TechWadi

TechWadi is delighted to announce our full roster of distinguished speakers for the

upcoming Arab Tech Forum 2008.

• HRH Princess Sumaya Bint El Hassan will open the conference on Tuesday Jan. 15 and she will deliver the closing Keynote Speech on Wednesday night Jan. 16, 2008.

• John Waclawsky, PhD. Chief Architect-Motorola Software Group

• Dr. Usama Fayyad, PhD. Executive VP of Research & Strategic Data Solutions - Yahoo
  

• Said Ouissal, VP of WW Technical Field Operations—Redback Networks

• Bassim Karkachi, CEO/President—Bivision Systems Group

• Krimo Salem, Founder & CEO,—IntelliCEES

• George Kadifa, Senior Advisor—Silver Lake Partners

• Maher Hakim, PhD., co-founder—Faculte

• Mohammad Darwish, President & CEO—AdvancedIO

• Bassel Y. Ojjeh, Group Vice President, Strategic Data Solutions—Yahoo

Speaker Bios: 

•  John Waclawsky, PhD. Chief Architect-Motorola Software Group

Dr. John Waclawsky is an architect of the future. More than 25 years research, consulting and deployment experience in networking as well as wireless, architecture, fault tolerance, protocol and performance analysis have led him to a greater understanding and deeper appreciation of Motorola’s Seamless Mobility vision. As the leader of a team in the Motorola Business Units and Labs, John is constructing unique software architecture for Seamless Mobility, one that will translate easily across Motorola’s business units for coordinated product and solution development. “The focus is on developing a practical approach,” says John.

• Dr. Usama Fayyad, PhD. Executive VP of Research & Strategic Data - Yahoo, Inc.

Dr. Usama Fayyad is Yahoo!’s executive vice president of Research & Strategic Data Solutions. Fayyad is responsible for Yahoo!’s overall data strategy, architecting Yahoo!’s data policies and systems, prioritizing data investments, and managing the Company’s data analytics and data processing infrastructure. The analysis and management of data within Fayyad’s group enables Yahoo! to ensure customer satisfaction and develop innovative products and services that are essential to consumers’ lives. Fayyad also oversees the Yahoo! Research organization that includes offices in Sunnyvale, Burbank and Berkeley, CA as well as New York, Europe, and S. America. Yahoo! Research is building the premier scientific research organization to develop the new sciences of the Internet, on-line marketing, and innovative interactive applications.

•  George Kadifa, Senior Advisor - Silver Lake Partners

Mr. Kadifa joined Silver Lake in 2007 as a Senior Advisor. He has spent his 25-year technology career serving in chief executive and other senior management positions as well as in management consulting, research and development. Prior to joining Silver Lake, he was the Vice President of Global Delivery at IBM Global Technology Services, where he also had served as the General Manager of the company’s Applications on Demand product area. Mr. Kadifa joined IBM as a part of its 2005 acquisition of Corio, Inc. where he was the Chairman and CEO. Mr. Kadifa led Corio, a Kleiner Perkins-backed company, from its start-up in 1999, to its initial public offering in 2000, to its sale to IBM in 2005. During this time, Mr. Kadifa also was accepted into the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO). Prior to his leadership at Corio, Mr. Kadifa was Senior Vice President of the Industrial Sector at Oracle Corporation, directing the company’s largest and most profitable vertical sector. In addition, he was a management consultant with Booz-Allen & Hamilton serving Fortune 500 clients. Prior to Booz-Allen, Mr. Kadifa was a Development Manager at Xerox, leading strategic initiatives and software development, in addition to obtaining two US patents in operating system and user interface software and receiving the Xerox Inventor award. Mr. Kadifa started his career on the research staff at Fairchild Semiconductor. He holds a B.S. degree from the American University of Beirut, an M.S. degree from the California Institute of Technology and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago.

• Mohammad Darwish, President & CEO - AdvancedIO

 Mr. Darwish brings his creativity and vision to set the tone and direction for AdvancedIO Systems. He has over 17 years of technical and business experience in embedded systems. Prior to launching AdvancedIO, he spent seven years with Spectrum Signal Processing as a senior member of the R&D team, where he was responsible for several embedded products and held a major position in software radio system development. He also chaired the PICMG 2.18 standard committee and wrote the original specifications. Mr. Darwish received a MASc Degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the University of British Columbia, and taught at the university from 1994 to 2002. He holds one patent and has been published in a number of industry journals. Mr. Darwish also serves on the AdvancedIO Board of Directors. 

