Doug McConatha
Recently retired after a career as a professor of Sociology, Dr. McConatha has been an Internet innovator for 20 years. He has served as CEO, College Dean or President of numerous organizations during his 40 year career. As originator and founder of one of the first LMS platforms in 1995, his WebStudy.com project was in business for 20+ years. His Open Education project CircleofLearning.com in 1998 was the first online education product offering free professional and user-created content. He is an award winning professor with over 50 publications to his credit. His work in introducing the Internet into nursing homes in 1996 received international attention resulting in TV, radio and print stories. Among the most recent of his publications is his co-authored volume Mobile Pedagogy published in 2014 and his article on ROI models for online learning. He continues to build his body of work through new VR and AI projects currently underway.
John Kahler
A long-time media producer, communicator, educator and manager/director of media and technology departments and organizations, John has also been a freelance producer, writer and technology consultant throughout his career, and serves as executive director of CollegeAnywhere. His experience trajectory has been in pushing into leading technologies as video and media have moved from analog to digital, as education has evolved from the classroom to a blend of face to face and technology-mediated learning, and as the entire media world has moved into the always connected, social media world that continues to evolve in directions not yet envisioned.
Dafan Zhang, Esq.
Dafan Zhang, Esq., is a passionate professional at the intersection of higher education, entrepreneurship, law, technology, and social good. His current interests include Blockchain/Security Tokens; Augmented Reality; Legal Tech/AI; EdTech – Interactive Learning. A fierce advocate for diversity, he is a professor of entrepreneurship at the nation’s oldest degree-granting HBCU, educating and supporting young minds to achieve, a mission he has held dear to his heart for over 20 years. An entrepreneur himself, he is a founder, co-founder, and advisor to many startups, leading innovation and entrepreneurship tracing back to the first dotcom boom. As an attorney, he is High Tech Counsel®, representing and assisting clients in all matters of business and technology, for over two decades working on Internet, mobile and eCommerce innovation, especially in tune with the unique needs of early stage and emerging companies.
Tom Murray
Tom has over 25 years of filmmaking and video experience with a distinctly artistic approach. Over the past decade several short films Tom co-directed and animated have been exhibited as official selections at a number of international film festivals. He is a full-time college faculty member, teaching film and television production courses. As an educational streaming media pioneer, Tom has been an active consultant with educators and content producers including Annenberg Learner and PBS.
Ryan Dumont
For the past ten years, Ryan has served as technology director for CollegeAnywhere, a non-profit which supports higher education use of video and media, creating and managing tools that allow instructors to share materials with their students. The main focus is on video assets which are stored and distributed via Amazon’s AWS.
Pavel Sanca
For over twelve years as a leader of the DigiSense team, Pavel has served US higher-ed institutions and hundreds of thousands of e-learning students. DigiSense continually develops and enhances a suite of e-learning software applications, integrating 3rd party tools, and working collaboratively with the academic institutions who utilize the product. Pavel brings significant expertise in developing and maintaining user friendly applications and tools.
Scott Purdy
Scott is a business and educational professional who received his MBA from Rowan University. He has held various management positions, including Regional Vice President for a national security company, before moving into community college education at Camden County College. Scott spent the last seventeen years leading their groundbreaking distance learning program before recently retiring after twenty five and a half years at the college. He is also a board member and serves as treasurer for a non profit technology corporation serving the educational community.
