Spring Institute 2013 Speakers


Alexa Robertson | Amy Calhoun | Camille Reynolds | Colin Mackay |
David Sandino | Denise M. Davis | Joe Genshlea | John McKinsey | Julie GallaherLinda Teresa Di Biase | Walter Nelson


Alexa Robertson

Program: It Takes a Village: Vendors Grow Their EBook Digital Files

Alexa Robertson is the Director of Library Relations at the Practising Law Institute. She has a background in librarianship, instruction, usability, and information architecture. Alexa served as project manager to the design and development of Discover PLUS, an eBook library which provides online access to PLI’s Answer Books, Course Handbooks, Treatises, Legal Forms, and Program Transcripts. Practising Law institute (PLI) is a non-profit continuing legal education organization and publisher. Since 1933 PLI has been dedicated to providing the legal community with the most up-to-date, relevant information and techniques critical to the development of a professional. This is achieve through the development of over 300 seminars in locations across the US, regularly supplemented Treatises and Answer Books, audio CDs and DVDs, MP4s, live Webcasts, and Course Handbooks.


Amy Calhoun

Program: It Takes a Village: Growing Successful Ebooks Programs

Amy Calhoun is the Virtual Branch Coordinator for Sacramento Public Library, overseeing the online presence of the library, including the public website, social media channels, and the electronic resources collection of eBooks and databases. She also has experience implementing a circulating eReader program that includes over 250 devices with preloaded eBook content.


Camille Reynolds

Program: Social Media Collaboration @ Law Libraries

Camille Reynolds has more than 10 years of experience managing law firm information services including risk management, library, knowledge management and records functions. Ms. Reynolds focuses her role on developing efficient and effective processes that enable the Firm’s attorneys to provide the highest quality legal service to their clients. She leads the Firm’s Risk Management & Information Services teams that include conflicts, new business intake, library, competitive intelligence, records, patent and trademark practice support. She combines strong leadership and organizational skills to provide effective business services that promote the efficient delivery of legal services.

Prior to joining Fenwick & West, Ms. Reynolds was the Director of Knowledge Management at Nossaman LLP where she built a team from the ground up combining library, records, risk management and knowledge management functions into one cohesive service group, led the development of the firm’s first Intranet and implemented a Competitive Intelligence program.

She speaks and writes frequently on topics related to library, risk and knowledge professionals helping their organizations remain competitive by more effectively utilizing knowledge assets while managing risk.


Colin Mackay

Program: It Takes a Village: Vendors Grow Their EBook Digital Files

Colin Mackay is Vice President of Product Marketing within the Thomson Reuters Legal business unit. In this role, Colin is responsible for market positioning of Westlaw and Law Books, available in both Print and eBook formats. The eBook strategy is being built around Thomson Reuter’s proprietary ProView professional eReader software platform.

Colin has held a number of leadership roles during his tenure at Thomson Reuters. At different junctures within the Thomson Reuters Legal business, Colin has been Vice President of the Government Segment, the Solo/Small Law Firm Segment and the Medium Law Firm Segment. He has also assumed Strategy and Business Development roles inside Thomson Reuters.

Before joining Thomson Reuters, Colin’s experience included management consulting at Arthur D. Little, where he focused on strategy and merger & acquisition projects for international clients. He also held marketing and business development roles, at Ariba, a B2B software company.

Colin earned his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and holds a B. Eng. in Chemical Engineering from McGill University.


David Sandino

Program: Different Views of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta:  How We See California’s Most Important Ecosystem

Appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, David Sandino served as Chief Counsel for the California Department of Water Resources from 2006-2010 and worked on water, environmental, and energy issues during his twenty year career with the Department. As Chief Counsel, he managed thirty-five attorneys and received the Department’s management excellence award in 2010. The Department operates the largest state-built water system in the United States, the State Water Project, which delivers water to 25 million Californians and 750,000 acres of farmland.

During his tenure with the Department, he also served for four years as lead counsel for the California Reclamation Board (currently named the Central Valley Flood Protection Board), which is responsible for flood control protection in the Central Valley. From 1995-2000 he also worked as lead attorney for the Department in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay-Delta Hearings, which allocated responsibilities to meet environmental water quality standards in the Delta.

He has taught water law, environmental law, energy resources law, real property and local government law at Texas Tech University School of Law, Santa Clara University School of Law, University of San Francisco School of Law, and Golden Gate University School of Law. He also created and teaches a water law and policy course to environmental professionals at the UC Davis Extension and the UCLA Extension. He received a distinguished teaching award from UC Davis for his contribution to natural science continuing adult education. He received a 1999 Fulbright Fellowship to teach in Russia, where he taught international environmental law at the Moscow State Academy.

He is on the Board of Editors of California Environmental Law Reporter, and he has written numerous articles on the environment, water, and land use. He has been a frequent speaker on California and western water and environmental issues at conference and seminars.

He served on the City of Davis Planning Commission and Natural Resources Commission. He currently serves on the City of Davis Policy Advisory Commission, which reviews internal police investigations.

