VSLive! San Francisco 2007

Conference Speakers

	Bill D. Baldasti Bill is a Director & Practice Manager at Infusion Development. Bill is a Microsoft MVP, Solutions Architect, a Microsoft Certified Application Developer (MCAD) and a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT). In addition to architecture and development, Bill has been a member of Microsoft’s .NET Trainer tour across the USA, was the #1 ranked trainer on Microsoft’s Windows 2003 training tour in July 2003, and speaks at various conferences – most recently the Microsoft Financial Services Developer conference in New York, VSLive! Toronto, and Microsoft`s PDC05 in Los Angeles.
	Robert Boedigheimer, Schwan Food Company Robert Boedigheimer works for The Schwan Food Company providing business solutions with web technologies. Robert has been designing and developing web sites for the past 10 years including the early days of ASP and ASP.NET. He was the lead architect, designer, and developer for the schwans.com rewrite with ASP.NET, and is currently implementing a large ASP.NET 2.0 project. He is a columnist for aspalliance.com, an "Early Achiever" MCSD for .NET with C#, and a 2nd degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. Robert has spoken at several industry conferences including the Heartland Developers Conference, Microsoft's Visual DevCon 2005, and several VSLive! events.
	Kent Brown, twentysix New York Kent Brown is the manager of the Enterprise Integration practice at twentysix New York, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Kent has 17 years of experience in software development in the Pharmaceutical, Financial Services, Insurance, Legal and Manufacturing industries. He has authored numerous articles primarily on Enterprise Integration technologies: Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), BizTalk, SOAP. He has been involved with .NET since its early Beta. He often plays a mentoring role, providing training, design and team leadership to help teams establish correct architecture and best practices around new technologies, e.g. Object-Oriented programming in .NET, and Service-Oriented Architecture. He is the founder and leader of the NJ .NET Architecture and Development User Group, www.njevbug.org. He is also a leader of the NYC Connected Systems User Group, www.nyccsug.org.
	Andrew Brust, twentysix New York VSLive! Conference Chair Andrew Brust is Chief, New Technology at twentysix New York, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner in New York City. Andrew is lead author of Programming Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (Microsoft Press), serves as Microsoft Regional Director for New York and New Jersey, is a Visual Basic MVP and a member of Microsoft’s Business Intelligence Partner Advisory Council. Andrew is a Vice-Chairman of the New York Software Industry Association (NYSIA), a member of INETA’s Speaker Bureau and is a highly rated speaker at conferences throughout the U.S. and internationally. Often quoted in the technology industry press, Andrew has over 18 years experience programming and consulting in the Financial, Public, Small Business and Not-For-Profit sectors. He can be reached at andrew.brust@26ny.com.
	Scott Cate, myKB.com, Inc. Scott Cate is the President of myKB.com, Inc., in Scottsdale, Arizona. myKB.com is a technology company specializing is commercial ASP.NET applications. His product line includes myKB.com (Knowledge Base Software), kbAlertz.com (Microsoft Knowledge Base Notifications) and EasySearchASP.net (a Pluggable Search Engine for ASP.NET sites). Scott also runs AZGroups.com (Arizona .NET User Groups), one of the largest and most active user group communities in the country, and is a member of ASPInsiders.com, a group devoted to giving early feedback to the Microsoft ASP.NET Team. Scott has also been awarded the ASP.NET MVP for three years in a row, from 2004-2006. In addition, Scott has co-authored an AJAX book titled Beginning AJAX with ASP.NET to be released in the summer of 2006 and the non-fiction novel Surveillance and can be found at http://surveillance-the-novel.com.
