Joseph M. Byrd

Joe Byrd brings to Future Image a wealth of management, marketing and sales experience in the imaging and technology industries. His primary assignment is to create and conduct the operations for Future Image's many conferences held around the world including the Mobile Imaging Summits and the Future of Imaging Executive Briefings held in connection with major imaging and telecommunications trade shows.

His previous endeavor was founding PhotoHighway.com, a digital photography web portal where he was COO, with responsibility for the overall management of operations, development, finance, marketing and sales. Byrd matured the Photohighway concept over more than a decade. He discovered the power of online communications and community building while creating the first online support service for a software company utilizing CompuServe and the Source in 1983. In 1996 while working for a division of Softbank he extended that concept to vertical market portals for PC OEMs. This concept was then adapted for use as a Windows 98 upgrade program approved by Microsoft and implemented worldwide for Compaq, Toshiba, Packard Bell and other PC OEMs. Byrd presented the next generation of his program at the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) trade show in February 1999, as a vertical portal for digital photography. He received overwhelming industry acceptance, assembled a development team and brought PhotoHighway.com to the market in the space of four months.

Byrd's extensive involvement in the technology industry includes developing and launching dozens of software products and Internet programs with such companies as Digital Research, Softbank and Borland over a period of 16 years. His education includes a master¹s degree in Communications Management and Marketing and a bachelor's degree in Journalism. He is the author of two books on computer technology and the Future Image section on the Emerging Trends in Digital Photography that was published in the February 2001 issue of Red Herring and the Visual Communication section that was published in October 14, 2002 issue of Forbes magazine.