Eric Burger - SIP Forum Chairman Emeritus - SIP Forum

Most recently, Eric was Chief Technology Officer at NeuStar, where he was responsible for setting NeuStar's forward-looking technology and service strategy, and devising the architecture to help strengthen the company's position by developing new services and solutions. He also oversaw the early stages of new technology development, and worked closely with NeuStar's Operations team to drive the successful launch and commercialization of future IP services.

Prior to NeuStar, Eric was Deputy Chief Technology Officer and General Manager of the Communications Products Division at BEA Systems, primarily focusing on real-time multimedia communications and the telecommunications industry vertical.

Eric has made numerous contributions on protocols to the IETF (SIP, SIPPING, SIMPLE, LEMONADE, SPEECHSC, VPIM) and markup to the W3C (VoiceXML, CCXML, and MSCML). He is the inventor of the Applications and Services Infrastructure concept, bringing the web development paradigm to telephony applications. Service providers, application developers, and equipment manufacturers have since adopted SIP+XML as one of the motivations to moving to a SIP-based real-time communications infrastructure.

Eric sits on the advisory boards of Sigma Systems, Dexrex, PC-NG, Kanga Networks, Mobera Systems, and AGNITY. He is currently Vice Chair of the IEEE-USA Committee on Communications Policy as well as Vice Chair of the IEEE New Hampshire Section. He is also Chair of the mobile e-mail, speech services control, and media control work groups in the IETF. Prior to BEA Systems, Eric was a Founder and CTO at SnowShore Networks; CTO at Brooktrout Technology; and CTO of Cantata Technology. He has held various positions with ADC/Centigram, The Telephone Connection, MCI, Cable & Wireless, Texas Instruments, and Valid Logic Systems.

Eric has published 11 RFCs, 12 patents, journal papers, and a book on SIP signaling entitled Ubiquitous Reach and Remote Control of Devices: Introducing KPML. He is a Senior Member of the ACM and IEEE, a Patron of the AAAS, and a Benefactor of the Internet Society. Eric holds SBEE, MBA, and Ph.D. Computer Science degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Catholic University of Leuven, and Illinois Institute of Technology. He was a Lecturer at George Washington University and Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at George Mason University.

Chris Gatch - Cbeyond

Chris Gatch is the CTO and a founder of Cbeyond (NASDAQ: CBEY), a successful managed services provider started in 1999 and now publicly traded on the NASDAQ. Chris is responsible for Cbeyond's Engineering department as well as on-going network technology research and development. Chris has a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from Clemson University and a master's degree in the management of technology from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has served on the board of the Cisco BTS 10200 Users Group and the Service Provider Board of the International Packet Communications Consortium (IPCC). Chris has been professionally committed to VoIP technology since 1998.

Chris helped lead the formation of the SIP Forum’s Service Provider to IP PBX Interoperability Task Group for which he submitted the proposal to create. This task group produced the SIPconnect SIP Forum recommendation of which Chris was an editor along with Chris Sibley.

Steve Johnson - Ingate Systems

As President of Ingate Systems Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of Ingate Systems A.B., Steven Johnson is responsible for building market recognition and developing multiple sales channels for Ingate products within the United States. Johnson most recently served as CEO of Abrena, Inc., a business development consulting firm that assists European and North American firms to expand in the United States. Prior to that, Johnson was President and CEO of Transcept, Inc., a telecommunications infrastructure company that develops products to economically enhance wireless network coverage and capacity. Johnson also served as Division General Manager for Lockheed Martin, and held a number of senior management positions at Lockheed Martin, Lockheed Corporation and Sanders Associates, Inc. Johnson was also Treasurer at Telco Systems, Inc., a supplier of Information and Communication Technology equipment for the Regional Bell Operating Companies. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in economics and a Master’s in Business Administration from Boston University.

