Brian Madden Email & Phone Number

Paris, Fr

Industry analyst & consultant focusing on how EUC & digital workplace practices will evolve into the AI-enabled future. Created the Workplace AI Strategy Guide project as a practical guide to help us all understand the impact of employees using AI tools in the workplace. The general premise is this:∙ AI tools like ChatGPT are really popular now.∙ Employees are using them, often without company approval.∙ This raises questions about productivity, security, and ethics.∙ The nature of work and employer-employee dynamics is quickly changing, and most companies don’t realize how significant this already is.∙ Should you develop a strategy to support this now (probably), or wait and see what happens as employees randomly figure it out on their own (probably not)?∙ If so, what are the issues, what’s real and what’s hype, how to you plan, and what do you do next?

I write all the technical documentation for FAST Pinball, a small company whose integrated hardware/software platform is the electronic control system which power pinball machines. The FAST platform is used in commercial machines from several manufacturers (including Barrels of Fun, Pedretti, European Pinball Co, and Haggis) as well as in hundreds of hobbyist and homebrew machines. I've done a lot of things over the years for FAST, including:∙ Created & published all FAST technical documentation, diagrams, & how-to guides. (https://fastpinball.com/docs)∙ Wrote software tools for hardware programming (various Atmel microprocessors & RP2040s), created all GitHub CI/CD pipelines for firmware builds.∙ Wrote & updated the FAST Platform interface for the Mission Pinball Framework (mostly Python)∙ Created the branding and storytelling, presented on stage at several pinball shows.∙ Co-created, chaired, and launched the PinDevCon pinball maker's conference. (https://pindevcon.com)∙ Spent a lot of time hardware hacking, in FCC certification test chambers, and lots of time in the lab∙ Product managed the launch of the FAST Neuron modern pinball platform and FAST Retro platforms.

Palo Alto, Ca, Us

A global role reporting to the EUC CTO and part of the EUC leadership team, I worked with VMware customers, partners, employees, and analysts; listening, learning, educating, and engaging on topics around VMware's innovations, insights, and north star vision.∙ Gave ~50 speeches per year.∙ Executive sponsor for several of our largest global customers.∙ Owned and drove several long term strategic direction initiatives around the VMware EUC platform and how we support the future of work.∙ Worked with product management on our roadmap.∙ Engaged with product marketing on our storytelling and messaging.∙ Started a public speaking club and mentored dozens of colleagues, getting more and diverse people on stage telling their stories.∙ Owned the VMware vExpert and EUC Champions communities for EUC.∙ Countless blog posts, videos, podcasts, press interviews.∙ Member of the CEO office team for BU strategy and company-wide technical alignment.∙ Pivoted during covid to a home studio, helped our biggest customers embrace the chaos of allowing secure and productive work from everyone everywhere.

Suwanee, Ga, Us

Angel investor & advisor for FSLogix, a software company whose products enabled the optimization of VDI environments and helped improve the user experience by addressing challenges such as profile management, application provisioning, and performance issues. The company was acquired by Microsoft in 2018.

Founder & creator of the BriForum conference, a vendor-neutral highly-technical EUC conference series which we held 20 times over 12 years in many cities including Washington DC, Chicago, Denver, Boston, London, Amsterdam, and Frankfurt. A typical BriForum would be 3 days, 500 attendees, 40 speakers, 60 breakout sessions, 30 exhibit hall vendors, 1 Geek Out gameshow, and 1 epic party. It was widely regarded as the premier tech event in the EUC space and my proudest professional achievement. And yes, the name was a play on "iForum", which was Citrix's vendor conference at the time, as BriForum was jokingly conceived as "Brian's iForum" over drinks there. BriForum was acquired by IT media company TechTarget in 2008.

