Jeremy Acklam
Business Development Director, thetrainline
Jeremy Acklam leads the implementation of innovation ticketing solutions for business and leisure customers as part of TheTrainline's business development strategy. Trainlie Smart, the first online smart ticketing system from UK rail, was completed in Feb 2008. Jeremy joined TheTrainline from ATOA Origin where he provided strategic consultancy to the Community of European Railways & International Union of Railways on the European TAF TSI Rail Freight Industry Telematics Regulation. Before that he was I.T. Director of Virgin Rail where he was part of the original team that launched TheTrainline in 1999. As Deputy Chairman and a Director of the Integrated Transport Smartcard Organisation, in 2002 Jeremy wrote and presented the Downing St Lecture on Transport Information and Smartcards for Tony Blair, politicians and transport experts.

Francis Aldhouse CBE
Former Deputy Information Commissioner
Francis Aldhouse is a consultant specialising in information law and policy. He retired in 2006 as the United Kingdom Deputy Information Commissioner. He has directed the registration, administration, complaints, publicity, investigations and strategic policy functions for the Commissioner. He was noted for leading the teams which developed policy and guidance on data protection issues particularly at European and international levels.

He had joined the Office of the Data Protection Registrar, as it then was, in mid-March 1985 from Surrey County Council, where he had been an Assistant County Clerk. In 2006, he was awarded a CBE in recognition of the work he has done over the last 21 years and the contribution he has made, both domestically and internationally as an expert on data protection.

Tim Bishop
Head of Strategy, Siemens
Tim has over 20 years experience in the communications and IT industries. He has enjoyed a varied career which has included assignments in the UK, United States, Europe, Scandanavia, in roles which have included IT project management, video conferencing services, product business management, CRM, mobile business, user needs analysis and strategy consulting. Tim believes that unified communications presents a huge opportunity for organisations, with the vision and capability to apply the technology, to simply work practice and collaboration.

Sarah Burnett
Senior Research Analyst, Butler Group
Sarah Burnett is an experienced analyst and consultant with over 20 years in the IT industry. She started her career in electronics engineering and soon moved into real time application software development. In 1986 she joined Digital Equipment Corporation and soon after became manager of Digital’s Third Party Applications Group for Europe.

Sarah has since worked in a variety of IT roles. As a freelance consultant she delivered a number of projects for Xansa, utilising the emerging Internet-based technologies at the time, to deliver financial information. Sarah has also been involved with the public sector. In 2002/03, as the Smart Card Programme manager for Buckinghamshire, she delivered a collaborative pilot project with Bracknell Forest and Milton Keynes Councils.

Jon Culshaw
As NCC are celebrating their 2008 Annual Conference, delegates, speakers and VIP guests are invited to attend the 2008 Annual Conference Gala Dinner at Café Royal. This years attendees will have the pleasure of having an evening with Jon Culshaw as the after dinner speaker. The Dead Ringers star has an ever-growing catalogue of over 350 voices from politics, showbiz and sport. After serving his apprenticeship on Spitting Image, Jon now has such a range that he can respond to virtually any audience request.

Declan Curry
Presenter, BBC One
Declan Curry is the Business Presenter for 'Breakfast' on BBC One and BBC News 24. He reports each morning from the Studios of the London Stock Exchange, covering business, the economy, the workplace and personal finance.

Gill Hall
Director of Climate Change Programme in IBM's Global Business Services Division, IBM
Gill Hall is the Director of Climate Change Programme in IBM's Global Business Services Division, where she works with climate leaders in both public and private sector organisations to reduce an organisation's impact on the environment.

She has wide experience in complex negotiations and has lef global teams to close big ticket financial transactions and strategic alliances. Gill also contributes to leadership thinking in the field of carbon - notably the recently published 'Gorilla, Ostrich, Mule or Peacock ..?" Additionally, she spent several years in the public sector before making a career shift into the private sector.

Gill holds a MBA with Distinction from Lancaster University Management School and an LLB in English and French Law from Kings College, London and Paris I Panteon.

Adrian Hepworth
Business Development Director, Erudine
Adrian began his career in the IT industry in 1992 for Andersen Consulting on client facing projects for the Department of Social Security, retail banking customers, and the Benefits Agency. His roles spanned the full software development lifecycle, including development, testing, design and architecture. In 1997 he moved to work for an IBM business partner (Seer Technologies) providing consulting services to clients in the financial services sector. In 1999 he moved to Sema Group PLC as a Technical Architect responsible for selection and delivery of the technology for a multi-billion Euro settlement service for the UK rail industry, and the development of the AvantixT Mobile rail retail platform.

His involvement with Erudine began in 2004 whilst working for Atos Origin where he was responsible for evaluation of the Erudine Behaviour Engine technology and proposal of the technology for the Scottish Executive and Yorcard smartcard scheme bids. He subsequently joined Erudine in March 2006 and has been involved in business development for the technology, advising customers and prospective customers how to integrate the technology into their business, and providing input to guide the development of the technology.

Steve Markwell
Chief Executive Officer, The National Computing Centre Ltd
Steve became the Chief Executive Officer of The National Computing Centre in March 2008. He was formerly Managing Director of NCC subsidiary PMP Ltd. which he set up in 1989 to provide market research and support services to IT vendors. PMP was acquired by the National Computing Centre in 2005.

Prior to establishing PMP, Steve was responsible for sales and marketing at Price Waterhouse Coopers' consultancy and subsequently became an advisor to the firm. At PMP he established Conspectus as the publication for those responsible for technology purchasing, and latterly, the Evaluation Centre, which is now the UK's number one guide to software services and technology.

Steve brings considerable business expertise and experience to the Centre and will build on the work already started to ensure that NCC continues to serve and provide added value to its Members and the wider IT community.

