Welcome and Opening Remarks - Karen H. Nies-Vogel
Speaker Identification:
KN: Karen H. Nies-Vogel
DH: Daniel Hill  

KN:  Well good morning, and welcome to the Bureau of Industry and Security’s 29th Annual Update Conference on Export Controls and Policy. I’m Karen Nies-Vogel, the Director of BIS’s Office of Exporter Services. Today at lunch, we are honored to welcome Secretary of Commerce, the Honorable Penny Pritzker, as our keynote speaker, and at tomorrow’s luncheon, the United States Trade Representative, Ambassador Michael Froman, will give remarks.
Once again this year, a team of BIS’s IT specialists are available throughout the conference to demonstrate and answer questions about BIS’s electronic licensing system and our web-based interactive tools. They can also assist you and your company with any IT issue that you may have, specific to BIS’s systems of course. (Laughs)
Audience:  (Laughter)
KN:  They are located in the Cardozo Room on the terrace level of the hotel. They will be available until 5:00 today, until 6:30 tomorrow, and until 3:30 on Wednesday. Also, this year we’re very happy to say that BIS’s new Chief Information Officer, Roger Clark, is here. He is very interested in talking to all of you or as many of you as possible about your experiences with IT systems, so if you would like to talk to Roger, today I will tell you he is wearing a pink shirt, but if you can’t find him but you can find me, I would be happy to track him down for you.
On Wednesday, Assistant Secretary Wolf will hold morning and afternoon sessions to take comments and answer questions about the implementation of Export Control Reform. These sessions will have the same format as his very popular Wednesday afternoon teleconferences, and we hope that you will be able to attend and to ask questions. If you’re not able to attend, there will be an open teleconference line which will be in listen-only mode as it is usually for his Wednesday ECR teleconference.
Also on Wednesday morning, there’ll be a session on encryption controls. This is a great opportunity to hear about the recent changes implemented by BIS and to ask questions.
On Wednesday also, we will have 33 round tables in both the morning and the afternoon, and we hope that the subject matter experts at those round tables will be able to answer your questions.
A few housekeeping items before we move on to the main program. We ask that you review the hotel emergency information which is on page 13 of your program book. The Hilton’s emergency number is 60, which can be dialed from any house phone.
Please wear your name badge at all times throughout the conference and make sure it is visible to conference staff. Your name badge serves as your entrance to all conference sessions, and if it’s not visible, conference staff may ask to see it before allowing you into a session.
We have a large variety of sessions available for you. Many are being offered more than once. Seating for all of the sessions is available on a first-come, first-served basis, and if seating capacity is reached for a session, the session will be closed. Unfortunately, we cannot allow attendees to stand in the back of the room due to fire regulations and safety concerns.
The materials for the conference sessions are loaded on the computers in the Internet café. That’s in the Du Pont Room on the terrace level of the hotel. You can download the materials onto the thumb drive that you were provided when you registered at the desk here. There is paper available for printing. Additionally, the conference materials are all loaded onto BIS’s website, so you can certainly download those at your leisure after the conference as well.
The opening plenary today, the interagency plenary tomorrow, and both luncheon keynote speakers will be videotaped for archiving, and the videos will be posted with transcripts on the BIS website after the conference.
We have 32 government and private-sector exhibitors joining us this year at Update, and we encourage you to stop by their booths which are on the hotel’s terrace level in the Columbia Hall. All of the exhibitors invite all attendees to a reception tomorrow evening. The reception will be from 5:00 until 6:30 p.m., and we hope that you all will join us.
In terms of electronic devices, we understand that many of you have business to attend to while you are at the conference, but we ask that you set your devices to vibrate out of courtesy to other attendees. If you need Wi-Fi access, it’s available in the hotel’s lobby area, and the hotel staff can assist you with that.
Your conference evaluations, both of the individual sessions and of the overall conference, are very important to us. This year for the first time, we are offering an app to complete your evaluations. You should have received instructions about downloading the app in e-mail that was sent out over the weekend. If you did not receive the e-mail or if you have not had the opportunity to download the app, there are instructions in the conference book, and as well, all of the conference staff would be more than willing to help you if you need assistance.

In addition to the evaluations, the app has the conference schedule, the list of speakers, and the attendee list, as well as a map of the area around the hotel and an activity feed. Hard-copy evaluations are also going to be available for anyone who prefers that to the electronic app.