Founder & CEO of The Brian Madden Company, a boutique industry analyst firm known globally for flipping the traditional analyst model and returning the power to the people. We believed that all IT practitioners should benefit from knowledge and insight, and all of our research and work was available for free for everyone.We were most known for our work in the enterprise end-user computing space (cloud based apps, mobile device management, the future of work, the consumerization of IT) and led the conversation in the industry on these topics. BrianMadden.com was widely-regarded as THE site driving the conversation and industry forward.We ultimately published 2500 original articles & thought pieces (written by more than 50 different industry experts), 1,000+ videos, 6 books, and 120 podcast episodes. We were acquired by TechTarget in 2008.

Boutique IT book & DVD publisher which catered to the needs of emerging tech authors. We changed the traditional compensation model so authors actually got paid what they were worth. We published 20 different products on topics including Citrix, VMware, Microsoft Windows, enterprise mobility, thin client computing, and other similar topics for IT professionals.

Harris County, Texas, Us

Solutions Architect for Compaq Federal (and then HP Services), I spent time at various US Federal Agencies leading the technical architecture for various projects, including:* Exchange at the US Senate.* Systems Management Server (SMS) for USDA. (The largest SMS infrastructure in the world at the time, 2700 site servers! Microsoft bought us a cake.)* Site Server at the Department of State.* Citrix and Terminal Server for the US Navy in Pearl Harbor and several TLAs in DC.Plus lots of shorter engagements and talks all over the government.I had the PCMCIA sleeve for my iPAQ PDA with the 1xRTT modem, so at the time I felt like a badass. (Though, technically-speaking, my device couldn't make calls and only had 90min of battery.)

Lewis Center, Ohio, Us

Principal Consultant for a large reseller, focused on Microsoft and Citrix desktop and application management technologies. I built our practice and was involved with many of our largest projects and clients. I spent a lot of time on stage and mentoring junior engineers on how to think about technology, how to write amazing documentation, how to speak on stage, and how to grow their careers.I had the OmniSky CDPD modem for my Palm V. (Text-only, for 30 battery-limited minutes a day, from a few very specifically covered parts of the city, assuming the wind was right.) I was living in the future!!

Large national VAR, I was one of 6 principal consultants globally and split my time between consulting engagements and growing and training our own people. Most of my time was focused on Microsoft and Citrix technologies, though back in those days there was still a fair amount of NetWare, Banyan Vines, and a smattering of ArcServe work to do.Got my first experience as a "road warrior" consultant. CompuServe was our ISP and I exclusively stayed at hotels which offered RJ-11 data ports on their room phones for my Lotus Notes lightning sessions. (I just had to remember to pre-print my MapBlast turn-by-turns.)

Vanstar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Wow, what a bygone era! I did a lot with Microsoft SMS (Systems Management Server, the grandparent of Intune). I was part of the committee which wrote the MSCE certification exam for SMS.

Satellite Beach, Florida, Us

IT consultant in NE Ohio. Did a lot of driving around with paper maps. Bought floppies in bulk. Traded prior months' TechNet CDs on the black market. Worked from my van before it was cool. Most work was desktop architecture, desktop management, and Microsoft SMS. Oh! And a lot of NetWare too. (I'd read that AppNote about how to recover from an abend without rebooting, so I was basically God.)Notable projects included:* NASA Lewis (now Glenn) Research Center, I did engineering for a 4,000 seat Windows 95 (!!!) rollout. I spent a lot of time figuring out how to get old DOS apps which controlled robots and wind tunnels and stuff running on 95.* Lead desktop architect at Telxon (acquired by Cisco) for a 500 seat Windows NT desktop rollout. This was the first project where I owned the entire desktop OS design and rollout process. (Unrelated, this was where I met my first Citrix server (WinFrame 1.6) running on CUBIX blades. Fun times!)* SMS implementation engineer at Diebold (way before they were famous). Spent a lot of time managing OS/2-based ATM machines with SMS. (!!!)* Plus a lot of little projects, including for the people who make highway guardrails and those little colored letter stickers from doctors' office patient file-folders. (Both 1990s NE Ohio industries!)