General Sessions

Dave Barry, Columnist and Author - Sponsored by Blackboard, Inc.
Education: Bad Idea or What?

Wednesday, October 11, 2000
8:15 a.m. - 9:45 a.m. PLEN1

A Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and best-selling author of numerous books (including Dave Barry in Cyberspace), Barry tackles cultural issues with wit and wisdom. While the title of his speech might appear inflammatory, Barry is sure to keep tongue firmly planted in cheek as he scrutinizes the current state of American education. Join us for an opening general session full of humor and insight from America's "funniest man."

David Halberstam, Author - Sponsored by NEC America, Inc.
America: Then and Now

Friday, October 13, 2000
10:30 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. PLEN3

Halberstam's view of our society is sweeping and insightful; he sees the technological changes that drive modern communications and understands the effects of these changes upon our values as we move from the "Calvinist age of our fathers to an entertainment age."

David Halberstam is a legendary figure in American journalism. His landmark trilogy of books on power in America, The Best and the Brightest, The Powers That Be, and The Reckoning, have helped define the latter part of the century more than any journalistic works, and have won him innumerable awards as well as broad critical acclaim. They deal with, respectively, the path that the Kennedy-Johnson administrations used to take America to war in Vietnam, the dramatic and sudden rise of the power of modern media, and the ascent of the Japanese as a rival economic superpower.

Halberstam is the author of 11 best-selling books. The Reckoning was voted in a Wall Street Journal poll of 400 CEOs The Most Important Book of the Year. The breadth of Halberstam's work is demonstrated by the vastly different subjects of his two books that have been number one on the best-sellers list: The Best and Brightest, and 17 years later, Summer of '49, a nostalgic look at a pennant race--and a very different America--which existed forty years ago.

Halberstam graduated from Harvard, where he served as managing editor of the daily Harvard Crimson. He began his career as the one reporter on the Daily Times Leader in West Point Mississippi and later at The Nashville Tennessean before joining The New York Times in 1960. He first came to national prominence in the early sixties as a part of a small handful of American reporters who refused to accept the official optimism about Vietnam and who reported that the war was being lost. At the age of 30, for his reporting on Vietnam, David Halberstam was awarded The Pulitzer Prize.

Judith Estrin, Chief Executive Officer of Packet Design, Inc. sponsored by ABT, Inc.
The Technological Future of the Internet

Thursday, October 12, 2000
9:45 a.m. - 11:15 a.m. PLEN2

Along with government, higher education played a key role in the early experiment that became the Internet. Years later, with the Internet at a phase of maturity and ubiquity that few could have imagined, higher education can be on the receiving end of huge benefits from this technology. It is accepted that the Internet will be a useful tool for distance learning, academic collaboration, fund raising and other activities. This general session will present some of the key catalysts driving the growth of the Internet, along with some of the key technology issues that need to be addressed, such as ease of use, capacity, mobility and privacy, to meet the growing demands of these emerging applications and realize the Internet's ultimate potential.

Judy Estrin is Chief Executive Officer of Packet Design, Inc., a company focused on technology to scale the Internet. Prior to cofounding Packet Design in May, 2000, Judy was Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President at Cisco Systems. At Cisco, she was responsible for strategic technology planning and business development including investments and acquisitions, consulting engineering and advanced Internet projects, as well as legal and government affairs. Ms. Estrin joined Cisco through the acquisition of Precept Software, a leading multimedia networking software company, of which she was CEO and a co-founder. Previously, she was President and CEO of Network Computing Devices (NCD), a leading supplier of X terminals and PC-to-UNIX connectivity software. Prior to NCD, she was a cofounder of Bridge Communications, a pioneer in internetwork routers, bridges and communication servers, which merged with 3Com in 1987.

Ms. Estrin holds B.S. degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science from UCLA and a master's degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, where she was involved in early development of the TCP/IP protocols. Ms. Estrin sits on the Board of Directors of Federal Express, Sun Microsystems, and The Walt Disney Company.