The NoSQL "C Panel"

NoSQL products seemingly burst onto the IT scene within the past 2-3 years. Yet software products with the robust capacity of the market leaders doesn't just emerge overnight - it takes years to build and refine. So how is it that the leaders of these companies knew where the market was headed before the rest of us? And now that they're leading the industry, has it turned out as they anticipated? What surprised them? What directions do they see as important to track? What advice do they offer customers, and what lessons do they now offer to other software entrepreneurs?

Robert Scoble is a geek who grew up in Silicon Valley and since 1985 has been building online communities. In 2000 he started the technology blog, http://scobleizer.com, and in 2003-2006 he worked at Microsoft as an evangelist and one of the five guys who started Microsoft's famous Channel9 video community. He now works at Rackspace as Startup Liaison Officer, going around the world to study and make media about world-changing startups. You'll see his videos on http://youtube.com/scobleizer but the best place to watch him is on Google+, on Twitter or on my blog. He was deemed one of the top 5 most influential tweeters by the UK’s FT.com, and one of the top 140 tweeters by TIME.

Bob is the CEO of Couchbase, a leader in NoSQL databases. Prior to Couchbase, Bob served as Chairman, CEO and President of Transitive, the worldwide leader in cross platform virtualization, acquired by IBM in 2008. Bob held several executive management positions at Cadence, an electronic design automation company which he helped grow to over $1B during his 13 year tenure. From 1993 through 1996, Bob headed High Level Design Systems, an electronic design automation start-up that went public before being acquired by Cadence in 1996.

John "Jay" Jarrell, President and CEO, leads the operations of Objectivity Inc., determining the company's strategic direction and managing growth. Jay has a long history with Objectivity, Inc. starting in 1997 as the Vice President of Sales, and adding the Marketing group to his responsibilities shortly thereafter as Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Jay was elevated to President and COO in 2002, and in 2003 was named President and CEO of the company, while also being appointed to the Board of Directors. Prior to joining Objectivity in 1997, Jay was the senior director of sales and marketing for Creative Biomedics, a company specializing in network telecommunications equipment and software solutions. Previously, he held sales and marketing positions at Computer Associates and A.C. Nielsen Co. He holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of Western Ontario in Canada.

Kirk is the COO of Cloudera where he uses his diversified range of technology engineering, marketing, sales and management experience to oversee Cloudera’s business operations. During his nearly 20-year career, Kirk has worked extensively with established companies, high-growth organizations and Fortune 200 accounts, successfully building strategic sales and product divisions, and leading international expansions. Kirk served as the CEO of PowerFile, Inc, which was successfully sold to Hitachi LG Data Storage, and was CEO of Bang Networks Inc. Prior to joining Bang Networks, Kirk served as VP of North American Field Operations at Inktomi. He came to Inktomi from Network Equipment Technologies, Inc. (NET), where he held executive positions in sales, marketing and professional services. Kirk also worked for IBM in senior sales positions. He holds a BA in mathematics and applied sciences from the University of California, Los Angeles.

After a decade as a developer, mentor and architect at a consulting- and product company in southern Sweden, Emil's current focus is on evangelizing graph databases and preaching the demise of tabular solutions everywhere.

Dwight is CEO and co-founder of 10gen, and one of the original authors of MongoDB. In 1995, Dwight co-founded DoubleClick and served as its CTO for ten years. Dwight was the architect of the DoubleClick ad serving infrastructure, DART, which serves tens of billions of ads per day. Dwight is co-founder, Chairman, and the original architect of Panther Express (now part of CDNetworks), a content distribution network (CDN) technology which serves hundreds of thousands of objects per second. Dwight is also a co-founder and investor in BusinessInsider.com and Gilt Groupe.