Advisors

John Briggs

John Briggs is Vice President of Product Management at SNOCAP, a digital media company founded by Shawn Fanning that offers record labels, publishers, and artists an end-to-end solution for digital licensing, copyright management and distribution services. John's professional career spans 17 years in product management. Ho joined Yahoo! in 1995 as their first product manager, where he launched such properties as Yahoo Finance, News, Sports, Weather, Yellow Pages, Maps, Auctions, Classifieds and Shopping. He left Yahoo as a Vice President and General Manager in 2001 and later helped get Friendster started as their VP of Product Management. Prior to Yahoo!, John was a product manager in the Desktop Products Group at Lotus.

Carl Ford

Carl Ford is Community Developer at pulver.com, the Voice of IP Communications. Carl's professional career spans 20 years with leading telecommunications companies such as Telcordia Technologies and Verizon where he led initiatives in product management, operations, regulatory and marketing. At pulver.com, Carl facilitates business development and customer contact between companies and coordinates content at the pulver.com conferences. At a pulverite, he serves as an advisor to many companies in various degrees.

Adam Lorant

Adam Lorant was a co-founder and VP Marketing for OctigaBay Systems Corporation which designed and manufactured high performance computer hardware and software. OctigaBay was acquired by Cray Inc. in 2004. Prior to OctigaBay, Adam was a co-founder of Abatis Systems and VP of Product Management and Marketing. Abatis designed and built a family of internet services hardware and software products. Abatis was sold to Redback Networks in 2000 in one of the largest private acquisitions in Canadian history. He was responsible for the strategic direction of Abatis marketing, product development and channel development programs. Prior to Abatis, Adam was with Newbridge Network for seven years and five years with Northern Telecom Canada. Adam holds a master's degree in business administration from Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario and a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from the University of Toronto. In 2000 Adam was honored with Canada's Top 40 Under 40 award.

Jim Southcott

Jim Southcott is one of the Vancouver's leading advertising professionals and Chief Strategic Officer at TBWA\Vancouver where he has direct responsibility for many of the agency's accounts, including Boston Pizza, BC Lottery Corporation, Vancity and Parmasave. In his advertising career, Jim launched the first ever "family of dog chow" brand positioning, helped establish the extremely successful HMV strategy in Canada, prepared Telus for long-distance competition, helped launch U-TV, and spearheaded the successful Yukon Tourism campaigns. More recently Jim has become very involved working with Web 2.0 companies looking to leverage the power of the internet. He is currently providing strategic counsel to Universe, MovieSet, EQO, CityDazz, Qnext and Blast Radius. Jim serves as a board member of BC Chapters of the American Marketing Association, was on the Executives of the Quality Council of BC. Jim is a graduate of the University of British Columbia.

Eric Winsborrow

Eric Winsborrow is Chief Marketing Officer at Sipera Systems, a Sequoia-funded start up and was previously Vice President, Product Marketing, McAfee. Eric is a long time veteran of the IP communications sector, having held senior management positions with companies such as Cisco, Symantec, Sygate, Lucent and Nortel Networks. Eric conducted his undergraduate studies in Engineering Physics and Economics at McMaster University in Canada, and completed his MBA in International Business at the Institute for International Studies and Training (IIST) in Japan.

Steve Lake

Steve Lake recently retired from the position of Chief Operating Officer of Bell Canada’s western Canadian operations. Prior to Bell, Steve was Senior Vice President Operations for 360 Networks where he completed a pan-European network build and oversaw the North American operations. He also held senior executive positions with Shaw Cable and Okanagan Skeena Group Ltd. Steve is a member of the BC Business Council and was on the MBA advisory board for Royal Roads University.