EMS SCV Meetings: SEP 2004 – JUN 2005
Jun 29, 2005:
Management Forum: Impacts of Global Economy to Technology Business & Tools to Aid Technical Mgrs – Eric T-S. Pan
After-dinner Talk: Web Services for Tacit Knowledge Retention, Notebook & Patent Journaling – David A. Rivkin, PhD
May 25, 2005:
Management Forum: The Flaw of Averages and Its Cure – Sam Savage
After-dinner Talk: Bob Gove, Vice President of Imaging, Micron Technology
Apr 27, 2005:
Management Forum: Making Good Decisions in the Face of Uncertainty and Risk – Burke Robinson
After-dinner Talk: Why Would Anyone Follow You? What people Look for In Their Leaders – Barry Posner
Mar 30, 2005:
Management Forum: Career Checkpoints – Robyn Chew Gibbs
After-dinner Talk: Introducing Technology to Make Everyday Devices See – Dr. Abbas Rafii
Feb 23, 2005:
Management Forum: Productive Meeting Fundamentals – Gregory J. West
After-dinner Talk: Innovation in Programmable Logic: Past, Present and Future – John Birkner
Jan 26, 2005:
Management Forum: White Collar Productivity Revisited: The Job you Save May Be Your Own – Bob Parden
After-dinner Talk: Achieving Multi-Dimension Practical Goals – Rahim Esmaili, Sr.
Dec 8, 2004:
Management Forum: From Engineer to Entrepreneur – Bill Musgrave
After-dinner Talk: A Sport’s Analogy for Managing Personal and Team Performance – “Q” Kioumars Houshmand
Oct 27, 2004:
Management Forum: Startups that Survived the Bust: The Silicon Valley Spirit – Ehsan Rashid, Shiv Chiruvolu, …
After-dinner Talk: Startups that Survived the Bust: The Silicon Valley Spirit – panel continued
Sep 29, 2004:
Management Forum: The Art of Commitment and The Science of Change – Cynthia Scott, PhD., M.P.H.
After-dinner Talk: Walking A Tight Rope with Resilient Packet Rings — A Startup Story – Nirmal R. Saxena
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MEETING SUMMARIES & BIOS
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Jun 29, 2005
Management Forum: Impacts of Global Economy to Technology Business and Tools to Aid Technical Managers
Presented by Eric T-S. Pan, founder of Meridian Deployment Corporation
The acceleration of globalization has produced unprecedented opportunities, threats, and uncertainties for technical professionals and for business in general. It can be very disconcerting when knowledge, productivity, and money are no longer sure competitive advantages. Don’t be discouraged. It just takes a while to find value first and realign oneself and/or one’s business into a new value profit chain!
Based on his newly released book, Perpetual Business Machines: Principles of Success for Technical Professionals (ISBN 0975448005), Eric T-S. Pan will present management tools that will help technical managers discover pointers that are applicable to current situations.
Eric T-S. Pan is the founder of Meridian Deployment Corporation (MDC) to provide consulting, publishing, and training services specifically to the scientific and engineering communities. As an engineer and a technical management practitioner with experience leading high-tech organizations over all phases of the business life cycle, Mr. Pan understands the specific business and career challenges technical professionals face. Concerned with various impacts of the new economy on engineers and scientists, Mr. Pan has found a serious lack of insight and information from the perspectives of these technical professionals. It is Mr. Pan’s vision and aspiration for MDC to offer an online community (www.mdc-learning.com) supported by professionals for professionals, through a topical series of books and other information resources.
Prior to founding MDC, Mr. Pan was a director of operations at Skyworks Solutions, Inc. He also held senior operations and product management positions at Network Device, Inc., Spectrian Corporation, and Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.
Mr. Pan began his career in research and development at IBM, Caltech, and Hughes Electronics. In his early career, Mr. Pan authored over twenty technical papers and held several U.S. patents. Mr. Pan received a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT and a bachelor’s degree in applied physics from Caltech.
http://www.mdc-learning.com
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After-dinner Talk: Web Services for Tacit Knowledge Retention, Laboratory Notebook and Patent Journaling
Presented by David A. Rivkin, PhD, Founder and President of Global Consulting & Patents Intl.
Web Service Technologies are advancing not only casual, personal communications but also offering opportunities for businesses to communicate better by providing centralized data repositories which can be used as a multimedia electronic notebook. Such multimedia electronic notebooks offer firms a way of keeping all information, thoughts, experiments, data and even video of the events recorded. These notebooks can be implemented with security, authenticity and other features necessary from an intellectual property perspective as well. Such notebooks can be integrated with other Web or Desktop based Product Development Lifecycle automation tools and Integrated Enterprise Management systems.
