Mark Matterson

Learn the value of "The Art of Change". In this session you will discover the HOW and WHY of stretching comfort zones (i.e., Moving from install to manager to leader). Mark is an "Edutainer" combining high levels of interaction and fun blended with bottom line business content, utilizing a three step approach to change.

One: Providing proven Best Practices Concepts for small and medium size contracting businesses. Two: Provide straightforward Tools for Change. Three: Inspire his audiences to use the Tools to increase Sales, improve Profits, Attract Good People, Improve Customer Retention

Mark Matteson is an internationally known Speaker, Author and Consultant.  He is the founder and President of Pinnacle Service Group, Inc., Lynnwood, WA.   He is author of three books including the best seller, Freedom from Fear. With over 29 years in the service industry, Mark is on the Editorial Advisory Board and a frequent contributor to Contracting Business.  He has written for HVAC Insider and has been written about in The News for his unique and Profit Producing seminars.  Mark inspires Manufacturers, Distributors and Service Organizations Nationwide to “Raise the Bar” to achieve higher levels of personal and professional performance. 

Jim Bearden

In this upbeat, entertaining and enlightening keynote presentation, Jim Bearden will offer insights on the changing circumstances we encounter, the choices we make about those circumstances and the consequences those choices produce.

Using plenty of humor and his experiences as a decorated Marine officer, corporate vice president, published author and owner of his own successful speaking & training business, Jim will provide us with specific suggestions and tools for acknowledging and confronting the setbacks we encounter and for finding ways to transform those setbacks into progress. Jim’s dynamic speaking style, his warm, tasteful sense of humor and the stories he tells will reinforce the power of Playing to Win in a Changing World.

Jim Bearden's many rich life experiences form the basis for his work. A former Marine officer, decorated Vietnam veteran, corporate vice president, author-and most important, father of three-Jim delivers practical insights on the life skills essential to individual and organizational success. Jim's warm sense of humor, along with the wonderful, relevant stories he weaves into his sessions give him the ability to bring timeless concepts & principles to life.  

James Dion, Dionco

Are you getting the best deal for your company/yourself? Do you know what you should never say in a negotiation and what you should always say? This presentation is the "Swiss Army Knife" of negotiation skills, giving everyone who attends the highest payback skills to ensure a successful negotiation. In this session, you will learn some very simple techniques to use right away to help you create positive and beneficial relationship with your alter negotiators.

Jim Dion is founder and president of Dionco Inc., Chicago.  Jim is an internationally known consultant, keynote speaker, trainer, author and one of North America's leading experts on retail technology, retail selling and service, merchandising and operations and consumer trends.

Jim is a speaker for the National Retail Federation in Washington DC on Technology, Inventory Control, Negotiation Techniques and Store Management.  He has produced six video tapes on Retail Inventory Control as well as authored the definitive retail selling manual titled "Retail Selling Ain’t Brain Surgery, It’s Twice As Hard." In addition, he has co-authored the "Start and Run a Retail Business" for Self-Council Press. Jim lectures and writes for numerous trade and national magazines on technology issues and on the Internet and its use and misuse by retailers and manufacturers.

Gisue Hariri

Established in 1986 by Cornell educated, Iranian born sisters Gisue Hariri and Mojgan Hariri, New York Citybased Hariri & Hariri Architecture is internationally known for creating a visionary architecture that is both conceptually provocative, yet visually elegant. The firm’s integration of striking architectural forms, digital technology, inventive materials and a social agenda has defined their practice for over two decades. Hariri & Hariri’s pure understanding of light and space, and the thoughtful exploration of dynamic forms and materials are consistent themes in all their projects. Hariri & Hariri have been recognized for the quality and originality of their work with numerous awards, such as the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Academy Award in Architecture among others. Consistently creative and evocative, Hariri & Hariri are leaders in their field with highly visible multi-family housing developments, commercial and institutional projects, and private residences of national and international significance. 

Chad Oppenheim

The architecture of Chad Oppenheim is simultaneously daring and sensible, romantic and reductive; evocative and essential.  An alchemist of atmosphere, Oppenheim transforms the prosaic into the poetic-- eliciting a site’s inherent power through minimal gesture and sincere means.  Spaces and structures, optimized for pleasure and performance, establish aesthetic delight with passioned sensitivity towards man and nature. 

Born in New York in 1971 and raised in the suburbs of New Jersey, Chad Oppenheim, NCARB, AIA, received a bachelor of architecture from Cornell University in 1994, and founded OPPENHEIM architecture + design in 1999.   An adjunct professor of architecture at Florida International University, he has lectured globally, and is the recipient of numerous awards and distinctions.  Oppenheim lives and works with his wife and muse, Ilona in Miami. 

Doug Wilson  

Doug Wilson is a modern day Renaissance man — a designer, author, television showman and philanthropist. While he is perhaps best known as the “colorful” designer for his daring, high-impact rooms on TLC ’s hitseries “Trading Spaces,” this small-town boy turned design-phenom extends well beyond his television persona. Raised five miles outside the town of Broadlands, Illinois, Doug uses the purity and serenity of his childhood home as inspiration for melding organic elements with a fresh, sophisticated and inherently American sense of style.