Jim Ericson is Vice President and Research Director with Dresner Advisory Services.

Jim has served as a consultant and journalist who studies end-user management practices and industry trending in the data and information management fields. From 2004 to 2013 he was the editorial director at Information Management magazine (formerly DM Review), where he created architectures for user and industry coverage for hundreds of contributors across the breadth of the data and information management industry.

As lead writer he interviewed and profiled more than 100 CIOs, CTOs, and program directors in a 2010-2012 program called 25 Top Information Managers. His related feature articles earned ASBPE national bronze and multiple Mid-Atlantic region gold and silver awards for Technical Article and for Case History feature writing. A panelist, interviewer, blogger, community liaison, conference co-chair, and speaker in the data-management community, he also sponsored and co-hosted a weekly podcast in continuous production for more than five years.

Amy Webb knows whats coming. The futurist, author and founder of the Future Today Institute, she identifies emerging trends maps how theyll transform the future of business, international relations, culture and the world. A recent?Wall Street Journal profile?described her methodology, which combines data-driven research with aggressive computation. Webbs forecasting tools are taught in universities, and her Future Today Institute team advises Fortune 500 and Global 1000 companies, government agencies, large nonprofits, universities and startups worldwide.?Her futures forecasting work has been featured in?The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Inc. Magazine, Fast Company, CNN, NPR, and more. She was recently named to the?2017 Thinkers50 Radar?list of management thinkers most likely to shape the future.

The authority on forecasting and strategy, Webb collaborates with a number of institutions. She was a Delegate on the former U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission, where she worked on the future of technology, media and international diplomacy. She is a member of the?Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, where she has served as a Blue Ribbon Panel Emmy Judge for emerging technology categories. She sits on several advisory boards, including the SXSW Accelerator.

An engaging and energetic speaker,?Webb customizes every presentation for each audience using original research and insights specific for the organization, industry or conference. Attendees typically receive a?digital folder full of resources, tools and actionable ideas following the presentation. Webbs popular?TED talk,? based on her bestselling memoir?Data, A Love Story, has been viewed more than 5 million times and translated into 32 languages. It has been the featured in-flight entertainment on Delta flights and in Marriott hotel rooms.

She is the author of three books, including The Signals Are Talking: Why Todays Fringe Is Tomorrows Mainstream?(PublicAffairs, December 2016) which explains how leaders and?organizations can predict and manage technological change. It was selected as one of Fast Companys Best Books of 2016, was an Amazons best book of December 2016 and was a #1 Bestseller.?Signals?has been translated into a number of languages.

Webb designed?and teaches the futures forecasting MBA course at the New York University School of Business. She was a 2014-15 Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, where her research on the future of?education reform received a national Sigma Delta Chi award. Every year, she?lectures about the future of media and technology at a number of universities, which have included Institut dtudes politiques de Paris, Temple University, Tokyo University and National University of Kyiv.

The first half of Webbs career was spent in journalism: she was a reporter with?Newsweek?(Tokyo) and the?Wall Street Journal?(Hong Kong) where she covered emerging technology, media and economic trends.

Ben Schein has over fifteen years of experience leading business intelligence, analytics and finance teams. The core of his work has been around connecting technical and analytic capabilities to solve real business problems. At Target, he currently leads business insights teams delivering data and analytic solutions for the Enterprise Merchandising organization (digital and stores focused buyers) under the Chief Merchandising Officer. Prior to this role, Ben led a similar insights team supporting Target.com & Mobile business areas including site merchandising, guest fulfillment, digital merchandising, gift registry, subscriptions, item setup and digital media.

Ben has also led efforts to adopt an agile approach to BI across 800+ person Data and Analytics Center of Excellence with offices in Minneapolis, Sunnyvale, Pittsburgh and Bangalore. This agile BI philosophy seeks to meld capabilities across engineering, data science and business analysis to build small teams with high accountability and trust. The teams are also committted to learning quickly through a orientation towards minimum viability and working in short sprints. This work has also led to Ben's involvement in exploring and developing new BI tools with a focus on enabling speed to market, scalability and collaboration.

Prior roles at Target included Target.com Finance, Merchandise Finance and Property Development Finance in addition to six years at a software start-up prior to Target.

Ben holds a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA in Strategy and Finance from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota.

Bill Hostmann is a Research Fellow with Dresner Advisory Services. His area of focus includes trends in Analytic Data Infrastructures (ADI) - integrating and managing the information and information models used by BI, Advanced Analytics and CPM/PM applications.

