Abhijit Arvind Bhure is a domain consultant in the energy and utilities sector with Infosys Technologies Limited, an IT services company in India.
He has over seven years of consulting experience with various utilities and his areas of interest include customer information management, customer services, and advanced metering issues.

Alvaro Rios Roca is the Executive Secretary of the Organización Latinoamericana de Energía (Latin America Energy Association, OLADE) for the term 2006-2008.

He is a former minister of hydrocarbons on Bolivia. He is an expert in the energy sector and has acted as a consultant on various international energy projects and as a sector analyst. He also participates in conferences and has contributed to various media in Latin America.

He trained as a chemical engineer in the U.S.A.

Amatsia Kashti PhD is of Israeli origin; he lives in Oxford, UK. Following an academic career in demand modeling, he founded Olive Domestic Metering in 1995. He has been writing and lecturing ever since on environmental and competition issues with reference to smart metering and energy efficiency.

Compos Mentis is the pen name of a well-known North American expert in metering and  AMR who has been involved in advanced technologies for the utility industry for more than 35 years. This column will appear from time to time, as the author selects various “balloons to pop”, as he terms them. “Compos Mentis” (Latin) means sane, sober, rational, clear-headed.

Duncan Sedgwick is chief executive of the Energy Retail Association (ERA), which was established in 2003 and represents Britain's major household energy suppliers. During the last two years, the high profile of this sector has generated widespread political and media interest in the views of the Association.

Before setting up the ERA, Sedgwick held a variety of senior positions in Powergen, including Director of Business Transformation and Director of Retail Mass Markets. He has also held posts such as Chairman of the Learning & Skills Council, Chair of Race for Opportunity in the East Midlands and the Citizens Advice Bureau for the East Midlands.

The ERA represents the common interests of its six member companies and their customers; British Gas, EDF Energy, RWEnpower, Eon Powergen, Scottish and Southern Energy, and ScottishPower. Its mandate includes developing policy for the industry on issues as varied as energy efficiency to fuel poverty and future technology such as smart meters.

As Research Analyst for Energy Insights, H. Christine Richards provides research-based advisory and consulting services that enable energy company executives to maximize the business value of their technology investments and drive technology-enabled business innovation. Specifically, Ms Richards plays a key role in conducting various benchmarking and metrics studies as well developing and managing the company's oil and gas and utility industry IT spending guides. This fall, she will become the lead analyst for Energy Insights' new intelligent grid advisory service.

Karen Blackmore, as Program Director of Energy Customer Operations Strategies at Energy Insights, provides research, advisory and consulting services to business and IT executives involved in customer operations, smart metering, and meter-to-cash processes. She helps them maximize the value of their technology investment and drive technology-enabled business innovation.

Jonathan Spencer Jones is the Editor for North and South America

Matt Lecar is Director of Utility Practice at Global Smart Energy, a research and consulting firm providing intelligence and insight for the new world of smart, clean energy. He is a featured speaker at the Smart Metering West Coast conference and co-author of the Advanced Metering Opportunities Report and Market Pulse Supplement.

Nicholas McDiarmid is the editor of ESI Africa magazine, an energy specialist publication focusing on the electricity sector across Africa. As the former editor of IMIESA magazine, a specialist magazine covering infrastructure and investment, he established himself as a clear and critical thinker and successfully brought that publication to award winning status, including a PICA award in 2005.

Scott DeBroff, Esquire, Smigel, Anderson & Sacks

Scott is Hunt Technologies’ outside national regulatory counsel and the Chair of the Energy and Telecommunications Practice Groups of Smigel, Anderson & Sacks LLP, and works from their offices in Harrisburg, the state capitol of Pennsylvania. He brings with him over 14 years of experience in working on regulatory utility issues in the public and private sectors and now maintains a national energy and telecommunications practice with the firm.