•  Maher Hakim, co-founder - Faculte.com
  

Prior to co-founding Faculte, Maher was Senior Vice President Product Management and Strategy at Lawson Software. Maher is a serial entrepreneur and a respected leader in enterprise business solutions. Before founding Apexion, Maher was the CTO of Neoforma — a publicly traded supply chain solution provider in the healthcare industry. Previously, Maher was Co-founder, CTO, and Executive Vice President of Products and Services at Pharos Technologies, Inc., which was acquired by Neoforma.com in January 2000. Pharos develops Internet infrastructure solutions for B2B marketplaces. Earlier, at Autodesk, Maher led product development and operations for two early e-supply-chain initiatives for the industrial manufacturing and construction industries. Maher holds a Ph.D. in computer-aided engineering and management from Carnegie Mellon University.

• Said Ouissal, VP of WW Technical Field Operations—Redback Networks

 Said Ouissal has been working for 6 years at Redback Networks in various technical/management positions, where he has been closely involved in developing and delivering advanced Broadband Data Services solutions for global tier-1 customers such as KT, FT, DT, BT, Telefonica. Currently, Said is responsible for all worldwide pre-sales/systems engineering activities and staff in the role of Vice-President of Worldwide Technical Field Operations. In that capacity, among other customers, he has also been working also closely with North African and Middle-Eastern telecommunications companies for high speed data services solutions, such as Maroc Telecom, Algeria Telecom, Tunisia Telecom and Etisalat (UAE). Prior to Redback Networks, Said worked at Conxion Corporation, responsible for the European IP network and Network Engineering/Operations staff. Additionally, he held previously other technical positions at Alcatel, Lucent and Bay Networks.
Said holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the Hogeschool of Enschede, the Netherlands.

• Bassim Karkachi, CEO/President—Bivision Systems Group

 Bassim Karkachi is an international executive and entrepreneur conducting business in North Africa and converging the BIVISION SYSTEMS global team to execute projects in Europe, North America, Middle East and Asia. Bassim will share with TechWadi Silicon Valley?s Arab-American Technology Professionals his views, experiences and findings based on five years of experience doing business in Algeria and North Africa.
Bassim is a 1989 graduate of Galileo Institute in Paris, France, with a degree in Telecommunication Engineering. He was an instrumental part of the launch of the first GSM network in France in 1991, and has since advised many operations worldwide, including the launch of Western Wireless / VoiceStream in 1996 in the US (now T-Mobile). He spent many years developing cross-pacific business between US and Asia, before deciding to shift his focus to Europe, Africa and the Middle East, while building a base in the country of Algeria.
Bassim is CEO & President of BIVISION SYSTEMS INC, which he co-founded in 1999. BIVISION provides complex information systems under the brand InVisionJ Systems, which is a fully integrated collaboration platform enabling GIS, data mediation/aggregation, multi-language support, business process management, web content management and a large range of data visualization through web and wireless portals.

• Krimo Salem, Founder & CEO,—IntelliCEES

 Krimo is an entrepreneur with more than 20 years management experience, including experience in starting and managing businesses in Information Technology. He has experience at Oracle, Adobe, Electronic Arts and IntelliSync.
He founded If & Then, Inc, a virtual CIO company which provides small to mid-sized growth organizations access to levels of strategic and technical IT experience and services which they could not afford, retain or do not need on a full time employee basis at this stage in their evolutions working across multiple fields and time lines. He engineered one of the world first intranet, and restructured and maintained online systems while orchestrating and implementing new technologies and new network infrastructure.
Krimo has a degree in law from the University of Paris XII, France.

• Bassel Y. Ojjeh, Group Vice President, Strategic Data Solutions—Yahoo 

 Bassel Ojjeh is the Group Vice President of the Strategic Data Solutions group at Yahoo, Inc. He is responsible for building technologies that leverage Yahoo data for marketing solutions and increasing network relevance for consumers.
Prior to Yahoo, Inc., Bassel co-founded and served as Chief Operating Officer of DMX Group and digiMine, Inc. (now Revenue Science, Inc.). Both companies delivered Business Intelligence and Data Mining products and services to fortune 100 companies including American Express, Daimler-Chrysler, Ford Motors, Microsoft Corp, Dow Jones, AT&T Wireless and T-Mobile.
Bassel served as Group Program Manager in the Internet Business Server division at Microsoft Corporation. He was responsible for all eCommerce related components in Microsoft’s Commerce Server Product, including Data Warehousing, Analysis, Data Mining, Advertising Server, Analysis, Personalization, User Management and Direct Marketing.