Archive for January, 2009
Entrepreneurial Series Roundtable Event:
“Capital Formation”
December 3, 2009
5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Bradley, Arant, Boult, Cummings, LLC.
Roundabout Plaza | 1600 Division Street, Suite 700 | Nashville, TN
Click Here to Register Online
Panelists:

Vic Gatto
Partner, Solidus Company
Vic is a Partner of Solidus Company, an early-stage venture capital company in Nashville, TN. Solidus invests primarily in three industries: healthcare services, applied technology, and media/communications. Vic is responsible for sourcing, analyzing, and structuring new investments in addition to monitoring existing portfolio companies. Prior to joining Solidus in 2007, he worked for six years with another venture firm: Massey Burch Capital Corp. Before switching to the investor side of the table, Vic co-founded and subsequently sold a software company in Atlanta. He lives in Nashville with his wife and two sons, has a graduate degree from Vanderbilt’s Owen School of Management and a BA from Amherst College.
John Chadwick
Managing Partner, Claritas Capital
John Chadwick is the Managing Partner of Claritas Capital. Prior to forming Claritas Capital, John served as a principal of Richland Ventures, one of the largest venture firms in the Southeast with over $340 million in assets under management across three venture funds. John has over fifteen years of experience in financial services, with over ten years of experience in venture capital.
During his tenure with Richland Ventures, John represented the firm on the boards of directors of Axolotl Corporation; The Delta Group; halftheplanet.com; Mattress Giant (acquired by Freeman Spogli); Network One Communications; Swell, Inc.; SynHRgy H.R. Technologies (acquired by Marsh & McClellan); and, TORCH Health Care (acquired by Merrill Gardens). He served as a visitor to the board of directors of Mainbancorp, Inc. (acquired by Prosperity Bancshares).
Currently, John represents Claritas Capital on the boards of directors for Empyrean Benefit Solutions; Blue Chip Surgical Center Partners, LLC; Continuum 700 (advisory board); eDō Interactive, Inc.; Filedby, Inc.; Sanovia Corporation; and, StudioNow, Inc. In addition, John serves as a member of the Board of Trustees for Ensworth School. John graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.A. in 1989, and graduated from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with an M.B.A. in 1995.
James C. Phillips, Jr.
Vice President & CFO, XMi Holdings, Inc.
James C. Phillips, Jr. is Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of XMi Holdings, Inc. He also serves as President of the XMi Capital, a corporate finance transactions advisory firm.
Mr. Phillips has spent his entire 18 year career advising entrepreneurs in corporate development transactions, having completed nearly 50 deals over that time. He is also an expert in business valuation and has completed
business valuation assignments for submission to the Department of Labor, Internal Revenue Service, bankruptcy cases, divorce cases, and estate planning cases.
For the last six years, Mr. Phillips has held the corporate development role at XMi Holdings. When he first joined, XMi had six employees and needed to materially increase scale. Starting in April 2003 and continuing over the next five years, Mr. Phillips proceeded to lead 17 acquisitions or startups for XMi and its affiliates. Today, these firms employ approximately 425 people, and generate over $120 million in revenue. During that time, he also took on increasingly greater responsibility with XMi including being promoted to Chief Financial Officer.
Christopher P. Rand
Tri-Star Technology Ventures
Moderator:

Chris Sloan
Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP
Chris is a corporate and intellectual property lawyer specializing in representing entrepreneurs, start-ups and other emerging businesses and also in handling complex software and other IT transactions for both small and large companies alike. He has represented many early-stage, high-growth businesses in connection with business planning and formation, venture capital funding, drafting and negotiating vendor and customer agreements, strategic contract negotiations, mergers & acquisitions, intellectual property protection, and other general business law and intellectual property law issues. He often serves as outside general counsel for these types of companies.
Chris regularly represents both technology and brick-and-mortar clients in connection with software, IT, and other vendor contract negotiations, including software and healthcare IT transactions valued as high as $100 million. He is responsible for advising many of the firms largest hospital clients on IT and IP issues.
Chris takes pride in providing his clients with practical, cost-effective advice tailored for each client’s unique business objectives. He is actively involved in the technology and entrepreneur communities and he is frequent author, speaker, board member, and leader in that community.
A Bumpy Road Webcast: August 19
Introduction to Cloud Computing:
Insights and Implications for
Business Leaders
Is cloud computing the next Big Thing?
