Show Schedule CommTech East

Bio:

Pasquale Ricciardi is the CTO of FONEX data systems. He brings 20 years of expertise and insights on the architecture and evolution of telecom networking. Pasquale has held various positions at FONEX over the years in systems design, network engineering, product management and business development. In his role as CTO, he overseas the end-to-end portfolio of vendors and products represented by FONEX. He also explores new potential technologies and seeks out innovative, best-of-breed vendors from all over the world developing such technologies into products our customers can benefit from. Pasquale holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from McGill University.

Bio:

Stephen is an accomplished senior-level Sales/Marketing executive in the broadband and video telecommunications industries, with proven strategic & tactical capabilities in providing leading-edge technology solutions to those industries since 1984.

Stephen received his Professional Engineering degree (Mechanical & Aeronautics) at the University of Toronto in 1973, and his Masters of Business Administration (majoring in Marketing & Buyer Behavior) at Schulich in 1977 in Toronto.

Stephen was the founder of MDL COMMUNICATIONS in 2006, one of Canada’s top VARs and Design/Consulting Firms. He works with his partners (Boris Eventov, Vincent Garneau, Collin McIntyre, Ron Polsky, Darren Richer, and Rita Sacks) and continues to provide laser-targeted, cost-effective solutions to the communications industry.

Bio:

Rob McCann is the President of Clearcable Networks. He works with service providers providing technology, integration, and business practices required to effectively operate voice, video, and data services. Rob is a board member of ICF Canada, was named CITA 2016 Supplier of the Year, and holds degrees in Mathematics and Economics.

Bio:

Eric Hedlund is responsible for all Sales efforts for Servato’s products and services. Eric has more than 25 years of experience in sales, marketing and product development in both telecom and technology-driven markets. Prior to joining Servato, Eric was the Vice President of Carrier Sales for Encell Technologies, where he drove sales and channel development activities for Encell’s Battery Management Platform (Sentinel). Prior to Encell, Eric served as VP of Marketing and Product Management at Sagamore Systems, a venture-backed telecom solutions company. Prior to Sagamore Systems, Eric was Director of Technical Marketing at Turnstone Systems, a venture-backed company, where he was instrumental in growing revenues to over $200M in 3 years and supporting a successful IPO in 2000. Prior to Turnstone, Eric served in a variety of product management, architecture and engineering roles at Inrange Technologies and GTE Government Systems. Mr. Hedlund holds a BS in Computer Sciences from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a MS in Engineering Management from Northeastern University.

Bio:

Chris Busch is currently Engineering Fellow with the CTO Networks organization of ARRIS. He is responsible for guiding ARRIS orchestration and virtualization technology helping CCAP operators achieve their distributed architecture goals. Chris has previously held positions at ARRIS in Assurance software architecture and as CTO Incognito Software where he actively led development in CableLabs, Broadband Forum, and TMForum provisioning and activation systems. Chris has been an invited speaker at SCTE and TMForum events on a variety of industry topics including Wi-Fi management, IPv6 implementation, IPTV, Commercial Services, and OSS Orchestration Convergence.

Bio:

Flavio has been part of the cable and broadcast industries for over 30 years. His introduction to cable was in 1984 with Videotron in Montreal as a service technician. This was followed by long-term stints with Incospec Communications (Cable and Broadcast VAR) and Sunrise Telecom (Test Equipment). His role throughout his career has always been dedicated to technical and field support. Flavio joined Effigis GeoSolutions in November 2014 as a Technical Support Coordinator for the CPAT division’s Ingress and Egress monitoring solutions.

He is an Electronics Technology graduate from the DeVry Institute of Technology.

Bio:

Steve is a graduate of Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (1984) and just retired as Supervisor Development Construction for The Regional Municipality of York. He is currently Senior Utility Coordinator at T2 Utility Engineers and a member of the Ontario Public Works Association (OPWA) Directors Board, Co-Chair of the OPWA Right of Way Management Committee and TAC – Public Utility Management Subcommittee. He is also a member of the CSA Z247 Technical Committee and the American Public Works Utility and Public Right of Way Committee. Steve has obtained a vast amount of knowledge throughout his 25 year career at York Region in a variety of design and construction positions. For the past 10+ years Steve’s has focused primarily on the utility design review and approval, utility construction inspection, utility relocation coordination for Region Capital Road, Environmental Services and Bus Rapid Transit projects as well as negotiating utility agreements.

Bio:

Roger Vaughn has an extensive background in fiber optic cabling, connectivity, and hardware and in the past several years worked with customers deploying FTTx. As Solutions Engineer for OFS, Roger works with customers defining solutions for deployment of optical networks from the central office to the subscriber and in the home. Roger received his Bachelor of Science degree in Materials Science and Engineering from North Carolina State University.

Bio:

Patrick has been involved in the telecom industry for 23 years, starting his career at Videotron in network engineering.  For the past 16 years, Patrick’s key focus has been supporting service providers with technologies for test & measurement of their networks.

