Dr. Richard Thomas Watson   is the J. Rex Fuqua Distinguished Chair for Internet Strategy and Director of the Center for Information Systems Leadership in the Terry College at the University of Georgia.

 He currently serves as the Interim head of the MIS Department. Professor Watson has published more than 100 journal articles and written books on electronic commerce and data management. His work has been accepted by leading academic and practitioner journals and has been translated into several languages. Dr. Watson has given invited presentations in more than twenty countries. His most recent research focuses on IS leadership, the business of open source, net-based customer service systems, and the role of IS in creating sustainable business practices. In 2001, John Wiley & Sons appointed him as its consulting editor for its net-enhanced organization (NEO) series. He is also a visiting scholar at the University of Agder in Norway. Dr. Watson has served as President of the Association for Information Systems, the major academic society for IS faculty, and was co-conference chair for the 2004 meeting of the International Conference on Information Systems, the pre-eminent IS conference. He has served as a senior editor for MIS Quarterly, the leading IS journal. He was in 2006 co-program chair for the Americas Conference on Information System, the major regional IS conference. In addition, he is co-leader of the Global Text Project, which aims to create a library of 1,000 open content textbooks for students in the developing world. Professor Watson received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, where he studied on a Fulbright award, and his MBA from Monash University in Australia. In addition he holds a Diploma in Computation and a Bachelor of Science in mathematics from the University of Western Australia. 

Speech Title: The Business of Open Source