The Holy Grail of business computing has always been based on the idea of simply “buying” a technology-based service when you need it, using only as much of it as you require, and “paying” only for what you use… no matter where you are. In many ways, that is the concept behind Cloud Computing.
The ramifications of this concept may ultimately be as profound as the advent of the internet – affecting how applications are implemented and transforming many business processes.
We invite you to learn more about where things stand, what’s on the horizon, and how you can help your business manage and leverage your information resources more effectively!!
Register now for a free web seminar.
Wednesday, August 19, 11:00 AM ET
Topics to be covered:
Cloud computing concepts
The business impact of cloud computing
The IT impact of cloud computing
Getting started
Who should attend:
> Business decision-makers wanting to better understand today’s emerging technologies and their potential impact
> IT decision-makers looking for insights into how, when, and where to consider deployment of cloud based services
Speaker:
Ray Trakimas
Vice President
Consulting Services Enterprise Initiatives
IBM
The Bumpy Road Series is a free webcast which each month tackles – in an educational manner – a different business problem area. The goal of these discussions is to offer business decision makers useful ideas for improving the application of technology to their business – all in the context of today’s difficult economy.
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JAN
Laure Hughes Bio
Laurie Hughes is an executive and attorney with twenty-five years experience in business affairs, business development, and copyright licensing. She is skilled in developing and executing licensing strategies for both copyright owners and digital content providers. In addition to her law practice, Laurie is a principal in Hughes-Kessler Consulting, an intellectual property rights management assessment consulting firm. She has completed meditation training and serves as a music and entertainment industry expert for IP Mediation Group, a national IP mediation service.
Laurie was most recently VP Business Affairs & General Counsel for TouchTunes Corporation, a company which grew from a start up into the world’s largest out-of-home entertainment network and owner of numerous patents and trademarks. She was responsible for the strategic and operational leadership of departments overseeing music programming, acquisition and distribution of content to the network, copyright research and licensing, contract administration and royalty allocation and distribution. Her department obtained rights to millions of works and distributed royalties for over 750 million uses each year. She negotiated licenses with all major and large independent record labels and publishers and all three U.S. performing rights organizations. Her department also obtained rights from thousands of independent record labels and music publishers. Laurie established some of the first digital licenses with Canadian and Mexican collective licensing agencies. She also liaised with outside counsel to protect more than 20 trademarks in the US, Canada, Mexico, China, Taiwan, Brazil and India and advised the company and supervised lobbyists on potential copyright law revisions.
Hughes was previously AVP, Business Affairs at ASCAP. Her primary focus was the development of industry-wide license agreements that grew existing revenue each year and created new revenue streams, resulting in millions of dollars of revenue to copyright owners. She led a team of licensing, legal, and economics executives in developing license rates, terms and strategy in negotiations with trade and industry associations, including colleges and universities, satellite radio, concert promoters, hotels, municipalities and major sports leagues.
Laurie began her career as an attorney at SESAC, where she rose to VP Legal & International Affairs. At SESAC, she served as General Counsel during the transition of the performing rights organization from a sixty-year old family-operated firm to an entrepreneurial, investor owned company. She appeared as counsel in Copyright Royalty Tribunal distribution proceedings and testified at numerous state legislative hearings in opposition to bills regulating and interfering with copyright licensing and enforcement. She also served as corporate advocate during meetings with Congressional representatives and their staffs. She has been a speaker on rights and licensing at numerous trade and industry association conferences including:
- Intellectual Property Law Section of State Bar of California (April 2009)
- SELAW (November 2008) World Intellectual Property Organization (2007)
- Association of Independent Music Publishers (2006)
- North American Folk Music & Dance Alliance North American (2005)
- Kagan & Associates Pay Per View Summit (2003)
- National Speakers Association Annual Convention (2000) She is an alumna of Leadership Music (class of ’92), and a member of the Tennessee Bar Association, Copyright Society of the USA (former trustee), Copyright Society of the South, and founding member of SOURCE, Inc., an association of executive and professional women in the Nashville Music Industry.
Laurie has a B.A. in government from Smith College, and a J.D. from the University of Memphis. She has also completed basic and advanced negotiation training in intensive summer workshops at the Harvard Law School Negotiation Projects.