This talk with provide an overview to the various web based technologies currently used and touch on how two firms implement such notebooking capabilities.
Dr. David A. Rivkin, PhD, Founder and President of Global Consulting & Patents Intl., has over 20 years experience in management, engineering and patent development in high-technology companies. He has extensive experience in advising companies, venture capital funds, mutual funds and law firms in technology related business, engineering and patent prosecution. He founded SciEssence, LLC in 1998 where he served as its President and CTO.
Dr. Rivkin has extensive experience in engineering management, intellectual property, regulatory requirements and technology related matters. He specializes in instrumentation and measurement, issues for such fields as Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Materials Sciences, Semiconductor Test and Manufacturing, and Optics. He has been a frequent guest speaker on engineering management and high-techno! logy issues, and is a member of IEEE, ACS, APS, SPIE, ACM, ACT and is currently the Vice-Chairman of the IEEE Silicon Valley Chapter of the Instrumentation and Measurement Society, Vice-Chairman of the Association for Chemical Topology and Chairman of the Science and Technology Institutes Emerging Technologies Group. Dr. Rivkin is a holder of several patents and holds certifications in embedded systems and program management. He has received awards for innovation and program management from the Science and Technology Institute.
Dr. Rivkin holds a PhD in Engineering Management from Farington University School of Business in the UK. He has done undergraduate work in chemistry and nuclear engineering and graduate work in applied mathematics, biophysics, electrical engineering/computer science. Dr. Rivkin is a Registered Patent Agent in South Africa and expects to be so in the USA shortly.
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May 25, 2005
Management Forum: The Flaw of Averages and Its Cure
Presented by Sam Savage, AnalyCorp Inc.
A common cause of bad planning is the flaw of averages, a fallacy as fundamental as the belief that the world is flat. This error occurs whenever an uncertain quantity, such as next month’s sales or next year’s interest rate, is represented by a single average number. An obvious example is the case of the proverbial statistician who drowns while fording a river that is, on average, only three feet deep. Many other examples of the flaw of averages are subtle and insidious; and gum up otherwise well laid plans with regularity.
Confusion in the face of uncertainty is an age-old problem, so what’s the point? The point is that new technologies are changing our perspective of uncertainty as profoundly as X rays changed our perspective of broken bones. This presentation will demonstrate some recent advances in the search for a cure for the flaw of averages.
Sam Savage is Consulting Professor at Stanford University since 1990. After receiving his Ph.D. in the area of computer science from Yale University, Sam spent a year at General Motors Research Laboratory. He then joined the Management Science faculty of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business in 1974. Here he quickly realized that an algebraic curtain separated management from management science, and he abandoned the field as moribund.
In 1979, out of boredom, Sam invented, developed and marketed the SHMUZZLE™ Puzzle, which was inspired by the artwork of M.C. Escher. This puzzle was popular in the early 1980s and has recently been re-introduced (www.SHMUZZLES.com). Then with the advent of the personal computer and electronic spreadsheet, the algebraic curtain began to lift, and Sam was reborn as a management scientist. In 1985, he collaborated on the first widely marketed spreadsheet optimization package, What’sBest!, which won PC Magazine’s Technical Excellence Award.
In 1990 Dr. Savage came to Stanford where he continues to teach and develop management science tools in the algebra free environment of Microsoft Excel. His primary focus is on enterprise wide visualization and management of risk. He has also been a Visiting Professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School, the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey, the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, and the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge in the UK.
Sam’s acclaimed text and software, DECISION MAKING WITH INSIGHT has been called a “must read” by Harry Markowitz, Nobel Laureate in Economics. He has also been published in both refereed journals and the popular press – with recent articles in the Harvard Business Review, the Journal of Portfolio Management , Washington Post, the Journal of Forensic Accounting and Financial Planning Magazine. Two of his most popular essays: “The Flaw of Averages” and “Some Inflammatory Gratuitous Remarks on the Accounting Industry” are available for download from his Stanford website. Sam also consults and lectures extensively to business and government agencies and has served as an expert witness.
Sam is also the founder and president of AnalyCorp Inc. (www.AnalyCorp.com), a firm that develops executive education programs and software for improving business analysis.
