Global IT Executive Summit

Aaron Brenner is an Emmy-Award winning producer with 11 years of experience in production and post. His specialties include content development, production management and showrunning.

From 2008 through 2015, he built and directed the in-house production group at the LA Kings. Charged with producing original content for TV, web and social – Brenner established the model production team that continues to be replicated across sports franchises.

With over a decade of experience in production – he’s built a career around an ever-changing content landscape. In that time, he’s produced content that has aired on all 4 major networks, cable and internationally. His credits include the UFC, LA Galaxy, US Ski and Snowboard Teams, World Series of Poker and more.

Brenner has built and managed teams of 2-60 people and budgets of $10K to $8.5M for TV, documentary feature films, VOD content and more. He’s most proud of the work he’s produced while surrounding himself with talented people that have grown together as they redefined what’s possible. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California and flies a helicopter whenever possible to avoid traffic.

David Cerf is Executive Vice President of Strategy and Business Development at Crossroads Systems. With more than 25 years of corporate development experience in the IT industry, David is a frequent speaker on data growth, storage and protection issues; and a thought leader in the industry. Joining Crossroads in 2005, he currently leads global efforts to expand Crossroads innovative data protection solutions and develop relationships with key early technology adopters. Serving as a key member of Crossroads’ executive team, he helps distinguish the company’s future product roadmap and overall business direction. Prior to joining Crossroads, David served as vice president of sales and business development at NexQL, a leading provider of advanced database acceleration technologies. He was also a co-founder of 360World, a national provider of video and imaging solutions. In 1988, as the founder and managing director of the Dallas Business Incubator, he was responsible for the development and funding of more than 50 new high-growth startup companies.

Ed Childers is a Senior Technical Staff Member in IBM’s Storage Systems Development lab in Tucson, Arizona where he is the Development Manager responsible for IBM’s tape drive and LTFS development.

Ed joined IBM in 1978 and has over 30 years of experience in computer storage technologies starting with floppy disks in the late 70’s, thru HDD and optical storage, to his current responsibilities in magnetic tape storage. He joined the tape development team in 1995 and was a member of IBM’s team creating the open LTO format in the late 90’s. Most recently, Ed was member of the team creating LTFS and introducing [LTFS] as an open standard in the storage industry.

Thomas M. Coughlin, President, Coughlin Associates is a widely respected storage analyst and consultant. He has over 30 years in the data storage industry. Dr. Coughlin has many publications and six patents to his credit. Tom is also the author of Digital Storage in Consumer Electronics: The Essential Guide, published by Newnes Press. Tom publishes the Digital Storage Technology Newsletter, the Digital Storage in Media and Entertainment Report, and other reports. Tom is active with SMPTE, SNIA, the IEEE, and other professional organizations. He is VP of Future Directions for the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society as well as Director Elect for IEEE Region 6. He is serving his third term as a member of the CE Society BoG and was Vice President of Operations for three years. Tom is the founder and organizer of the Annual Storage Visions Conference, a partner to the International Consumer Electronics Show, as well as the Creative Storage Conference. He is the general chairman of the annual Flash Memory Summit.

Josh brings over 25 years of post-production experience to his role at EFILM. He manages the Production, Operations, Dailies, Editorial, Video Deliverables, Scanning/Recording, Client Services, Quality Control, Vaulting, Security and Facilities teams. Since joining EFILM in 2003 as a Digital Intermediate Producer, he has been involved in successfully completing over 500 Digital Intermediate projects. EFILM is a member of the Deluxe Creative Services family. Josh works closely with other Deluxe members around the world including Company 3, Method and Encore.

With the increased use of digital cameras for motion picture acquisition, Josh and the EFILM Team began remote services to receive, replicate, archive and verify the data files from the production location. The remotes team has grown rapidly over time with the decline of film capture. Currently Deluxe remote teams are scattered all over the globe embedded with some of Hollywood’s largest productions.

EFILM is located in Hollywood as well as operating color timing theaters on the Fox, Universal and Sony studio lots, including a theater at the world famous Skywalker Ranch. EFILM maintains a color calibrated loop with its Deluxe facilities in New York, Atlanta, London, Sydney, Vancouver and Toronto.