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JAN
John R. Morrow
John R. Morrow
Business Development, Corporate Development, Special Projects, Senior Vice President, Managing Director, Chief Executive
Founder: 100 Top Hospitals: Benchmarks for Success®
Creator: NRC Patient Satisfaction Index™
Founder: The Data-Advantage Hospital Value Index™
- Twenty-seven years experience in health information systems and content including: database publishing, clinical and financial decision support, outcomes analysis, benchmarking, quantitative best practices and consumer health new media. \
- Ten years merger & acquisition in corporate environment, executing over a dozen deals. Strong strategy, business and corporate development skills. Successful track record of acquisitions, joint ventures, sponsorships and out-licensing of content.
- Innovator and motivator of people and programs in support of sales and marketing strategies. Strong with product lifecycle and business growth strategies. Experience with re-structuring and new business integration.
- Industry leader comfortable on the podium, in the boardroom and with Congressional briefings.
- Advisor to health information executives
- Successful track record in public company environment
John Morrow is the principal of The Ratings Guy, LLC, and advises information companies and others interested in using provider performance data to assist with strategic health care decision support. Current active advisory projects include:
Restructuring of a public health information technology company,
Industry advisor to a publicly traded health information survey and research company,
Advisor to a private consumer health information company
Strategy advisor to a leading health information decision support content provider,
Technical advisor to investors and firms involved in M&A due diligence
Advisor to an application development company deploying Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault PHR engines
Morrow was senior vice president of HealthGrades Inc. He brought to the company experience with proprietary methodology development, database acquisition and development, product distribution, channel development and new business growth. As a member of the executive management team he guided the strategic growth of the business and its brand. Morrow joined the de-listed company at $.04/share and exited the NASDAQ listed company at $7.00/share within three years.
Prior to joining Health Grades, Morrow was Senior Vice President and Publisher with HCIA (dba Solucient and Thomson-Reuters). Morrow identified businesses and products for acquisition; led the Syndicated Products business unit and the International business unit; directed the out-licensing of the company’s intellectual property; managed business relationships with major consulting/audit firms; formulated highly visible brands such as 100 Top Hospitals and created or managed co-development and marketing alliances with major corporate business partners such as Ernst & Young, Deloitte, McKesson, Siemens, Cerner and WebMD.
In 1993 Morrow founded the 100 Top Hospitals: Benchmarks for Success® program which was produced by HCIA and thrives today as a Thomson-Reuters initiative. As publisher for HCIA, Morrow has published in the areas of inpatient outcomes, performance measurement, longitudinal analysis, ambulatory outcomes, clinical quality measurement and cost management.
Morrow was CEO of CHKS Ltd, the UK’s largest independent outcomes performance consultancy. Morrow returned to the U.S. to assist with the packaging and sale of HCIA to VS&S for $135 million. Immediately following the sale HCIA merged with Sachs Group to create Solucient. Prior to joining HCIA, Morrow was general manager for the health care information systems practice of Ferranti International plc that developed hospital and nursing home management information systems in the U.S. and U.K.
Morrow, an Eagle Scout, holds a degree from the Sellinger School of Business, Loyola College in Maryland. He resides in Belfast, Maine with his wife and triplet children.
28
JAN
Eric Reuthe
Eric Reuthe has over 15 years of experience, as an entrepreneur, working with start-ups, and managing and developing technology in a variety of industries including medical device, semiconductor, and business and financial services. Currently, he is the Vice President of Product Engineering at edō Interactive a company that is developing technologies that leverage payment card and platforms to create digital marketing and advertising networks. At edō, he is responsible for the technical design and development of edo’s products and service platforms and is involved with patenting several business methods and supporting technologies. Eric is actively working on and inventing much of edō’s technology related to creating consumer incentives through the use of financial offsets and real-time transaction analysis.
For two and half years prior to edō Interactive, Eric was the CIO at CompuPay, the country’s largest privately held Payroll and Tax Services provider. There he led major re-engineering efforts of core processing engines and internet applications, as well as doing technology and IP due diligence for several acquisitions as part of an expansion strategy.
