Regional Directors

Microsoft Regional Directors are independent developers and architects, volunteers chosen for their leadership in their local technology circles, whose primary purpose is to share information about Microsoft technologies with their developer communities and to provide feedback from developers to Microsoft.

	Barry Gervin is a Principal Consultant with ObjectSharp Consulting. Barry, a technical leader with over 15 years experience, has helped many development teams architect and build large-scale mission critical applications. Barry is skilled in the Architecture and Development of Distributed Applications and Databases. Some of his notable recent work is aimed at establishing best practices for .NET development. He has been deeply involved with Microsoft's .NET platform and is a convert from the PowerBuilder development community. In addition to consulting, Barry has been a Software Development Instructor for over 10 years and currently holds a MS Certified Trainer designation in addition to .NET MS Certified Solution Developer and MS Solution Framework Practitioner designations.
	Richard Campbell is one of the co-founders of Strangeloop Networks and part of the team building an appliance to accelerate ASP.NET. Richard has more than 30 years of high-tech experience and is both a Microsoft Regional Director and Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP). He has consulted with a number of leading North American organizations; Barnes&Noble.com, Dow Chemical, Johnson & Johnson Health Care Services, Reuters, Subaru/Isuzu and the U.S. Air Force. In addition to speaking at conferences around the world, Richard is co-host of the ".NET Rocks!, the Internet Audio Talk Show for .NET Developers" podcast and the host of "RunAs Radio, the Internet Audio Talk Show for IT Professionals" podcast.
	Scott Howlett is a Principal with imason inc. in Toronto, Canada. With lots of in-the-trenches development experience, Scott now focuses the majority of his time in leading development teams through the design and build phases for critical line-of-business applications. He uses an unique blend of proven best-practices and innovative approaches to address complex problems. Scott brings a wealth of real-life experience to the software development practice in design, architecture and implementation. Recent work in the Financial Services and Banking sectors has demonstrated an aptitude in getting traction on large-scale .Net projects with a serious emphasis on security. Scott holds an engineering degree from the University of Waterloo and is a long-standing Microsoft Certified Solution Developer. Outside of his professional services work, Scott is a Media Center and SmartPhone enthusiast with a real passion for wake boarding and snow boarding.
	Guy Barrette is a Solutions Architect based in Montreal, Canada. He is the Microsoft Regional Director for the Montreal region and a MVP for ASP/ASP.NET. He has been working and developing with Microsoft development tools since the launch of VB 3 in 1994. His focus is helping organizations build better software using Microsoft technologies like Team System and also architecting and developing Web applications. He's been a speaker at developers' conferences like Microsoft TechDays and DevTeach. Speaking of DevTeach, Guy is on the speaker selection committee. Guy has the following Microsoft certifications: Solution Developer and Technical Specialist Team Foundation Server. Guy is the president of the Montreal .NET Community, he's organizing the Code Camp in Montreal, he writes a monthly .NET book review column for the Level Extreme Magazine and he is the Visual Studio Talk Show Internet radio show co-host.
	Luc Gauthier is the Microsoft Regional Director for Quebec City and is a Principal Consultant with CGI. Luc has been working with Information Technology (IT) since 1992. Through his career, Luc acquired extensive experience in developing object-oriented applications, client/server applications and transactional web site. At CGI, Luc is working in the .NET group since August 2001. This group, specialized in .NET development, has developed the CGI .NET Toolkit and support other .NET projects (.NET Frameworks, Web Services, VB.NET, C#, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, etc.) at CGI in Quebec City, but also remotely for other CGI's office like Boston, Montreal, Toronto, etc. Luc has a strong passion for .NET technology since the beginning in 2001. Luc devotes his time to the Quebec City .NET User Group and members of the .NET community at-large through delivery of .NET-related presentations at his User Group and at different Microsoft events (DeepDive, DevDays, ...).
