Manu Pillai

Manu Pillai

President & Co-founder, WaterBit, Inc.

Manu Pillai is co-founder, and currently drives revenues for WaterBit, Inc. Over the 25 years prior to WaterBit, Manu worked in consumer, industrial and telco grade electronic systems and software from design to deployment. He has led or been a key team member in the definition, development and manufacturing of over 100 products to the global market. Manu has a BE(EE) from University College, Dublin, Ireland and an MBA from Santa Clara University, California.

WaterBit, Inc., is focused on sensing and control systems for high granularity irrigation automation. WaterBit has an emerging portfolio of connectivity products, connected sensors and application software. Sensing systems include proprietary sensors for soil and irrigation as well as the integration of interesting 3rd party sensors.

WaterBit is currently shipping a zero maintenance, 30 second-install, integrating data logging, actuation, telemetry and solar into a single compact unit with long range radio support. Installation takes about 30 seconds, close to ground level and out of the way of machinery, with nothing to configure by the end user.

David Larson

David Larson

Vice President, Global Precision Solutions & Telematics - Technology Systems and Services, CNH Industrial

David Larson is Vice President of Precision Solutions & Telematics – Technology Systems and Services, a role he assumed in 2016 after five years as VP Agricultural Product Portfolio Planning for CNH Industrial.

Mr. Larson has previously served in numerous management positions in the agricultural products, services, innovation and technology fields for CNH, Case Corporation and John Deere.

He holds an Ag Engineering Technology degree from the University of Illinois and an MBA from Northern Illinois University.

Through a dozen global brands, including Case IH and New Holland agricultural, and Case and New Holland construction brands, CNH Industrial is a global leader in the capital goods sector. CNH Industrial designs, produces and sells agricultural and construction equipment, commercial vehicles, buses and specialty vehicles, in addition to a broad portfolio of powertrain applications. More information can be found at: www.cnhindustrial.com

Jorge Heraud

Jorge Heraud

CEO, Blue River Technology Inc.

Jorge Heraud is passionate about combining agriculture and high-technology.  He is the co-founder and CEO of Blue River (www.bluerivert.com).

Blue River Technology Inc. is a start-up that creates smart machines that use Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence to detect and treat each plant in a Plant-by-Plant basis – a cheaper and better alternative to broadcast chemical application.  In its first application, Blue River’s See & Spray machines identify and spray herbicides to only the weeds and not the crops. Each year $25 billion are spent in herbicides.  Blue River’s high-technology approach cuts chemical usage by a factor of 10, which saves money in chemicals and seeds, allows the use effective chemicals, and helps the environment.

Prior to Blue River, Jorge worked at Trimble Navigation as Business Unit Director for Precision Agriculture, and Director of Engineering, designing and delivering high-technology products including Automatic Steering, GPS receivers, displays and Variable Rate Controllers.

Jorge holds Master’s degrees from Stanford University in Electrical Engineering and Business. He lives in Sunnyvale, CA with his wife, and two kids.

Blue River Technology Inc. (www.bluerivert.com) is a start-up that creates smart machines that use Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence to detect and treat each plant in a Plant-by-Plant basis – a cheaper and better alternative to broadcast chemical application.  In its first application, Blue River’s See & Spray machines identify and spray only the weeds and not the crops. Each year $25 B are spent in herbicides.  Blue River’s high-technology approach cuts chemical usage by a factor of 10!, which saves money in chemicals and seeds, allows the use effective chemicals, and helps the environment.

Eric Hansotia

Eric Hansotia

Senior Vice President, Global Crop Cycle and Fuse Connected Services

Eric Hansotia is Senior Vice President, Global Crop Cycle and Fuse Connected Services.  In this role, he provides leadership and strategic direction for AGCO’s global harvesting, crop care, Fuse, and dealer technical support businesses.  He is located in Duluth, GA.

Mr. Hansotia graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Madison with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering. He also earned an MBA from the University of Iowa.

AGCO (NYSE: AGCO) is a global leader in the design, manufacture and distribution of agricultural solutions and supports more productive farming through its full line of equipment and related services. AGCO products are sold through five core brands, Challenger®, Fendt®, GSI®, Massey Ferguson® and Valtra®, supported by Fuse® precision technologies and farm optimization services, and are distributed globally through a combination of over 3,000 independent dealers and distributors in more than 150 countries. Founded in 1990, AGCO is headquartered in Duluth, GA, USA. In 2016, AGCO had net sales of $7.4 billion.

Steve Brumer

Steve Brumer

Partner, 151 Advisors

With over 25 years+ industry experience, Steve Brumer leads the IoT Practice at 151 Advisors – a global advisory and execution firm that advises companies on establishing new market positions and accelerating the growth of products and services.