He received his A.B. in chemistry from UC Davis in 1980. He continued his education with a J.D. from Santa Clara University School of Law, where he graduated in 1984. He received his LL.M specializing in pubic international law in 1987, from the University of London, King’s College. While in London, he studied under a Rotary Foundation Graduate Fellowship.


Denise M. Davis

Program: It Takes a Village: Growing Successful Ebooks Programs

Denise Davis is the Deputy Library Director of Sacramento Public Library, with responsibilities for Collection Services, Facilities, Finance, Information Technology, Communications and the Virtual Branch.

Denise has contributed to the library profession with more than 30 years experience in academic, public and state library agencies, as well as directing research at the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science and the American Library Association’s Office for Research and Statistics. Denise also has contributed to the profession through consulting with such organizations as Florida State University, Dominican University Graduate School of Library and Information Science. Denise currently provides consulting support to the American Library Association (ALA), as an expert advisor to the LJ Patron Profiles series (link), DataONE (a primary data depository initiative), and with ICF International for the assessment of the Institute of Museum and Library Services Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian grant program.


Joe Genshlea

Program: Succeeding in the California Wine Business by Really Trying

Partner / Founder Revolution Wines

Founded Revolution Wines in 2006. Set strategic direction, oversee finance, technology and operations.

Presentation topics:

  • Business of the small winery
  •  Navigating local, state and federal rules and regulations during start up
  •  Overview of winemaking in an urban environment
  • Economies of winemaking

John McKinsey

Program: Succeeding in the California Wine Business by Really Trying

Partner, Locke Lord LLP

An overview of the wine business in California from the small startup winery perspective and featuring the growing story of urban winemaking. Using Joe’s success in steering and nurturing his urban winery, Revolution Wines, to John’s experience advising and guiding numerous wineries through all phases and levels of business, you will learn all about the business and regulatory hurdles wineries face including: land use and environmental hurdles, economic and market barriers and alcohol-related restrictions and regulation.


Julie Gallaher

Program: “Do You Control Your Online Reputation or Does It Control You?”

Julie Gallaher is Google’s #1 ranked Sacramento Social Media Consultant and owner of Get on the Map Local Search Marketing. Specialties include Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Training, Reputation Management and Social Event Promotion.

 Search Engine Optimization – We specialize in helping businesses that previously would have reached new prospects via the yellow pages.  With yellow page usage dramatically declined over the last ten years, it’s essential that businesses find modern ways to maintain a flow of fresh prospects. SEO combined with social media is the most effective to accomplish this goal.

Social Media  – Julie’s social reach is one of the largest in the Sacramento area, with 10,000 Twitter followers, 5,000 Facebook Friends/Fans, 3,000 LinkedIn Connections and active profiles on Instagram, Youtube, Pinterest, Google+ and other social platforms.

Social Media Training – We’ve trained over 500 business leaders on social media marketing via classes sponsored by the Sacramento Metro Chamber, Sacramento Association of Realtors and many others.

Social Event Management – Our most recent success was managing the social media for Sac Fashion Week, where we generated 2.7 Million Impressions and reached over 300,000 individuals via our postings on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Youtube.

Reputation Management – Businesses and individuals can find that their most positive mentions online may be buried 5 or 10 pages back in Google, while their failures are highlighted on page one.  We can help reverse that situation.

 Get on the Map 2572 21st Street Sacramento, CA 95819 Phone: 916-265-2521 http://getonthemap.us


Linda Teresa Di Biase

Program: It Takes a Village: Growing Successful Ebooks Programs

Linda coordinates the work of 70 subject librarians at a large research university in the area of collection development and management. Assists in budget allocation and management and in policy development; participates in regional and national consortia engaged in collaborative collection development and management. Serves as subject librarian for Religious Studies and Classics, managing an annual budget in excess of $100,000. Serves 3-4 hours per week on the Special Collections reference desk.

She also serves on the Operations and Collections Council of WEST (Western Regional Storage Trust) and the Collection Development and Management Committee of the Orbis Cascade Alliance. As chair of the Ebook Working Group of the Orbis Cascade Alliance, oversees the Demand Driven Acquisitions Program, a pioneering collaboration of 37 libraries in 3 states to acquire ebooks triggered for purchase by patron use.

She aas held previous professional positions in special collections and archival management, and as a reference librarian in a public library.


Walter Nelson

Program: Alternatives to the Catalog

Walter Nelson has been with the RAND Corporation Library for more than 25 years. During this time he has come to specialize in web design, online information management and the migration a digital content model. He has spearheaded the deployment of web interfaces, catalogs and digital content management systems for RAND and for several local organizations, using tools such as SIRSI Symphony, EOS, Filemaker, SharePoint and Drupal. He also introduced blogging to RAND, and has built several document repositories on several Government networks.

Outside his “day job”, Walter is active in organizing programs for the Southern California historical dance community, to include successful annual events like “The Avalon Ball”, a 1930s big band dance in the Avalon Ballroom in Catalina and the “Jane Austen Evening”, a program of entertainments and dance from the era of Jane Austen.

In his activities inside and outside of RAND, Walter focuses on getting the greatest impact from online tools with the most efficient possible application of time and effort.

He is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley with a BA in History and a former US Army Intelligence officer.