In 1998 Eric started Stroudwater Technologies, LLC, a company specializing in software development and technology consulting. As the CTO at Stroudwater he developed consulting and software engineering methodologies for the company and clients, and frequently worked with start-ups who were developing technology assets core to their businesses. He also frequently performed technology due diligence for clients that were making technology related acquisitions of other companies and products
Eric’s experiences in dealing with intellectual property began in college when he did market research for IDEXX Laboratories to help identify products for acquisition targets and ended up as part of a teaming plowing through licensing and patent documents tied to some of the acquisitions. He was also lucky enough to get to work in one of Digital Equipment Corp’s defect analysis labs during school breaks, where he had the chance to play with really expense of digital photography equipment (it was the early 90’s). Right out of college Eric worked in the medical device industry where he worked acted as a liaison between surgeons and engineers designing orthopedic and neurosurgical devices. He also helped compile 510(k) submissions for both hip and knee implants. Figuring out how to manage all this information is what led him to information technology and software engineering.
Eric has a degree in Philosophy and Logic from Brown University and studied Applied Computer Science briefly at Harvard University.
28
JAN
Suzanne Kessler
Suzanne Kessler is an entertainment attorney and documentary filmmaker. She began her legal career at Rosenfeld, Meyer & Susman, LLP, a Beverly Hills entertainment law firm, where she worked in the transactional entertainment department, focusing in the film, music, copyright, and trademark areas. She serviced studios and production companies (such as MGM, Universal, and Turner Broadcasting System), record companies (such as MCA Records and Curb Records), and assorted independent film and television producers and talent. During six years at Universal Music Group (“UMG”), she was the Director of Business and Legal Affairs for A&M Records in Hollywood and served as Vice President of Business Development for UMG’s Nashville operations. While at UMG, Kessler helped develop new media strategies and facilitate intellectual property anti-piracy efforts.
Most recently, Kessler has provided entertainment and intellectual property law counsel as a business and legal affairs consultant to recording artists, artist managers, and film and television production companies, including The Walt Disney Company. She graduated from Brown University with honors in English, earned her master’s degree in documentary film production from Stanford University, and her law degree from Stanford Law School. At Stanford Law School, Kessler served as co-chair of the Entertainment Law Society and was awarded first prize in the Nathan Burkan Memorial Competition for excellence in copyright law research and writing, sponsored by ASCAP.
Kessler has appeared as a guest speaker at many prominent entertainment industry conferences, including SXSW (South By Southwest), the Cutting Edge Music Business Conference and Roots Music Gathering, and the Southeastern Regional Entertainment & Sports Law Conference. She is affiliated with a variety of legal and entertainment organizations, including the American Bar Association, the Tennessee Bar Association, the Nashville Bar Association, the Los Angeles County Bar Association, the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music. She is the current Chair of the Nashville Bar Association Entertainment and Sports Law Committee. Kessler is the past Executive Director of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, Nashville Chapter (the GRAMMY organization). She serves on the W.O. Smith Nashville Community Music School Advisory Council, is a former Board member of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, and graduated from the Leadership Music program. Kessler is an Adjunct Professor at Vanderbilt University Law School, teaching courses on entertainment industry transactions and intellectual property licensing within the Technology and Entertainment Law Program.
Her recent film credits include: Co-Producer of the A&E Network documentary “Hairdos & Heartache: the Women of Country Music,” an exploration of the history of female country music artists; Producer and Director of “Boxing With the Bard: the Making of Marcus Hummon’s ‘Surrender Road’” for the Nashville Opera Association (which aired on Nashville Public Television, PBS), documenting the world premiere of an opera composed by a Grammy-winning Nashville songwriter; and Production Consultant on the CMT documentary “American Revolutions: The Highwaymen,” a behind-the-scenes look at the final recording sessions of The Highwaymen group, which was comprised of Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson. Kessler is currently working on launching a production with WLIW, PBS member station in New York.
| Application | Enterprise | Layer “8″ | Innovations in Security |
Innovations in Security Track – Room #210
9:35 – 10:25
Next Generation Threat Mitigation for the Distributed Enterprise
by Scott Lucas, Director of Product Marketing, Juniper Networks
Today’s enterprise is at the center of a number of conflicting trends related to changes in the network. Data centers are consolidating as enterprises are scaling beyond headquarters to regional, branch, and remote locations, and often the network functions as the primary connection between these locations. In order to be competitive, today’s enterprise network must be open for business wherever, whenever, and however business is done. Unfortunately, these highly distributed environments can also open the network—and the enterprise itself—to threats that are motivated by everything from mischief to profit. This session will discuss these trends and dangers as well as how Juniper Networks Adaptive Threat Management Solutions make work forces more productive with fewer security and application delivery risks, all while significantly reducing total cost of ownership (TCO). We will discuss unique differentiators of an open and cooperative systems based approach which provides real-time threat defense and application delivery along with unparalleled network-wide visibility and control.
