About Dave Nelsen
1960: Born October 7 (a Friday, in the heart of Silicon Valley)
1982: Arizona: BS Systems Engineering
1982: Joined AT&T Bell Laboratories
1983: Stanford: MS Operations Research
1986: Married Katherine (37+ years…)
1987: Promoted into “Management”
1990: I’m a dad!
1993: AT&T Bell Laboratories President’s Innovation award (one of three companywide)
1994: Joined start-up FORE Systems
1998: Cofounded CoManage Corp (telecom “operations support system” software)
2000: Closed third round of venture financing ($39M) during dot com crash (a minor miracle)
2000: E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year winner (Emerging Business category)
2002: Regular guest/host on WMNY 1360-AM “The American Entrepreneur” (thru 2012)
2003: Joined Vistage CE 676 as a member
2004: Tech Council CEO of the Year
2005: Sold CoManage to Syndesis; CoManage revenues zoomed 400% in the first year
2005: Founded TalkShoe.com, an early podcasting pioneer (a time of iPods but not yet iPhones, hence “pod”casting)
2009: Started professional speaking – Vistage Rookie of the Year
2010: Founded Dialog Consulting Group
2010: Vistage Impact Speaker award
2011: Founded GradeNation.com
2011: Vistage Speaker of the Year
2012: Vistage Impact Speaker award
2013: Vistage Members Choice Speaker (highest rated of 1,000+ speakers)
2016: Sold Talkshoe.com to Iotum Conferencing
2017: TEC Canada #1Top Speaker award
2018: Vistage Lifetime Achievment award
2020: Vistage Top Performer award (Operations)
2020: Founded Locaitor.ai
2021: Vistage Top Performer award (Ops)
2022: Vistage Top Performer award (Ops)
2023: Vistage Top Performer award (Ops)
2023: I’m a grandparent (d’pop)
A geek who can speak!
ChatGPT: Most geeks speak a unique dialect known as “Tech-nese,” a blend of jargon, acronyms, and code snippets that sounds like a secret code to the uninitiated. When they say “Just SSH into the server and execute a simple script,” it might as well be “Just recite the enchanted spell to enter the magic portal.”
Dave: You’re stereotyping, although you’re accurately describing my employees and my friends.
ChatGPT: In addition, geeks love details – the more, the better. So when asked a simple question, they embark on an epic journey through the history, theory, and potential future implications of the topic, often forgetting that the original question was just about resetting a password.
Dave: I’m a different kind of geek, a title I wear proudly. Yes, I’m an engineer, I’m married to an engineer, and when I’m not speaking, I’m the CEO of a software company. But even when studying Operations Research at Stanford, my interest was in practical applications rather than in theoretical concepts.
When I speak with groups, it’s not about the technology but instead about what we can do with it. Not what we can do with it in the wiring closet, but what we can do with it to make our people more productive and our businesses more successful.
Dave’s Mission
…is to help every businessperson he meets become more effective using technology.
Dave’s Vision
…is of a world where businesses produce abundance for humanity at a lower price point than today (made possible through ever-improving technology).
Dave’s Approach
…is “Show, don’t tell.” Whereas the conventional wisdom is to use one slide for every five minutes of speaking, his sessions are closer to five slides for every one minute of speaking. It’s the most visual presentation most people have ever seen, with countless animations, screen captures, builds, and transitions, with comparatively few bullets and words. We remember what we see, far better than what we read or hear.
Apps to AI: Elevating Executive Effectiveness!
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[email protected]
Phone/text: 1-412-779-2788
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20436 Hwy 19, Ste 620-400
Cranberry Twp., PA 16066