PTCE

		Ken Sochats Director Visual Information Systems Center, University of Pittsburgh.
Ken Sochats is the 2005 Central Appalachian Geospatial Conference GIS Service Awardee and the Carnegie Science Center 2002 award winner for IT excellence. He has over thirty years of experience in the Computer and Telecommunications industries. He holds advanced degrees in Electrical Engineering and Business Administration. After spending several years at Westinghouse Electric Corporation where his work resulted in several inventions and patents, he accepted a faculty position at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently the Director of the Visual Information Systems Center and Assistant Professor of Information Science and Telecommunications. He has taught over twenty-five different courses in telecommunications, computing, systems and business. While on leave, he helped co-found BroadStreet Communications Corporation a next-generation telecommunications company. BroadStreet has attracted over $180 million in startup capital. He served as Vice President of Information Systems. He served as the manager of the Link To Learn Project out of The Governor’s Office of Information Technology. This group annually produced the Pennsylvania Technology Atlas. The Progress and Freedom Foundation named the Link To Learn Project their 1998 Best Practice in the Educational Technology category. He continues to serve as a consultant to the Pennsylvania Department of Education and on the Pennsylvania Information Management System (PIMS) committee. Ken served on The Telecommunications advisory panel of Governor Ridge’s Pennsylvania Regional Development Committee and as a consultant to the Keystone Telecommunications Project and the Governor's Policy Committee. He served on the Governor's Year 2000 Technical Outreach Committee, which was responsible for helping Pennsylvanians prepare for the Y2K computer problem. His group at the Joint State/Federal Y2K Conference was awarded the University Continuing Education Association’s Award of Excellence. He has served as a consultant to over 35 organizations of all types. Government/agencies at the federal, state and local levels include Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, State of New York, Westmoreland County, US Departments of Defense, Agriculture and Energy and NASA. Private firms include ALCOA, USAirways, Penn Access, Hyperion, Brightline, American Hytech and numerous smaller companies. His publications include three books and over 40 Journal papers and conference proceeding papers. His papers on metadata are in use in 42 countries and have been translated into 14 languages.

		Philip G. Svesnik, CIO, Westmoreland County
He has over 31years of technical, administrative, and management experience in the Information Systems field. He has extensive experience with implementing current technologies into the organizations infrastructure to more cost effectively meet the changing demands of the organizations business units as well as dealing with the reorganization of the staffing required to carry out the mission on Information Systems. He has over 31years of technical, administrative, and management experience in the Information Systems field. He has extensive experience with implementing current technologies into the organizations infrastructure to more cost effectively meet the changing demands of the organizations business units as well as dealing with the reorganization of the staffing required to carry out the mission on Information Systems. He has worked in various capacities for many years in the area of Information Systems and Data processing, both as a technical person and various management positions. He has been in his current position as C.I.O. with Westmoreland County for 23 years and served one year as director of Judicial Information Systems. He has also taught computer related classes for over 23 years at the University of Pittsburgh and 21 years at Westmoreland Community College. In addition He has taught on occasions at a number of other Colleges and Universities in the area. He also worked 17 years for the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad in the capacity of an accountant, Information Systems Analyst Programmer, and Data Processing Manager prior to taking a position at Westmoreland County. His work experience in the Information Systems field over the last 36 years had dealt with everything from programming various computer environments to establishing the strategic vision and plans for the organizations that he has worked. He has recommended and implement CASE technology for application development, Mainframes, Midrange systems, PC clients, COLD Storage, G.I.S., LANs, WANs, wireless networks, internet servers and disaster recovery plans. He has planned and implemented data center conversions and done several reorganizations of Information Systems personnel to better meet the needs of the organizations for which he worked. His current area of administrative responsibility in addition to Information Systems also includes voice communications, records management and Election Bureau. Over the last 36 years in the Information Systems field He has served in the capacity of President for a number of professional organizations including the Data Processing Management Association which is now called Association of Information Technology Professionals, the National Association of Counties Data Processing Administrators, Government Management Information Sciences PA chapter which he also formed in 1988 and is the current President. He also is on the Executive Board for the Government Management Information Sciences International organization and currently serves on the CIO Forum advisory council. He has received various achievement and performance awards from these organizations over the many years. He also is a U.S. Army veteran and served in the Vietnam War.