Al Pilcher is a professorin the Bachelor of Applied Business e-Business Supply Chain Management Degree program at Algonquin College, Ottawa. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Information Systems and an M.B.A thesis option in Technology Management from the Sprott School of Business, Carleton University; thesis topic “Factors Affecting Mobile Data Technology Adoption by Canadian SME’s”. Al is certified as a Project Management Professional and as an SAP Consultant Certification Solution Architect ERP - Integration of Business Processes.

Before joining Algonquin full-time in December of 2008, Al was a term instructor the Sprott School of Business, teaching Management Information Systems. Prior to academics, Al was a two-time Canadian Olympian for Cross Country Skiing in the 1988 and 1992 Olympics. He stills holds the record of best Canadian male result at Nordic World Championships, finishing 7^th in the 50km. Al also competed and placed nationally in the Canadian Road Race Cycling, Triathlon and Duathlon Championships. An entrepreneur during his undergrad years, Al raised over $100k, implemented several business plans, supported six agents, and developed proprietary software. Other accomplishments include leading camping trips; pilot’s license, building a cedar log home and owning a 1927 Model-T. But to date, his greatest personal accomplishment (besides his family) is getting his undergrad when he was 38 years old.

Rob Riordan is an Instructor in Information Systems in the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University in Ottawa. He holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology and a Master’s Degree in Social Demography from the University of Western Ontario, where he also studied towards a PhD in Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the Faculty of Medicine. Before quite finishing his studies, he accepted a position at Statistics Canada, where he worked for 15 years while teaching Information Systems on a contract basis at Carleton. At the height of the tech boom, Carleton wooed him to a fulltime faculty position, where he has remained ever since.

Like many Information Systems practitioners his age, he comes to the discipline via the path of personal experience. Rob began his near lifelong passion for systems while an undergraduate, becoming somewhat of an expert in the use of SPSS on the venerable CDC Cyber mainframe. From here, he learned to program in FORTRAN on the Cyber and then in BASIC on the DEC VAX. From here, and needing to support his burgeoning family (three children by the time he started his doctoral studies in 1983), Rob took various programming and database management positions for research projects in Epidemiology, Demography and Sociology, along with analyst and project director positions for the Health Care Research Unit at Western.

Rob is the recipient of several teaching awards (and near awards), including the prestigious Teaching Achievement Award for 2009 at Carleton. He was also recipient of the Commerce Society Excellence in Teaching Award, the Teaching Excellence Award of the Carleton University Students Association and was twice a finalist for the National Capital Educator’s Award. Rob also received a Professional Achievement Award from Carleton in 2002-2003. He lives with his wife Fara and two remaining at-home children (of four total) near the beach in the Ottawa suburb of Britannia. He has two grandchildren living in Germany. A fixture on the bike paths of the NCR, he is an avid cyclist and fitness buff, clocking more than 5,000 km a year. He does a solo cross Ontario and back cycle trip every June. He fancies himself a poet.