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/MSandE/people/teaching/savage/index.html
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After-dinner Talk: Bob Gove, Vice President of Imaging, Micron Technology
The image sensing market is experiencing substantial growth, fueled by numerous and widespread applications of imaging technologies. This talk will begin with a description of these key applications and market trends.
Micron Technology, Inc., while a relative newcomer to the imaging business, has risen to become one of the top suppliers of image sensors. The rapid rise is a result of a start-up acquisition and successful integration of global teams to create a business unit within a larger semiconductor corporation. This blend preserves the advantages of a start-up culture, strengthening innovation, product development and customer application support capabilities. At the same time it leverages the advantages of corporate strength, including semiconductor manufacturing capacity, advanced R&D, product engineering, and sales, each with global scale.
Bob Gove, Vice President of Imaging Group, leads the Micron Technology’s imaging business unit, producing CMOS image sensors for applications ranging from today’s popular cell phone cameras to swallowable pill cameras for medical diagnosis. He has been working in the semiconductor and related business for 28 years. Prior to forming Micron’s imaging group over 2 and 1/2 years ago, he was General Manager of Micron’s NetCom San Jose Design Center, developing embedded-DRAM technologies. Prior to joining Micron, Bob was Vice President of Engineering at Equator Technologies, developing and introducing an advanced media processor, the MAP1000. Prior to Equator, he was Vice President of Engineering at Compression Labs Inc., responsible for all product development and sustaining. Initially, Bob held various positions over 19 years with Texas Instruments Inc., were he was involved in CCD, DSP and DLP technologies and products.
Bob holds a PhD and M.S. in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science from Southern Methodist University in Dallas and a B.S.E.E. from University of Washington in Seattle. He holds over 100 US patents and 45 technical publications.
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Apr 27, 2005
Management Forum: Making Good Decisions in the Face of Uncertainty and Risk
Presented by Burke Robinson, Professor, Management Science & Engineering Department, Stanford University
We all want to make the best decisions we can. To make good decisions we need to understand the difference between decisions, which are controllable, and uncertainties, which are uncontrollable. We need the language of probability to evaluate uncertain outcomes and to determine the value of gathering additional information. We need to carefully weigh the risks and rewards of each alternative. And we need to consider options for partnering, insurance, and diversification before making a decision. Finally, we need to apply these principles to performance measurement and reward systems. In a lively, interactive, demonstration involving real money, Prof Robinson will illustrate how we can all make good decisions all the time.
Prof. Robinson teaches a series of graduate courses on decision-making in organizations, with a practical emphasis on consulting tools and techniques for applying well-established theories of decision and risk analysis to actual decisions being made in business, non-profit, and government organizations. He has a long-standing interest in crisis decision-making.
Dr. Robinson has over 25 years experience in management consulting. He was a director of Strategic Decisions Group (SDG), a strategy consulting firm that helps senior executives and board members make difficult decisions about strategy and change in their organizations. He also was a director of the Institute for the Future, responsible for the Business Horizons Program and the Ten-Year Forecast.
His primary areas of expertise are: strategic leadership, strategic management, business development, risk management, and decision analysis. Dr. Robinson has worked in a broad range of industries worldwide, including energy, oil & gas, utilities, pulp & paper, forestry, mining & metals, chemicals, software, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, telecommunications, and financial industries.
Prof. Robinson has a bachelor’s degree in social psychology from Stanford, a master’s degree in technology and human affairs from Washington University, St. Louis, and a master’s degree as well as a Ph.D. in decision analysis from Stanford. He also is a certified trainer for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).
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After-dinner Talk: Why Would Anyone Follow You? What people Look for In Their Leaders (see the slides)
Presented by Barry Posner, Dean of the Leavey School of Business and Professor of Leadership
“Why Would Anyone Follow You? What people Look for In Their Leaders” is an opportunity to understand that leadership is a relationship, and the importance for leaders to realize and appreciate what makes others willing to follow some people, and not others.
Learn whether or not people would describe you as a leader, and come away with practical ideas for improving your leadership capabilities.
Barry Posner is the co-author of the award-winning and best-selling leadership book: The Leadership Challenge: How to Keep Getting Extraordinary Things Done in Organizations. Described as a groundbreaking research study, The Leadership Challenge combines keen insights with practical applications and captures both why and how leadership is everyone’s business. With over one million copies in print, this book has been the featured selection of several book clubs, named book-of-the-year by the American Council of Health Care Executives, received the Critic’s Choice Award from the nation’s book review editors, and translated into over 15 foreign languages.
