8 January

Ron Riesenbach is co-Founder and CEO of Telepresence Systems, Inc. (www.telepres.com), a consulting firm which provides project leadership and software development services to organizations building advanced electronic commerce and knowledge management systems. Riesenbach was previously Managing Director of the Ontario Telepresence Project. He has a MBA from the University of Toronto, is an alumnus of this course, and was a Guest Entrepreneur in Fall 1997.

15 January

Mark Skapinker is co-founder of Brightspark (www.bspark.com), an incubator of Internet and software ventures. Prior to founding Brightspark, Mark was a founder of Balisoft Technologies, later merged into Servicesoft (www.servicesoft.com), a leader in Internet customer service. Recently, Broadbase Software agreed to acquire Servicesoft. He was also previously co-founder and President of Delrina Technologies, which was, until its sale to Symantec, a leading software development and marketing firm specializing in PC productivity products such as fax and forms software. Mark has spoken in this class several times over the past decade.

22 January

David Abrams is Direct of Technology for Perceptual Robotics, Inc. (www.perceptualrobotics.com), in Evanston, Illinois, an application service provider offering TrueLook, the leading edge system for live visual telepresence. David was the first full-time hire at Perceptual Robotics, Inc. and has multiple patents pending in this area. He develops products for e-commerce, mass-audience webcasting (e.g. NBA Finals), 360-degree surround panoramas, collaborative imaging, and digital video. David was the top B.S. graduate from Northwestern University, has a M.Sc. in Computer Science from U of T, and is an alumnus of this course.

29 January

Prof. Mark Fox, the NSERC Industrial Research Chairholder in Enterprise Integration in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, is founder of Novator Systems (www.novator.com), an e-retail software and services company specializing in e-retail shopping sites that build brand loyalty, maximize customer satisfaction, and operate under high demand conditions. He also founded and was President twice and VP of Engineering once of Carnegie Group Inc. (CGI), which provided semi-custom solutions employing knowledge-based systems for engineering and management, and in the mid 80s was the only profitable AI company. CGI was taken public on NASDAQ in 1994, and acquired by Logica in 1998. He was a Guest Entrepreneur in Fall 1992.

12 February

William Tatham is CEO of Janna Systems (www.janna.com), a CRM systems company founded by him in 1990 and recently sold to Siebel Systems (www.siebel.com). Billís vision, leadership, and understanding of the financial services industry propelled the company to a leading position in the eRM (Enterprise eBusiness Relationship Management) industry, where its solutions give organizations an enterprise information portal for client knowledge. Prior to founding Janna Systems in 1990, Bill was a senior manager in Andersen Consultingís Toronto office for the Advanced Technologies and Financial Services practices.

5 March

Edgar Matias* is President of Matias Corporation and the inventor of the Half Keyboard. He is also a member of the University of Toronto's Input Research Group, a multi-disciplinary group which studies computer input devices. He has over 15 years of experience in software development, user interface design, and programming, on projects ranging from low-level operating system extension utilities to high-level online groupware database applications (in languages ranging from Assembler to Perl). He also has a working knowledge of industrial design, digital image manipulation, and website design.

*to be rescheduled in a future year

12 March

Dave Penny is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, specializing in software engineering. From 1994 to 1999, he held a number of senior positions at Algorithmics Incorporated (www.algorithmics.com), the industry leader in enterprise risk exposure calculation. These positions included Vice President of Software Development, Chief Technology Officer, Vice President of Client Services, and Vice President of Product Marketing.

19 March

Leonard Lidov is President and co-founder of Name.net (www.name.net). NAME is one of the world's first Internet application integrators, helping clients understand and take advantage of network technologies in electronic business, on-line publishing, knowledge management, and process reengineering. Recently, itemus (www.itemus.com) finalized its merger with Name Inc, a move that allows itemus to become one of the first true end-to-end providers of business webs.

26 March

Teri Kirk is founder and President of NovaForum (www.novaforum.com), the Electronic Courthouse. NovaForum is a wholly web-enabled online dispute resolution service for the global B2B market. Ms Kirk continues to be active in the broader e-Com. community, providing senior e-strategy services to Canadian enterprises such as Rogers Media Inc and TVO, and to early stage companies such as ADV-Care, the online pharmacy. She services as a Business Advisor to Canadian incubator QCED, and has served on the Board of a number of technology companies and agencies, including Health Link Inc. and the Ontario Center for Science and Technology.

--