Dr. Alan Johnston - Avaya

Dr. Alan Johnston, Consulting Member of Technical Staff in Avaya’s Unified Communications division, has been involved with SIP and VoIP since the mid 1990s. While a Distinguished Technical Member at MCI, he served as an architect of the first enterprise SIP VoIP product in the United States. He is also an adjunct assistant professor of electrical and systems engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. He is a co-author of the SIP protocol specification RFC 3261, and editor of the Basic and PSTN call flows BCP (Best Current Practices) documents, RFC 3665 and RFC 3666 and several other RFCs. His recent areas of work include the SIP Service Examples, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) SIP and security, where he has co-authored the ZRTP protocol. Dr. Johnston has authored or co-authored four books on SIP including the best selling “SIP: Understanding the Session Initiation Protocol”, “Understanding Voice over IP Security” “SIP Beyond VoIP” and “Internet Communications Using SIP”. He also wrote the Foreword for Avaya’s “SIP Communications for Dummies”. He is also co-chair of the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) Centralized Conferencing Working Group. He holds a Bachelor's of Engineering degree with Honours from the University of Melbourne, Australia, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA.

Glenn Russell - CableLabs

Glenn Russell is the Director of Business Services at Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. (CableLabs®). In this position he is responsible for all strategic planning and development activities within CableLabs that support the cable industry's business and commercial services initiatives. This includes setting the specification development and interoperability program for SIP-based communications services.

Prior to his current position, Mr. Russell served as the Director of the PacketCable™ project where was responsible for the overall PacketCable specification development and interoperability testing program for Voice over IP over cable broadband networks. As Director of PacketCable, Mr. Russell established the interoperability and certification programs at CableLabs that resulted in CableLabs certified products. Today, cable operators serve more than 10 million customers using PacketCable-based VoIP technology.

Prior to joining CableLabs®, Mr. Russell spent 7 years in business development and technical product management in the business teleconferencing industry. During this time he helped found the International Multimedia Teleconferencing Consortium (IMTC) and helped develop the T.120 and H.320 conferencing standards. Mr. Russell earned his BA in Economics (magna cum laude) from the University of Colorado at Boulder and completed two years of graduate school in the Interdisciplinary Telecommunications Program at the University of Colorado.

Richard Shockey - SIP Forum Chairman of the Board - Shockey Consulting

Richard Shockey serves as Chair of the SIP Forum Technical Working Group, and most recently was a Director and Member of the Technical Staff for NeuStar, Inc. [www.neustar.biz] based in Suburban Washington DC. NeuStar provides a number of critical services to the communications industry including the administration of all telephone numbers in North America, management of the wireline and wireless Number Portability Administration, number pooling and OSS products for carriers. NeuStar also operates the .BIZ. Internet Top Level Domain and manages the United States Country Code domain .US for the U.S. Dept of Commerce.

Mr. Shockey is a founder and has been Co-Chair of the IETF ENUM Work Group for many years and is an author of several IETF RFC's and numerous articles on Next Generation Network technologies for various publications. Mr. Shockey has lost count of how many times he has given a speech on ENUM. Educated at Washington University in St. Louis. Mr. Shockey and his wife live in Reston, Virginia.

Rene Sotola - CGI Group

Rene has been involved in bringing new technologies and products to the market throughout most of his career. Rene's role as a VP in the Global Telecommunications practice in CGI includes working on strategy direction for the next generation telecom offering development as well as marketing.

He enjoys speaking at US and international events and contributes to publications and analyst briefings. His experience includes senior management and technical roles, serving as Development Manager, Product Manager, Business Unit Manager and CTO at various times, both in Europe and North America.

Rene is a Chartered Engineer in IEEE, a Chartered Member of the British Computer society, holds two M.S. degrees and was awarded a patent in the area of order orchestration.

Robert Sparks - Tekelec

Robert Sparks is a Principal Engineer at Tekelec. Before joining Tekelec, he was the VP of Research and Development at Estacado Systems, CTO at Xten Networks (now CounterPath) and has held management and research positions at Dynamicsoft, Lucent, MCI, and Texas A&M University. For over 8 years, Robert has focused on designing and developing SIP-based IP communications systems.

Robert is a co-author of the core SIP specification, RFC3261, and several of its updates and extensions. He chairs the IETF's SIMPLE and GEOPRIV working groups. Robert has focused on improving the level of interoperability of SIP implementations by coordinating the SIPIt and SIMPLEt interoperability events. Robert is also an active contributor to the reSIProcate project.

Robert has a BSc in Computer Science and a MSc in Mathematics from Texas A & M University.