Tom Tabor

CEO, Tabor Communications, Inc.

LAUNCHED THE VERY FIRST PAID-SUBSCRIPTION, PAID-ADVERTISING PUBLICATION ON THE INTERNET

Tom Tabor is an international publishing and media executive and has been widely acknowledged as a pioneer in the electronic publishing industry. In the late eighties, Tom was part of a team that launched an Internet-based version of Supercomputing Review magazine, followed by the highly successful HPCwire in the early nineties. HPCwire is recognized as the very first paid-subscription, paid-advertising publication distributed on the Internet and is today considered the worldwide industry publication/portal of record for the High Performance Computing (HPC) industry. HPC is the segment of the computing industry where the internet, the worldwide web, and AI were first developed.

photograph of Tom Tabor

Currently, Tom is CEO of Tabor Communications, Inc. (TCI). TCI is a leading international media, events, marketing, and communications organization focusing on companies throughout the global advanced computing ecosystem. Over the past 20+ years, TCI has grown to become internationally recognized as the preeminent information source for covering the fastest computers in the world and the people who run them.

Tom has served as publisher for HPCwireEnterpriseAIDatanami, HPC in the CloudDigital Manufacturing ReportGreen Computing ReportOn-Demand EnterpriseGRIDtodayHigh Performance Computing: Contributions to Society, The Emergence of Grid and Service-Oriented ITWEBster, and the award-winning Supercomputing Review magazine. He also produced a series of Grid VIP Summits worldwide (London, San Jose, Costa Rica, Philadelphia, and Chicago). Tom has more than 40 years of experience in business-to-business publishing, with the last 35 years focused primarily on advanced computing technologies such as AI, HPC, Big Data, and Quantum Computing.

Tom is a frequent speaker at global industry events, and has served as a leader and board member of many committees and organizations, including the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences’ Strategic Interest Group on Digital Manufacturing, the Alliance for High Performance Digital Manufacturing, the Global Grid Forum’s Awareness Council, SC(xy) Industrial Advisory Committees, The Humanities, Arts, Science & Technology Alliance & Collaboratory (HASTAC), and the Institute for Computing in Humanities, Arts, and Social Science (iCHASS) at NCSA. Tom also serves on the Steering Committee for the Organization of American States, Advance Research and Technology Collaboratory for the Americas (OAS-ARTCA). He’s a board member of the National University Community Research Institute (NUCRI) and Latte Stone Management, and is a former board member of The LUX Art Institute.In 2002, Tom was awarded the inaugural HPC Industry Recognition Award. The award was presented to Tom for his dedication to the HPC community worldwide and recognized his efforts in promoting HPC industry credibility far beyond the boundaries of the industry’s scientific and technical computing audience.

In 2011, Tom developed the concept and participated as a moderator of the inaugural International Supercomputing Conference’s (ISC) Think Tank Series. The program was a “meeting of the minds” between the thought leaders across HPC in discussions revolving around controversial and provocative topics that impact the HPC community. The sessions were filmed during ISC 2011 in front of a live audience at the CCH-Congress Center Hamburg.

ISC Think Tank Series Inaugural Edition badge with Tom Tabor listed as moderator

In 2014, at the 24th Annual Asian Business Association (ABA) Awards Gala, Tom was honored with the ABA’s Trailblazer Award. “The Trailblazer award is presented to an innovative business person who is of Asian or Pacific Islander decent or who has spearheaded a positive impact on the business environment of these communities,” said Wendy Urushima-Conn, CEO of the ABA. “We have followed Tom’s work not only as an internet publisher, but as a stalwart for both gender and ethnic diversity globally. We are very proud to honor Tom and the Tabor Communications organization, a Pacific Islander-owned business, for being an early internet publishing pioneer as the first paid subscription, paid advertising publisher on the internet.”

In 2023, Tom was featured as an HPC luminary in the SC23 conference profile series, I AM HPC. To this day, his interview is the most widely read profile of the series.

Tom was born in Guam and raised in Napa Valley, California. He did his undergraduate work in Political Science at the University of California, Davis. Tom lived in La Jolla, California for over 45 years, and recently moved to Summerlin, a suburb of Las Vegas, NV with his wife Verna (Vee), who for 25 years was CEO of one of California’s largest domestic violence, rape crisis, and elder abuse agencies (ccssd.org). He is an avid skier and weekend golfer.