Seminar chair

Sara Coburn began her career as a researcher for Radio 4's The World at One and The World this Weekend, and then moved over to Channel 4's Business Daily. When Business Breakfast began, Sara was engaged as producer and then took to presenting. She also acted as editor with full responsibility for the content. Currently presenting  BBC Business Breakfast and News 24  business output, Sara's tasks range from studio presentation to interviews and live outside broadcasts. She also co-hosted the personal finance programme Its Your Money with Declan Curry and Tanya Beckett.

Socitm President

Angela Waite is Head of ICT at Canterbury City Council. Prior to becoming President in April 2005, Angela had been chair of Socitm's Performance Management Group.  Her interest in performance management reflects responsibilities in her day job, where she was involved in the CPA process as one of the District pathfinders. She is on the Programme board delivering the Kent Connects LGOL partnership project connecting services across Kent, and was a member of the project board of the e-Citizen National Project.  Angela has worked in local government since 1988, with Rochester City council through LG reorganisation to Medway Unitary council, where she helped create and manage the ICT team, and developed SLAs and performance measures using the Socitm KPIs. She started in ICT in 1970 with the Central Electricity Generating board as application developer and systems support.

Speakers

Roger Lamb is the Business Applications Manager at the DTI supported RFID Centre. He has experience as a senior project manager and client services director with international supply chain expertise and project management experience for many Fortune 500 companies. Roger has managed consulting teams for IBM, Unisys and GE Global eXchange Services, a provider of business-to-business integration, synchronisation and collaboration solutions. As part of his session, Roger will discuss the implementation considerations for an RFID project.

Alex Black has recently retired after working in the computer industry since the mid-1960s.  He started as a trainee programmer on ICT 1300s, and went on to be a systems developer, designer, consultant, lecturer and IT Manager.  His employers include ICL, The National Computing Centre and Congleton Borough Council.  Since 2000, he has worked for regional e-Government partnerships, firstly in Cheshire and latterly with the North West E Government Group (NWeGG).  NWeGG is one of nine regional e-Government partnerships and is considered to be one of the best at delivering value to its 46 local authority partners.

Crispin O'Connell is the Chief ICT Officer at Cardiff City Council has been involved with the development, implementation and ongoing operation of many Council systems and services. Crispin joined local government in 1978 and was appointed as Cardiff County Council's IT Support Manager in 1996.  In 1998, he was promoted to Assistant Director for Information Services, and subsequently appointed as Chief ICT Officer in 1999.  In 2000, he attained an MBA from the University of Wales. Since 2001, as well as being responsible for all of the Council's ICT systems, Crispin led on the design and establishment of the Council's contact centre services, which now include the award winning Connect to Cardiff, Connect to Out of Hours Cardiff, Consumer Direct Wales, Connect to Blaenau Gwent Partnership and the Single Non Emergency Number for Cardiff.

Thomas Power is Chairman of Social Business Network Ecademy founded in 1998 with his spouse Penny Power.  With 72,000 members in over 150 countries around the globe, Ecademy is an online community aimed at the self employed who work from home. Ecademy acts as a research base for Thomas and Penny's research interviews, books, speaking and consulting services. Thomas has conducted 8,000 interviews with members since 1998.