VSLive! Las Vegas 2008

Conference Speakers

	Rob Bagby, Microsoft Corporation Rob Bagby is a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft. Rob works with customers, as well as delivers presentations at numerous regional and national conferences, to illustrate how to take advantage of Microsoft's developer technologies to deliver performant and secure applications faster. Rob bases his discussions on over 10 years of consulting experience, along with a Masters Degree in International Business from Thunderbird. You can read Rob's blog here.
	Perry Birch, Accentient Perry is currently a Solutions Architect / Trainer for Accentient, consulting across a broad range of Microsoft technologies including Applications in C#.Net, ASP.Net, Sharepoint 2007, InfoPath 2007, SQL Server and Team Foundation Server to name a few. Perry is also a trainer and speaker that has delivered courses on Sharepoint 2007 Development and Team Foundation Server as well as presentations on DLinq.
	Robert Boedigheimer, Schwan Food Company Robert Boedigheimer works for Schwans Shared Services, LLC providing business solutions with web technologies and leads Robert Boedigheimer Consulting, LLC. Robert has been designing and developing web sites for the past 13 years including the early days of ASP and ASP.NET. He is a columnist for aspalliance.com, an ASP.NET MVP, an "Early Achiever" MCSD for .NET with C#, an MCPD: Web with C#, and a 2nd degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. Robert has spoken at industry conferences including the Heartland Developers Conference, Twin Cities Code Camp, Tulsa Tech Fest, TechEd, AJAXWorld, and numerous national and international VSLive! events.
	Jeff Bramwell, Farm Credit Services of America Jeff Bramwell has over 17 years of software development experience and is currently employed as a Lead Developer by Farm Credit Services of America. He has been working with .NET technologies (VB.NET and C#) since the early pre-release days (in mid 2000) and currently teaches a course in C# at a local university. Jeff started the Omaha Team System User Group in 2008 and has presented on Team Foundation Server at the Omaha .NET User Group as well as the Heartland Developers Conference. He also spends time answering Visual Studio Team System questions in the MSDN forums and makes every attempt to post useful information (mostly regarding TFS) on his blog at http://devmatter.blogspot.com/.
	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.
	Gus Emery, Magenic Gus Emery is a Senior Consultant with Magenic, one of the nation's premier Microsoft Gold Certified Partners. Gus has over fourteen years experience architecting and implementing highly-scalable ASP.Net applications and distributed n-tiered applications across a broad array of industries within the Twin Cities area. Gus has been working with .Net since Beta #1, and loves to seek out new and exciting technologies to serve his customers technological needs!
	Aaron Erickson, Magenic A software architect, author, and public speaker, with over 15 years of progressive, global, full lifecycle software experience, with particularly deep expertise on the Microsoft.NET architecture. Extensive domain experience in financial services, risk management, and insurance, with a proven track record of delivering high-performance, multi-tier software solutions that have been successful in the marketplace. Experience working with offshore, "near-shore", and on-site teams, with specific experience of bringing agile development techniques to developers in India.Contributor to multiple open source projects/free software projects - including CSLA.net, i4o, and MetaLinq. Winner of the 2008 Microsoft MVP award for my contributions to the C# community. Winner of the Magenic Regional Consultant of the Quarter award in Q406.
	Chris Franz, Sybase iAnywhere Chris Franz is a systems consultant for Sybase iAnywhere in Boise Idaho. Chris is focused on training and consulting for Advantage Database Server. Chris has over 10 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. Chris is an MCSE and has participated as a contributing technical editor on two books. He can be reached through his weblog at http://blog.advantageevangelist.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, VSLive!, and Microsoft's Tech-Ed.
	Sue Googe
	Richard Hale Shaw, Richard Hale Shaw Group VSLive! Dallas 2008 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.
	Scott Hanselman, Microsoft Corporation Scott Hanselman works for Microsoft as a Senior Program Manager in the Developer Division, aiming to spread good information about developing software, very often on the Microsoft stack. Before this he was the Chief Architect at Corillian Corporation, now a part of Checkfree, for 6+ years. He was also involved in a few Microsoft Developer things for many years like the MVP and RD programs and will speak about computers (and other passions) whenever someone will listen. He's written a few books, most recently with Bill Evjen and Devin Rader on ASP.NET 3.5. He blogs at http://www.hanselman.com and podcasts at http://www.hanselminutes.com.”
	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.
	Richard Hundhausen, Accentient Richard Hundhausen has 25 years of software and database development experience and over 15 years of training experience. As the president of Accentient, he and his company primarily focus on Application Lifecycle Management consulting and training. Always an advocate for the developer, Richard's distractions often take him to the intersection of .NET and SQL Server development.
	Philip Japikse, Pinnacle Solutions Group, Inc. Phil has been working with .Net since the early days, and developing software for over 20 years. Phil is currently helping to architect Commerce Server 2007/BizTalk solutions for a Fortune 50 company along with teaching them implement Scrum/Agile practices. Phil is also actively developing smart client applications for the long term care industry. A Principal Consultant with Pinnacle Solutions Group, Inc. (a Senior level firm specializing in Custom Software, BI, and eCommerce solutions located in Cincinnati, OH), Phil is a practicing .Net Application Architect, Developer, and Trainer. Phil currently holds certifications as an MCSD, MCSD.Net, MCDBA, and a Scrum Master in the technical realm, and is also certified as a Firefighter/Paramedic for the local fire department.