	Mike Culver, Amazon Mike Culver joined the Developer Relations Group of Amazon Web Services in May, 2006.Mike brings with him fifteen years of technology leadership experience, including at companies such as Microsoft. In addition Mr. Culver has a strong background running an IT organization, with over a decade of experience in the Electrical Wholesale Distribution industry. As a Web Services Evangelist at Amazon, he helps developers take advantage of disruptive technologies that are going to change the way we think about computer applications, and the way that businesses compete. During Mike’s tenure at Microsoft he managed a team of technical evangelists. In this capacity he saw Microsoft .NET transform from a vision to become reality. His team was responsible for a number of high-profile, high-scale, implementations such as the City of London traffic congestion project, as well as projects on the other end of the spectrum such as Smartphone applications.
	Robert Daigneau, Monster.com Rob Daigneau has over seventeen years experience designing and implementing enterprise-class applications for a broad array of industries from manufacturing, to financial services, to retail and wholesale. Rob is currently the Director of Architecture for Monster.com, one of the most visited web sites in the world.
	Duncan Davenport, Microsoft Duncan Davenport is a Program Manager with the Visual Studio Team System for Database Professionals product. With over 30 years of consulting and development experience, Duncan spent 4 years in Microsoft Research as both a PM and a Developer working with Very Large Database systems. He joined the DBPro Team in 2006 as a Development Engineer focusing on comprehensive SQL coverage in the products's first version, and transitioned into a Program Management role to both help drive the vision for the next generation of Lifecycle Tools for Database Development, and to evangelize the "DataDude" experience to the database community. He holds certifications as a trainer, engineer, developer, and DBA.
	Benjamin Day, Benjamin Day Consulting Benjamin Day is an independent consultant specializing in the design and development of web and Windows applications using Microsoft .NET technologies. Ben also provides consulting and training on Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server via the Richard Hale Shaw Group (www.RichardHaleShawGroup.com). He is a Microsoft MVP for C#, speaker at VSLive! and other conferences, and the leader of the Beantown.NET INETA User Group in Boston. When not developing software, Ben plays piano with a Boston-based jazz trio and is an enthusiastic restaurant, food, beer and wine buff. He can be contacted via www.benday.com.
	Michael Dunn, Magenic Technologies Michael Dunn is a Consultant for Magenic technologies, a Minneapolis based consulting firm. He has over 6 years experience as a software developer, specializing in IVR development with a emphasis on Speech Recognition. He is a certified VoiceXML Application Developer and holds the following Microsoft certification: MCPD, MCSD, MCITP, and MCTS.
	Stephen Forte, Corzen, Inc. Stephen Forte is the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Corzen, Inc., a Manhattan (USA) based provider of online market research data for Wall Street Firms. Stephen is also the Microsoft Regional Director for the NY Metro region as well as an MVP and INETA speaker. He speaks regularly at industry conferences, North Africa Developers Conference and other conferences around the world. He is an author of Programming SQL Server 2005 (MSPress) as well as other books on application and database development. Prior to Corzen, Stephen served as the CTO of Zagat Survey in New York City and also was co-founder and CTO of the New York-based software consulting firm The Aurora Development Group. He currently is the co-moderator and founder of the NYC .NET Developer User Group.
	Steven Fox, Microsoft Corporation Steven Fox is a 7 year veteran at Microsoft. He has worked with a number of different technologies including natural language, search, social computing, and more recently Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO). He is a customer-facing Program Manager and spends a lot of time with VSTO customers, evangelists and advocates.
	Chris Franz, Sybase iAnywhere Experience Chris Franz is a systems consultant for Sybase iAnywhere in Boise Idaho. Chris has over 8 years of experience working with databases using many development languages such as Visual Basic, C#, Java and ASP.NET. He has spoken at several technical conferences, .NET user groups and provided training to developers all over the world. He is currently working on several projects using Advantage in Windows and Web based .NET applications. Chris is an MCSE and has participated as a contributing technical editor on two books.
	Mikael Freidlitz, KnowIT Mikael has over 11 years experience consulting in the software development business. He has co-authored and provided material to several software development books, and is a frequent speaker at developer conferences in the United States and the UK. Mikael is currently the Vice President of Content & Knowledge Programs for the International Association of Software Architects.