Bill has more than 20 years of product management experience at the intersection of business intelligence/analytics and data analytics infrastructure, including positions in product and general management at Gemstone Systems, Informix, and Informatica.

He spent 14 years as a research analyst at Gartner, including several years as a VP and Distinguished Analyst for BI/Analytics. Bill served as conference chair of the Gartner BI/Analytics Conference for many years, growing the number of conference attendees from hundreds to several thousand attendees.

With more than 20 years of experience building and leading top-performing teams that have transformed the enterprise at organizations in the fields of higher education, entertainment, telecommunications, insurance, and new media/internet, Brendan Aldrich is a cross-industry data innovations specialist who has most recently been leading data modernization and democratization initiatives as the Chief Data Officer for Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana. His groundbreaking data democracy work has empowered thousands of administrators, faculty, and staff at numerous institutions with intuitive and interactive access to relevant information and has been recognized with the 2017 Data and Analytics Excellence Award (Self-Service Analytics) from Gartner, Inc., the 2017 Excellence Award (Social Impact) from Hitatchi-Vantara, and the 2014 Innovators Award (Administrative Systems) from Campus Technology magazine. Brendan holds a bachelor?s degree from California State University, Los Angeles.

David Dadoun is currently the Aldo Group’s Director of Business Intelligence and Data Governance. Prior to joining the Aldo Group he was the Director of a BI practice for the Keyrus Group. Over the last 15 years David Dadoun has advised a broad number of companies in the selection and implementation of BI tools, strategies, and roadmaps. He has managed BI projects including upgrades and migrations, and multiple BI platform deployments at small, medium, and Fortune 500 companies.

David often presents at global BI events regarding the challenges and opportunities managers face when it comes to Business Intelligence and Data Governance. He also teaches Business Intelligence and Analytics at Montreal’s prestigious HEC Business School.

David holds a Bachelor of Commerce in International Business from the John Molson School of Business and an executive Masters of Business Administration from ESG Montreal and Paris-Dauphine in France.

Allaa Hilal is Director of Data, Plus and International at Shopify. She is also an assistant professor at the University of Waterloo in the Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence lab. Dr. Hilal has been recognized as one of the most influential women in the world of IoT by the connected world magazine. She is an active researcher and a subject matter expert with more than 12 years of experience in data intelligence, ambient intelligence, wireless sensor networks, autonomous systems, and embedded and fog computing, backed by versatile experience in academia and the tech industry in proactive innovation, solution development, and turning novel ideas into revenue-generating products. She has her Doctorate degree in Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence from the University of Waterloo. Dr. Hilal has been recognized and awarded numerous prestigious scholarships, most prominent of which are NSERC IRDF, NSERC CGS, Fulbright, DAAD, and OGS. She has been recognized as a champion in a Women in Technology Peer2Peer group. She has also been recognized by the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship as a Google scholar for her active role and leadership in supporting women in technology.

Hal B. Gregersen is the executive director of the MIT Leadership Center and a senior lecturer in leadership and innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He co-authored "The Innovators DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators" with Harvard professor Clayton Christensen and Brigham Young professor Jeff Dyer. ?The book evolved from the co-authors 2009 article of the same name that was runner-up for the prestigious McKinsey Award for best Harvard Business Review article.?In the book the authors identify five abilities demonstrated by the best innovators and explain how you can master these skills as well. This book, written by the foremost authorities on innovation, finally reveals the code to becoming a successful innovator. Gregersens next book will deal with great leaders and innovators most critical skill, Questioning.?

To grasp how leaders find and ask the right questions ones that disrupt how we view and interact with the world Gregersen is now studying over 100 renowned innovative leaders, including Amazons Jeff Bezos and P&Gs A.G. Lafley. This question-centric research project, conducted in collaboration with Clayton Christensen, is already surfacing insights into how leaders can build better questions to unlock game-changing solutions. Gregersen is also founder of the?4-24 Project, an initiative dedicated to rekindling the provocative power of asking the right questions in adults so they can pass this crucial creativity skill onto the next generation in order to improve organizations, communities and global society.

Howard Dresner is the founder and Chief Research Officer at Dresner Advisory Services.

Howard is one of the foremost thought leaders in business intelligence and performance management, having coined the term “Business Intelligence” in 1989. He has published two books on the subject, The Performance Management Revolution – Business Results through Insight and Action (John Wiley & Sons, Nov. 2007) and Profiles in Performance – Business Intelligence Journeys and the Roadmap for Change (John Wiley & Sons, Nov. 2009).