	Jeff Levinson, Northwest Cadence Jeff Levinson is the ALM Practice Lead for Northwest Cadence specializing in process, methodology and Team System. He is a Microsoft Team System MVP, MCAD, MCSD, MCDBA and MCT. Jeff is a former Solution Design & Integration Architect with The Boeing Company. He is the author of ³Building Client/Server Applications with VB.NET² (Apress 2003) and ³Pro Visual Studio Team System with Team Edition for Database Professionals² (Apress 2007). Jeff has a Masters in Software Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.
	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 Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and co-founder of Sleek Technologies Inc., a New York based development shop with an early adopter philosophy towards new technologies. He is also a principal consultant at twentysix New York, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, and lead author of the new MS Press book “Programming Microsoft SQL Server 2008”. Programming since 1979, Lenni specializes in Microsoft-based solutions with experience that spans a variety of business domains, including publishing, financial, wholesale/retail, healthcare, and ecommerce. Lenni has served as chief architect and lead developer for various organizations, ranging from small shops to high-profile clients. He is also a consultant, author, trainer, and a frequent speaker at local usergroup meetings, VSLive, and other industry conferences. He can be reached at lenni.lobel@sleektech.com.
	Anthony Lombardo, Infragistics Tony Lombardo is the lead Technical Evangelist in the Worldwide Evangelism Group at Infragistics, the world's leading publisher of presentation layer tools. Tony has a deep technical background in ASP.NET and his community participation has earned him the ASP.NET MVP Award from Microsoft. Tony co-runs the Central Jersey .NET Users Group, and often writes for both online and printed publications, including ASP.NET Pro, Dr. Dobb's Journal, .NET Developers Journal and Redmond Developer News.
	Javier Lozano Javier Lozano, Imagetek, Inc. Javier is an ASP.NET MVP that specializes in ASP.NET, system architecture, and training. During the day, he enjoys helping Imagetek, an enterprise content management provider based in Grimes, Iowa, to deliver quality products and services to their clients. Outside of work, Javier has helped co-found the Iowa .NET Users Group as well as the Iowa Code Camp. He's also a co-author of the ASP.NET 3.5 Programmer's Reference which is published by Wrox.
	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. Jeffrey has been a speaker at VBITS/VSLIVE since 1998 and has authored 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
	Chris Menegay, Notion Solutions, Inc. Chris Menegay is a Development Process Consultant for Notion Solutions, Inc., a consulting and training firm specializing in software development process and Visual Studio Team System. He has been working with Team System full-time since late 2004. Chris has obtained a broad understanding of information technology by sharing best practices with the client companies he has worked with over the past 10 years. As a consultant, he has served in many different roles in the software development process. Chris has been a project manager, analyst, architect, developer, and tester. This broad background has given him insight into not only the technical challenges that face software projects, but the procedural challenges as well. He has written white papers and articles on Team System for MSDN and MSDN Magazine. Chris is a Microsoft MVP (Team System), a Microsoft Regional Director and a member of the INETA Speakers Bureau.
	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 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.
	Stephanie Saad
	Ben Scheirman Ben Scheirman is an agile web developer from Houston, TX. He is a Certified ScrumMaster, ASP Insider, and Microsoft Certified Solution Developer. You can read about these topics on his blog, online at http://www.flux88.com. Check out his upcoming book, ASP.NET MVC in Action by Manning Press at http://manning.com/palermo. Ben is a Principal Consultant with Sogeti.
	Craig Shoemaker, Infragistics Craig Shoemaker is a software developer, podcaster, blogger and New-Media Evangelist for Infragistics. As host of the Polymorphic Podcast and Pixel8, Craig does what he loves most - making contributions to the community and drawing the best out of industry luminaries. Craig is a Microsoft ASP.NET MVP, ASP Insider and guest speaker at various developer user groups and tradeshows. Craig is co-author of the Wrox books "Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX", "Beginning ASP.NET Ajax" and a contributor to CoDe Magazine. In his spare time Craig enjoys looking for a haystack to hide his prize needle collection.
	Steve Taylor, OpenMake Software Mr. Taylor is an expert in software build management spanning multiple languages and platforms. He currently serves as CTO of OpenMake Software and is the architect of OpenMake Meister, the first commercially available build management solution. With more than 20 years of experience in application development, Mr. Taylor has the answers for solving the most difficult of build and release issues. Prior to founding OpenMake Software in 1995, Mr. Taylor served as a Technical Consultant assisting companies with defining a solid build and release process. Early in his career, Mr. Taylor recognized the need for a solid and agile build process that could easily adapt to source code changes. At this time he began developing the build procedures which have since become OpenMake Meister. Mr. Taylor received his Bachelors of Science Degree in Computer Science/Mathematics from the University of Illinois-CU.