BI-Day - BI-day.be; the hotspot for Business Intelligence and Information Management

Howard Dresner, Howard Dresner is Chief Research Officer of Dresner Advisory Services, LLC, an independent advisory firm and a well known authority and author in the areas of Business Intelligence and Performance Management.

Howard has 30 years of IT industry experience with 22 years in the Business Intelligence market. He spent 13 years at Gartner, where he was a Research Fellow and Lead Analyst for BI. He also served as Chief Strategy Officer at Hyperion Solutions prior to forming Dresner Advisory Services.

Howard is a frequent speaker around the globe and has published two books on the subject – including: Profiles in Performance – Business Intelligence Journeys and the Roadmap for Change (John Wiley & Sons, November 2009) and The Performance Management Revolution: Business Results through Insight and Action (John Wiley & Sons, November 2007).

He also publishes several landmark industry research studies annually: The Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence Market Study ™ and The Mobile Business Intelligence Market Study. More information can be found at www.business-intelligence-study.com.

Howard also supports a blog, where he muses about the industry

Hans Patrick Hultgren, President, Genesee Academy LLC. Hans is a Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence educator, trainer, speaker, advisor and consultant. He is currently working on Business Intelligence and Enterprise Data Warehousing (EDW) with a focus on Data Vault primarily in Stockholm, Denver and NYC. GA offers the certified data vault data modeler CDVDM seminars around the world and continues a focus on e-Learning with On-Demand DWBI training at www.DataVaultAcademy.com

Steve Hoberman, is the most requested data modeling instructor in the world. Introduced at over 50 international conferences as a "data modeling guru" to "data modeling addict" to "data modeling rock star".
Steve balances the formality and precision of data modeling with the realities of building software systems with severe time, budget, and people constraints. In his consulting and teaching, he focuses on templates, tools, and guidelines to reap the benefits of data modeling with minimal investment. He taught his first data modeling class in 1992 and has educated more than 10,000 people about data modeling and business intelligence techniques since then, spanning every continent except Africa and Antarctica.
Steve is known for his entertaining, interactive teaching and lecture style (watch out for flying candy!), and organizations around the globe have brought Steve in to teach his Data Modeling Master Class, which is recognized as the most comprehensive data modeling course in the industry. Steve is the author of five books on data modeling, including the bestseller Data Modeling Made Simple.
He is the founder of the Design Challenges group, inventor of the Data Model Scorecard®, and CEO of Technics Publications. You can learn more about his books and other innovative and practical works at Technics Publications' website, www.technicspub.com. To receive Steve's monthly Design Challenges, visit his website at www.stevehoberman.com.
Steve can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Donna Burbank, is the senior director of worldwide product marketing for CA Technologies' data modeling solutions, with than more than 15 years of experience in the areas of data management, metadata management, and enterprise architecture. Donna has a unique perspective on the field of data modeling – having helped design and produce several of the leading metadata and data modeling tools in the market today, as well as having spent many years as a consultant implementing these solutions. She has also been active in industry organizations and standards bodies within the industry.

Shawn Rogers, Vice President of Research, Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing at EMA (Enterprise Management Associates).
Shawn has more than 19 years of hands-on IT experience, with a focus on Internet-enabled technology. In 2004 he co-founded the BeyeNETWORK and held the position of Executive Vice President and Editorial Director. Shawn guided the company's international growth strategy and helped the BeyeNETWORK grow to 18 Web sites around the world, making it the largest and most read community covering the business intelligence, data warehousing, performance management and data integration space. Today he continues his relationship with the Network in the capacity of Technology Advisor and remains a partner in the firm.

Prior to co-founding the BeyeNETWORK, Shawn was Internet Business Development Director at Thomson Media (now SourceMedia), President of Achieve Communications and a partner at DMReview magazine (now Information Management) – where he was Vice President as well as Publisher and Editorial Director of DMReview.com, a leading business intelligence and data warehousing Web site.

Shawn's passions are rooted in the online world, focusing on analytics, social media, business intelligence, enterprise 2.0, SaaS and open source. He applies his nearly two decades of experience to every client engagement.