The Leadership Practices Inventory has been called “the most reliable, up-to-date leadership instrument available today.” Barry has also co-authored three other award-winning, inspiring and practical books on leadership: Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose It, Why People Demand It; Encouraging the Heart: A Leaders Guide to Recognizing and Rewarding Others; and The Leadership Challenge Planner: An Action Guide to Achieving Your Personal Best.
Barry is an international renowned scholar who has published more than 80 research and practitioner-oriented articles, in such journals as the: Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Human Relations, Personnel Psychology, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, and the like. He is currently on the editorial review boards of the Journal of Business Ethics and Leadership Review, and section editor for the Journal of Management Inquiry. Barry, along with his co-author Jim Kouzes, received the International Management Council’s award as the nation’s top management and leadership educators (previous recipients have included Peter Drucker, Ken Blanchard, Steve Covey, Norman Vincent Peale, Edward Deming, Tom Peters, and Rosabeth Moss Kanter).
He serves on the Board of Directors for the San Jose Repertory Theatre and as a Public Director for the American Institute of Architects (AIA). Barry has previously served on the boards of Public Allies (Silicon Valley), Big Brothers Big Sisters of Santa Clara County, The Center for Excellence in Nonprofits, Sigma Phi Epsilon Fraternity, along with several start-up companies.
Barry received his undergraduate degree in political science from UCSB, his master’s degree from the Ohio State University in public administration, and his Ph.D. in organizational behavior and administrative theory from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
At Santa Clara he has received the Dean’s Award for Exemplary Service, the President’s Distinguished Faculty Award, and several outstanding teaching and leadership honors.
He is a warm and engaging conference speaker and dynamic workshop facilitator, and has worked with such organizations as: Alcoa, Applied Materials, Arco, Charles Schwab, Conference Board of Canada, Hewlett-Packard, Kaiser Permanente Health Care, L.L. Bean, Levi Strauss, Lockheed Martin, Merck, Mervyn’s, Motorola, Network Appliance, TRW, Trader Joe’s, US Postal Service, among others. He has made presentations and conducted workshops across the U.S., and around the globe from Canada, Mexico and Europe to the Far East, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.
http://lsb.scu.edu/faculty/profiles/posnerprofile.htm
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Mar 30, 2005
Management Forum: Career Checkpoints
Presented by Robyn Chew Gibbs, Juniper Networks
The speed of change causes many to ask: “Where will I be in x years”? The better question is: “Where will I be next year”? Taking it one step further, the ideal question is: “Where do I want to be next year”?
How often have you said, “I wish I could change jobs or change careers”! Chances are this question will remain rhetorical until you closely examine the reasons you state this wish and begin to uncover what is at the root of your desire for change. Once understood, creating an appropriate plan becomes an easier & more successful undertaking.
Robyn Chew-Gibbs, Human Resources Training & Development Manager at Juniper Networks, will lead the group through a working session designed to show how to productively analyze and plan your career direction.
Robyn Chew-Gibbs has 15+ years of Management and Employee Development experience. In September of 2004, Robyn joined Juniper Networks as the first Human Resources Training Manager. Responsible for management development and “soft skills” training worldwide, Robyn continues to be motivated by the excitement that employees exude when mastering a new skill that results in personal growth and positive business impacts!
Formerly, she was employed for 9 years at Levi Strauss & Co. She was part of the Corporate Training & Development department where she facilitated various training programs including Performance Management, Valuing Diversity and Leadership training. During her tenure at Levi’s she was tapped by the CEO to direct the Corporate Work/Family Initiative. This initiative, one of the few of its kind at the time, earned Levi’s recognition by Working Mother magazine as one of the “Top 100 Companies for Women”.
After achieving her goals at Levi’s, Robyn began her own consulting firm, specializing in management and employee development. During the 10 years as a consultant, she amassed a loyal clientele including Wells Fargo Bank, Advanced Fibre Communications, Blue Shield of California, Industrial Light + Magic, Skywalker Sound, Intel and Oracle. Robyn holds certifications in Myers Briggs Type Indicator and Project Management.
Robyn is a native San Franciscan and 3rd generation Chinese-American. She earned Undergraduate and Graduate degrees from University of California at Los Angeles and University of California, Berkeley.
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After-dinner Talk: Introducing Technology to Make Everyday Devices See
Presented by Dr. Abbas Rafii, Executive VP, Canesta, Inc.
