Playing Field

AdGorilla created a new operating division - AdGorillai -- that will house the company's new iCapture push2call technology, a customer relations management tool for cable operator Web sites. Kim Gilmartin, a 15-year cable veteran, who most recently was president of Blue Vista Media, was named president of the new division. Aurora Networks hired Mike Hochman as its new director of sales for the southeast region. Hochman, who joined the cable industry in 1981, has nearly 15 years of sales experience. Most recently, he was VP of sales for the eastern region, Caribbean, and Latin America for EGT Inc. IneoQuest Technologies announced that Frank Summerfield, former European Director of Sales for Harmonic UK Ltd., joined the company as its new European director of cable MSO sales. Kevin M. Gantt, product engineer for CommScope in the company's Digital Broadband Division in Catawba, N.C., is the 2008 recipient of the SCTE Excellence in Standards Award. Gantt has been an active participant since 1992 in the SCTE Interface Practices and In-Home Cabling Subcommittee (IPS), which has a charter to develop standards for the cables, connectors and housings used in broadband telecommunications distribution plant. Symmetricom named David Nicholas as VP of sales for cable. He has a 25-year career in the cable industry, with experience at Panasonic, Pioneer, Texscan MSI, Concurrent, N2Broadband (now Tandberg TV), Vyyo and BigBand Networks. In forming his sales team, Nicholas brings with him John Quesenbury from BigBand, where he was principal systems engineer, and previously served as systems implementation specialist at Cox Interactive Media. OpenTV hired Paul Woidke as SVP and GM, advanced advertising. Woidke joins the company from Comcast Spotlight. SCTE announced that Comcast Chief Learning Officer and SVP Martha Soehren, Ph.D., will deliver the keynote speech at the upcoming Conference on Broadband Learning & Development (CBL&D) 2008. The daylong conference, which is set for June 24 in Philadelphia, and is sponsored by Jones/NCTI. Sean Burris, a senior at Northwest Christian School in Phoenix, is the 2008 recipient of the $20,000 Milton Jerrold Shapp Memorial Scholarship. The scholarship is funded by Motorola. Burris, who will be honored in June as part of the Annual Awards Luncheon at SCTE's Cable-Tec Expo in Philadelphia, is the son of Don and Lori Burris. Don Burris is a project manager with Corning Gilbert in Glendale, Ariz.