Date: Thursday, April 29, 2010
Time:  8:30 AM - 10:00 AM

Event Description

In this panel discussion, hear first hand from a panel of successful entrepreneurs and experts on how to build a more efficient business by leveraging technology. In today's environment, businesses need to be nimble and quick to adopt new technologies in order to grow and keep up with their competition.

The discussion will be interactive and include some of the following topics:

• Cloud Computing

• CRM Systems

• Outsourcing technology

• Security

• Customized software

• Web/mobile applications

• Project management

• Infrastructure Development/Integration

After the discussion, guests will be able to participate in a Q&A session with the panelists. Open networking will take place before and after the panel discussion so you can interact with other entrepreneurs

Entrepreneur Panel:

George Burciaga
Founder and CEO
SmarTECHS
www.smartechs.net

George Burciaga, 34, founded smarTECHS.net, a Chicago‐based national IT firm specializing in Application, Infrastructure, Web and Project Management development solutions for clients in both the private and public sectors. Raised in an underserved neighborhood of Chicago; Pilsen, Burciaga was an entrepreneur from the start, selling gum on the streets at age 7. While being raised by his grandparents and attending Chicago Public Schools, he found himself in a position to become innovative by necessity. Burciaga was first in his family to graduate College. The struggle to further his education, consistently conflicted his need to provide for his family. This forced him to leverage his entrepreneurial skill sets, and start Sunrise Technology Inc., from his two‐bedroom apartment in 1998, while a student at De Paul University. 

In 2005, smarTECHS.net was launched by Burciaga as a full service IT firm, within the Private and Public sectors. smarTECHS.net would leverage enterprise service within the public sector and brand a recognizable name to change the current IT service platform. smarTECHS.net engaged strategic partnerships with global IT corporations such as; Microsoft, Deloitte, Unisys, SDI, and Dell. Best practices and strategic partners quickly placed smarTECHS.net in a new position and initiated brand recognition. smarTECHS.net has built a successful company that serves clients including; the City of Chicago, Chicago Park District, Cook County, Cook County Clerk, Cook County Sheriffs Office, Metra, State of Illinois, City of New Orleans, City of Miami, MB Financial and Girl Scouts of America and several Non‐Profits within the U.S.

smarTECHS.net sales revenue has grown 129.9 percent in the last three years, helping the company earn a position on Inc. Magazine’s list of “fastest growing private companies in America” for the past three years.

Adam Caplan
CEO
Model Metrics, Inc.
www.modelmetrics.com

Adam Caplan is the Founder and CEO of Model Metrics, a leading Cloud Computing technology and services company. Adam founded the company to accelerate the adoption of Cloud Computing within enterprise organizations. An early evangelist of the Cloud – applications delivered via the Internet rather than hosted onsite – Adam and has team have forged relationships with the nation’s leading cloud computing companies, including Salesforce.com, Amazon, and Google. No more servers. No more software. No more updates. Just tremendous ROI. Based in Chicago with offices across the United States, clients number more than 500 and include many of the most respected companies in industry, including Aon, Abbott, Boeing, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Morgan Stanley, and NBC Universal. The Model Metrics team is now approaching 100 consultants and is highly respected in taking bleeding edge technologies and helping businesses understand how to leverage them successfully, from custom mobile solutions built around these technologies to strategic business process work to change management and adoption. Model Metrics earned the Illinois Technology Association’s Rising Star award in 2008 and follows a 1/1 model for giving, with 1% of employee time committed to volunteering and 1% of profits donated to non-­‐profit organizations. Adam earned his MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management and his undergraduate degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a board member of the Illinois Technology Association and a member of the Kellogg School Entrepreneurship Advisory Board.  

Steven Hamburg, MEng, PE
President
Eclipsecurity, LLC
www.eclipsecurityllc.com

Steven Hamburg began his career as a professional engineer in the field of civil / structural engineering with strong emphasis on IT. After transitioning his career to the field of information security, Steven worked for Deloitte & Touche and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, where he was an international thought leader in many areas of information security, including information security risk management, identity and access management, corporate security policy management, information classification and control, encryption, business continuity planning and disaster recovery, application and network security, legal and regulatory compliance, and data privacy.

Since establishing his own full-service information security consulting firm, Eclipsecurity, LLC (www.eclipsecurity.com) in 2003, Steve has provided diverse consulting services similar to what he focused on while at Deloitte primarily for health care organizations, professional and financial services firms, retailers, software companies, manufacturers, and energy and utility companies.

In 2008, Steven co-founded a full-service critical infrastructure protection consulting firm, Encari, LLC (www.encari.com), which currently focuses on providing North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Reliability Standards compliance consulting services for electric utilities. Steven has provided NERC CIP compliance consulting services focusing on identification and risk-based assessments of critical assets and critical cyber assets, security management, personnel risk assessments and security awareness and training, electronic and physical security perimeters, and systems security management for several electric utilities. Steven is a co-author of a popular blog focusing on industrial cyber security on the Control Engineering magazine web site: http://www.controleng.com/blog/590000659.html#460037846. Steven frequently provides public speaking engagements addressing a variety of information security topics and currently provides instruction for DePaul University and Illinois Institute of Technology graduate students.  

Erik Nejman
Managing Partner and Lead Implementer
Vitruvian Solutions
www.eventionllc.com

Erik Nejman is a Managing Partner and Lead Implementer for Evention. Erik manages all of the client setups for the Evention product line and takes an active role in developing the sales and marketing strategies for Evention. Erik is also responsible for the day to day operations for Evention including internal software implementation efforts. Prior to co-founding Evention in 2004, he spent 6 years in the software industry managing multi-nation implementations for sales force configuration software for Premisys, J.D. Edwards, and PeopleSoft. Erik received a B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Toledo. He currently resides in Chicago with his wife and two children.   

Moderator
Jason Jacobsohn
AEGIS Professional Services
www.aegisps.com/

Jason Jacobsohn is well known in the Chicago area as a “connector” and go-to person for entrepreneurs who want to grow and maintain their success. Currently, he is Director of Venture Development at AEGIS Professional Services, which offers integrated, comprehensive business services through its legal, consulting, and capital sourcing practice groups.

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