition by Microsoft in 1999.

Mr. Steele earned his M.B.A. from the Brigham Young University Marriott School of Management, and a B.A. in advertising from Brigham Young University.

Panelist Bio – David Eichler, David & Sam PR

Many people call David “creative”, which is just monkey talk for crazy and that’s exactly how he likes it. Many more years ago than he’d like to admit, he graduated from Wesleyan University (the one in Connecticut) studying Film and Psychology – occasionally. He then journeyed into the belly of the beast, the ape training program at Hollywood talent and literary powerhouse Creative Artists Agency, where he peeled bananas for Kongs like Martin Scorsese, Sydney Pollack, Barry Levinson and Warren Beatty. David spent his next epoch developing, producing, writing and marketing at habitats like Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Electronic Arts and Disney, making Murder at 1600, Broken Arrow, and Free Willy 2. He then hung ten on a banana board, surfing up the California coast, to Silicon Valley, where he took on marketing, public relations and branding for both start-up and public companies right when the tech bubble burst. Nice timing Davey.

After moving to Arizona with his prime-mate Diane, David set banana sales records as the Top Marketing & Communications Ape at Ballet Arizona. And yes, it’s true, toe shoes hurt like hell. Shedding those Nutcrackers, he then served as Top Communications Ape at the Arizona Office of Tourism. Poached by a local agency (barely living to tell about it) he subsequently represented higher education, hospitality, Government, restaurant and non-profit clients before co-founding David and Sam PR in 2005.

David was recognized in 2007 by Phoenix Business Journal’s 40 under 40 for his professional accomplishments and community involvement – although he would tell you his most important qualification was that he hadn’t turned 40 at that point.

He swings on the Board of Apes for Free Arts of Arizona – a local non-profit that last year introduced over 6,000 children in shelters and broken homes to all forms of the arts. David has written for Arizona Business Magazine and Scottsdale Airpark News and guest lectures at ASU.

David & Sam PR

Panelist Bio: Craig Ballard, FINAO Capital

Craig Ballard is currently Managing Partner of FINAO Capital LLC. Craig is founder and the former CEO of of Logistechs Inc. In less than five years, Logistechs became a leading provider of inventory management and financing services to the commercial airline industry. Logistechs developed state of the art inventory optimization software (k2s – Knowledge to Spare) and web-based inventory management systems that quickly established them as the frontrunner in third party inventory management, with a long list of satisfied clients including US Airways, Southwest, Lufthansa, Air Canada, Mesa Airlines, Pinnacle, Horizon, ATA, WestJet and GE Engines. Logistechs, a private company, was purchased by GE Commercial Finance in 2004.

Prior to Logistechs, Craig held management positions at KPMG Consulting, Ryder Integrated Logistics, and Holland Chemical International. Working with Ryder at General Motors, he successfully led one of the largest JIT Supply Chain transformations in US automaker history. Craig is recognized as a thought leader in supply chain and asset management, and has a proven track record of successfully commercializing groundbreaking technologies. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of British Columbia. Craig serves on the Boards of Iamota, Inc. and Telserra Global, Inc.

Panelist Bio – Sean Tierney, JumpBox

Sean Tierney is the COO of JumpBox, a maker of virtual machines for Open Source applications. He has ten years of experience with web development having served in various technical capacities in both established and startup companies. In 2002 Sean founded Lights Out Production LLC, a software consultancy under which he developed custom collaborative and commerce applications for Arizona companies. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Trinity University, San Antonio, TX and graduated Cum Laude. Sean is a certified Innovation Games™ facilitator, a graduate of the Eugene Marion-Kauffman Foundation FastTrac Entrepreneurship course series, author for the Techdirt Insight Community and host of the bi-weekly Grid7 Podcast interviews.

JumpBox.com

Panelist Bio – Greg Head, Flypaper Studio

Greg Head is the chief marketing officer at Flypaper Studio, Inc. where he is responsible for the overall marketing strategy and execution. Prior to joining Flypaper, Head served as senior vice president and general manager of Sage Software’s ACT! division. As a founding member of the SalesLogix executive team, Head championed the launch of SalesLogix as vice president of marketing and later led the product launch into more than 50 countries. Head has also served as the senior vice president of marketing at PatchLink where he was responsible for all aspects of marketing and product management. Head holds a bachelor degree with honors in Economics from the University of Iowa.

www.flypaper.net

Panelist Bio – Dirk Beth, Mission3

Dirk Karsten Beth has been a leader and innovator of advanced applications for regulated enterprises since before the Internet transformed the enterprise application market. After creating Mission3 in 2005 he has positioned the company to revolutionize the way enterprises manage their regulated product development. The company quickly gained interest from many pharmaceutical, biotech, and research organizations and is positioned to help the more than 4000 US and global life sciences companies achieve product approval.

Before founding Mission3, Inc. Dirk held the position of Principal Consultant and Solution Architect at Arbortext, INC. the leader in Dynamic Enterprise Publishing. Dirk designed and implemented applications for several fortune 1000 companies including SAP, Beckman-Coulter, Schlumberger, HP, Lockheed Martin, and Guidant. Dirk architected and implemented some exciting new technology solutions while at Arbortext – building the first fully automated SVG based pharmaceutical labeling application which formatted approved labeling content with graphical symbols to create a print ready file without human intervention ensuring SPL content flowed through regulatory to product without errors.

Prior to Arbortext, Dirk was a Principal at SeraNova where he implemented globally deployed Internet Security applications for American Express and 3Com.