Paradigm Shift in Wireless Innovations for Hospitality
HTNG and the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) have combined forces to bring you a two-webinar series on the latest information and innovations coming out of the Wireless industry and the benefits hospitality brands and venues stand to gain. The full agenda can be seen below.
15th September
Wireless Revolution for Hospitality – Harnessing the power of 5G & Wi-Fi convergence
On September 15th, we will take a look at how the latest in Wi-Fi and 5G cellular technologies are coming together to benefit hospitality with improvements to connect guests, staff and ‘things,’ as well as greater operational efficiencies. We will also take a deep dive into how combining the power of Wi-Fi 6 and the addition of spectrum will enable transformative guest experiences and a raft of new use cases and opportunities. This webinar will also discuss acceleration strategies and hospitality use cases with multi-access edge computing.
08:30am - HTNG Introduction and State of the Industry Address
08:45am - The Enhanced Connected Guest Experience Through the Co-Adoption of 5G and Wi-Fi 6. - A Corning Perspective
09:15am - Wi-Fi 6: A Step Change in Technology
09:30am - Building Blocks of 5G and the Ecosystems that Support Them
09:45am - Leveraging Multi-Access Edge Computing for Hospitality Use Cases
10:00am - Ask the Experts Panel
Patrick Dunphy
CIO
Patrick’s responsibilities largely focus on member activities and workgroups. In addition to managing the ongoing activities of workgroups as well as coordinating insight meetings, Patrick is also responsible for directing HTNG’s internal systems strategy and architecture. Patrick holds several Microsoft systems certifications and is familiar with managing systems across distributed networks, and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Software Engineering. In his prior role, Patrick managed IT projects for a suburban Chicago school district, which totaled 25,000 users in 27 different buildings. In his free time, Patrick enjoys reading popular non/fiction.
Michael Blake, CAE
CEO, HTNG
Michael Blake is the CEO of HTNG. Michael previously served as the CIO of Commune Hotels & Resorts, encompassing Joie de Vivre, Thompson, Tommie and Alila Hotels. He provided strategic leadership and sound perspective to contribute to the management and evolution of Commune’s global IT functions. Michael was previously the CIO for Hyatt and set the global technology direction for their global footprint. Michael has over 20 years of experience in finance and technology in various roles. Before his CIO positions with Commune and Hyatt, Michael was SVP of IT for First Data, CFO of IT Finance at Kaiser Permanente and Director of IT Finance for Sears. In each role, he was the highest ranking IT Finance resource and key internal consultant and advisor to international senior leadership teams. Prior to that, Michael held various financial roles within United Airlines including the controller of the IT organization. Michael holds a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from the University of Utah, received his MBA in Finance and Economics from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and also his MS in Information Technology from Northwestern University. He also maintains several credentials and licenses: CPA, CMA, CISA and CITP. Michael served as a member of HTNG’s Board of Governors since 2009 and held the Treasurer position for many of those years.
Bio coming soon!
Derek Peterson
CTO, Boingo
Derek Peterson, Ph. D., is chief technology officer at Boingo Wireless. He is responsible for the company’s technical vision and strategy. Under his leadership, Boingo is pioneering the adoption and deployment of the latest IT and wireless network technologies including 5G, Passpoint, network virtualization and convergence. He is directly responsible for building and operating Boingo’s core technologies and systems, including web applications, client software, networks, authentication, billing, advertising, IPTV, business intelligence and IT infrastructure.
Dr. Peterson has deep telecommunications experience as a consultant, engineer, product manager and executive. Prior to joining Boingo in 2011, he served in strategic product roles at Oracle driving global launch campaigns for LTE adoption and billing software solutions.
He is a Wireless Broadband Alliance, MulteFire Alliance and New IP Agency board member, and a founding member of the Wireless Infrastructure Association’s Innovation & Technology Council. Dr. Peterson was named “CTO of the Year” in 2017 by the Los Angeles Business Journal and a 2015 “Wireless Industry Executive to Watch” byFierceWireless.
Dr. Peterson holds a BS in computer science from the University of Maryland, an MA in education and technology from the American Intercontinental University, and a Doctorate of Computer Science with a focus on enterprise information systems from Colorado Technical University. He is an adjunct professor for Colorado Technical University and an editor for the “International Journal of Strategic Information Technology and Applications.”
Chris Bruce
Managing Director of GlobalReach Technology
Chris is responsible for leading the GlobalReach Technology team to deliver world class Wi-Fi authentication and user experience services for Operators, on a global basis. Chris has over 15 years experience in the Wi-Fi Service Provider sector: as CEO BT Openzone: Director BT Global Sales and Consulting including Wi-Fi roaming and has previously held the posts of Chair and Co-Chair of the WBA, representing BT.