Bio:

Ian Oliver has built a career on his ability to pull order out chaos, to have a really good idea of what’s going to happen next, and to cut trail for others to follow. He has developed and sharpened his abilities over a 35 year run in the television, broadband, and telecom industries in North America and overseas.
Ian excels in the planning and execution of large, complex initiatives, typically involving disparate stakeholder contingents, rapidly evolving technology, numerous vendors/integrators, and complex contractual situations. He has a finely honed ability to distil the truly fundamental factors in complicated circumstances, then to develop and implement both strategic and tactical approaches for obtaining the business objectives. As importantly, Ian knows how to combine talented people and powerful data-centric tools to achieve exceptional results.

Bio:

Stan co-founded Adara Technologies in 2006 and is currently Chief Technology Officer where he provides leadership on technology strategy and engineering and is key to all strategic business decisions.

Prior to co-founding Adara, Stan enjoyed 5 years with Rogers Cable as a key member of their Engineering team where he was instrumental in building the digital TV platform that now boasts over 3 million set-top boxes and where he spearheaded the deployment of Switched Digital Video.

Prior to joining Rogers, Stan spent 3 years with Scientific-Atlanta (now Cisco’s Service Provider Video Technology Group) where he was instrumental in launching their state-of-the-art digital TV platform which now manages tens of millions of digital set-tops on behalf of video service providers and cable operators throughout North America and around the world.

Stan has a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from Moscow Power Engineering Institute, Russia’s top technical university.

Bio:

Dennis’ career in the telecommunications industry began 35 years ago, when he joined a distribution provider of Data and Telecommunications equipment in Florida. He worked as a member of the Technical Support Tier 3 team and was a full time Technical Training Instructor. His migration led him to join the Sales staff and has worked as a Sales Engineer for the last 13 years to present.

Dennis has a Bachelor of Science degree in Education with majors in Electronics and Computer Science from Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania.

Bio:

Dennis Brown has been in the Cable industry more than 20 years and has a background in the access network and headend world working for companies like Charter, Time Warner, and Ericsson. When not thinking about cable Dennis enjoys the outdoors by mountain biking or fishing with his son Jake.

Bio:

Mark Ridgeway is a Senior Solutions Architect at Casa Systems with over 20 years of experience in cable. Mark helped launch some of the first DOCSIS systems and has continued to design and implement DOCSIS, IP, QAM video, IP Video over DOCSIS and Distributed Access Architecture solutions.

Bio:

Satheesh Hariharan is a Product Manager for Outside Plant Solutions at Alpha Technologies Limited.  He has over 18 years of experience in the Telecommunications, Cable Broadband, Public Safety & Security, ITS, Mining & Industrial Power sectors, having worked extensively in Applications Engineering and Product Management roles at Alpha Technologies Ltd.  Satheesh holds a Bachelor of Technology Degree in Electronics from the British Columbia Institute of Technology, Pragmatic Marketing Certification and a Lean Sensei Blackbelt Certification in lean strategy and deployment.

Bio:

Kevin O’Leary, the original Mr. Wonderful, is the Director of Product Marketing for ARRIS’ Customer Premise Equipment business.  For the past seventeen years Kevin has been helping Service Providers worldwide revolutionize broadband communication by delivering industry leading Data and Video CPE.  As Director of Product Marketing Kevin is responsible for working with Service Providers to determine key initiatives, bringing these requirements back to ARRIS’ best-in-class Engineering team, and delivering products and technology that achieve these goals.  Currently he is focusing on taking ARRIS’s experience and market leadership into the era of DOCSIS 3.1 and gigabit WiFi service to the whole home.

When not on trains, planes and automobiles Kevin enjoys being home in the suburbs of Philadelphia with his family of five: wife Amy, Daughters Grace and Maura and, the apple of his eye, Australian Shepherd Bridie.

Bio:

Darie Marza
Application Engineering Manager, TVC Canada
30+ years of CATV experience in Canada and overseas
Strong theoretical and hands-on knowledge of CATV, DOCSIS & Networking
Extensive customer support and training activity

Bio:

Jimmy Gagnon has been working for EXFO in fiber optics and telecommunications for over 14 years holding different positions, gaining valuable experience in making his way up to Product Line Manager as a BDM for the Optical business. Jimmy has been supporting and developing optical test solutions for fiber characterization, specializing in FTTH/POL and MSO markets. Besides this direct experience in telecommunications, Jimmy worked for three years as a major account manager for a Quebec company in electronics, acquiring important skills in project management and customer relations. Jimmy holds a technical degree in Electronics from Limoilou College, Quebec City.

Bio:

B.Sc Degree in Microwave Technology from Shanghai University of Science & Technology
Sales Engineer of test and measurement/OSP products (Anritsu/Sumitomo/Yokogawa/Agilent/FITEL) in Telecommunication/CATV industry since 1991. 8 years experience of repair and field support for FITELfusion splicers, cleavers & connectorization Member of SCTE since 2007

Bio:

Gwenn Amice currently holds the position of Subject Matter Expert, Physical layer with EXFO in charge of technical seminars, trainings, support and technical advices to EXFO’s customers.

Mr. Amice is a member of the FTTH councils Americas Technology Committee