F R I D A Y , M A R C H 3 1 , 2 0 0 6
RICHARD B. BURROUGHS
President, APPLIED SOFTWARE
Mr. Burroughs is the founder and President of Applied Software Technology Inc. Founded in 1982, Applied Software was an original member of the Advanced Technology Development Center on the Georgia Institute of Technology campus.
Applied Software, a leading company in the Southeast with over 3,700 customers, specializes in computer aided design, document management, imaging, and geo-spatial applications. The company is certified as an Autodesk Premier Service Provider, an authorized Autodesk Training Center, and a registered Autodesk Developer.
Mr. Burroughs is a graduate of Georgia Institute of Technology, a registered engineer in the State of Georgia, and formerly served in the United States Navy. He is the former Chairman of Rasterex International, and is currently President of the Board of Directors of Pathways Community Network, a non-profit human services provider. He is a past President of the Brookhaven chapter of Rotary International.
Panel:
WILLIAM MATSON
Executive Director, PATHWAYS COMMUNITY NETWORK
Bill Matson co-founded Pathways Community Network, a nonprofit organization that supports human services providers with a variety of tools that encourage collaboration, reduce costs and increase impact, so more people find the path to success. Matson has fifteen years of experience in nonprofit administration and project management, and 18 years of media experience, including stints at Cox Broadcasting, Gannett Newspapers, United Press International and Jacor Communications (now Clear Channel Communications). He has been a member of the board of directors of the National Human Services Data Consortium since 2002 and now serves as the NHSDC's president.
BRENAN STEARNS
Research Analyst, Center for Working Families
Brenan Stearns currently serves as the Research Analyst for The Center for Working Families, Inc. (TCWFI) non-profit located in the Mechanicsville neighborhood of Atlanta. Opened in November 2005, TCWFI offers local residents and families with job readiness and placement services, financial education and development skills plus income and work supports and community building initiatives. At the Center Mr. Stearns helps co-ordinate the design, development and implementation of TCWFI’s on-line case management system as well as provide data support for initiatives of TCWFI and its primary funder -- the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
Before moving to TCWFI Mr. Stearns served as the Research Analyst for the local Casey site team where he worked alongside residents of Neighborhood Planning Unit V to produce Neighborhoods Count – a data book for the neighborhood planning unit. A graduate of the City and Regional Planning program at Georgia Tech where he served as manager of Data and Policy Analysis until 2004, Mr. Stearns is currently involved in an ongoing involving local data users, providers and advocates to develop a framework to provide regular and timely neighborhood-level data to a larger community audience in the Atlanta area.
RICHARD T. WATSON
Director of the Center for Information Systems Leadership, UGA's Terry College of Business
I live in Athens, Georgia, where I am the J. Rex Fuqua Distinguished Chair for Internet Strategy in the Department of MIS at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business. I am also the Director of the Center for Information Systems Leadership.
My wife, Clare, and children, Alice, Ned, and Sophie, and I moved from Perth, Western Australia to Athens in 1989. We had previously lived in the U.S. for a three year period while I completed a Ph D.
I am one of the few people in Athens with a genuine southern accent. I am a true southerner — I was even born in South Australia. I spent much of my childhood on a farm near Narembeen in Western Australia.
I was educated at the University of Western Australia (B Sc and Dip Comp), Monash University (M. Admin), and the University of Minnesota (Ph D). In Australia, I taught at Curtin University and Edith Cowan University, where I founded the Department of Information Systems. I am a visiting professor at Agder University College (Kristiansand, Norway), Fudan University (Shanghai, China), and an honorary advisor to Neusoft Institute of Information (Dalian, China).
The University of Georgia has been very supportive of my academic career, and I have published over 100 refereed articles in leading academic and practitioner journals, written or edited more than 10 books (including a data management text book). I have served as a senior editor for MIS Quarterly and was co-conference chair for ICIS2004. I am currently the Past President of the Association for Information Systems.
My current research interests are u-commerce, net-based customer service systems, open source, and information systems leadership. I collaborate with researchers in several countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, and Singapore.