Dinah McLeod
Head of Sustainability Practice, BT
Dinah joined BT in August 2007 to assume leadership of BT Global Services Sustainability Practice. With considerable international experience across a broad range of sustainable development initiatives, she is responsible for developing the environmental, social and community sustainability opportunities for this newly created practice.

Prior to joining BT, Dinah spent three years as an independent consultant working on sustainability issues. Her clients including the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), the African Development Bank, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Asia Foundation, the Japanese International Development Agency, the Government of Uganda, and the Overseas Development Institute.

Before then, Dinah spent two years as a Policy Adviser in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit (UK), working on oil and gas security and fragile state issues. Commissioning departments for this work included the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence, the Department for International Development, and the Cabinet Office.

Simon Post
CTO, Carphone Warehouse
When Simon joined The Carphone Warehouse as CTO in 2005, he had a clear vision... to shape the IT department into one that would support such a pioneering, entrepreneurial FTSE 100 organisation. Simon successfully steered the organisation through a two year period of Transformation with the goal of re-engineering itself into a flexible, scalable and innovative department which could react quickly to the ambitious growth plans of the business. Much of Carphone's success has been down to its ability to rapidly change and transform, and as the world's largest independent retailer of mobile phones, IT plays an increasingly critical role as the business moves into the wireless world and beyond.

Previous to CPW, Post made his name at Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB as Group IT and Strategy Director, where he was responsible for a complete organisational and process transformation and an update to much of the core IT infrastructure.

His early career included a spell in consulting and he was a partner at Arthur Andersen responsible for running its global e-business and advanced technology teams. Following that Post worked at Stanford Research Institute spin-off Atomic Tangerine in commercialising technology intellectual property from companies and research laboratories.

Simon is married with four children whom he keeps challenged with the large number of gadgets to be found in and around his house!

Gerry Pennell
CIO, Co-Operative Financial Services
After reading Mathematics at University, Gerry’s career began in the software development industry before moving to Barclays Bank and then Price Waterhouse (subsequently PriceWaterhouse Coopers) From there Gerry undertook the role of Director of Technology for the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester – particularly the provision of the results and event management service. In 2003 Gerry joined CFS as Director of Development and Delivery, ICT and in 2004 moved to the role of ICT Director. In August 2005, he took on the role of CIO for CFS and Trading Group (covering grocery, stores, travel, pharmacy etc).

John Riley
Managing Director, Global Media Ventures
Until February this year John Riley was Managing Editor of Computer Weekly. Over many years he was responsible for developing strategic direction, identifying business value from IT and for building in-depth relationships with the corporate IT user community. In the mid 1990s he set up Computer Weekly's long standing club for IT Directors (the CWE500 Club) which still meets every month at Claridges. He remains very active within IT generally, being a Court Liveryman of the City of London livery body, the Information Technologists Company, a Fellow of the British Computer Society, and a management committee member of the BCS under user oriented group, Elite.

He is also currently a member of two Parliamentary/industry groups: the Parliamentary Information Technology Committee (Pitcom); and Parliamentary/IT action group, Eurim. He is board member of Byte Night, the annual IT industry charity sleepover, and is a founder of the external advisor to de Montfort's University's Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility. He is also a Fellow of the Society of Arts (FRSA), and Freeman of the City of London. In his 25 years at Computer Weekly, he also set up from scratch and ran IT related book publishing, newsletter and high priced report operations, and organised various events, workshops and awards.

Hamish Sandison
Partner, Field Fisher Waterhouse
Hamish Sandison is a partner in our Technology Law Group. He has a leading reputation in technology law, with over 20 years' experience advising UK clients in the public and private sectors on major IT projects. Prior to joining Field Fisher Waterhouse, Hamish was a partner at Bird & Bird and was its Non-Executive Chairman for six years. Hamish specialises in commercial work for public sector clients, including IT procurement, major PFI and PPP projects, large-scale business process outsourcing transactions, cutting-edge IPR and e-commerce issues and alternative dispute resolution. He also advises major users of IT systems and services in the private sector and leading suppliers of IT to the public sector.

He is a non-executive director of the National Computing Centre, a member of the Council of EURIM (the European Information Society Group), the Council of Experts of the Intellectual Property Institute and the FAST (Federation Against Software Theft) Legal Advisory Group. He has written and lectured widely on IT law and intellectual property and is top-ranked in the UK legal directories in the field of IT law. Computer Weekly has called him "an ever trenchant interpreter of the law."

John Suffolk
Head of CIO Council, CIO, Her Majesty’s Government
John was appointed Her Majesty’s Government Chief Information Officer on the 5th June 2006. Prior to this he was the Director General of Criminal Justice IT (CJIT) from February 2004. He has a background of over 25 years’ experience in IT and major transformation programmes. John has worked in the engineering and financial service industries and has extensive experience in delivering IT-enabled change.

John will lead the work of the CIO council in delivering the Government strategy for the transformation of public services enabled by technology. John will also provide leadership to the IT Professions across the wider public sector and enable public service transformation through the strategic deployment of technology which includes driving the uses of shared services. John will also act as the ‘face’ of UK Government IT both home and abroad.

Mark Taylor
Director of Developer and Platform Evangelism, Microsoft
Mark’s focus is on platform strategy and evangelism of the Microsoft platform to developers, IT professionals and partners. His team also managed Microsoft’s relationships with key partners including the venture capital community and Academia.

Mark re-joins Microsoft from Avanade (a Microsoft/Accenture joint venture) where he was UK MD from 2000 to 2007 and built the UK office into one of Avanade’s largest operations. Prior to Avanade, Mark worked for Microsoft in the UK as Director of Consulting within Microsoft Consulting Services and then head of Product Support Services, where he was an architect for the Global Support Model that is still in use today.