Brumer’s specialty is Monetizing the Connected World. Creating real-world executable plans that drive revenue growth in new or existing markets to enable companies to realize their full commercial potential.

151 Advisors provides technology companies with a combination of advisory and execution services to ensure companies are focused on the right markets, establishing new market positions and accelerating the growth of its products and services. With decades of experience building ideas into successful businesses and working across the full tech ecosystem to drive revenue growth,151 Advisors helps companies execute and add value to their strategic sales and business development initiatives.

Matthew Brown

Matthew Brown

Director of Business Data, International Farming Corporation

Matthew is Director of Business Data for the International Farming Corporation, a private equity group that specializes in agricultural investments. Starting as an agronomist in 2013, he’s helped build data operations within the business and across multiple farming entities that span over 200,000 acres, growing 70 different crops in 17 states and on two continents. Matthew has more than 15 years’ experience in complex asset management of natural resources, holding a B.S. in International Agriculture and Development from Cornell University and an M.S. in Soil Science from North Carolina State University.

International Farming Corporation, LLC (“IFC”) is an asset management company that specializes in the agricultural sector.  IFC was founded to acquire, farm or lease out for production, top producing farmland in diversified locations throughout the United States.  IFC purchases and owns farmland, partners with farmers to help maximize farm profitability through progressive farming techniques, and works closely with farmers to adopt the IFC franchise model which includes best practice business and agronomic protocols. This active management strategy benefits our farming partners as well as our investors who trust us to provide consistent strong returns in the alternative investment industry.

Lisa Prassack

Lisa Prassack

President, Prassack Advisors, LLC

With more than 20 years’ experience working in emerging markets, including real-life, in-the-trenches agriculture and business experience, Lisa brings an entirely unique point of view to issues surrounding big data in agriculture. She has seen precision agriculture evolve rapidly both in capability and promise to help farms improve productivity and efficiency and is committed to helping agriculture address the remaining challenges.

Lisa brings an “outsider’s perspective,” having specialized in providing critical market understanding for data-intensive, smart connected solutions in many industries including healthcare, smart buildings, telecommunications, IT, energy, consumer homes, online retail, oil & gas and aerospace. On the ag side, she served as Trimble Agriculture’s Strategic Marketing Director, where she was responsible for the precision farming strategy, planning and M&A, as well as global strategic partnerships with companies including John Deere, Dow AgroSciences, BASF, Land O’Lakes, CHS, AGCO, Monsanto-Climate, and DuPont Pioneer to name a few.

Lisa’s farm roots go back to tying grapes, introducing dairy feed RFID tracking and operations in the global supply chain for dried fruits and vegetables, biofuel production and as the Agrium-Viterra merger PMO. She holds a BS in Computer Science from Penn State University and attended the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

William Schmarzo

William Schmarzo

CTO Global Services, Dell EMC

Bill Schmarzo, author of “Big Data: Understanding How Data Powers Big Business” and “Big Data MBA: Driving Business Strategies with Data Science”, is responsible for setting the strategy and defining the Big Data service offerings and capabilities for EMC Global Services Big Data Practice. As the CTO for the Big Data Practice, he is responsible for working with organizations to help them identify where and how to start their big data journeys. He’s written several white papers, is an avid blogger and is a frequent speaker on the use of Big Data and data science to power the organization’s key business initiatives. He is a University of San Francisco School of Management (SOM) Executive Fellow where he teaches the “Big Data MBA” course. Bill was recently ranked as #4 Big Data Influencer by Onalytica.

Bill has over three decades of experience in data warehousing, BI and analytics.  Bill authored EMC’s Vision Workshop methodology that links an organization’s strategic business initiatives with their supporting data and analytic requirements, and co-authored with Ralph Kimball a series of articles on analytic applications. Bill has served on The Data Warehouse Institute’s faculty as the head of the analytic applications curriculum.

Previously, Bill was the vice president of Analytics at Yahoo where he was responsible for the development of Yahoo’s Advertiser and Website analytics products, including the delivery of “actionable insights” through a holistic user experience. Before that, Bill oversaw the Analytic Applications business unit at Business Objects, including the development, marketing and sales of their industry-defining analytic applications.

Bill holds a masters degree in Business Administration from the University of Iowa and a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics, Computer Science and Business Administration from Coe College.

Recent blogs can be found at: infocus.emc.com/author/william_schmarzo
You can also follow Bill on twitter @schmarzo and LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/schmarzo.

As a member of the Dell Technologies unique family of businesses, Dell EMC serves a key role in providing the essential infrastructure for organizations to build their digital future, transform IT and protect their most important asset, information. Dell EMC enables our enterprise customers’ IT and digital business transformation through trusted hybrid cloud and big-data solutions, built upon a modern data center infrastructure that incorporates industry-leading converged infrastructure, servers, storage, and cybersecurity technologies.