Ray Milhem
Director and Chairman of the Board - AdvancedIO
Ray Milhem joined AdvancedIO as a Director and Chairman of the Board. He is responsible to manage the Board, help raise capital and work closely with the CEO. He recently joined Arab Seed Ventures as a Venture Partner.
Ray Milhem was Vice President & General Manager in the Motorola Software Group (MSG) to lead, enhance & coordinate the Network Management side of the MSG as well as Network applications. Prior to Motorola, Ray held several Executive & Senior Management roles at Nokia, Cisco Systems, Extreme Networks, AFC (Tellabs) & AT&T.
Ray designed and planned the first and largest Frame-Relay and ATM (Asynch Transfer Mode) Public Network globally at AT&T Canada. He was a key member of the AT&T North American Network Planning council that also coordinated OSS and Fiber access across North America.
Robert Hoekman, Jr.
Founder - Miskeeto
Robert Hoekman, Jr., is an interaction designer, writer, presenter, and user-experience evangelist, and the founder of Miskeeto, a product development and web design consultancy focused on socially-conscious projects that improve the world.
He is the author of the Amazon bestseller Designing the Obvious (New Riders), which focuses on seven guiding principles of great web-based software, and Designing the Moment (New Riders), a collection of stories from real projects that show how to put web design principles into action. Learn more about Robert through his blog at rhjr.net.
Ryan Carson
Co-Founder - Carsonified
Ryan is an entrepreneur and father. He and his wife are the founders of Carsonified, a company in the UK that makes useful web apps and runs events, conferences and workshops. You can follow him on Twitter at @ryancarson.
Simone Brunozzi
Web Services Evangelist for Europe - Amazon
Simone Brunozzi is a technology enthusiast, involved in IT and computing since an early age. He joined Amazon.com in may 2008 in the role of Web Services Evangelist, traveling across Europe and vicinity to showcase the innovative new solutions by Amazon Web Services and help developers build businesses and applications. He is following the “Cloud Computing” paradigm shift since 2006, and believes that it is going to replace the traditional computing model in a few years.
Of Italian origins, Simone loves travelling, meeting people and connecting with them. He is a Linux and Ubuntu passionate, loves blogging on www.brunozzi.com, and has interests in the environment, clean energies, and technology in general.
Nabil Ali Alyousuf
Chairman of Nabil Alyousuf & Associates and Vice Chairman of Board of Trustees Dubai School of Government
Nabil Ali Alyousuf is Chairman of Nabil Alyousuf & Associates and Vice Chairman of Board of Trustees Dubai School of Government. In his last job, he served as the Director General of The Executive Office of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Ruler of Dubai. Throughout his career he focused on developing a wide range of policies that aim at improving the economic and social environments in Dubai. He also established entities and institutions to support these policies. Among these are the Dubai School of Government in collaboration with Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Dubai Cares campaign, which aims at providing education for a million children from the world. In addition, he led the establishment of Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation with ten billion dollar endowment.
In his private capacity, he established several successful businesses including the first brand of Abayas in the Gulf, the first company that specializes in designing and distributing local souvenirs. He is currently in the process of establishing a Venture Capital firm in collaboration with leading VC firms in the Silicon Valley and prominent investors in the UAE.
Mohamed Marwen Meddah
Founder & Editor - StartUpArabia
Mohamed Marwen Meddah, the founder and editor of StartUpArabia, has always been very passionate about the web and all the possibilities it brings to people and businesses alike. Throughout his career, he has worked on web application development, web marketing solutions, and collaborated closely with a number of online startups throughout their projects' lifecycles.
Through StartUpArabia he tries to give more exposure to Arab technology startups and help find ways to overcome the different challenges that they face.
Cloves Carneiro Jr.
Co-Founder & CEO - SpinBits
One of the founders of SpinBits, he wears many hats, from CEO, Ruby on Rails developer to Fifa champion. He has a big passion for technology, and all the learning required to keep himself – and the team – ahead of the curve.
Besides writing code, Cloves also writes in his blog at http://ccjr.name and had a book titled Beginning Rails published by Apress in mid-2007. He's currently working on a newer version of the book when not coding.
Rida Al Barazi
Co-Founder & Development Manager - SpinBits
Yet another Ruby on Rails developer in the team, co-founded SpinBits because he cares about quality. He sleeps the least, curses the most and is very passionate about what he does.
With over 5 years of experience in the web industry, Rida pioneered in programming languages specifically C and PHP, meanwhile he did some work on user interface science and dug deep into usability and accessibility measures. He further accelerated his career when he established SpinBits in 2007, to realize one of their key business objectives to “Webify with Quality” and increase the awareness of the importance of the Web as a Medium across the Middle East Region.
Tariq Al Asiri
General Manager - Argaam Business Info
Tariq Al Asiri is the co-founder for argaam.com an Arabic financial news portal since 2005.
Tariq has long juggled interests in both business and tech. He contributes to raise the awareness of entrepreneurship and online marketing in Middle East via his blog ajabni.
Tariq believes the internet in the Arabic world carry a lot of untapped opportunities for both entrepreneurs and consumers.
Ashraf Khalil
Abu Dhabi University
Dr. Khalil is a usability expert and a university professor. He has consulted for a number of major names in the industry such as Nokia and Samsung. He teaches at Abu Dhabi University and holds a Ph.D in Computer Science from Indiana University in Bloomington, USA. During the last 10 years, he has conducted extensive research on usability, human computer interaction, social and mobile computing, persuasive computing, and privacy issues.
His work has been featured in a number of top conferences as well as USA public media such as National Public Radio and Slashdot. He is interested in promoting usability as an essential tool for the success and the sustainability of the IT industry across the Middle East. He believes technology should not be confined to the work environment but should be woven into every aspect of our daily lives.