Despite impressive advances in imaging technology, computers remain essentially blind and unable to make sense of their environment. The advances in time-of-flight 3D sensor chips promise to bring this technology to large volume deployment, making ranging the next big development in computer imaging and vision markets. Canesta’s work in this area enables everyday devices to recognize and intelligently interact with their environments. Bringing the technology to the market involved making many challenging technical and business decisions.
Dr. Abbas Rafii is Executive Vice President and one of the founders of Canesta, Inc. He has extensive background in software engineering and business management. His current focus is directing the software development for the company’s Electronic Perception Technology. Earlier, he directed the development of Projection Keyboard application. He received his MS and Ph.D. in EECS from Stanford University.
He was a founder and held the position of Vice President in Penware and atPos (now part of Symbol). He recruited the team and directed the design and development of the company’s PDA, Point of Sale, enterprise, and e-commerce applications. He provided technical support in closing large deals and started several technology and business development initiatives in the company.
Earlier, he was a software scientist and an architect of heterogeneous object databases at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories. Prior to that, he was a system performance specialist at Hewlett-Packard’s commercial and UNIX operating systems labs. He has published papers on computer performance evaluation and heterogeneous object databases. He has also taught Computer Science at University of Oklahoma, U.C. Davis and Santa Clara University. He has authored and been granted several patents.
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Feb 23, 2005
Management Forum: Productive Meeting Fundamentals (link to slides below)
Presented by Gregory J. West
Understanding productive meeting fundamentals helps managers, companies, and organizations minimize the cost associated with wasted meeting time through a series of processes and techniques to improve meeting effectiveness. Improved meeting productivity translates to improved value for Customers, improved bottom line results for investors, and improved employee morale.
This talk includes practical tips on planning and conducting meetings and on meeting follow-up to insure that meeting time is used productively.
Gregory J. West is a 25 year industry veteran with more than 20 years in supervision and management roles forming and leading high performance product development and operations teams in some of the biggest and best known companies including Texas Instruments, National Semiconductor, Philips Electronics, and Samsung Semiconductor.
Greg has also successfully applied productive meeting concepts in leadership roles in community based, volunteer, and government organizations. Greg founded Jonathan Byrnes Associates, a management consulting firm in 2003.
Greg earned his BSEE from Milwaukee School of Engineering, and his MS Engineering Management from Santa Clara University. He is also a registered Professional Engineer in the State of Wisconsin.
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After-dinner Talk: Innovation in Programmable Logic: Past, Present and Future
Presented by John Birkner
Innovation is the fuel that drives the high tech industry. Using the $4B FPGA and PLD semiconductor chip industry to exemplify the innovation process, we will examine keys to success and failures to avoid. How do you manage creative people to maximize innovation? How do you manage situations where “Too many cooks spoil the broth”?
Patents are a necessary evil in capitalizing on innovation. They can be used for both offence and defense against completion. They are expensive and time consuming for management, yet rewarding for creative individuals.
Fertile ground for innovation to be discussed includes the new wave of HD DVD and Blu-ray DVD increasing multimedia bandwidth requirements 10-fold.
John Birkner, a Distinguished Engineer at Xilinx, is responsible for directing product planning of Spartan FPGAs. At Quicklogic, he was a co-founder and served as Vice President of Technology. He has 30 years of experience in the semiconductor industry.
Prior to co-founding Quicklogic, Mr. Birkner was a fellow at Monolithic Memories Incorporated (MMI), where he co-invented the Programmable Logic Array (PAL) device and championed its development and marketing efforts. In addition, he authored PALASM, the first EDA tool for programmable logic. He holds numerous patents for his work, including the patents for Quicklogic’s ViaLink metal-metal interconnect technology and MMI’s PAL and PALASM products.
Mr. Birkner has been named to Electronic Design magazine’s engineering hall-of-fame in October 2002.
Mr. Birkner holds a B.S.E.E from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.S.E.E degree from the University of Akron.
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Jan 26, 2005
Management Forum: White Collar Productivity Revisited: The Job you Save May Be Your Own
Presented by Bob Parden, Chair of Eng Mgmt & Leadership, School of Engineering, Santa Clara University
We have reached the Knowledge Age, where knowledge has become the competitive weapon. The creation of knowledge and the sharing with others, is what organizations seek to do.
The leaders of networks have the greatest challenge, how to encourage lateral integration of the contributions of individuals and teams to optimize the organization as a system.
To reach the next level of creative achievement, leaders must help Knowledge Professionals. The term Collegial Leadership is used to describe this distributed, and shared, leadership among colleagues. The goal: reduced hierarchy and the achievement of higher levels of participation, commitment, creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. Congruence is the key: the achievement of organization goals, while enhancing the personal growth of individuals.
