Moderators

John Barber, Featured Research Director, Gartner, San Jose

John Barber joined Gartner as Research Director in 2005. Prior to Gartner, John served as Product Marketing Manager for the Digital Consumer ASSP Group at NEC Electronics America for five years. While at NEC Electronics, John was awarded the company’s Annual Design Win Award in 2004. Previously, John held the position of Project Manager in Cisco Systems’ Global Products & Services Division for one year. John did his undergraduate studies at University of Calfornia, Santa Barbara and is currently working on his MBA at San Jose State University.

Ron Wilson, Executive Editor, EDN Worldwide, USA

Ron Wilson’s career goes back to the dawn of medium-scale integration, whatever that was. As a design engineer for Tektronix, Inc. he developed bus interfaces and participated in processor- and graphics-engine architecture and design, as well as evaluation engineering and software-driver development. The most tangible project in which he participated led to—arguably—the first engineering workstation, unknown today except for its minor supporting role in the original Battlestar Galactica television series.
Later an exile from engineering, Ron wandered through the realms of training and marketing before landing happily in the editorial world, first with Computer Design Magazine in the mid-1980s. From there he moved to CMP Media, where he wrote for EE Times and was briefly involved with ISD Magazine. His primary interests are system design based on highly integrated ICs, the interaction of chip and software engineering, and the future of design practice in the increasingly global electronics community.

Maury Wright, Editor in Chief, EDN Worldwide, USA

Maury Wright is editor-in-chief. Maury graduated from Auburn University in 1978 with a BSEE and a curriculum emphasis on digital design and development with early microprocessors. Subsequently, he took graduate-level courses at Auburn and San Diego State University with an emphasis on microprocessors and digital-signal processing.
Maury's engineering experience includes stints at San Diego-based General Dynamics Convair division and The Computation Company. At General Dynamics, he worked designing ground support equipment for the Tomahawk cruise missile. At Computation, he worked on early microprocessor-based office systems and on ophthalmic instruments based on microprocessors.
Maury first joined EDN in 1983. During his career, he has worked in several capacities at EDN and was also the founding editor of CommVerge magazine (may it rest in peace). Maury has specialized in covering computers and peripherals, with emphasis on enabling technologies in the multimedia area and voice/data/video convergence. As editor in chief, Maury spends time in offices in San Jose and Waltham, Mass., as well as his home office near San Diego.

Gerry Kaufhold, Principal Analyst, In-Stat

Gerry Kaufhold has been with In-Stat since 1991, creating business models to predict the dynamics of products for emerging, high technology marketplaces. Gerry founded In-Stat's Converging Markets and Technologies Information Research Service. He analyzes multimedia industry technology trends and forecasts growth of emerging applications delivered over Ethernet, Cable TV, Satellite, Wireless and Digital Terrestrial network systems. Prior to joining In-Stat, he was new Business Development Manager for ST Microelectronics (formerly SGS-Thomson) and Linear Corporation. He has also served as Chief Engineer for commercial broadcast stations. Formerly a contributing editor to Broadcast Engineering, Gerry continues to contribute to Multichannel News and other industry journals and is a popular speaker at industry conferences with his wry style. His education is in physics and computer engineering. Kaufhold has initiated several new services for In-Stat. The Multimedia Service reports on trends in the set-top box business, including technology issues and five-year product forecasts. The Digital TV Service "took the bull by the horns" and began predicting markets for emerging products and services. The service was expanded in 2001 to include "Markets for Multimedia Broadband Services and Infrastructure, or MBSI. Kaufhold coined the term "freckle effect" to describe the neighborhood-by-neighborhood rollouts of multimedia broadband networks. If you place a colored pin in a map to indicate the kind of broadband service available by neighborhood, you wind up with a pattern of colored dots, or "freckles" with white space in between. From a consumer perspective, high-speed "Internet-like" content will arrive using branded delivery systems, and those companies that own the brand names will pre-program and edit the multimedia content so that it best serves the capabilities of their particular delivery system. The "freckle effect" also applies to business access services, with selected areas having Gigabit Ethernet Metro Area Networks, other areas using DSL services, and still others using fixed wireless or cable modems. Gerry was an early predictor of growth of CD-ROM drives for personal computers, as well as market shares for worldwide unit shipments of MPEG-related semiconductor devices. In a 1997 report on the video game industry, he correctly forecast that Sony would ship 47 million units of their popular PlayStation console by the end of Calendar 1998. Sony announced the shipment of their 50 millionth PlayStation in March of 1999. Currently, his focus is forecasting the growth of Markets for Multimedia Broadband service, which entails covering Cable TV, digital telephone systems, digital terrestrial broadcast networks, wireless cable TV and video game consoles. This research includes extensive analysis of Internet impact on electronic commerce.

Jim Walker, Featured VP Research, Gartner

Jim Walker is a vice president of research with the semiconductor manufacturing
team. His research covers semiconductor packaging and assembly, manufacturing
outsourcing services, MEMS and nanotechnology.
Before joining Gartner Dataquest, Mr. Walker was the co-founder and vice president
of marketing for Hana-USA, a subcontract IC package assembly company. At Dexter Electronic Materials and E.I. DuPont, he performed research, development, quality assurance and technical service utilizing polymeric materials for adhesive, composite, aerospace, electronic and semiconductor applications. At National Semiconductor, Mr. Walker held various roles, including surface mount packaging marketing manager. A founding member of the Surface Mount Technology Association (SMTA), Mr. Walker served as secretary and treasurer before becoming the national president.
Mr. Walker holds a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from California State Polytechnic University. He is a member of the Society for the Advancement of Materials and Process Engineering, the Micro-Electronic Packaging and Test Engineering Council, and the Surface Mount Technology Association.

Richard Robinson, Principal Analyst, Automotive Electronics, iSuppli

Richard comes to iSuppli from his previous position in Alpine Electronics in Europe where he lead Advanced Research Projects. His primary responsibility at iSuppli is to provide vendors with insightful analysis of the increasingly complex ‘Automotive Infotainment’ value chain.
Richard is an expert in car-navigation and Human-Machine-Interfaces (HMI). He has lead interface design breakthroughs including the world’s first production automotive-interface using Macromedia Flash (New Jaguar XK/2006 Freelander) He has also been a key HMI consultant on several award winning OEM navigation systems for Honda and Acura. (JD Power No.1 : 2001-2005)
Richard has Batchelor of arts (B.Mus) from the University of Natal in Durban, South Africa.