Shawn studied fine arts and photography at Columbia College, Chicago Illinois

Tom Davenport, a world renowned thought leader and author in the area of analytics, joined Deloitte as a game changer, supporting Deloitte Analytics strategy in the U.S. and globally.

Guru, thought leader, pioneer, academic, business consultant

Davenport's seminal work, Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning has been ranked by Harvard Business Review as one of the 12 most important management ideas of the past decade. His more recent book, Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results was named one of the top 15 "must reads" for 2010 by CIO Insight.

Davenport holds the President's Chair in Information Technology and Management at Babson College, has a PhD from Harvard University in organizational behavior, and has taught at a number of highly rated universities. His professional experience also includes serving as executive director at Accenture's Institute for Strategic Change and directing research at McKinsey & Company and Ernst & Young. He currently advises several U.S. intelligence agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Thomas Christiansen, Thomas is the CTO at timeXtender and the inventor of the application timeXtender – an intuitive and simple Data Warehousing application for the SQL Server based Business Intelligence market. He is the driving force behind timeXtender's R&D department, but also manages to find time to work with partners and customers around the world. Thomas is at the forefront of the movement to involve business users more tightly in BI implementations, and he is a recognized advocate for reducing the technical barriers of BI.

Prior to timeXtender, Thomas worked as senior developer and lead consultant in a number of Dynamics AX and Business Intelligence consultancies. Thomas started his IT career at a large Danish manufacturing company where he worked with several ERP platforms and database technologies over a thirteen year period.

Gertjan Vlug, is a born entrepreneur and owner of BIReady. Gertjan founded several companies in the BI-space. He has been working in the BI area since the late 1980s for BI-tool vendors like Cognos (now IBM) and Business Objects (now SAP) in (international) Services, Commercial and Management roles.

This expertise and his entrepreneurship made it a natural next step to start his own business.

His first company was a total-solution organization, reselling best-of-breed tools (mainly well respected BI-tools) together with excellent consultancy.

He also started regional business for companies with promising new BI-products.

In the 90's Gertjan started to discuss the lack of generic data warehouse products, where this could bring such a tremendous advantages for organizations in getting the right management information in time, and finally being capable of adopting business requirements in a flexible and accurate way.

Jef Van der Wee, is since 2006 CIO and advisor business strategy development at the Flemish Departement of Work & Social Economy. In this role he is responsible for a challenging IT-investment program for building a better service for both internal clients as the public. Working with both business & IT makes that he as a broad business insight and brings this together in his daily work. Working with state of the art technology and broad SOA-implementations his goal is to build customer oriented applications with much added value. Since 2009 the Departement started with the implementation of a BI for the public-application for labour market statistics. Since june 1st a totally new implementation of the OBIEE 11G with integrated maps is available on http://www.werk.be. Both stand-alone application or integrated views in the Drupal-framework are available.

Prior to his role as CIO he worked 5 years as policy advisor in the Flemish Employment Administration. Jef owns a master in Laboursociology from the Leuven University and a degree in business administration of the Leuven Postgraduate School.

Omar Akabi, is the IT Domain Manager SAP at MIVB-STIB, the Brussels public transportation company that provides over 311 million of journeys by bus, metro and tram each year.

He has 12 years of experience in the SAP environment of which 7 were spend at MIVB-STIB where he led multiple projects and programs in the logistics, finance and maintenance modules. For nearly 2 years he has been responsible for the BI team and is transforming this department from an operational to a strategic level.

Peggy Daneels, ICT Director at Vandeputte Safety

In all here projects Peggy always applies ICT-alignment and ICT management.

Martin Willcox, Director, Platform and Solutions Marketing, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) Teradata Corporation

Martin Willcox's career in IT spans 14 years, 5 organizations and 10 roles. In his current role (Director of Platform and Solutions Marketing for EMEA), Martin is responsible for articulating Teradata's strategy and the nature, value and differentiation of Teradata's platform and solution offerings to EMEA customers, prospects and 3rd party influencers.