He has more than 30 years of international experience in the telecommunications industry in a range of general management, product, marketing and sales channel roles he was responsible for business growth in the data communications, mobile, internet hosting, global voice and wireless broadband sectors.
Chris has a deep interest in innovation, entrepreneurship and new technologies. Chris has acted as mentor to start-ups in programmes eg Cognicity Smart Cities Challenge, PWC’s Swiftscale programme, a support of the BT Infinity Labs and has been a board advisor to Pie Mapping. He has a specific interest in the Industrial Internet of Things and Smart Cities and is a member of the WBA Connected Cities Advisory Board.
Prior to joining Global Reach Technology in 2018, Chris was at BT during which time he was vice president for BT’s pan-European Applications Hosting business and a board director of Inet Spa, a publicly quoted Italian hosting business in which BT was a shareholder. In 1998 he was sales & marketing director of Telfort Business Mobile (The Netherlands), launching the first 1800 GSM service in Holland. While at BT he also spent a secondment with the British government Department of Trade & Industry (DTI), where he managed the UK Broadband Britain programme. Prior to BT, Chris held a number of positions in product marketing with Ericsson Business Systems, Ascom and CASE Communications PLC.
Stuart Strickland
Distinguished Technologist, Aruba HPE
Stuart Strickland is a Distinguished Technologist at Aruba Networks, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, where he leads the technical development of Aruba’s 5G strategy, including customer and partner engagements and representation in 3GPP, IEEE, the Wi-Fi Alliance, and the Wireless Broadband Alliance. He drives initiatives on spectrum allocation, Wi-Fi/cellular coexistence, edge computing, and heterogeneous network architectures. Prior to joining Aruba, Stuart led Qualcomm’s enterprise Wi-Fi/small cell convergence and hybrid location strategies, served as Vice President of CSR’s location-based services business unit, as CTO at Insiteo, as lead software architect for the Radio Network Controller of Siemens’ first 3G network, and as Assistant Professor of History at Northwestern University. Stuart earned his PhD from Harvard University, his BA from Columbia University.
Valerie Parker
Principal Technologist, Intel Network Business Incubator Division
Valerie J Parker is a Director and Principle Engineer of the 5G Infrastructure Edge for Intel Network Platform Group (NPG). She was one of the pioneering engineers in data plane packet processing, real time and determinism into virtualization, and multi-access edge computing (MEC). As part of the real time virtualization work, she drove different methodologies to reach less than 10us of latency. She drove and led Intel’s vRAN (Virtual Radio Access Network) software incorporating the ecosystem to develop a full stack optimizing to meet performance/watt defined by operators. She drove to open source software and open APIs to broaden the reach, security and innovation. She has made more than 30 contributions into the industry, wrote several white papers and been on several panels. She works strategically with Network Operators and Enterprises, as trusted advisor understanding technical, security and business requirements on 5G, multi-radio and edge computing. Her strategic nature has enabled her to look across different businesses and leverage technologies into new areas.
As part of the journey, Valerie has generated multiple patents in the area of telecommunications, autonomous vehicle, IOT, security and digital transactions. She also drives harvesting IP in multiple forums. Valerie, in previous roles has managed multi-faceted engineering, developed ASICs, firmware and test methodologies.
Bio coming soon!
Bio coming soon!
Dayna Kully
Co-founder, 5thGenWireless
Dayna has over 35 years of experience in sales, channel development, marketing and senior level management, specializing in technology for the hospitality market. Dayna is a co-founder and partner in 5thGenWireless, a consultancy specializing in hospitality technology and strategic investment planning for everything wireless and in-room entertainment. Dayna has held leadership roles in numerous companies specializing in hospitality technology, including VP, Hospitality Business Development for Enseo, a digital media solutions firm; Sr. Director Vertical Business Development at Corning MobileAccess, a leading distributed antenna system provider; VP, Sales and Marketing for IP3, a broadband gateway supplier. Early in her career, Dayna successfully managed sales, technical and operations teams at GE/RCA and Williams Communications, later joining Nortel Networks’ emerging optical and access group. Dayna later went on to lead successful broadband divisions as VP of Hospitality at both Everest Broadband and Mitel Networks. Prior to this, Dayna co-founded Brautovich/Kully, a product marketing firm offering expertise in the strategic marketing of telecommunications products. Dayna is actively engaged in HTNG, currently serves as Co-Chair as the Infrastructure Resource Team and has helped spawn multiple workgroups on topics such as Cellular, Wi-Fi, Central Authentication and Fiber-to-the-Room. Dayna holds a Bachelor’s degree with honors in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley.
