Michael is the president and founder of Osterman Research.  He has more than 27 years experience in the high-tech research industry and has spent nearly 16 years following the messaging and collaboration industries. Prior to founding Osterman Research in 2001, Michael was the Vice President of Market Research for Creative Networks, and has held senior analyst positions with SRI International and Ryan Hankin Kent.

David has spent the past 20 years analyzing virtually every area in communications and collaboration and the past 10 years focused on real-time social software. His work has appeared in leading technology publication such as PC Magazine, Network Computing, IT Architect, Data Communications and Red Herring, and has consulted to and assisted Fortune 500 enterprises in their technology acquisitions. Most recently he was the editor of Network Computing.

Linda is an independent editor/writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Originally from London, England, she has been writing about the technology industry since 1989, when minicomputers where pushing mainframes out of the data center and Unix was all rage. In 1996 she said goodbye to the print magazine industry for good and joined a fast-paced European online newswire service, reporting on IT industry news on a daily basis. She left London for California in 1999 to head up the newswire service's Silicon Valley bureau, and witnessed first-hand the dot-com bust of 2001. Linda was most recently Assistant Site Editor at IDG's Network World, the premier site for IT networking professionals where she launched the vibrant independent Cisco Subnet and Microsoft Subnet communities.

Michael is an Industry Analyst and Consultant focused on improving the performance of distributed teams. Michael helps end-user organizations understand the collaboration landscape, through independent analysis and briefings. His research as an industry analyst is presented at conferences around the world, and he shares his work on the Michael Sampson: Currents blog. Michael holds an MCom with first class honors in telecommunications-based IT, from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, and is currently working on his doctorate in collaborative applications and virtual teams.