Speakers & Moderators

2009 Conference Speakers

Dr. David Swinton

The Honorable Robert "Bob" Coble was elected as Mayor of Columbia in 1990.  Mayor Coble has received numerous awards including Ambassador of the Year (2004), and Central Midlands Council of Governments Regional Leadership Award (2007). He was inducted into Richland One's Hall of Fame in 2007.  Mayor Coble was the also the recipient of the Global Vision Award presented by the World Affairs Council in October 2008.  He is currently a board member with the River Alliance, Central SC Economic Development Alliance, and Engenuity.

Representative Dwight Loftis is a native of South Carolina and Greenville County. He and his wife Sandra have three children and three grandchildren. Loftis is a graduate of North Greenville College and spent his early years in radio broadcasting. For past 33 years owned and operated a Nationwide Insurance agency in Greenville. He recently joined his son Kevin in opening a restaurant, Foothills Deli on Poinsett Hwy. in Greenville. Began his public service in 1992 when he was elected to the Greenville County School Board and has represented District 19 in the South Carolina House since 1996. As a member of the House, Representative Loftis has served as a member of the Medical, Municipal and Military Affairs, Education and Invitation Committees. His current service includes Agriculture and Environmental Committee- Chairing the Environmental II Sub-Committee; House Rules Committee; and Legislative representative on the Government and Industry Council.

Camilla Hertwig

Dr. Jabari Simama has been a distinctive voice for using technology to serve the public interest. He has been a true champion of the public/private partnership model, and has maintained the simple perspective that the highest use of technology is that which "makes us more human." Dr. Simama is the Vice President of Community Development at Benedict College and the Director of the Center for Excellence in Community Development. Presently his Division has over $125 million in development projects that are in various stages of implementation. Prior to moving to Columbia, SC, in 2005, Dr. Simama created and directed the city of Atlanta's first multimillion dollar cable access program, a quarter-of-a-century old community media institution that turns 26 in February. Later, after serving two terms on the Atlanta City Council, Dr. Simama raised $10 million to establish and direct the City of Atlanta's Office of Community Technology, where he oversaw the development of a citywide network of community technology centers that at maturity would connect 100 CTCs with broadband. Dr. Simama also created the first RFP for a citywide Wi-Fi network in a major city in America. He is credited with marketing the viability of the concept as solution to bridging the divide and as a new revenue stream for local government. Each year since Y2K, Dr. Simama has assembled thought leaders working to narrow the digital divide with public officials in government to discuss the role of technology in economic and community development. He aims to do the same at Benedict College with the new series of conferences marketed under the banner, "Broadband in Cities & Towns." Winner of 3COM's Urban Challenge Award, E-Gov's Explorer's Award, and Government Technology's Doers, Dreamers, & Drivers of information technology in government honor, Dr. Simama will soon be profiled in a new book on the African American Hall of Fame of Technology, edited by John Barber, author of Blacks in the Information Society. He holds a Ph.D. from Emory University and is a native of Columbia, MO.

James R. Bottum was named Vice Provost and Chief Information Officer for Computing and Information Technology at Clemson University, on July 17, 2006. Mr. Bottum leads Clemson's efforts to build a state-of-the-art cyberinfrastructure for education, research and service. In his first year on the job, he was able to bring Clemson into the Top 100 supercomputing sites in the world and link Clemson to the national research infrastructure through a privately gifted optical fiber network, CLight. Before coming to Clemson, Mr. Bottum was Purdue University's first Chief Information Officer (CIO) beginning in August of 2001. His leadership at Purdue was recognized in a 2005 report by the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research in the case study, A New Model for Supporting Research at Purdue University, and also in Newsweek as well as a cover story in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Mr. Bottum has served on number of national committees including the National Science Foundation's Advisory Committee on Cyberinfrastructure, the Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) and the Internet 2 Applications, Middleware and Services Advisory Council.

Nathan L. Bohlmann is currently the Executive Director of IT Strategic Planning, Assessment, and Research Administration. In this capacity he is responsible for the coordination of long-term strategic, financial, and facilities planning. In addition, he directs the assessment of the central IT organization's progress towards its goals and objectives. He also manages all aspects of research proposal submission, post award adminstration, sponsored programs liasion for central IT, and research partnership management. Prior to joining Clemson, Bohlmann spent 18 years at Purdue University in a variety of roles including database administration for sponsored program services, budget and fiscal planning administration, institutional research, IT management for the Vice President for Research, IT manager of Graduate School Administration, and directed central IT assessment.

Dr. Jill Gemmill has over 26 years of experience in university Information Technology and scientific computation. As Executive Director reporting to Clemson University's CIO and Vice Provost for Information Technology, Jill leads initiatives that enable new discoveries in research, teaching and service through integration of domain expertise with cyberinfrastructure. She is a successful research scientist who has produced notable results in high performance networks and middleware as PI or co- PI on 9 federally funded grants totaling over $5 million. Her research has received funding from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine, Southeastern Universities' Research Association, and the UAB Health Services Foundation. Jill's IT experience encompasses facilities and network infrastructure, application design and development, real-time process control, visualization, scientific computation, system architecture, security, and project management. Most recently, Dr. Gemmill's expertise in directory services, security, single sign on, federated identity, systems integration, software development, visualization, web systems and networks has been invaluable in developing collaborative environments for Virtual Organizations in domains including Social Science, Health Sciences, Computational Science, Bioinformatics, and Ecology. She is co-developer of the myVocs collaboration environment for Virtual Organizations. She has earned Ph.D and M.S. degrees in Computer and Information Sciences and an MSEE in Electrical and Computer Engineering, all from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her current research interests include single-sign-on and federated authentication architectures, transparent authorization, and secure collaboration tools for virtual organizations. 

Dr. Andy Cohill

Casey Lide is a principal with The Baller Herbst Law Group, PC, a national law firm based in Washington, DC, and Minneapolis, MN, that specializes in representing local governments and public power utilities in matters involving telecommunications, cable television, high-speed data communications, Internet access, wireless telecommunications, right-of-way management, pole and conduit attachments, and barriers to the public-sector entry into telecommunications. Together with his partner Jim Baller, Mr. Lide recently co-authored an article entitled "Eight Bold Steps to a National Broadband Strategy: Recent Developments Underscore the Need for a National Broadband Strategy," available online at http://www.baller.com/pdfs/baller-lide_8Steps_NatBBStrategy.pdf

Mignon Clyburn (invited)

2009 Conference Moderators

Nolan Bowie

Darrell Black

Chuck Sherwood