Bob Parden is a Chair of Engineering Management and Leadership in the School of Engineering, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California. His degrees in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering are from the University of Iowa. Dr. Parden was an army lieutenant, an industrial engineer with the La Crosse Rubber Mills, La Crosse, Wisconsin, and an Associate Professor at Illinois Institute of Technology, in Chicago. He served as Dean of Engineering, at Santa Clara, for 27 years. He is a registered engineer in Iowa and California, and holds a California General Contractor’s license. He is manager development consultant at IBM, Amdahl, Lockheed, Memorex, and FMC. He was named to the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame in February 1993 and in Who’s Who in America.
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After-dinner Talk: Achieving Multi-Dimension Practical Goals
Presented by Rahim Esmaili, Sr. Engineering Manager, Cisco Systems
Who am I? An employee, a leader, a mentor, a life-time learner, a family oriented parent, a social activist, a hobbyist, a believer and most of all a happy person! The answer is long and includes many roles which seem impossible to achieve all at once. That is however the goal laid out for each of its employees four years ago by the management team of ARF Department at Cisco Systems, Inc.
Tremendous changes and efforts spent on the work process, team building and human development eventually paid off. During the past four years from 2000 to 2004, the team has grown on many dimensions and continues to see the same trend onward: team productivity increases by six folds; average certified team knowledge increases by four folds; relationships are closer among team members and management; many more talented and fresh minds are attracted to join the winning team; company executives and internal peer partners empowers the team with more important charters; cross-functional activities doubles; and best of all everybody commits to be a leader in his or her fields working towards the same customer-centric goal to improve product quality.
This presentation shares the principles that define our team vision, mission statement, core values and charters. It describes our practices, process automation, risk management, team expertise acquisition and performance metric definition that lead to not only immediate higher productivity, but also a long term framework for future development and expansion for both technical and human aspects.
Rahim Esmaili is a Sr. Engineering Manager at Cisco Systems. He has been working at Cisco for the last eight years in ARF (Automated Regression & Reseach Facility). ARF is responsible for consistent automated regression testing over Cisco IOS products. ARF consist of over 150 engineers across US, India, and Taiwan. Rahim has over 21 years of industry experience. Prior to Cisco, he worked at ROLM corporation for seven years, developing and executing product test.
Rahim was born in Abadan, Iran. He has a degree in civil engineering from Iran and a degree in Computer Science from US. Rahim has a passion in promoting leadership skills and developing high performing teams. He delivered many honorary speeches at universities, K-12 schools and various organizations. ARF has become a role model for Cisco in employee satisfaction, leadership, productivity, and delivering excellence.
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Dec 8, 2004
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SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:
Board Elections for Year 2005
Current board will nominate candidates for board elections for year 2005 at the December 8, 2004 meeting. You can also enter your nominations from the floor at the meeting.
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Management Forum: From Engineer to Entrepreneur
Presented by Bill Musgrave, President & CEO, The Enterprise Network of Silicon Valley
Get the big picture in entrepreneurial trends, including risks and rewards, from someone who knows. Bill Musgrave shares his experiences as president and CEO of The Enterprise Network, TEN, a nonprofit organization that is an incubator for technology and a place where entrepreneurs launch great companies. We are not all created equal, so it is key to understand the different types of entrepreneurs and ventures, as well as the qualities of a successful entrepreneur. Be sure to take a personal inventory of your skills to ensure the right fit, rather than generalize on the strengths and weaknesses of entrepreneurs. The importance of the entrepreneurial team will be emphasized, as well as helpful resources available to would-be entrepreneurs.
The ability to identify business opportunities will be discussed as part of this practical talk. Many helpful tips will be shared for getting started, when you are actually ready to take the plunge and move from engineer to entrepreneur. Come learn if you are ready to go out on your own and be an entrepreneur or find out if you are better suited to stay within an established company and find a way to use your entrepreneurial skills.
Dr. Bill Musgrave has 25 years of executive experience in both the public and private sectors. Prior to joining TEN in 1999, he was a General Manager for DRS Ahead Technology, a supplier of specialty magnetic heads, engaged in corporate acquisitions and business development. He was also on the founding team for an e-commerce startup.
Formerly, Bill was a career U.S. Navy officer, completing his military service at the rank of Captain. In the Navy, he managed large-scale business and logistics operations, and was integrally involved in the formulation and implementation of major government procurement reform initiatives.