Josh is a member of the Hollywood Post Alliance (HPA), Society of Motion Picture Television Engineers (SMPTE), Digital Cinema Society (DCS), Visual Effects Society (VES) and an associate member of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC).

Aaron is the development manager of the durable storage systems on which all of Windows Azure Storage is built.  He contributes to the storage hardware architectures for standard storage, premium storage and archival storage focusing on optimizing storage costs and system performance.  He has been instrumental in reducing the cost of Internet Storage for Microsoft by over 98% in the last 7 years.  Aaron works with the hardware ecosystem teams, OEMs and ODMs, part suppliers, hardware design teams and datacenter planning teams to continue to optimize storage hardware and software systems for Microsoft Azure.

Aaron was an avid race car drive, winning the SCCA Oregon region championship in Formula Mazda in 2000.  Using his racing experience, Aaron was one of the first developers on Forza Motorsport which he helped to make the most successful racing franchise on XBOX.

Aaron was also fortunate enough to be a part of the Windows 95 team, that shipped the OS that kicked off the broad adoption of GUI interfaces for mainstream customers.  Most importantly, the Windows 95 ship part was largely considered to be one the best parties ever thrown by Microsoft.

With 15 years of experience working in the HPC, Media and Entertainment, and Enterprise IT industries running global marketing programs, Molly Rector serves as DDN’s Chief Marketing Officer responsible for product management and worldwide marketing. Rector’s role includes providing customer and market input into the company’s product roadmap, raising the Corporate brand visibility outside traditional markets, expanding the partner ecosystem and driving the end-to-end customer experience from definition to delivery. Rector is a founding member and former Chairman of the Board of Active Archive Alliance. She is also the Storage Networking Industry Association’s (SNIA) Vice Chairman of the Board and the Analytics and Big Data committee Vice Chairman. Prior to joining DDN, Rector was responsible for product management and worldwide marketing as CMO at Spectra Logic. During her tenure at Spectra Logic, the company grew revenues consistently by double digits year-over-year, while also maintaining profitability. Rector holds certifications as CommVault Certified System Administrator; Veritas Certified Data Protection Administrator; and Oracle Certified Enterprise DBA: Backup and Recovery. She earned a Bachelor’s of Science degree in biology and chemistry.

Drew Robb is a freelance writer living in Florida specializing in technology and engineering. Originally from Scotland, he has a degree in Geology/Geography from the University of Strathclyde. He is the author of Server Disk Management for Windows Systems by CRC Press. He freelances for a diverse range of magazines including Enterprise Storage Forum, Enterprise Apps Today, Data Center Management, Small Business Computing, HR Magazine, PI Magazine, Power Magazine, Power Engineering, Forbes and The Economist. He is also the Editor in Chief of Turbomachinery International.

Nathan C. Thompson is the chief executive officer of Spectra Logic Corporation. He founded Western Automation, which manufactured memory boards, peripheral test equipment and storage systems, in 1979, while enrolled at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Nathan continued the business while in school, graduating in 1983 with a bachelor’s of science degree in electrical engineering and computer science. Under Nathan’s direction, Western Automation acquired the assets of the interface company Spectra Logic in 1988 and renamed the combined company Spectra Logic Corporation in 1996. Today, Spectra Logic continues as a manufacturer of innovative tape and disk-based data backup and archive solutions—with products installed globally in over 40 countries.

Nathan has served as a member and chapter chairman of the Rocky Mountain Young President’s Organization (YPO) since 1994, the Colorado 30 Group since 2004, the University of Colorado’s Electrical Engineering advisory board since 2006, and recently joined the Wells Fargo Community board. He also serves on the finance and investment committees for the Alexander Dawson School of Lafayette, Colorado. Additionally, Nathan is a licensed commercial instrument pilot with more than 2,100 flight hours logged.In 1996, Ernst & Young and USA Today named Nathan Entrepreneur of the Year. In 2003, he was awarded the Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award (DEAA) from the University of Colorado. In April 2012, he was inducted into the Boulder County Business Hall of Fame.

Read his Colorado Engineering magazine article to learn more about how Nathan started the company as a college undergraduate.