NECCC Speakers Bureau

Basil S. Nikas
NECCC, ITAAA, NFB

CEO
PublicPurchasing.Net

A founding partner of PublicPurchasing.Net, Mr. Nikas' forte is in conceptualizing and marketing international concepts and productions, resourcing the entities to make them a success and managing their execution. At PublicPurchasing.Net, Mr. Nikas has concentrated his efforts in  creating strategic alliances and fostering the growth of Electronic Commerce in the public sector arena. 

Mr. Nikas is Chairman of the ITAA (Information Technology Association of America) State and Local Public Enterprise Electronic Commerce Committee, serves as the ITAA Board Member on the NECCC (National Electroninc Coordinating Council - an alliance of NASIRE, NASPO, NASACT, NASS and NACHA), Chairman of the NECCC Communications Committee and is a Board Member of the National Federation of The Blind Community Partnership Board. 

Educated in the USA and Europe, Mr. Nikas had, over a ten year period, established and directed project and regional procurement operations offices in North Africa and Egypt for the General Electric Company, Aerojet General Corporation, Union Carbide and The Bechtel Power Corporation for multi-national, multi-million dollar consortium projects. His successes were founded on his vision of taking cutting edge technology and logically applying it to uncharted business applications.

As early as 1975, Mr. Nikas took the burgeoning WANG word processing technology and designed an end-to-end materials control system that could identify the location of over $350 million in construction materials for a Liquefied Natural Gas facility in Algeria for El Paso Gas from requisition stage to on-site location.

At PublicPurchasing.Net, Mr. Nikas gathered together a team of top public sector purchasing professionals and internet/database technologists to develop end-to-end Internet based public purchasing services as the next paradigm in cross agency, co-op purchasing.

Upon returning from his overseas tenure, Mr. Nikas entered the multimedia arena as an Executive Producer, Producer, Director, Videographer and Photographer. Under the tutelage of Ken Valley, the "father of interactive multimedia" and as a consultant to Active8, the leading producer of interactive, multimedia productions, Mr. Nikas developed, produced and directed new concepts and business in the areas of interactive and linear video for expositions, museums and cultural centers, presidential libraries, educational institutions, documentaries and interactive television programming for such clients as INTEL, Saatchi & Saatchi, Mars Corporation, Heidelberg Harris, the Reagan Library and the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Museum.

In 1989, Mr. Nikas accepted the assignment to establish in-house television and video production capabilities for Very Special Arts, an affiliate of The John F. Kennedy Center for The Performing Arts, in Washington, DC. During Mr. Nikas' tenure with Very Special Arts, he produced and directed hundreds of hours of footage for news stories on disabilities and supplied background footage and information to NBC News, The McNeil/Lehrer Report, Entertainment Tonight, USIA/Worldnet, et al. In 1989, Mr. Nikas was responsible for producing the historic, Emmy Award winning performance of the Alexandrov Red Army Chorus singing "God Bless America" on network, prime-time television as the closing segment of the annual Kennedy Center Honors.

While in Egypt, as an established leader in the business community, Mr. Nikas realized the need for the establishment of an American Chamber of Commerce. In spite of ten years of repeated attempts by his predecessors who fought losing battles with established bureaucracies, Mr. Nikas took the issue directly to President Sadat, who by Presidential Decree, authorized Mr. Nikas to found the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, the first American Chamber of Commerce in the Middle East. Mr. Nikas was elected its first President.