Dr. Musgrave maintains an active involvement in higher education and has led the initiation of an entrepreneurship center at San Jose State University and has been on the adjunct faculty of a number of universities. He is also a frequent speaker at professional events on entrepreneurship and innovation, and organizational leadership. He has been featured in numerous news journals, and has appeared on BBC Worldwide Broadcast, Silicon Valley Business Radio, and at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco. He has lectured overseas.
Bill earned the MBA and Doctor of Business Administration degrees from The George Washington University’s School of Business and Public Management. He holds a B.S. in Education degree from Texas State University.
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After-dinner Talk: A Sport’s Analogy for Managing Personal and Team Performance
Presented by “Q” Kioumars Houshmand, Engineering Director in ARF, Cisco Systems
Improving personal and team performance is the main focus of sports management. Many similarities exist in the high tech industry with high demand for creativity and higher productivity, which translates into higher personal and team performance. We would like to share our experience from our management ABC-GOAL-FIRST strategy and S-I-R Business Operation Model that we used from 2001 to 2004. The creative strategy which focuses on personal and team performance improvement based on the same analogy of sports management has helped expand our team’s charter from a regression facility at the tail end of the software life cycle to a bigger company-wide scope. The expanded charter allows the team to be involved in all phases of the software life cycle collaboratively and crossfunctionally to maximize our contribution while leveraging other organizational expertise. We also would like to share the analysis, the metrics and the positive human affect of the proven management strategy that helped to increase our team’s productivity by six folds during the past four years.
“Q” Kioumars Houshmand is an Engineering Director in ARF at Cisco system, managing over 150 engineers across USA, India, and Taiwan.
Q has 25 years industry experience. He has been with Cisco for the last eight years. In Cisco, he has established a Dream Team, growing from 11 headcount/engineers to over 150. Prior to Cisco, he has worked for Siemens, IBM, ROLM, and Nixdorf computer. Q has a passion to be a servant leader, create an environment that people achieve the absolute best to their potential, and have fun. He has instituted the fundamental of coaching and soccer/football into the daily ARF business operations.
Q. Houshmand has a master of Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of California, Chico. He has a bachelor degree in Applied Mathematics and Economic Management from Tehran University.
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Oct 27, 2004
Management Forum: Startups that Survived the Bust: The Silicon Valley Spirit
Presented by Ehsan Rashid and Shiv Chiruvolu
Silicon Valley startups blossomed during the boom of the late 1990’s when the potential of broad band and wireless access seemed limitless and the internet was growing at a phenomenal rate. The New Economy was driven in internet time by the need for new hardware, new software, and new systems to gain advantage and agility in what seemed to be an ever growing market.
Then the dot-com bubble burst and the New Economy imploded. A few companies survived. What was unique about the survivors that allowed them to rise from the ashes, prosper, and flourish? A panel of senior managers from technology companies that started up during the boom times of the late ’90’s and survived the bust will describe and discuss what makes their companies unique and their business models robust.
Ehsan Rashid
Ehsan Rashid currently serves as Vice President of Operations for Virage Logic, Inc., a provider of Silicon Aware Physical IP to the Semiconductor Industry. Mr. Rashid joined Virage in April 2003. Prior to that, from December 2000 to March 2003, Mr. Rashid held the position of Senior Vice President and General Manager, Access Product Division, at Com21, Inc., an OEM of Broadband Infrastructure Equipment (Cable Modem, and CMTS) for the Cable Industry. Mr. Rashid joined Com21 in January of 2000, as the General Manager of the Network Interface Business Unit, which was eventually merged into the Access Products Division in December 2000. Prior to joining Com21, Mr. Rashid served as Senior Director, Engineering, Systems Applications and Alliances from December 1997 to January 2000 at VLSI Technology, Inc., a provider of application specific and standard product integrated circuits, now a division of Philips Semiconductors. He was also the Director of Engineering at Hitachi Micro Systems, Inc., a maker of microprocessors for embedded applications, from April 1995 to December 1997. Prior to that Mr. Rashid spent over 8 years at Hewlett-Packard Company in various technical and management roles related to HP’s microprocessor and computer systems businesses. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of California, Berkeley.
Shiv Chiruvolu
Dr. Shiv Chiruvolu obtained his bachelors, masters and PhD degrees in Chemical Engineering from NIT Warangal, IIT Mumbai and UC Santa Barbara respectively. His doctoral work at UCSB was on nano- and microstructures of self-assembly in mixed molecular systems. For his post-doctoral research he worked at the University of Minnesota on biomolecular materials and films to develop model biosurfaces.