Prior to Dresner Advisory Services, Howard served as chief strategy officer at Hyperion Solutions where he focused upon corporate strategy, product direction, and acquisitions. Hyperion was acquired by Oracle in 2007.

Prior to Hyperion, Howard was a research fellow at Gartner, where he led its Business Intelligence practice for 13 years. He was twice selected as “analyst of the year” and inducted as a Gartner “cultural icon”. In addition to driving much of the research surrounding BI, he founded and chaired Gartner’s European and North American Business Intelligence conferences. Both remain industry-defining events.

Mico Yuk is the founder of BI Brainz and the BI Dashboard Formula (BIDF) methodology, where she has trained thousands globally how to strategically use the power of data visualization to enhance the decision making process.

In the last nine years, she has worked with Fortune 500 companies like Procter & Gamble, Honda, Kimberly-Clark, Royal Dutch Shell, Nestle, Qatargas, Ericsson and FedEx. Mico is the author of Data Visualization for Dummies (Wiley 2014). With her ‘blunt’ twitter comments and blogs Mico was named a Top 50 Analytics Blogger to follow.

Peter Schwartz is an acclaimed futurist and Senior Vice President for Strategic Planning at Salesforce. In this role, he oversees the company’s ongoing strategic conversation and focuses on the future trends impacting the business. Peter leads the Salesforce Futures LAB – a collaboration between strategic thinkers at Salesforce and its customers around provocative ideas on the future of business.

Prior to joining Salesforce, Peter was cofounder and chairman of Global Business Network. An internationally renowned business strategist, Peter specializes in scenario planning, and working with corporations, governments, and institutions to map out alternative perspectives of the future and develop robust strategies for a changing and uncertain world.

Peter is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the World Affairs Council and the Research, Innovation and Enterprise Council in Singapore. He also sits on the boards of the Long Now Foundation and the Center for Strategic Futures in Singapore.

From 1982 to 1986, Peter headed scenario planning for the Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies in London. His team conducted comprehensive analyses of the global business and political environment and worked with executive leadership to create successful strategies for the business. Before joining Royal Dutch/Shell, Peter directed the Strategic Environment Center at SRI International. The Center researched business trends, lifestyles, and consumer values, and conducted scenario planning for corporate and government clients.

Peter is the author of Inevitable Surprises (Gotham, 2003), a provocative look at the dynamic forces at play in the world today and their implications for business and society. His first book, The Art of the Long View (Doubleday Currency, 1991), is considered a seminal publication on scenario planning and has been translated into multiple languages. He is also the co-author of The Long Boom (Perseus, 1999) – a vision for the world characterized by global openness, prosperity, and discovery; When Good Companies Do Bad Things (Wiley, 1999) – an examination of, and argument for, corporate social responsibility; and China's Futures (Jossey-Bass, 2001), which describes very different scenarios for China and their international implications. He writes, lectures, and publishes widely.

Peter has served as a script consultant on the films "The Minority Report," "Deep Impact," "Sneakers," and "War Games."?Peter received a B.S. in aeronautical engineering and astronautics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in New York. In 2009, he delivered the commencement address and received an honorary Ph.D. for contributions to management from RPI.

Dr. Theresa Johnson is a data scientist on Supply Growth at Airbnb, a two-sided marketplace for travel.

Dr. Johnson came to data science with a PhD in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University. There, she received the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and was further selected as an inaugural member of the NSF Engineering Innovation Fellows Program. She’s helped mentor students on entrepreneurship and innovation, and received numerous distinctions such as the Accel Innovation Scholar, HBX fellow from Harvard Business School and Ignite Entrepreneurial Fellow from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

She currently serves as a founding board member for Street Code Academy, a non-profit dedicated to connecting culture, community and technology in East Palo Alto. She has been featured in Tech Crunch for her commitment to helping early stage founders succeed. Her lifelong fascination with the capacity for technology to change lives led her to Stanford University, where she earned dual degrees in Science, Technology and Society and Computer Science.

She serves on the special panel on data science interviewing and is a co-founding member of Stddev (Standard Deviation), Airbnb’s employee resource group for Underrepresented Minorities in technical fields. Theresa is passionate about extending technology access for everyone and finding mission driven companies that can have an outsized impact on the world