Scott Allen, OdeToCode
Scott Allen is a software architect based in Baltimore, MD, and has more than 13 years of experience in delivering commercial products across a wide range of technologies — from 8-bit embedded devices to highly scalable Web applications. Scott is a Microsoft MVP and founder of OdeToCode.com.

Joanna Bichsel, Microsoft Corporation
Joanna Bichsel is a Program Manager at Microsoft in the Office Business Platform Team. She has been at Microsoft for about 5 years, working on products such as SharePoint and Excel. Her role is to help developers get started building Office Business Applications and to show how Office 2007 is the platform for building enterprise solutions.

Scott Cate, myKB.com, Inc.
Scott Cate is the President of myKB.com, Inc., a technology company specializing in commercial ASP.NET applications. Scott's 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. He 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 .

Miguel Castro, Infotek Consulting Group, Inc.
Miguel Castro is a .NET consultant, author, speaker and trainer with over 20 years of IT experience with a background in full automation solutions encompassing all aspects of a project’s life cycle, including data gathering, architecture, design, development, documentation and training. He is a Microsoft MVP in the area of Visual Developer C#, recently awarded for 2005, and president of InfoTek Consulting Group, Inc., a provider of .NET consulting services to clients in the New York/New Jersey Metropolitan Area.

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.

Mark D’Urso
Mark D’Urso is a lead developer on the next generation online content delivery and rendering systems for MSDN and TechNet.  Recently, he lead the adoption of key technologies such as ASP.Net AJAX and Script# for the MSDN wiki.  Mark has been with Microsoft since 2000 and during that time has authored a variety asp.net based rendering frameworks used throughout the Microsoft.com suite of sites.  As a developer, he considers himself a user of both MSDN and TechNet and is dedicated to improving the user experience and streamlining developer productivity. 

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.

Torsten Grabs, Microsoft Corporation
Torsten works as a Program Manager for the Microsoft SQL Server Query Processor. His responsibilities currently cover a broad range of areas in SQL Server from relational data warehousing to reliability of query processing to features such as cache sync (aka query notifications). Torsten is with Microsoft SQL Server since early 2004 serving in different roles in development and program management. Torsten holds a PhD in database systems from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich.

John Holliday, John Holliday & Associates
John Holliday is an independent consultant and Microsoft MVP for Office SharePoint Server and has over 25 years of professional software development and consulting experience.  John has been involved in a broad spectrum of commercial software development projects ranging from retail products to enterprise information systems for the Fortune 100.  

After receiving his bachelorís degree in applied mathematics from Harvard College and a J.D. from the University of Michigan, John developed a specialized computing language for constructing legal expert systems.  His expertise includes all aspects of distributed systems development, with a special emphasis on document automation, collaboration and enterprise content management.
  
In addition to his professional career, John is actively engaged in humanitarian activities through Works of Wonder International, a non-profit he co-founded with his wife Alice, and the Art of Living Foundation, an international service organization devoted to uplifting human values throughout the world.

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.

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.

Peter Kellner
Peter Kellner founded 73rd Street Associates in 1990, where he successfully delivered systems for university clinic scheduling, insurance company management, and a turnkey physician office management to more than 500 customers nationwide. Ten years later, in 2000, 73rd Street Associates was purchased by a large insurance company, and Peter started a new career as an independent software consultant, writer and speaker.   Among the technologies he currently is involved with include ASP.NET, WPF, WPF/E and Mobile. When not working, Peter spends most his free time biking. He has ridden his bike across the globe. Most recently he and his wife, Tammy, rode across the U.S., from California to Georgia, in just 27 days. He is also an ASP.NET MVP and maintains a blog at http://peterkellner.net.

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.

Christian Kleinerman, Microsoft Corporation
Christian Kleinerman has over 10 years of experience working with SQL Server - the last seven as part of the SQL Server development team in Redmond, WA. He is currently the Group Program Manager of the Relational Engine team where he has worked on a variety of features and technologies. Before Microsoft he worked on eCommerce web site development and previously was co-founder of a development company specializing on scheduling software.

Dr. Adam Kolawa, CEO, Parasoft
Dr. Adam Kolawa is the co-founder and CEO of Parasoft, a leading provider of Automated Error Prevention (AEP) software solutions. Kolawa's years of experience with various software development processes has resulted in his unique insight into the high-tech industry and the uncanny ability to successfully identify technology trends. As a result, he has orchestrated the development of several successful commercial software products to meet growing industry needs to improve software quality - often before the trends have been widely accepted. Kolawa, co-author of /Bulletproofing Web Applications/ (Hungry Minds 2001), has contributed to and written over 100 commentary pieces and technical articles for publications such as The Wall Street Journal, CIO, Computerworld, Dr. Dobb's Journal, and IEEE Computer; he has also authored numerous scientific papers on physics and parallel processing.

Vishwas Lele, Applied Information Sciences
Vishwas Lele is a Principal Architect at Applied Information Sciences (www.appliedis.com) where he has been involved in the design and development of .NET based applications for a number of clients. Vishwas has been a speaker at a number of developer events and has also authored many magazine articles and white papers on the .NET technology. Vishwas serves as the Microsoft Regional Director for the Washington, D.C. area. He is also a Solution Architecture MVP.

Rockford 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.

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).

John Papa, ASPSOFT
John (C# MVP and MCAD.NET) has been working with Microsoft distributed architectures for over 10 years. He has enterprise experience architecting and developing with .NET technologies including ASP.NET as well as WebForms using both C# and VB.NET. He is a baseball fanatic who spends most of his summer nights rooting for the Yankees with his family and his faithful dog, Kadi. John has authored or co-authored several books on ADO, ADO.NET, XML, and SQL Server, is the author of the Data Points column in MSDN Magazine and can often be found speaking at industry conferences such as VSLive.

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.

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.

Amanda Silver, Microsoft Corporation
Amanda Silver has been working on the Visual Basic team at Microsoft for nearly 6 years.  Currently, she is the Lead Program Manager for the Visual Basic core experience which includes language design, compiler, editor, debugger, and interoperability with VB6. The past couple of years have been devoted to enhancing data integration in the form the LINQ project (Language INtegrated Query) which will incorporate SQL-style query expressions and XML as a first-class data type into the Visual Basic language.  She has edited several books including Ted Pattison’s Object Oriented Programming with Visual Basic .NET, the VB.NET Language printed by O’Reilly press, and Paul Vick’s Visual Basic .NET. She is a frequent guest in live chats on MSDN, .NET Rocks, Channel9, and appeared on Microsoft’s VBTV oh so many years ago. She has recently appeared at developer conferences like VSConnections, VSLive, TechEd, PDC, and in user group meetings throughout the world. She is a primary contributor to the vbteam blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam

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.

Allen Wagner,
Allen Wagner is a developer on the next generation online content delivery and rendering systems for MSDN and TechNet. He has been with Microsoft since 1995 in a variety of roles and teams, ranging from DirectPlay through Windows Media Player to MSDN, where he’s been a developer for more than 6 years. Recently, he has been focused on performance enhancements for the MSDN and TechNet TOCs.