MeriTalk 2010 Innovation Nation Forum

What

MeriTalk invites government and industry IT leaders to attend this full-day conference focused on Federal IT innovation – and its potential to change the fundamental performance and economics of government IT. Lean budgets are here to stay. Uncle Sam requires government to do more with less. Innovation is the only way forward. 1,000 government and industry IT thought leaders will convene to listen, learn, and teach about innovative new approaches to Federal IT and what the future looks like for our community

Why:

Budget pressures
Innovation priority
Real appetite for IT change – transparency, cloud, etc.
Federal legacy IT and thinking impede change – need to light the path forward

Please view the website for the agenda and complete program details.

Speaker and Presenter Information

David Zanca David Zanca is responsible for bringing market leadership across the customer-facing domains of FedEx, the systems that support its world class customer service function, customer shipping solutions, FedEx Office digital-to-print solutions and the award-winning fedex.com. A primary focus for David is the extension of a �Connectedness� strategy that embeds FedEx services into mobile devices and applications that customers use every day. Under his leadership, Customer Access Services & Technology developed the FedEx iPhone application, the MyFedEx web site, application plug-ins and a suite of Web Services. David reports to Rob Carter, FedEx Executive Vice President and CIO. Prior to his current role, David was Senior Vice President of Information Technology with FedEx Freight where he led its IT strategy, operations, applications and infrastructure. Before that, David was Vice President of FedEx Customer Systems, leading the design and development of customer automation solutions, fedex.com and Sales & Pricing systems. In 2001, David was named the first FedEx Chief Information Security Officer. David received the CIO Magazine One�s to Watch Award in 2009. He was selected as one of Computerworld�s 2008 Premier 100 IT Leaders. He has spoken to major technology conferences on digital connectedness, application development trends and the strategic business value of Information Technology. He has been honored with a FedEx Five Star Award and named to numerous Who�s Who editions. Before joining FedEx, David worked with Andersen Consulting for 12 years. He holds an MBA from Emory University and a bachelor�s degree from Duke University. He holds professional certifications including Certified Public Accountant, General Information Assurance-Information Security Officer, Certified Data Processing Professional, and Certified Production and Inventory Control specialist. Married for over 25 years, David is the father of two children. His interests begin with family activities and also include college basketball, golf, running, and reading non-fiction. Raymond Kurzweil Ray Kurzweil is an inventor, entrepreneur, author, and futurist. Called �the restless genius� by The Wall Street Journal and �the ultimate thinking machine� by Forbes, Kurzweil�s ideas on the future have been touted by his many fans, ranging from Bill Gates to Bill Clinton. Inc. Magazine ranked him number eight among entrepreneurs in the United States, calling him the �rightful heir to Thomas Edison,� and PBS included him as one of 16 �revolutionaries who made America.� MIT�s Marvin Minsky has said, �with his brilliant descriptions of the coming connections of computers and immortality, Kurzweil clearly takes his place as a leading futurist of our time.� As one of the leading inventors of our time, Kurzweil was the principal developer of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition. Kurzweil is the recipient of the $500,000 MIT-Lemelson Prize, the world's largest for innovation. He has received honors from three US presidents, including Bill Clinton; when in 1999, he received the National Medal of Technology, the nation's highest honor in technology. In addition, Kurzweil was inducted into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame, established by the US Patent Office and has received nineteen honorary doctorates. Kurzweil has written five books, four of which have been national bestsellers. The Age of Spiritual Machines has been translated into nine languages and was the #1 best-selling book on Amazon.com in science. His latest book, The Singularity is Near, was a New York Times bestseller, and has been the #1 best-selling book on Amazon.com in both science and philosophy and has been made into a feature documentary released in late 2008. Kurzweil is co-founder and chancellor of Singularity University. Launched with the support of NASA, Google and a broad range of technology thought leaders and entrepreneurs, Singularity University aims at preparing the next generation of leaders to address "humanity's grand challenges."