10:40 – 11:30
Title: Legal Perspective
by Mark Rasch, Managing Director, FTI Consulting
As Congress continues to debate healthcare reform, one of the pressing issues relates to the use, storage, transfer, security and privacy of personal health information. The stimulus bill already substantially changed and expanded the rules under HIPAA, covering broad industries which were previously not considered “coverd entities” under HIPAA. New regulations recently published by the Federal Trade Commission now require holders of health information to notify patients and others about breaches that may affect the privacy of their health information. This in turn may require data breach monitoring, and enhanced security.
Many of the proposals for healthcare reform would likely result in greater system complexity, and greater transfer of health data. “Hidden” provisions of some of the bills also allow insurers who provide coverage based upon income to have access to customer’s IRS tax forms in addition to PHI. Thus, while reforms focus on insurers and providers, they have significant impact on IT security and privacy. This session will focus on these new developments and some of the challenges facing IT security professionals in the new regulatory field.
2:00 – 2:50
Recent Innovations in Information Security: Data and Virtualization
by Bob Kalka, Security Business Unit Executive, IBM Tivoli Software Division
Studies confirm that virtualized computing environments and the protection of sensitive business data are two of the strongest growth areas in IT today. This session will examine several recent innovations in the information security industry, particularly how new security solutions can help establish better controls around sensitive business data within virtualized environments. This session will be presented by Bob Kalka, a 15-year information security veteran from IBM Corporation.
3:00 – 3:50
Data Loss Prevention: Why Data Breaches Happen?
by Jennifer Ellard, Senior Product Marketing Manager, DLP Division, Symantec
Which organizations would want to be in the news because of a data breach? Threats to corporate information continue to increase and IT organizations now have to worry about internal and external attack vectors – even employees who may either intentionally or accidentally risk critical information. Loss of this critical information may result in a financial loss, damage to the organization’s brand and reputation, loss of customers, loss of competitive advantage and regulatory penalties. The current approach to security with different security strategies, applications and processes working independently of each other make it difficult to evaluate the impact of security breaches and quickly take appropriate actions in times of crisis. When considering security solutions, IT must evaluate a holistic strategy or risk putting their organization at risk.
Attend this session and learn:
*Why data breaches happen
*How you can prevent breaches as part of a holistic security strategy
*What benefits customers are seeing
27
JAN
Insourcing
Insourcing:
Discussion Overview: This panel will include a discussion of insourcing. In particular, we will discuss the best model to leverage resources internally so to maximize those applications and functions that move to an outsourcer. We will discuss management processes and outsource development opportunities.
Proposed Panel Discussion Questions:
· How did you decide to application support internally?
· What are the potential pitfalls for internally developed applications or group functions?
· What software applications are ideally suited for insourcing? What other functions are good candidates?
· What are the typical decision processes that companies go through to determine if they should insource support, BPO, or software development?
· What have you learned from going from outsourced back to insourced?
· What have been the stumbling blocks for insourcing?
· Can you discuss SLAs (Service Level Agreements) and how you would structure them for each of the different options?
· Are there any other insources best practices that you would like to share? [Open to All]
27
JAN
Mikell F. van der Laan
Mikell F. van der Laan
Manager of Architecture: Community Health Systems, Nashville, TN
Mikell F. van der Laan currently holds the position of Manager of Architecture for Community Health Systems in Nashville, Tn. A long time independent consultant, he has held leadership positions involving development of commercial hardware and software solutions for more than 20 years. Since 1995 he has concentrated on healthcare and advanced clinical application development and deployment strategies. As an independent consulting solutions architect, Mikell has regularly lead teams in architecture and development of mobile electronic health record systems for both acute care facilities and physician management corporations. Mikell was recruited from the telecommunications industry at Bell Laboratories (Lucent Technology) in 1995 by Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where he was responsible for building its Component Engineering Group and the development of advanced clinical applications. He is a graduate of the University of Texas in Austin.