Martin is a "poacher-turned-gamekeeper", having been a Teradata customer for several years at Co-operative Retail before joining Teradata as an Enterprise Architecture consultant in Autumn 2004.

Martin holds a BSc (Hons) in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Sheffield and a Postgraduate Certificate in Computing for Commerce and Industry from the Open University, is married with three children and is a lapsed supporter of Sheffield Wednesday Football Club.

Martin is a regular contributor to the Teradata EMEA Blog.

Guy Malfliet, is the teamleader for BI projects in the Atlas Copco Compressor Technique Service division, which is part of the Atlas Copco group, an international company that manufactures and delivers service on compressed air and gas equipment, generators, construction and mining equipment, industrial tools and assembly systems.

Johan Decoster, currently project leader of the Merchant Bank data warehouse project at BNP Paribas Fortis' corporate banking department, is an ICT specialist in analysis, design and project management, with a multi-disciplinary background and 13 years of experience in projects, operations and offshore delivery centers in the Belgian financial industry. Johan coordinates the operational activities and projects: team staffing, planning, budget, SLA and KPI reporting.

Stefaan Paridaens, Datawarehouse Development manager at BICS, member of the Belgacom Group.

Stefaan has more then 11 years of experience in datawarehousing, from which 10 years at Proximus – Belgacom Mobile.
Last year Stefaan moved to BICS, also part of the Belgacom Group, an international company, providing global solutions for Voice, Messaging, Roaming, Connectivity and Mobile Financial Services to hundreds of telecommunciation providers around the world. 

Arjan Heijmenberg , Manager Business Development EMA at Jaspersoft, is responsible for system integrator partners in French speaking Europe, Benelux and Africa.

Arjen has held partner sales and marketing responsibilities for Business Intelligence software companies throughout Europe. He has a degree in International Marketing from Berlin Business School of Economics and is fluent in Dutch, English, French and German. 

Sven Deckers,  Developer of Web Technologies at Kava

Sven Deckers joined KAVA (Koninklijke Apothekersvereniging Van Antwerpen) as Developer of Web Technologies after successfully rounding up his internship. With more than 9 years of experience in web-based applications (Perl and JAVA), he is responsible for the custom CRM system, parts of the website and online applications, and the bi-annual publication of a book which contains all kinds of information on para-pharmacy. He still mainly develops and since a couple of months, he has been in charge of the Business Intelligence project to implement a single platform reporting solution. Sven got his own projects and responsibilities as each developer has its own segment in the company's IT infrastructure. Sven owns a degree in "Toegepaste Informatica" at Karel De Grote.

Tom Cahil, Vice President EMEA at Jaspersoft, responsible for building the EMEA sales organization and driving both channel and direct sales. Prior to Jaspersoft, Tom Cahill held sales management responsibilities at a number of European and US-based software organisations with responsibility for US, European and Asian regions (Valista, Serco, CampusIT) covering both Fortune 500 accounts as well as SMB markets. Previously, in the ICT industry, Tom held the position of Managing Director at Interxion, Europe's leading operator of Internet Data Centres, where he established and managed the UK and Irish operations.

Tom has also held the posts of COO at ETP and General Manager Europe at Music Control (now a Nielsen Company).

Tom has a degree in International Marketing from Dublin City University and is fluent in several European languages.

Rudi Bils, manager of the ADM CRM Reporting team, coordinates several assets related to Customer Relationship Management and Business Intelligence, with a background of more then 20 years of experience in data warehousing & reporting related projects in BNP Paribas Fortis, serving the performance measurement needs for several business lines.
Rudi coordinates the operational activities, projects and assets: team staffing, planning and budget, within the Application Development Management department of BNP Paribas Fortis..

Kris Jacobs, currently BI architect of the Merchant Bank data warehouse application at BNP Paribas Fortis' corporate banking department.
Kris is a multi-disciplinary BI specialist with more than 10 years experience in implementation, analysis and design of BI and DWH solutions. He interacts with business to translate business requirements into functional data models, coördinates a team of functional and technical analysts and guards the quality of the overall solution .