Mr. Patten has spent the last 20 years developing educational software for a variety of clients. He has managed the engineering departments for several companies, including his own, and has won several awards for software design. He is currently bringing Open Source software solutions to schools to help maximize their technology dollars and close the digital divide between students of diverse economic backgrounds. Mr Patten is also the Executive Director of the National Center for Open Source and Education – a non profit organization advocating Open Source adoption in K-12 schools throughout the country.

Greg DeKoenigsberg is a senior community architect for Red Hat. The community architecture team is responsible for Red Hat's strategy for building vibrant open source communities, and for aligning Red Hat's community policies with its business objectives. Greg is the founding chairman emeritus of the Fedora Project Board, which is the ultimate decision making authority for the Fedora Project. He has been with Red Hat since 2001.

It is a well accepted fact that open source software products are frequently more flexible, more robust, and more cost-effective than their proprietary counterparts. Learn more about how the open source development model works, and how you can take advantage of this model to achieve your own goals more effectively.

Andy Lester has developed software for more than twenty years in the business world and on the Web in the open source community. Years of sifting through resumes, interviewing unprepared candidates, and even some unwise career choices of his own have spurred him to write this nontraditional book on the new guidelines for tech job hunting. Andy is an active member of the open source community, and lives in the Chicago area.

Steven Miller is a Distinguished Inventor and the Director of University Programs at Open Invention Network, helping to enable Open Source innovation and the Linux ecosystem through cooperation with university research and technology organizations in enabling technology commercialization. Prior to joining Open Invention Network, Mr. Miller served as Invention Development Chairman for IBM, overseeing 5 segments of the global software IP portfolio and helped IBM file more patent applications and achieve the greatest number of annual US patent issuances than any other entity during his twenty-five year tenure.

An active inventor himself, Mr. Miller was appointed as an IBM Master Inventor and recognized as a worldwide innovator and patent mentor, holding over 125 patents and applications in the US and other countries. In addition to inventing, he has served extensively as an expert in the fields of patent research and engineering, leading defensive and offensive patent analysis efforts and supporting litigation research while enhancing IP Licensing revenues from the IBM software portfolio.

As a software developer, Mr. Miller was an early pioneer in Object-Oriented design and development, helping promote the adoption of OO technologies across the software organization and the production of one of the first enterprise-level products using these now-standard technologies. He furthermore lead user interface architecture advancements, promoting consistent and user-friendly designs that swept across traditional product boundaries, and improved product usability and customer satisfaction for products in the VisualAge development brand. Mr. Miller also gained industry influence during his roles within the Pervasive Systems architecture organization as the lead industry architect for the automotive application segment. Mr. Miller was selected from a pool of industry experts across the IT industry to lead the design and architecture for automotive computing platforms to an automotive industry consortium.

While working as a lead architect in the Internet business unit, Mr. Miller was a member of the core concept design team adopting internet technologies from IBM Research and designing what became the WebSphere Application Server. Through extensive work with customers in the financial markets and later the telecommunications industry, he lead the concept design team creating portal products under the WebSphere brand and the creation of the WebSphere Portal product. He was later recognized as a portal product expert and served as the portal evangelist and lead analyst in the corporate Competitive Technology team. He lead efforts in competitive analysis for industry portal products and served as an advisor to marketing and development executives for portal products and other portal enhancements to cross- brand products.
Prior to joining IBM, Mr. Miller spent three years with Magnavox Government Systems, testing and designing anti-submarine warfare software components and weapons simulation software. Mr. Miller holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Purdue University.

Previously the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for American Public University System, Mark has three decades of technology experience including an extensive knowledge of academically aligned technology and high-availability architectures. For 10 years prior to joining American Public University System, Mark was a key member of the technology management team at Random House and served as Vice President of Shared Service Applications. Mark also served in senior technology positions with CSX, a Fortune 50 company, and Prudential Home Mortgage, a leader in mortgage securities innovation. Mark's valuable background building and overseeing technology teams for leading universities and corporations will help Moodlerooms ensure its clients receive leading-edge products delivered with the highest level of performance and reliability.

Dee Appleby joined the South Carolina Department of Education in 2005 as the Director of eLearning in the Division of Standards and Learning after 17 years if teaching at the middle, secondary, and post-secondary sectors. She currently manages statewide instructional technology programs, Instructional Television (ITV), SC Online Professional Development (elearningSC), and the South Carolina Virtual School Program (SCVSP) and Enhancing Education through Technology federal program. Her primary focus is providing high content, high quality, high energy programs that are well researched and delivered in online environment.

The question of whether open source software is a panacea or pandora’s box in regard to higher education is not only a timely question, but a pivotal one.

In an age of technological proliferation, there’s no question that learning management systems have become a necessity in campuses across the world. The question is no longer if, but what kind of solution a campus will choose—one that is based on open source software, or one that isn’t.

Join Moodlerooms Implementation Director Terri Ann Bennett as she discusses how open source software is developed, distributed, and supported and what it means for the future of today’s universities.

Terri Ann brings to Moodlerooms valuable experience in implementing and developing online learning programs as well as providing training. Prior to joining Moodlerooms in October 2009, Terri Ann worked with the South Carolina Department of Education to implement the first K-12 state funded virtual school. She was also responsible for enhancing the eLearningSC Professional Development Program in South Carolina, for which she implemented a registration system that worked with Moodlerooms’ open-source based learning management solution. She also built the eLearning Online Professional Development program for the SCDE to engage more teachers, counselors, librarians, etc., in online learning. In one year, they doubled participants in eLearning SCPD and had an average completion rate of 92%. During the Summer 2009 Semester, they had a 93.45% completion rate.