Dr. Chiruvolu has over 9 years industry experience in semiconductor materials processing and film deposition technologies, and nanomaterials synthesis and equipment development. He is currently at NanoGram Corporation leading the development of nanoparticle synthesis and formulation technologies for a range of product applications. At NanoGram he has led a number of projects including process scale-up of laser pyrolysis for producing nano-vanadium oxide compounds for high-rate batteries for implantable devices, high-surface area metal oxides as catalyst materials, nanometals for interconnect, Laser Reactive Deposition(TM) development for planar lightwave circuit fabrication.
He is an inventor or co-inventor on a number of patents, and has published over 20 scientific journal articles.
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After-dinner Talk: Startups that Survived the Bust: The Silicon Valley Spirit
We will continue the panel with Ehsan Rashid & Shiv Chiruvol started in the Management Forum.
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Sep 29, 2004
Management Forum: The Art of Commitment and the Science of Change
Presented by Cynthia Scott, PhD., M.P.H.
Have you been through enough organizational change to make you curious to find out what you know and might want to know more about? Are you currently involved or leading a change in your organization? Want to increase your competency and capacity to lead and benefit from change? Cynthia has provided the models and tools for a wide variety of mergers, cultural transformations, and structural changes over the past 20 years. She will use her books Getting Your Organization to Change, Managing Change at Work and Rekindling Commitment as a foundation to talk about a basic way to think about mobilizing, designing and implementing change to create organizational performance. She will share her experience from a wide variety of organizations and give you a “change agent’s” perspective from working at all levels in organizations.
Cynthia Scott is an organizational consultant, author and coach. The depth, scope, and quality of Cynthia’s experience have made her a preferred change management resource for Fortune-500 multinational corporations and smaller, regional firms.
Cynthia draws on a wealth of experience that spans over twenty years of consulting. Her expertise includes organizational effectiveness, management development, CEO coaching, senior team development, and the strategic planning and implementation of organizational change.
Her clients have included Blue Shield of California, California State Automobile Association, Atlas, Benjamin Moore, Charles Schwab, Kaiser Permanente, AT&T, Intermune, The Private Industry Council, Pioneer Hybrid, Abbot Labs, Bank of America, The Monterey Herald, New England Telephone, Internal Revenue Service, ITT Hartford, Union Bank, Deloitte & Touch™, Estee Lauder, National Semiconductor, IBM, and other organizations in financial, healthcare, high technology, and government sectors.
She is a frequent keynote speaker at national conferences on the topics of: Leadership, Mastering Change, and Minimizing Risk and Maximizing Performance. Reports of Cynthia’s work have been featured in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Business Week and the Stanford Business School Newsletter.
Cynthia is co-author of 14 books among them: Take This Job and Love it, Getting Your Organization to Change, Rekindling Commitment, Managing Organizational Change, Empowerment, Organizational Mission, Vision and Values) and numerous articles in management and trade journals.
She holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from the Fielding Institute, a M.P.H. in Health Planning and Administration from the University of Michigan and a B.A. in Anthropology from University of California, Berkeley.
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After-dinner Talk: Walking A Tight Rope with Resilient Packet Rings — A Startup Story
Presented by Nirmal R. Saxena, CTO of Alliance Semiconductor
This talk covers the technical and mangement challenges faced by a 2001 startup company, Chip Engines (now part of Alliance Semiconductor). Chip Engines was designing chips while the IEEE 802.17 Resilient Packet Ring Working Group was still defining the standard. Designing a chip with a dynamic off-shore engineering team and in the midst of an evolving standard is the subject of this talk.
Nirmal R. Saxena is the VP of Engineering and CTO at Alliance Semiconductor. He is responsible for the architecture definition, engineering management, and new product development. Nirmal is also a Consulting Faculty in the Electrical Engineering Department at Stanford University.
Prior to joining Alliance, Nirmal was VP of Architecture at Chip Engines where he was responsible for the design and development of Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) controllers. Nirmal has served in senior technical and management postions at Tiara Networks (now Tasman Networks), the Stanford Center for Reliable Computing, Silicon Graphics, HaL Computers, and Hewlett Packard.
Nirmal holds a BE degree from Osmania University, India; a MSEE degree from the University of Iowa; and a Ph.D. EE degree from Stanford University. He holds more than 10 patents and has published in the IEEE Transactions. He is Fellow of IEEE (2002) and was cited for his contributions to reliable computing.
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