IMTC Leadership and Service Awards - 2000

Fall Forum, November 7 - 9, 2000, San Antonio, Texas

The IMTC presented its Leadership Awards and Service Awards that honor significant contributions to the multimedia industry by individuals, companies or organizations. The awards ceremony was held during the IMTC Fall Forum in San Antonio, Texas. The IMTC Awards recognize efforts to create innovative environments that foster collaborative contributions to product types, protocol profiles and service offerings.

Leadership Award Recipient Recipients -

• Robert Gill, Chairman, President and CEO of MobileForce Technologies
  The Leadership Award honored Mr. Gill's innovative leadership at MobileForce Technologies, Inc. the Topaz Group, Frontier Corporation, ConferTech International, Ball Corp. and Magnavox.
  
  Bob Gill, formerly CEO of ConferTech, was one of the driving forces in getting industry support for T.120 as far back as 1992. This led to the formation of CATS, and Bob was first Chairman in 1993. When CATS and MCCOI merged in 1994 to form the IMTC, Bob remained a director and was actively involved in the IMTC until 1996.
  
  Industry impact of above contribution: Bob drove the concept of industry standards implementation by getting other companies to collaborate towards a common goal while competing for market share. He realized that this approach would lead to better acceptance in the marketplace for products, which ultimately meant a larger overall business market.



• Dr. Allen Korenjak, a pioneering developer of Indeo a digital video technology at Intel and DVI a technology at RCA's David Sarnoff Research Center
  
  The Leadership Award honored Dr. Korenjak for his pioneering innovations at Intel Corporation and RCA's David Sarnoff Research Center and for his role as chair of the Personal Conferencing Work Group (PCWG) and a member of the IMTC Board of Directors for fostering the merger of the two groups in 1995. Dr. Korenjak played a significant role in merging two competing standards-implementation forums to create a unified industry group in the IMTC. He convinced Intel management and the PCWG Directors that the two organizations should merge and took a proactive role toward that merger. Al was also instrumental in forming Activity Groups in IMTC to carry out the interoperability testing of standards-based products. Today, the IMTC Activity Groups and interoperability test events are key to the success of IMTC and its member companies whose products rely on inter-vendor compatibility.
  
  
• Dr. Norman D. Kenyon of the United Kingdom who created a framework for audiovisual multimedia services
  
  The Leadership Award honored Dr. Kenyon's contributions to the work on the Q4/XV Harmonization of audiovisual systems.



• Dr. Sakae Okubo, Fellow Researcher of the Telecommunications Advancement Organization (TAO) of Japan at Waseda Research Institute
  
  

  The Leadership Award honored Dr. Okubo for his pioneering work on the Q3/XV Visual telephone systems, including videoconferencing and videophone. Dr. Okubo has also been involved in the international standardization of video coding and audiovisual communication systems since 1984 and has received numerous industry awards.



• C.J. "Neil" Starkey, Distinguished Engineer at IBM and CTO at Databeam.
  
  

  The Leadership Award honored Mr. Starkey for his leadership roles in the development and promotion of open standards for multi-media conferencing. Also, he chaired the International Telecommunications Union committee responsible for defining data conferencing standards that resulted in development of the T.120 series of standards that are now used in millions of consumer products. He served three terms as President of the IMTC.

Service Award Recipients -

• Greg Meyer, Program Manager of IP Telephony Architecture, Intel
  
  

  Mr. Meyer has been actively involved with IMTC since 1995 chairing or co-chairing IMTC's Data Conferencing Activity Group, H.324 Activity Group, and the Conferencing Over IP (CoIP) Activity Group. He also expanded the role of testing within IMTC to include additional protocols.



• Jim Toga, Vice President of Operations and co-founder, eDail
  
  Mr. Toga, who has served chair of the IMTC's Packet Conferencing and H.323 Implementers groups, the editor of the H.235 Security standard and the H.323 Implementers Guide in the ITU-T.

Spring Forum May 9 - 11, 2000, Ottawa, Canada

Pioneer Award Recipients -

The IMTC presented its Pioneer Awards to honor significant contributions to the multimedia industry by three industry pioneers. The awards ceremony was held during the IMTC Spring Forum in Ottawa, Canada.

• Jeff Bernstein, Principal System Architect, 2Wire
  
  

  Jeff Bernstein continues his outstanding record of product design and definition as 2Wire's Principal System Architect. Bernstein co-founded PictureTel Corporation with Mr. Hinman in 1984, and for 15 years he held a variety of technical roles. His contributions there included product definition and architecture, research and development of signal processing algorithms, hardware and software design, and user interface design. He has also been an active participant in international standardization efforts in the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and holds four U.S. patents. Mr. Bernstein received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

• Brian L. Hinman, President and CEO, 2Wire
  
  

  2Wire was founded in July 1998 by Brian L. Hinman Hinman is also co-founder and formerly CEO of Polycom, Inc., the world's leading teleconferencing company. Mr. Hinman was the co-founder of PictureTel Corporation at the age of 22, and served as Vice President of Engineering and Director from 1984 through 1990. He is an industry expert in digital signal processing, holds eleven U.S. patents, and has been honored as one of the nation's most successful young entrepreneurs by A.C.E three different times. He has previously served on the national board of the American Electronic Association, and was co-founder and director of the International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium. He is currently on the Board of the University of Maryland Foundation, and on the Board of Visitors of the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Mr. Hinman holds a B.S.E.E. Summa Cum Laude from the University of Maryland and an S.M.E.E. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

• Rubin Gruber, Founder and Chairman, Sonus Networks, Incorporated
  
  

  Rubin Gruber is a well-known and highly successful entrepreneur, having founded four companies including Sonus. Prior to establishing Sonus, Gruber founded VideoServer, Inc. (now ezenia!), a leading provider of multimedia communications servers. Before VideoServer, Gruber served as Senior Vice President BBN Communications Corporation, where he introduced a new generation of packet-switching equipment in support of mission critical applications. Gruber also founded Davox, the leading supplier of outbound call-center systems and Cambridge Telecommunications (CTX), which was the first company to incorporate microprocessors in communications equipment and an early supplier of packet network access equipment. CTX was acquired by GTE and remains part of Sprint. Gruber is a member of the board of directors for the International Softswitch Consortium, and was one of the founding members of the International Multimedia Communications Consortium (IMTC). He holds a B.Sc. from McGill University and an MA in mathematics from Wayne State University.

Team Innovator Award Recipients -

• Terry Anderson, Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, Lucent Technologies
• Ayse Dilber, VoIP Manager Standards & Interoperability, AT&T
• O. Matthew Beal, Vice President, Technology and Engineering, NEXBELL
• Mr. Richard Brennan, Director, Business Development Standard Technology, GRIC Communications, Incorporated
• Vineet Kumar, Chief Software Architect, Intel Corporation
• K.V. (Raj) Srikantiah, Verizon, (formerly Bell Atlantic)
• Greg Meyer, Senior Engineer, Intel Corporation
• Robert Seiler, Polycom, Inc (formerly PictureTel)
• Tankut Turhan, Cisco Systems
• David T. K. Wang, Chief Technical Officer, Nuera Communications, Incorporated
• Wenchu Ying, Principal Technical Staff Manager, AT&T