Chris Bentivegna
Director of Strategy and Innovation, AT&T
Chris assists AT&T’s most strategic customers to deliver innovative solutions in the IoT, 5G, and mobile application space. Working across verticals, Chris has tackled projects ranging from helping food manufacturers provide greater supply chain visibility to streamlining operations for the largest airlines. With a current focus on Smart City and Venue operations, Chris recently enabled the first 5G broadcast of a sporting event and is tasked with helping our customers harness the power of 5G and edge computing.
Chris has 20 years of experience in software and mobile application development helping some of the world’s largest companies create industry leading solutions.
After graduating from the University of Florida with a degree in Engineering, Chris spend the next 7 years at Accenture where he grew from a hands-on developer to a Technology manager in their Communications and High-Tech organization. In this role, he was tasked with leading complex, cross functional engagements at such companies as Verizon Wireless, UPS, Cingular, WorldCom, and XM radio.
With AT&T, Chris has had a chance to meaningfully affect our customer’s business through technology. Projects of note include AT&T’s first ever Virtual Reality experience developed in. partnership with Carnival Cruise lines and development of an automobile smart battery that will alert owners weeks before failure.
Located in Tampa, FL, Chris is a new Dad and enjoys spending time with his family and plays in a competitive softball league. In addition, Chris serves on the IT Steering Committee of the Tampa Bay Crisis Center helping to define technology strategy in support of their critical mission.
Ajay Gupta
SVP for Business, Hughes Systique
Ajay Gupta, Senior Vice President for Business at Hughes Systique, is an experienced executive with over 25 years in technology innovation and leadership. Over the past several years, Ajay has worked on various cellular technologies from 2G to the current 5G. He works with travel, hospitality and retail to bring about large-scale digital transformation and efficiencies to operations and customer engagement.
Ajay’s efforts have brought significant efficiency gains to these industries as he continues to champion digital transformation to allow safe reopening during this Covid pandemic and beyond. Throughout his career, Ajay has been instrumental in bringing about transformative solutions to the industry. To meet the demand for rapid availability of telephony to the masses, he championed transformation from wired telephony technologies to wireless technologies, such as cellular and wireless local loop, into the telecom networks in the 1990s.
Ajay was also an early proponent of voice over Internet technologies, such as SIP and soft switching, and served as Director of the International Softswitch Consortium, where he worked on architectures and standards for multivendor and interoperable systems. This effort led to the emergence of several small and innovative softswitch technology companies, thus ending decades of the monopoly of a few large corporations. Currently, he is looking at the 5G technologies bridging the gap between the carriers and enterprises.
Yvette Vincent
Yvette Vincent served as Delaware North’s first-ever chief technology officer (CTO), a position based at the company’s global headquarters in Buffalo, N.Y.
As CTO, Vincent was responsible for creating the vision, strategy and roadmap for the company’s technology platforms.
Vincent, who was appointed to the CTO current role in January 2018, was with Delaware North for more than 20 years, and prior to the CTO role, filled a critical interim position as the leader of the Information Technology (IT) Department. She served as the vice president of technology applications and solutions, with responsibility for Delaware North’s mobile platform, system integration platform, and various mission-critical business systems. She and her team played a leading role in helping Delaware North reach aggressive goals to move its application assets to the cloud.
Vincent started with Delaware North in 1997 as a field system project manager, gaining field experience at the company’s Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex operation. She also spent three years working as a technologist for Delaware North Sportservice.
Vincent earned an MBA at Canisius College in Buffalo, N.Y., as well as a bachelor’s degree in math/computer science at D’Youville College in Buffalo.
Jessica Koch
Business Development Director of Sports & Entertainment and Hospitality
Corning Optical Communications
Jessica Koch is the Business Development Director of Sports &Entertainment and the Hospitality verticals at Corning Optical Communications. Jessica focuses on expanding the adoption of future-ready infrastructure in Sports, Entertainment and other large public venue environments. After spending 15 years in various telecommunications and technology consulting and sales positions, her passion for connecting people and their devices led her to Corning, where she accelerated next-generation connectivity efforts in the Western U.S. Her current role is a vertically focused, national role in Market Development working withstadiums, arenas, convention centers and large multi-use developments. She also sits on the Advisory Board for The Los Angeles Sports & Entertainment Commission (LASEC), a non-profit organization officially designated by Los Angeles Tourism to attract, secure and support high-profile sports and entertainment events in Los Angeles.Jessica holds a BA in Organizational Leadership from Chapman University.
