Speakers

The team driving the Canadian Leadership Summit is working to confirm our line-up of speakers for 2012. We have invited senior Microsoft Corporation executives to come and provide their thoughts on how relentless innovation will disrupt current business models, and create enormous opportunities for those organizations that are watching, and ready, for the right moment to make their move.

Eric Gales President, Microsoft Canada Inc. Eric Gales is responsible for all elements of Microsoft Canada's business and for deepening the company's commitment to this country through its Citizenship efforts. Eric is a genuine leader, who always seeks new and better ways to serve Microsoft customers, technology partners and employees. He is a consensus builder who thrives on change – on harnessing it for everyone’s benefit, on enabling Microsoft customers to make the changes necessary for their enterprises to thrive and better compete and on motivating his employees to lead and become agents of change themselves. Eric has more than two decades of experience in the IT industry and an outstanding track record of success. He joined Microsoft Canada three years ago as Vice-President, Small Business and Midmarket Solutions & Partners and has been instrumental in helping businesses understand the depth and breadth of software solutions available to them. Before coming to Microsoft Canada, Eric held positions in various business areas at Microsoft UK, most recently leading the UK Partner Group. During that time he was closely involved in developing the highly successful Microsoft Partner Program. Eric’s passionate nature and need to continually learn and challenge himself extend beyond the office, where he is a passionate mountain biker, amateur bike mechanic and avid pick up hockey player.

Christian Belady, P.E. General Manager – Datacenter Advanced Development Global Foundation Services, Microsoft Corporation Christian Belady is the General Manager for Datacenter Advanced Development in Microsoft’s Global Foundation Services (GFS) where he is responsible for driving research and advanced development of technologies for broad scale adoption in Microsoft’s datacenters. GFS supports over 200 Microsoft online services for consumers and businesses worldwide. Prior to his current role, he was the Director of Hardware Architecture in the Extreme Computing Group at Microsoft Research where he led a team that explored hardware opportunities related to the future of client plus cloud computing. He started his career at Microsoft in 2007 as Microsoft’s Principal Infrastructure Architect for Global Foundation Services to improve both efficiency and cost in their online services infrastructure. His responsibilities have included driving initiatives for sustainability in the datacenter and infrastructure space, and he was one of the key architects for the company’s next generation modular datacenters. Christian holds 87 US, and many international patents and was originator of the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) metric which is broadly used to determine the energy efficiency of a datacenter. Prior to joining Microsoft, Christian was a Distinguished Technologist for HP where his responsibilities included driving the technology direction in HP's server products and their environments, as well as driving industry datacenter initiatives. In addition, his earlier employers include Convex Computers (acquired by HP), TI and IBM, and in 2010, SearchDataCenter named Christian as one of “5 People who changed the Datacenter” industry and helped drive innovative thinking and quantitative benchmarking in the field.

Steven Berlin Johnson Author, Where Good Ideas Come From. Founder/Creator, hyperlocal media site outside.in. Steven Johnson is a bestselling author, sought after speaker and contributing editor to Wired magazine. In his newest book ‘Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation’ Johnson asks the questions, “What kind of environment fosters the development of good ideas?” “What sparks the flash of brilliance?” “How does ground-breaking innovation happen?” Both social critic and technologist, Steven has a genius for mapping the future—for predicting and explaining the real-world impact of cutting-edge developments in science, technology and media. In addition to his bestselling books, he authored an award winning cover article for TIME titled “How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live” and Steven was the creator of three influential websites including the hyperlocal media site “outside.in” which was acquired by AOL. It’s easy to see why Steven was selected as one of the Top Ten Brains of the Digital Future by Prospect Magazine.

Rick Rashid Chief Research Officer, Microsoft Corporation As chief research officer, Richard (Rick) F. Rashid oversees worldwide operations for Microsoft Research, an organization encompassing more than 850 researchers across six labs worldwide. Under Rashid's leadership, Microsoft Research conducts both basic and applied research across disciplines that include algorithms and theory; human-computer interaction; machine learning; multimedia and graphics; search; security; social computing; and systems, architecture, mobility and networking. His team collaborates with the world's foremost researchers in academia, industry and government on initiatives to advance the state-of-the-art of computing and to help ensure the future of Microsoft's products. After joining Microsoft in September 1991, Rashid served as director and vice president of the Microsoft Research division and was promoted to his current role in 2000. In his earlier roles, Rashid led research efforts on operating systems, networking and multiprocessors, and authored patents in such areas as data compression, networking and operating systems. He managed projects that catalyzed the development of Microsoft's interactive TV system and also directed Microsoft's first e-commerce group. Rashid was the driving force behind the creation of the team that later developed into Microsoft's Digital Media Division. Before joining Microsoft, Rashid was professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). As a faculty member, he directed the design and implementation of several influential network operating systems and published extensively about computer vision, operating systems, network protocols and communications security. During his tenure, Rashid developed the Mach multiprocessor operating system, which has been influential in the design of modern operating systems and remains at the core of several commercial systems.

Please bookmark the 2012 Canadian Leadership Summit website, and come back to look for updated information and Summit details including a listing of the featured speakers, both Microsoft executives and persons from outside of Microsoft, who will join us at the Summit and participate in the discussions.

Don’t hesitate to speak with your Microsoft Partner or your Microsoft Account Manager to ask for the most current information about the Canadian Leadership Summit 2012. You can always send your questions to registrar@microsoftleadershipsummit.com and we will promptly respond to your enquiry.