Warren Adelman
President & Chief Operating Officer, Go Daddy

Warren is responsible for day-to-day operations of the company, as well as resource management, process improvement and corporate strategic planning. He oversees Information Technology, Information Security and Continuity Planning, Product Development, Human Resources, Domain Name Services and Customer Sales and Support. Warren also heads up the Policy Authority Committee of Go Daddy's Secure Sockets Layer Certification Authority.

Warren joined Go Daddy after a variety of senior positions in the technology industry, including Vice President of Strategic Relations at Network Associates (now McAfee) and CEO of NeoPlanet, a customer interaction software company where he established partnerships with Compaq, USA Networks, MTV, Universal Studios, New Line Cinema and others. Warren was also Vice President of Business Development at Bigfoot, a leader in email communications and marketing automation technologies.

Prior to entering the private sector, Warren spent six years in international relations at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., where he served as Chief of Public Affairs. During this time, Warren was a member of the media and communications team for Israel's Delegation to Bilateral Peace Talks held in Washington, D.C. between 1991 and 1996. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and History from the University of Toronto.

Dr. Jim Spohrer, Director
Almaden Services Research, IBM Almaden Research Center

Jim Spohrer is the Director of Almaden Services Research at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA. IBM Global Services (IGS) is a people-intensive, information-intensive business of over 170,000 professionals world-wide, accounting for almost half of IBM's yearly revenues, and innovation for IGS is the focus of the Almaden Services Research group. Human sciences, On-Demand Innovation Services (ODIS), deep industry knowledge of future trends, and operations technology are areas of active exploration.

From 2000-2003, at IBM, he was CTO of IBM's Venture Capital Relations Group, where he identified technology trends and worked to establish win-win relationships between IBM and VC-backed portfolio companies. Previously, Dr. Spohrer directed the IBM Almaden Research Center's (ARC) Computer Science Foundation Department, and before that was senior manager and co-strategist for IBM's User Experience/Human Computer Interaction Research effort.

From 1989-1998, at Apple, he was a DEST (Distinguished Engineer, Scientist, and Technologist) and program manager of learning technology projects in Apple's Advanced Technology Group (ATG). He lead the effort to create Apple's first on-line learning community and vision for mobile any time, any where e-learning. From 1978-1982, he developed speech recognition algorithms and products at Verbex, an Exxon Enterprises company.

Jim received a B.S. in Physics from MIT in 1978, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Yale University in 1988. In 1989, Jim lived in Rome, Italy where he was a visiting scholar at the University of Rome La Sapienza, and lecturer at major universities across Europe. Jim has published broadly in the areas of speech recognition, empirical studies of programmers, artificial intelligence, authoring tools, on-line learning communities, open source software, intelligent tutoring systems and student modeling, new paradigms in using computers, implications of rapid technical change, as well as the coevolution of social, business, and technical systems. Jim has also helped to establish two education research non-profit web sites: The Educational Object Economy and WorldBoard: Associating Information with Places. Jim is a frequent advisor to the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Education, and other groups (merlot.org, newmediacenters.org) on the implications of rapid technological change to the future of education.