	Cathi Gero, Prenia Consulting Cathi Gero, C.P.A., is founder and development director of Prenia Corporation, providing custom software applications, training, and architectural designing to businesses and developers. Cathi is a Microsoft C# MVP and is an active member of the .NET community. She has extensive experience developing applications using the .NET Framework, SQL Server, and Crystal Reports as well as other technologies. She is a member of the Microsoft .NET Advisory Council. She is an internationally known speaker at conferences and user groups, author of numerous articles for Microsoft, and technical editor for several .NET books. Her monthly column, “Cathi Gero’s .NET Tips” appears in Universal Thread Magazine. Her Weblog, featuring .NET Tips and Tricks, can be found at http://blogs.prenia.com/cathi. Most of the year Cathi travels to various companies providing onsite training, mentoring, and development experience. Contact Cathi via email at cgero@prenia.com.
	Ken Getz, MCW Technologies Ken Getz is a developer, writer and trainer, working as a senior consultant with MCW Technologies, LLC, a Microsoft Solution Provider. He is a lead courseware author and trainer for AppDev (http://www.appdev.com), and has written and presented video courses covering C# and Visual Basic 2005, ASP.NET 2.0, ADO.NET 2.0 and more. Ken has co-authored several technical books for developers, including the best-selling ASP.NET Developer’s Jumpstart, Access Developer’s Handbook series, and VBA Developer’s Handbook series. Ken is a technical editor for Advisor Publications’ VB.NET Technical Journal, and he's a columnist for both MSDN Magazine and CoDe magazine. Ken speaks regularly at a large number of industry events, including Advisor Media’s Advisor Live events, FTP’s VSLive, and Microsoft’s Tech-Ed.
	Jackie Goldstein Jackie is a Microsoft Regional Director, a Microsoft MVP, the founder and monthly host of the Israel VB User Group, and is a featured speaker at international developer events including VSLive!, TechEd, Microsoft Developer Days, and Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC). Jackie works closely with Microsoft in the U.S., Israel, and throughout Europe. He was chosen by Microsoft as the Microsoft Regional Director of the Year for 1999 and also received the 2004 Outstanding Regional Director Award.
	Robert Green, MCW Technologies Robert Green is a senior consultant with MCW Technologies, a Microsoft Certified Partner. Before joining MCW, Robert worked at Microsoft for 8 years, most recently as a Program Manager on the Visual Basic product team and previously as a Product Manager for Visual Studio, Visual Basic, Visual Studio Tools for Office and Visual FoxPro. Prior to joining Microsoft, Robert was a Vice President and co-founder of The Information Management Group, a consulting and education services firm in Chicago. Robert has been a frequent speaker at technology conferences, including TechEd, VSLive! Along with co-author Ken Getz, Robert co-authored AppDev’s Developing Applications with Visual Studio 2005 courseware, and appears in the video training for these courses, as well.
	Renato Haddad, Web Action Technology Renato Haddad is currently the IT Director for Web Action Technology and is Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Mobile Devices. He is a frequent speaker at conferences such as TechEd Brazil 2002-2006, Mobility Road Show, Visual Studio Technical Conference, Mobility Seminar, Ottawa .NET Community Canada, and at Australia and New Zealand User Groups. Renato is an Architect and Developer of the .NET Solution with experience in Brazil and Canada MVP insider in November/05 (http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpInsider_2005-11). In addition to authoring a multimedia training DVD about VS.NET 2005, ASP.NET 2.0, SQL Reporting Services, Mobile Applications, and ASP.NET with Visual Basic .NET, he’s the author of 9 books about Microsoft technologies (MS-Office and .NET).
	Billy Hollis, DotNetMasters Billy Hollis is an author and software developer from Nashville, Tennessee. Billy is co-author of the first book ever published on Visual Basic .NET, VB .NET Programming on the Public Beta. He has written many articles, and is a frequent speaker at conferences. He is the Regional Director of Developer Relations in Nashville for Microsoft, and runs a consulting company focusing on Microsoft .NET.
