About the Young Technology Alliance
The Sarasota | Manatee Technology Conference 2006 is produced by The Young Technology Alliance (YTA), an organization dedicated to bringing technology events to the Florida Gulf Coast region. The YTA’s mission is to broaden technology awareness within the community through education, inspiration and collaboration of technology and business professionals.

The passion for technology as it relates to business success laid the foundation for the beginnings of the not-for-profit Young Technology Alliance (YTA). The shared passion united six entrepreneurial individuals (Anand Pallegar, Jessica Moats, John Barron, Sinan Gurman, Amanda Eyer, Diane Arthurs) who recognized an opportunity to bring technology-focused events to the Gulf Coast.

Each YTA chair member has a unique stake in the betterment of technology skills and awareness in the ever-expanding area we live and work in. The only thing YTA leaders are more fanatical about than technology mastery is the blend of technology and entrepreneurialism -- as a catalyst for innovation. Among them, the diverse team has founded over a dozen technology-based companies and actively participated with area business associations like The Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce, the Manatee Chamber of Commerce and 82 DegreesTech to raise the bar for companies doing business within the Gulf Coast.

YTA Chair Anand Pallegar carries the YTA vision and recruited each chair member. He is a seasoned entrepreneur and manager who founded his first company, Atlas Networks, a web hosting company, at the age of 19 while attending the University of Michigan. The Great Britain native held top management positions at several technology marketing companies before launching his interactive Web agency, atLarge, Inc., in 2001. Before founding the YTA, Anand co-founded the first daily digital business publication on the Gulf Coast, the S2 Report.

Like Anand, YTA Sponsorship Chair John Barron fused his marketing expertise with business knowledge to create his own company, Barron Productions, an Internet marketing company specializing in search engine optimization. He also has years of marketing and management experience having served as Marketing Director for a regional theater and a nation-wide furniture chain.

YTA Web Marketing Chair Jessica Moats has over seven years of experience in marketing --many of those years have been with GravityFree, a Sarasota-based Web design company. As GravityFree’s Marketing Director and Copywriter, Jessica manages GravityFree’s marketing, PR and is the content developer (a.k.a. copywriter) for their Web projects, where she has taken the writing aspect of her career to the specialized level of the Web. This includes developing, organizing, formatting and preparing search engine optimized content/copy for various Web sites as they are being developed. Jessica earned her bachelor’s degree in mass communications from Ohio University.

Another marketing guru, YTA Education Chair Sinan Gurman is a marketing analytics and software consultant at the Sequoya Group Inc., a leading provider of automated analytic and forecasting solutions for sales and promotions management. Sinan is the lead Sequoya consultant for Colgate Palmolive Company, ConAgra Foods, US Smokeless Tobacco Company and Bayer. Gurman holds a master’s degree in business administration from the University of South Florida. He earned his undergraduate degree in physics from Middle East Technical University in Turkey.

YTA Media Chair Amanda Eyer is the Marketing Coordinator for Tropics Software Technologies, a Sarasota-based software company specializing in software for the workers’ compensation insurance industry. Amanda manages marketing, PR, Web copy and events for the software company. She holds a bachelor’s degree in public relations from the University of Florida and a master’s in business administration from the University of South Florida.

YTA Marketing Chair Diane Arthurs is a Graphic Designer and New Media Coordinator for Anexio, Inc., a technology and Web site development company. The Holland native co-founded an animal performance company. She has always had a great love for art and believes graphic design is an art form that visually connects a business with its current or potential customers. Diane holds an Associate ’s degree in graphic design from Keiser College.

For more information, or to get involved with the YTA, contact us at info@sarasotatechconference.com.