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James Whittaker

Microsoft

James Whittaker is a technology executive with a career that spans academia, start-ups, and top tech companies. With a PhD in computer science, James worked for IBM, Ericsson, SAP, Cisco, and Microsoft. In 1996, he joined the faculty at Florida Institute of Technology where his work in Y2K testing and software security earned many awards. James’ first stint at Microsoft was in Trustworthy Computing and then Visual Studio. In 2009, he joined Google as an engineering director and led teams working on Chrome, Chrome OS, Maps, and Google+. In 2012, James rejoined Microsoft to build the Bing Information Platform. Of his five books, two have been Jolt Award finalists. Follow James on Twitter @docjamesw.

Speaker Presentations
Monday, June 2, 2014 - 8:30am
Half-day Tutorials
Giving Great Presentations: The Art of Stage Presence
NEW

Every hour of every day in every country where business is conducted, the same scene plays out―dozens of well-paid people sitting in a conference room being bored senseless. Death by a thousand slides. This mind numbing, soul crushing, grotesquely expensive experience ends here and now! James Whittaker reveals the secrets to conceiving, building, and delivering a great presentation. Whatever your level of presentation skills, this tutorial will hone them. Learn how to build a compelling story from the ground up. Receive advice on how to remember and recall that story as you deliver it. Learn how to use oratory and literary instruments to make the story come alive for your audience. Do your part to put an end to crap presentations―attend this tutorial.

Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - 8:30am
Half-day Tutorials
Leadership and Career Success—On Purpose
NEW

Line up all the successful people in the world. Take away the pedigreed and the prodigies—you know the people who are going to succeed no matter what. Remove the brown-nosers and right-time-right-place lottery winners. And who do you have left? People who succeeded on purpose. Study these folks carefully, and you’ll find theirs paths to the top have common themes. James Whittaker exposes the career strategies of the ultra-successful and analyzes them in detail. Learn about personal strategies for identifying high-payoff activities and gain insight into being more effective as an individual contributor, manager, and leader. Discover how to identify and interact with the right set of career mentors and role models. Being successful doesn’t have to be an accident. Join James and learn how to succeed—on purpose.

Wednesday, June 4, 2014 - 8:30am
Keynote
Beyond the Web and Apps: The Domestication of Knowledge

Since the dawn of computing, we've invented only two ways to get work done―the web or apps. We hunt for information on the web or we gather functionality from the app store. In each case, users must take the initiative to find the information they need. We've become used to this life of hunting and gathering, but its time is ending. A new era of domesticated information and functionality is dawning. In this new world, the web's information comes to users when and where they need it. Apps won't have to be installed and updated; their functionality will simply find its own way to users when it is needed. James Whittaker describes the technologies that are enabling this new era of domestication and describes how both developing software and using computers will fundamentally change the world in which users—and especially developers—live and work. New knowledge APIs and cloud functionality are waiting to make your apps more capable than ever before. Come hear about it. It's going to affect us all.