	K.D. Hallman, General Manager, Microsoft Corporation K.D. Hallman is the Microsoft General Manager for the Visual Studio team responsible for Visual Studio Tools for Office System (VSTO) and Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA). K.D. oversees the business strategy and the product development efforts. She frequently represents the team with business executives and as a presenter at developer conferences both nationally and internationally. K.D. is a 27 year software industry veteran with experience as an IT professional, systems integration principle, developer, and project manager.
	Robby Ingebretsen Robby Ingebretsen loves to make stuff and has found that he can do just that as the Director of Creative Development for IdentityMine, a user experience consulting firm in Tacoma, Washington. Prior to making stuff in this role, Robby was a Program Manager on the Windows Presentation Foundation, where he helped make WPF’s component and templating infrastructure. While at Microsoft, he also spent a lot of time thinking about workflows and ways to help developers and designers get along. Robby dreams first in XAML and then in English.
	Trey Johnson, Cizer Software Trey Johnson is a member of the executive leadership team and Chief Business Intelligence Architect for Cizer Software (www.cizer.com) and a long-standing member of Microsoft's Business Intelligence Partner Advisory Council. He has spoken at SQL Server industry conferences, including the Tech•Ed, Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS), and SQL Live! conferences. He can be found blogging on www.sqlserverbi.com and is actively building the first online Microsoft PerformancePoint community at www.performancepointcentral.com.
	Britt Johnston, Director of Program Management at Microsoft, Britt is responsible for defining the data access strategy for the Microsoft Windows platform primarily through the SQL Server product line, the .NET Framework and Visual Studio. Britt is responsible for the ADO.NET, XML Tools and data access technologies that support SQL Server such as ODBC, OLEDB and JDBC. Prior to joining Microsoft, Britt was CTO at Progress Software Corporation and was General Manager of the PeerDirect Distributed Enterprise product line that pioneered Occasionally Connected Computing (OCC) through the use of Database replication integrated with p2p networks. Johnston co-founded NuSphere Corporation, a pioneer in the open source database marketplace with MySQL and PHP, creating the first commercially supported LAMP stack for Windows in the late 90’s. Johnston was Director of Database Development at Progress Software Corporation in the 90’s where he redesigned the storage engine for the Progress RDBMS. In the 80’s Johnston worked on Rdb database cluster technology and RdbStar which pioneered portable database and distributed query technology at Digital Equipment Corporation.
	Michael Jones, Passport Health Communications, Inc Michael has been writing architectural level software for 18 years. Beginning at the Naval Research Laboratory, Michael developed cross-platform (UNIX, Mac, and Windows) remote procedure call software and a multi-vendor spreadsheet interface to relational databases (later made obsolete by Microsoft Query and Access). More recently, at Passport Health Communications, Michael has worked with a team to develop a transaction processing system used by hospitals and clinics across the country which currently processes several hundred thousand messages daily. Michael has also authored numerous architecturally focused articles for a prominent Internet development web site.
	Chris Kinsman, Vertafore Chris Kinsman is one of the founders of Guided Design and is formerly the VP of Technology for a family of Web sites that provide information for developers. He is the Chief Architect for Vertafore, an insurance ISV. Chris has taught courses on ASP.NET in both VB.NET and C# and has extensive experience with ASP, Web Forms, Clustering, Data Access and Scalability. Chris has spoken at a variety of conferences including VSLive! and Microsoft TechEd on topics including ASP.NET Security, ASP.NET State Management, Web Service Security, ASP to ASP.NET Migration, and Building Server Controls. Contact him at ckinsman@vergentsoftware.com.
	Deborah Kurata, InStep Technologies Deborah is a professional software architect, designer, and developer. She provides consulting services in the areas of project architecture and design, software development (Windows and smart-client applications), and mentoring services. She is frequently brought in to assist existing teams with establishing best practices and defining an appropriate architecture and application framework. Deborah has authored several books, including the Doing Objects in Visual Basic series (SAMS), Best Kept Secrets in .NET (Apress) and Doing Web Development: Client-Side Techniques (Apress), and is currently working on Doing Objects in VB 2005 (Addison-Wesley). She also writes for MSDN and CoDe magazine (www.code-magazine.com).