Last but certainly not least, if you have any questions, please ask me or any member of the conference staff or any of the many, many BIS employees who are helping to facilitate the conference. We will all do our best to help you.
It’s now my great pleasure to introduce BIS’s Deputy Under Secretary, Daniel Hill. Daniel Hill was appointed as BIS’s Deputy Under Secretary in February 2008. He is the bureau’s senior career official, and as Deputy Under Secretary, he manages BIS’s daily operations and advises Under Secretary Hirschhorn on a broad range of policy and management issues. Prior to his appointment as Deputy Under Secretary, Mr. Hill was the Director of BIS’s Office of Strategic Industries and Economic Security where he managed programs to ensure that the U.S. Defense Industrial Base has the capacity and the capability to meet national security, economic security, and homeland security requirements. Among many other duties, Mr. Hill served as a representative to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and the interagency working group on offsets. He was a member of the Government Coordinating Council for the Defense Industrial Base and the Industrial Planning Committee at NATO. Prior to his tenure at BIS, Mr. Hill was the Assistant Administrator for Technology at the Small Business Administration. Ladies and gentlemen, Deputy Under Secretary, Dan Hill.
Audience:  (Applause)
DH:  Thank you, Karen. Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Karen, for those very kind words, and let me just take a moment and express my thanks and congratulations to you and your entire team for the wonderful work you all have undertaken in planning this year’s Update Conference. Because of your efforts, I know it will be an outstanding success. I want to also acknowledge the work of our Chief Financial Officer and Director of Admin, Carol Rose, who has also done a lot of work on the Update Conference this year.
This morning I will be introducing our lead-off speaker for today’s sessions, the Under Secretary for Industry and Security, the Honorable Eric Hirschhorn. I know that many of you have attended our Update Conferences over the past years. I know that because I’ve been here since 1980 and have seen many of you at the conferences. As you attended, you heard about the exciting and busy times at the Bureau of Industry and Security as we and our sister export control agencies worked to develop and execute President Obama’s directive to create a new export control system that better addresses the myriad of threats to our national security that the United States faces today. From terrorist organizations to rogue states to destabilizing military modernization efforts by others, our challenges to protect American interests here at home and around the world are daunting. At previous Update Conferences, you have heard about our tremendous progress and how much we have accomplished. I think many of you have been amazed that we were making real changes. Well, get set to get amazed all over again. You’re about to have three days of briefings, interactive sessions, and small-group activities that will again demonstrate the outstanding work that has been done.
I cannot think of a better way or a better place to start hearing about these accomplishments than from our first speaker this morning, BIS Under Secretary Eric Hirschhorn. As most of you know, Eric’s breadth of experience and depth of knowledge about export controls is unrivaled. In fact, he literally wrote the book on export controls, which is now in its third edition and can be bought on Amazon.com.
Audience:  (Laughter)
DH:  From 1980 to 1981, Eric served in the Carter administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Export Administration. It was there that I had the privilege of working for Eric for the first time. He later, after he left the administration, worked as a partner in private practice, representing foreign and domestic clients on a wide range of commercial financial regulatory matters as well as being involved in other aspects of international transactions. But most important of all, most important of all, has been Eric’s leadership of the Bureau of Industry and Security these past seven years. It is under his relentless and skillful leadership that we have made changes for the better, that Export Control Reform has moved forward. As I said a little earlier, I’ve been around for a while, and I see many friends and familiar faces in the audience today. I’ve had the privilege and pleasure of working with many Under Secretaries of the Bureau, starting back when Paul Freedenberg as an Assistant Secretary was our leader. It’s been a good run in that regard because all of our leaders have been terrific and have been extraordinary in their wisdom, their approach, and their guidance.
Eric has taken it to the next level with Export Control Reform. Eric has had a singular mission. He has been relentless on driving Export Control Reform home for President Obama. Without him, all of the stuff that you’re hearing today might not have happened to the degree that it has or with the excellence that it has. I think if I hear Under Secretary Hirschhorn talk about taking ownership of your work again, for every dollar I would hear that, I’d probably be a millionaire today. He is serious about this. He’s been a joy to work for. I call him my friend. Please join me in thanking Under Secretary Hirschhorn for his service, his leadership, and for his years here at the Bureau.
Audience:  (Applause)