Keynote Speakers

Banff Venture Forum 2008 Keynote Speakers Include:

Sir. Terence Matthews
Chairman & Director

Mitel Corporation

Terry Matthews is the non-executive Chairman of a number of technology companies including Mitel Corporation, March Networks Corporation, DragonWave Corporation, Newport Networks and Solace Systems. In 1972 Matthews co-founded his first technology company, Mitel Corporation. He is today the non-executive Chairman of the company. Prior to joining Bridgewater, he served as CEO and Chairman of Newbridge Networks Corporation, a company he founded in 1986. Matthews holds an honours degree in electronics from the University of Wales, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical Engineers and of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Matthews is also the founder of Wesley Clover, an early-stage technology venture capital firm with offices in Canada, the USA and the United Kingdom.

Ashok Belani

Chief Technology Officer

Schlumberger Limited

Ashok Belani is chief technology officer of Schlumberger Limited, a position he assumed in March 2006. Based in Paris and Boston, Belani leads the effort to align Schlumberger research, product development, and marketing, in addition to oversight of the company's vast research organization.

Belani joined Schlumberger as a field engineer in 1980 and worked for 10 years in different field positions in operations, sales, and management. He then transferred to product development and held positions in engineering, marketing and technique, and technology management. He served as vice president of marketing and product development for Wireline and later as vice president of marketing and product development for Oilfield Services. He moved to Test and Transactions in 1999 and served as president of Semiconductor Solutions. He later held the position of CIO of Schlumberger Limited. From 2003 to 2005, Belani led the effort to divest the semiconductor equipment business from Schlumberger, listed the subsequent company on the Nasdaq stock exchange and then merged it with Credence Systems.

Belani studied Electrical Engineering in India and holds a Master's degree in Petroleum Engineering from Stanford University. He is currently the Chairman of the Advisory Board for the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford University.

Dr. Mike Ritter
Technical Solutions Engineer
Google:PSO mobile

Dr. Mike Ritter has over 20 years of technology development experience, with emphasis in software, radio and IP networks. Dr. Ritter is currently a Sr. Technical Solutions Engineer in the mobile group at Google. Previoulsy he was CTO at the startup VICO (Vehicular Information Co.) where he developed technology to automatically monitor drivers' behavior for insurance companies. Prior to that position Dr. Ritter spent two year's at Vyyo developing and promoting 700 MHz radio systems to provide wireless broadband service to telecoms and Utility companies. Dr. Ritter was also CTO of a wireless service provider start-up, MetroFi, during its funding phase. Previous to MetroFi, Mike was CTO for Mobility Networks, where he was responsible for overseeing the development of technology to interconnect WiFi hotspots and GSM/CDMA cellular networks. Mike was CTO at Metricom where, since 1994, he served as Director of Systems Engineering and Director of Software Engineering. In these roles he was responsible for architecting and developing Metricom's wireless network and infrastructure for the nationwide Ricochet Wireless Internet Service. Dr. Ritter also held the position of Manager of Open Systems Development at Apple Computer responsible for MacTCP, and earlier was a manager at Sun Microsystems and shipped TOPS, the largest selling network software at the time. He has held various consulting and research positions at OnWorld, Vyyo, Avide-Wireless, ChainCast, Ricochet, AdStrata, Lockheed Space and Missiles Co., Stanford University, Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, and was a visiting staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratories. Dr. Ritter holds a Bachelor's degree in Physics from Stanford and an MS, MA, and Ph.D. in Physics from Yale and holds five patents on various aspects of networking.

Previous keynotes include:

Robert Chiste, Chairman, CEO and President, Comverge (2007)
Dave Caputo, co-founder, President and CEO of Sandvine Inc. (2006)
Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of Research in Motion (2005)
Steve Jurvetson of the renowned Silicon Valley VC firm Draper, Fisher, Jurvetson (2004)
Guy Kawasaki, the former Chief Evangelist for Apple Computers and a founder of Garage Technology Ventures (2003)
Geoffrey Moore, the acclaimed technology commercialization author (2002).