	Jeff Levinson, The Boeing Company Jeff Levinson is a Solution Design & Integration Architect with The Boeing Company. He holds the following certifications: MCSD, MCSD.NET, MCDBA, SCJP and Security+. He is a current Microsoft Architect MVP and the author of two books on .NET development. He has presented at various conferences and user groups, and writes articles on all areas of .NET development. His latest book (co-author) is Pro Visual Studio 2005 Team System (Apress 2006).
	Rocky Lhotka, Magenic Technologies Rockford Lhotka is the author of the Expert VB 2005 Business Objects and Expert C# 2005 Business Objects books from Apress. He is a contributing author for Visual Studio Magazine and he speaks at major conferences around the world. Rockford is the Principal Technology Evangelist for Magenic Technologies, one of the nation's premiere Microsoft Gold Certified Partners.
	Leonard Lobel, Sleek Technologies, Inc. Leonard Lobel is the CEO and co-founder of Sleek Technologies Inc., a development shop located in New York specializing in Microsoft-based solutions with an early adopter philosophy towards new technologies. Programming since 1979, his experience spans a variety of business domains, including publishing and retail store management. Lenni has served as chief architect and senior developer for various organizations, ranging from small shops to high-profile clients. He is also a consultant and trainer, and has been a contributing editor to Visual Studio Magazine. Contact him at llobel@sleektechnologies.com.
	Jeffrey McManus, Platform Associates Jeffrey is Principal Consultant at Platform Associates, dividing his time between consulting and developing and running the collaboration web site Approver.com. He was a speaker at VBITS/VSLIVE from 1998 through 2001 and has author six books on software development on the Microsoft platform, including the best-selling "Database Access with Visual Basic." He was eBay's first web services evangelist, forming and leading their platform evangelism team and managing developer.ebay.com and codebase.ebay.com. Jeffrey also co-founded and led Yahoo's developer program.
	Kevin McNeish, Oak Leaf Enterprises Kevin McNeish is President and Chief Software Architect of Oak Leaf Enterprises, Inc, and a Microsoft .NET MVP. He is a speaker with MSDN Canada Speaker’s Bureau and is also a well known speaker and trainer throughout North America and Europe, including VSLive!, DevTeach (where he serves as one of the .NET chairs), SDC Netherlands, and Advisor DevCon. He is co-author of the book "Professional UML with Visual Studio .NET", author of the book ".NET for Visual FoxPro Developers", has authored several articles for CoDe magazine and has been interviewed on the .NET Rocks! Internet Radio Show. He is the Chief Software Architect of the MM .NET Framework and spends about half his time on the road training and mentoring companies to build well-designed, high-performance .NET applications. He has also helped many developers transition to the .NET development platform in his highly acclaimed .NET training classes and highly acclaimed Kevin McNeish’s Guide to .NET video series. e-mail: kevinm@oakleafsd.com
	Mark Michaelis Mark Michaelis is the IDesign architect specializing in WCF and VSTS as well as a independent consultant with intelliTechture in Spokane, WA . Mark was recognized by Microsoft as a Microsoft MVP for Visual Studio Team System and he wrote to official courseware for VSTS for Microsoft. Mark holds a MS in Computer Science from the Illinois Institute of Technology and he serves on several Microsoft Software Design Review teams including WCF, C# and VSTS. Mark speaks at developer conferences both nationally and internationally and has written several articles and books, in addition to maintaining a blog. His most recent book is Essential C# 2.0 (Addison-Wesley, 2006).
