Funeral services for Maria Madden, COMMON conference and expo manager, were held Saturday, July 16, at the Conboy-Westchester Funeral Home in Westchester, Ill, followed by a Mass at St. Mary Church, Riverside, according to the Chicago Tribune. Family and friends were received at the funeral home on Friday, July 15. Interment was private. 

Maria, wife of Wayne Madden, Penton Media digital media and communications market leader, and past president of COMMON, lived in LaGrange, Ill. She died last week at the age of 37 following a lengthy battle with cancer. The family requested donations in lieu of flowers be made to a special family-intention fund to provide assistance to another woman fighting the same disease. 

A 1996 graduate of Illinois State University, and scholar at Roosevelt University, Maria was a certified meeting planner and a member of the Professional Meetings and Convention Association. She worked in the hospitality industry as a meeting planner and special projects manager for the American Bar Association for two years until 2000, according to her LinkedIn profile. She later worked as a strategic account manager for Experient, a meeting and event planning service, but became COMMON's official conference and expo manager in 2007. She was responsible for numerous COMMON conferences around the country known for their detailed organization and near flawless execution.

She is survived by her husband, Wayne, her parents Joseph and Adele DiNatale, her three brothers Joseph, Marc, and Michael, two sisters, Cara DiNatale and Katherine Campbell, their respective spouses and children. Friends and members of the COMMON community already have left numerous messages of condolence at the Chicago Tribune guest book here, where others may pay their respects to one of the best liked and well known driving forces behind the IBM midrange community.

Chris Smith was the Senior News Editor at MC Press Online from 2007 to 2012 and was responsible for the news content on the company's Web site. Chris has been writing about the IBM midrange industry since 1992 when he signed on with Duke Communications as West Coast Editor of News 3X/400. With a bachelor's from the University of California at Berkeley, where he majored in English and minored in Journalism, and a master's in Journalism from the University of Colorado, Boulder, Chris later studied computer programming and AS/400 operations at Long Beach City College. An award-winning writer with two Maggie Awards, four business books, and a collection of poetry to his credit, Chris began his newspaper career as a reporter in northern California, later worked as night city editor for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, and went on to edit a national cable television trade magazine. He was Communications Manager for McDonnell Douglas Corp. in Long Beach, Calif., before it merged with Boeing, and oversaw implementation of the company's first IBM desktop publishing system there. An editor for MC Press Online since 2007, Chris has authored some 300 articles on a broad range of topics surrounding the IBM midrange platform that have appeared in the company's eight industry-leading newsletters. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..