	Joel Semeniuk is a founder and VP of Software Development at ImagiNET Resources Corp, a Manitoba based Microsoft Gold Partner in Ecommerce and Enterprise Systems. Joel is also the Microsoft Regional Director for Winnipeg, Manitoba. With a degree in Computer Science from the University of Manitoba, Joel has spent the last twelve years providing educational, development and infrastructure consulting services to clients throughout North America. Joel is the author of "Exchange and Outlook: Constructing Collaborative Solutions", from New Riders Publishing and contributing author of "Microsoft Visual Basic.NET 2003 KickStart" from SAMS. Joel has also acted as a technical reviewer on many other books and regularly writes articles for .NET Magazine and Exchange and Outlook Magazine on a variety of infrastructure and development related topics. Reach Joel by email at joels@imaginets.com.
	Kate Gregory is the Microsoft Regional Director for Toronto and a founding partner of Gregory Consulting. Based in rural Ontario, Gregory Consulting has been providing consulting and development services throughout North America since 1986, specializing in software development with leading-edge technologies, integration projects, and technology transfer. They also provide training, mentoring, and technical writing services. Kate is the author of over a dozen books including Microsoft Visual C++ .NET 2003 Kick Start. She teaches .NET, XML, UML, and C++ and is in demand as an expert speaker, with numerous cross-Canada tours for Microsoft Canada, and sessions at DevDays, DevTeach, TechEd (USA, Europe, Africa) and VSLive Toronto, among others. Kate is a C++ MVP, a founding sponsor of the Toronto .NET Users Group, the founder of the East of Toronto .NET Users group, a member of the INETA speakers bureau, and a member of adjunct faculty at Trent University in Peterborough. Kate has almost three decades of scientific and engineering programming experience in a variety of programming languages including Fortran, PL/I, C++, Java, Visual Basic, and C#. Her recent programming work is almost exclusively in Visual C++ and Visual Basic.NET, on a variety of projects, for both Enterprise and ISV clients. Since January 2002 she has been Microsoft Regional Director for Toronto and since January 2004 she has been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional designation for Visual C++. In June 2005 she won the Regional Director of the year award. She maintains strong relationships with the C++ and Windows teams in Redmond.
	Colin Melia is a Microsoft Regional Director and Microsoft MVP for Silverlight known as an architect, trainer, speaker and author with deep and broad knowledge of the latest Microsoft technologies, proven problem solving skills, hands-on solution creation ingenuity and the ability to communicate rich and complex ideas. He speaks regularly with his British accent at conferences, events and code camps for Microsoft and community organisations as well as being a college academic advisor. In the summer of 2010 he developed and delivered the first Windows Phone 7 boot camp tour in North America, training dozens of developers and companies across Canada at Microsoft offices. His recent articles and reference cards have been featured on Mobile Developer Magazine & DZone and he regularly posts on his blog. Colin has 17 years of hands-on experience in areas of rich UI with WPF/Silverlight, cloud development with Azure and BI with SQL Server, along with in-depth knowledge of core technologies such as .NET, OData, WCF, WF, LINQ and WIF. He has developed award-winning simulation technology with rich UI, cloud-based learning portals and workflow-driven BI systems. He also created the first streaming video community site with Windows Media. He has worked in the finance, telecoms, e-learning, Internet communications and gaming industries, with his business solutions recently in use at major league companies world-wide.
	Laurent Duveau is a Microsoft Regional Director, Microsoft Certified Trainer and Microsoft Silverlight MVP. He loves Web technologies and currently focus on Silverlight, RIA/Touch and Windows Phone apps. Laurent is a Montreal .NET Community Leader and a regular speaker at numerous events around Microsoft technologies such as TechDays, DevTeach, User Groups, Code Camps, etc. Laurent often teaches the Silverlight Tour in Canada and Europe. He is certified MCSD.NET, MCTS, MCPD, MCITP. He is a principal at RunAtServer, a Silverlight and RIA development/training company based in Montreal.