	Kevin Nethercott, LignUp Kevin Nethercott, founder, president, & COO of LignUp, a Pulver 100 company, brings over 20 years of experience in international sales and business development with more than 10 years of experience in the VoIP industry. As founder and CTO of SkyWave, Inc., also a Pulver 100 company, Kevin pioneered the deployment of VoIP technologies, established the first operational VoIP network in Japan and developed the first real-time VoIP billing engine. A recognized leader in the VoIP industry, Kevin was also responsible for the creation of the VoIP Forum of Japan and is a member of its board of directors. He is a popular, repeat speaker at VoIP conferences, such as VON and the VoIP Developers’ Conference, and has also led a number of VoIP mash-up events. Kevin is fluent in Japanese and holds a B.A. in Marketing from Utah State University in Logan, Utah. Visit http://66.160.128.146/LignUpTTSDemo/LignUpTTSDemo.html to see one simple VoIP-Web services mash-up come together in just 4 minutes.
	Michiel Van Otegem, Ordina Michiel van Otegem is Lead Architect with Ordina, one of the top ICT companies in the Netherlands and Microsoft Gold Partner. He is also the author of "Sams Teach Yourself XSLT in 21 Days" and "ASP.NET 2.0 - de basis" (Dutch), as well as numerous articles for magazines and websites, such as CoDe Magazine, asp.netPRO, and .NET Magazine (Dutch). He has also spoken at events such as DevDays and TechEd Europe. Michiel has been given the Microsoft MVP Award for the last four years for his community work, which includes the community website ASPNL.com, his blog www.vanotegem.nl, and founding the Dutch .NET User Group dotNED (www.dotned.nl).
	Robert Patton, Optimum Technology Robert Patton (MCDBA, MCSD, MCSE+Internet) is a System Architect for Optimum Technology and is responsible for the creation of the nationally recognized OHLEG-SE system for the Office of the Ohio Attorney General. He has been a regular speaker at SQL to the Max and SQL Live conferences and served as editor or contributor for several SQL Server and Windows 2000 books.
	Keith Pleas Keith is one of the founders of Guided Design and has worked for more than two years on the team developing the .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET. Keith is an internationally known writer and speaker and is the Editorial Chair for VBITS. He is also a contributing editor to Visual Studio Magazine and has developed Microsoft Professional Certification Exams. Keith also sits on the INETA board and is the liaison for the INETA Speakers Bureau. You can contact him at keithp@guideddesign.com.
	Brian A. Randell, MCW Technologies Brian A. Randell is a senior consultant with MCW Technologies, LLC. Brian spends his time between teaching Microsoft .NET -based technologies to developers, working with new and emerging technologies like Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio Team System, and consulting worldwide for clients such as Microsoft, American Honda, DELL and others. Brian enjoys helping people get the most out of their software. He does this through training, consulting and speaking at events such as VSLive!, Tech•Ed and the PDC. In addition, Brian shares through the written word. He is the co-author of Effective Visual Basic and has written articles for MSDN Magazine and Microsoft. He is also a member of Pluralsight's technical staff and author of Pluralsight's Applied Team System course. Reach Brian via his blog at http://www.mcwtech.com/cs/blogs/brianr/.
	Walt Ritscher, Scandiasoft Walt Ritscher has trained thousands of corporate developers during the last ten years. An active speaker, his teaching schedule has taken him throughout the world providing developer training at corporations, universities and software conferences .He has collaborated on several books and videos published for the developer market including 'early adopter' .Net courses at Microsoft Press. Walt¹s industry expertise has placed him on various national technology advisory boards. He is also deeply involved in the local developer community — founding the .NET Developers Association in Redmond, WA. Walt has accumulated plenty of experience as a developer — he is fluent in database, component, and win-forms technologies. As a web programmer he has worked on several prototype ASP.NET projects including the Microsoft Community Starter Kit. His company, Scandiasoft, produces developer tools.
