Moderator: Joseph Wei,   VP, Business Development, Wong’s International

Joseph Wei is the Chief NFC Evangelist and is responsible for Business/Partnership Development for the iCarte, a NFC reader/writer for the iPhone developed by Wong’s subsidiary, Wireless Dynamics.

Joseph has been involved with many key mobile wireless and cloud technologies throughout his career. Prior to Wong’s, Joseph was VP of Business Development with Inventec, a $15B notebook and server ODM with customers such as Acer, Fujitsu-Siemens, HP, and Toshiba. Previously, Joseph was a key member of the blade server startup Amphus, responsible for product marketing the first highly efficient blade server and server virtualization software for the data centers. Earlier, Joseph headed up SGI’s Linux High Performance Computing (HPC) group that achieved the world’s first TPC-H benchmark with IBM DB2, and worked in product management roles at NEC and at DEC prior to its acquisition by Compaq/HP. 

He currently serves as an advisor to several startups and is the Vice Chair and Program Chair of the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society for the Santa Clara Valley chapter.

Speakers:

Vik Pavate, VP of Business Development, Kovio

Vikram Pavate joined Kovio in 2002 with extensive experience in business development, product management and strategic planning. As vice president of business development, he is responsible for Kovio’s corporate strategy, business development, product management and marketing, OEM relationships and strategic joint development and technology alliances. From 1995 to 2000, Mr. Pavate held increasingly responsible positions in global product management within various deposition product divisions of Applied Materials Inc., including Physical Vapor Deposition, Copper Barrier-Seed and Integrated Liner Barrier. He also worked as a summer intern in the business development group at Onetta Inc., an optical networking company funded by Sequoia and Matrix Partners. 

Mr. Pavate holds 10 U.S. patents and has published 30 papers on electronic materials and semiconductor technology. He received a Bachelor of Technology in ceramic engineering from the Institute of Technology, BHU (India), Master of Science in metallurgical engineering from Purdue University and Master of Business Administration from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He was awarded the prestigious Price Institute Fellowship for Entrepreneurship and a Silver Medal in the 2001 Wharton Business Plan Competition. 

Scott Allan, Director of Mobile Applications, NXP Semiconductors

Scott is responsible for developing the mobile application ecosystem that leverages NXP’s mobile NFC and security technology. Scott works closely with major companies and starts ups in social networking, payment, transit, access as well as major mobile handset OEM and network operators worldwide. Prior to joining NXP, Scott was CEO of TriniTEQ, a restaurant mobile POS provider and VP/GM of the payment and kiosk business at Symbol Technologies (now Motorola Solutions). Scott has an MBA from the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Business and an BSME from U.C. Berkeley

Denny Mayer, VP of Business Development, Poken

 

Curt Carrender, Founder, Thinkify

Curt brings hardware expertise, industry knowledge and strategic direction to Thinkify. This is his fifth RFID startup. The first was Amtech Systems - the first commercially successful RFID company. Carrender previously held the position of V.P. of Engineering Systems and R&D at Alien Technology Corporation. In this role he was responsible for all hardware design, development, research and testing under Alien’s private and Government programs. His responsibilities included R&D, Hardware Engineering, Antenna design, Software/Firmware Engineering and Test design/development and Test Applications. From 2002 through 2008 he has managed 36 products from conception to release resulting in over $70M in revenue. He was also responsible for the development of the company’s newest venture, Alien Technology Asia, from inception to their current status of number 2 sales channel and development partner. Carrender and his team invented and named the Squiggle, the most successful RFID tag ever made, with over 500M units shipped. (It is also the only RFID tag known to be incorporated into a tattoo.)