ORION

Phil Baker, President/CEO, ORANO

BIO: Phil Baker is the President/CEO of the Optical Regional Advanced Network of Ontario (ORANO.) During his 27 years in the Ontario Government, Phil has held a number of senior management positions. These include: Senior Advisor to the Deputy Minister of Culture and Communications; Project Manager for the development of a Telecommunications Strategy for Ontario; Director (ag.) of the Capital Goods and Technology Sectors Branch; Manager of Ontario's Information Highway Secretariat; and, Manager of Program Partnerships in the Ministry of Energy, Science and Technology.

Phil led the inaugural strategic plan for the new Ontario Ministry of Culture and Communications and played a central role in developing the ground breaking Telecommunications Strategy for Ontario. He developed and managed the $100 million Ontario Network Infrastructure Program and the $50 million Telecommunications Access Program. Through a comprehensive analysis of business plan proposals, these initiatives invested selectively in a broad range of successful leading edge regional advanced networks and innovative telehealth network initiatives across Ontario that have helped keep the Province at the forefront in these fields.

In January 2002, Phil joined the Optical Regional Advanced Network of Ontario (ORANO) as President/CEO to lead the implementation across the Province of Ontario of a 3,700 kilometer fibre optic research and advanced education network linking Ontario's postsecondary institutions and research organizations. With significant capital investments from the Ontario Government and CANARIE, a Canadian Government supported initiative, ORANO is able to acquire the fibre optic cable for 20 years and purchase the equipment to manage and operate the network.

TALK:An Overview of the ORION Project

Randy Neals, Senior Telecommunications Engineer, ORANO

BIO: Randy Neals is the Senior Transport Engineer for ORANO. He is responsible for the optical design and implementation (fibre and DWDM infrastructure) of the Ontario Research and Innovation Network (ORION), a globally leading research and education network spanning over 3,700 km across the Province of Ontario.

Prior to joining ORANO in August 2002, Mr. Neals was manager of network engineering at Group Telecom, a national telecommunications carrier, where he led the technical development of that carrier's national Internet backbone. He also played the key role in the team that deployed the DWDM system supporting CA*Net4 across most of Canada.

Randy has worked in data and radio communications engineering for over 12 years, including companies such as Shaw Communications, EDS Canada, and Motorola Canada.

Randy is a graduate of Electronics Engineering Technology from Sir Sandford Fleming College.

TALK: The ORION Network Plan

CANARIE

Bill St. Arnaud

BIO: Bill St. Arnaud is Senior Director, Advanced Networks for CANARIE Inc., Canada's Advanced Internet Development Organization. At CANARIE Mr. St. Arnaud has been responsible for the coordination and implementation of Canada's next generation optical Internet initiative called CA*net 3 and more recently the world's first customer controlled optical network CA*net 4. He was recently featured in a Time Magazine article as the engineer who is "wiring together advanced Canadian Science".

Previously Mr. St. Arnaud was the President and founder of a network and software engineering firm called TSA ProForma Inc. TSA was a LAN/WAN software company that developed wide area network client/server systems for use primarily in the financial and information business fields in the Far East and the United States.

Mr. St. Arnaud is a frequent guest speaker at numerous conferences on the Internet and optical networking and is a regular contributor to several networking magazines. He is a graduate of Carleton University School of Engineering.

Peter Marshall

BIO: Peter Marshall is the Director of NetworkApplications with CANARIE Inc. in Ottawa, Canada. He uses his extensive networking and university support background to facilitate research and developing systems and services based on digital audio/video capture, indexing, storage, and distribution as well as other high-speed networking applications using Canada's very high-speed research networks. He holds an MSc in Computer Science and in his previous position at the Unviversity of Western Ontario, was instrumental in building the UWO campus and Ontario (ONet) internets.

TALK: Applications Using Canadian Advanced Networks

Dr. Todd Sands, WEDnet

BIO: Dr. Todd Sands is the Executive Director of the Windsor Essex Development Network (WEDnet) at the University of Windsor. He holds B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees, and has presented at more than 70 proceedings and workshops in the areas of technology and community-based networking. Dr. Sands is also a refereed author of more than 30 abstracts and articles, one instructional text and has written three distant education courses currently offered in an electronic format.

TALK: Dr Sands will update conference participants on WEDnet's role in connecting to the Government of Ontario's Integrated Network Project, and will include interpretations from a workshop held in late June of this year by the Ministry of Enterprise, Opportunity and Innovation, and Management Board Secretariat.

Tony Ming, Management Board of Cabinet

BIO: Tony Ming , MBA, CGA, started with the OPS as a tax auditor in 1975 and switched to the information technology stream 15 years ago. Mr. Ming led a enterprise wide re-engineering project of the tax administration business systems which process over $25 billion in revenues annually and resulted in a complete redesign and development of the major tax collection applications. Tony was seconded to the Management Board Secretariat two years ago as the project executive for implementing the Integrated Network project.