	Michael Ruminer, Magenic Technologies Michael Ruminer is a Principal Consultant for Magenic Technologies with over 14 years experience in a wide range of technologies and roles. His most recent focus has been in the area of Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server as catalysts and tools for best practices in SDLC methodologies. He is the author of the forthcoming book from Apress Team Foundation Server Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach as well as a number of whitepapers. Most recent accomplishments have been in starting the Team System Public User Group that meets on the third Thursday of each month in Waltham, Massachusetts. When not consulting, writing or speaking at code camps, Tech-Ed, and user groups or helping out at home with his young triplets he enjoys extending his knowledge in all things process and technology including Windows Workflow and WCF.
	Richard Hale Shaw, Richard Hale Shaw Group VSLive! Dallas Conference Chair Richard Hale Shaw is the founder of the Richard Hale Shaw Group, which has consulted and trained software developers since 1993. He's created and chaired numerous technical conferences, including C# Live! and the Black Belt tracks of the VSLive! conference series. An articulate writer and speaker on topics dear to the hearts of software developers and an outspoken critic of broken devtools, Richard specializes in consulting and training on .NET programming in C# and Managed C++. Richard is a member of the INETA (http://www.ineta.org/) speakers bureau, and for his work supporting C#/.NET software developers, he's been recognized by Microsoft as a C# MVP since 2004. You can reach him at www.RichardHaleShawGroup.com.
	Darren Sim Darren Sim (ASP.NET MVP) is a well rated speaker who speaks frequently in the MSDN Circuits as well as other Microsoft events, covering both academia as well as professional events. His speaking engagements includes .NET Security, Microsoft Ajax Library, ClickOnce Development, ASP.NET 2.0, Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, Microsoft Communities, C# 2005, iMovie, Windows Vista Gadget Development and Microsoft XNA Framework, mostly in the Asia-Pacific Region. Apart from his speaking engagements, Darren also does trainings on Microsoft .NET technologies for technical training schools as well as provides consultancy services to enterprises. Companies which Darren had provided services to or worked with include Microsoft Corporation (Singapore), Philips Medical Systems (Seattle, WA), Ron Kaufman Ltd, UP! Your Service Ltd, Mediacorp Singapore Pte Ltd, National University of Singapore (NUS), ABN Media Tech, EPT Consulting Tenant Business Centre, COMAT, Avantus, EASI Points, SIFE Singapore and more...”
	Michael Stiefel, Reliable Software, Inc. Michael Stiefel, principal of Reliable Software, Inc., is a consultant on software architecture and development, and the alignment of information technology with business goals. His current work involves: Training in service oriented and distributed applications development, software best practices, in .NET, C#, Web services, C++ and SQL Server. Advising on IT strategy and planning, including budgeting, hiring and growth management. Design and implementation service based applications including Web services. Requirements analysis, project plan development, and design document development. Expert Witness for intellectual property cases. He is currently a member of the OASIS Technical Committee developing a core SOA Reference Model and related Reference Architectures. In July 2006, Stiefel was named a Microsoft Visual Developer - Solutions Architect MVP. You can find more information about him at www.reliablesoftware.com.
	Prashant Sridharan, Microsoft Prashant Sridharan is the Senior Product Manager for Visual Studio. He is responsible for product planning for future versions of Visual Studio and driving the creation of development tools for enterprise customers. In previous roles at Microsoft he was the Product Manager for Visual J++ 1.1, Visual J++ 6.0, Windows CE Tools, Microsoft TV, and Visual C#. Prior to Microsoft, he was a software engineer at Sun Microsystems in Mountain View, CA and the MITRE Corp. in Washington, DC.
	Bill Wolff, Agility Systems Bill Wolff is an independent consultant, trainer and architect specializing in Microsoft development technologies. His company, Agility Systems, is based in the Philadelphia area. He ran the consulting firm Wolff Data Systems for 15 years and directed armies of consultants in the dot com world. Bill is founder and president of the philly.net user group, board member for INETA (Vice President, Speaker Bureau), and he is active in several other user communities. Bill was a contributing author to several books and articles. His certifications include trainer, systems engineer, developer and Microsoft MVP for VB.NET.