Anand Iyer

Northern California

Developer Evangelist

http://blogs.msdn.com/aniyer

Anand works as a Developer Evangelist, Microsoft's .NET ambassador to the Northern California region. During his tenure there, he has been in the midst of several launches, such as Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, Vista and Office 2007. He has spoken at over a hundred conferences on a variety of topics and boasts a very high and credible customer satisfaction score. Before joining Microsoft, Anand worked for a networking bellwether company, pioneering XML-based manageability solutions for an embedded operating system. During his five-year tenure as a software development engineer, Anand worked closely with customers to fine-tune his product features and drive problems to a full resolution. Anand has extensive experience software methodologies, and has worked on several development platforms, including Linux and Unix. He is fluent in C, C++, Java, and PERL. Anand has also earned two patent awards related to manageability solutions on networking platforms. Anand graduated from Purdue University (Go Boilers!) with a degree in Computer Engineering. In his professional daydreams, Anand is on the gridiron, working as the quarterback coach for his beloved Alma Mater.

Brian Hitney

North Carolina, South Carolina

Developer Evangelist

http://www.structuretoobig.com

Brian Hitney is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft Corporation, covering North and South Carolina. He frequently delivers presentations and works with local community groups and customers on emerging technologies, .NET, and developer tools. Prior to his Developer Evangelist role, Brian worked as a software engineer on a Windows Vista team in Redmond, and before he joined Microsoft he helped build large scale e-commerce applications for various companies across the United States. Brian is based out of Greensboro, NC.

Chris Bowen

Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, Vermont

Developer Evangelist

http://blogs.msdn.com/cbowen

Chris Bowen is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft in the Boston area. He works with all things .NET, but has specialties in application architecture and building highly-scalable transactional web systems. A software architect and engineer with over 15 years of experience, Chris joined Microsoft after holding senior positions at Monster.com, VistaPrint, Staples, and IDX Systems. He is coauthor of "Professional Visual Studio 2005 Team System" from WROX and the upcoming “Essential Windows Communication Foundation” from Addison-Wesley. He holds an M.S. in Computer Science and a B.S. in Management Information Systems, both from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Bob Familiar

Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, Vermont

Architect Evangelist

http://blogs.msdn.com/bobfamiliar

Bob Familiar is an Architect Evangelist based in the Boston area. He has been working in the software industry for 22 years, the last 11 with Microsoft. Bob has worked as a developer, an architect, a consultant and an evangelist speaking at numerous conferences, user groups and events of his own design. His passion is in object orientation, service orientation and user experience. Bob also holds a patent in Object Relational Design.

Peter Laudati

New York, New Jersey, Connecticut

Developer Evangelist

http://blogs.msdn.com/peterlau

Peter Laudati is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft. In his current role, Peter works with the developer community in New York and New Jersey to support area user groups, code camps, and other events. Previously, he worked as a consultant in Microsoft’s services division. As a consultant, he worked on several application development projects and provided architectural guidance for large customers throughout the NY & NJ metro area. He lives with his family in central New Jersey and loves kayaking and biking at the Jersey Shore.

Bill Zack

New York, New Jersey, Connecticut

Architect Evangelist

Bill Zack is an Architect Evangelist with Microsoft, covering the New York Metro area. He comes to this role after serving as a Solutions Architect in the Financial Services Group of Microsoft Consulting Services. His experience includes developing, supporting and evangelizing .NET/SOA based frameworks used to jump-start development projects for financial services companies. Prior to joining Microsoft he acted as a Consultant, Architect, Administrator, Developer, and System Integrator. He has also authored several computer books and white papers. Bill is the Founder and President of the International Association of Software Architects (IASA)-New York Chapter and a member of the IASA Board of Directors. He is also Co-Moderator of the New York City .NET Developers Group, founder and past president of the New York Enterprise Windows User Group, and the founder and past president of several other computer user groups.

Chris Koenig

Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas

Developer Evangelist

http://blogs.msdn.com/chkoenig

Chris Koenig is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft, based in Dallas, TX. Prior to joining Microsoft last March, Chris worked as a Senior Architect for The Capital Group in San Antonio, and as an Architect for the global solution provider Avanade. As a consultant, Chris worked with a variety of clients from many vertical markets, ISVs and other solution providers on enterprise-class Windows and Web-based applications. Today, Chris focuses on building, growing, and enhancing the developer communities in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. You can contact Chris through his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/chkoenig, via email at chris.koenig@microsoft.com, or via Windows Live Messenger at chris@koenigweb.com.

Asli Bilgin

New York

Developer Evangelist

Industry Focus: Financial Services

Asli Bilgin is an industry recognized speaker on the latest advancements with Microsoft technologies. She currently serves on Microsoft's Platform Strategy team for Financial Services, in the East Region of the United States. In this role, she advises the leading banking and capital market companies on the best practices for technology strategies. Asli is a well-respected speaker at international technology conferences, and serves as a contributing editor to various technical publications. She recently worked with CNET to host the video series: "At The Whiteboard" – an overview into Microsoft's latest developer tools including Visual Studio, Visual Studio Team System, and Internet Information Server 7.0. She's also created and hosted DVD box sets for training series on Visual Studio and ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX with Total Training. Prior to joining Microsoft, Asli led teams developing best of breed Wall Street systems in her role as a technical team lead and architect at Dell. Her book, "Mastering Database Programming With Visual Basic.NET", (Sybex) has been translated into six languages and serves as the curriculum for college and post-graduate institutions in the United States, United Kingdom, Israel, and India.

Allan da Costa Pinto

Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont

Developer Evangelist

Industry Focus: Health & Life Sciences, Financial Services

http://blogs.msdn.com/allandcp

Allan truly believes that software is magic and he is inspired by his customers, colleagues and competitors. As an evangelist, Allan gets to use both sides of his brain and his heart in helping others become more successful. Allan focuses on educating people on the merits of Microsoft’s vision for connected systems. He has been with Microsoft for about 8 years working in various roles from consulting to support and lives the good life in Hartford, CT with his amazing wife and children.

Curt Devlin

Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, Vermont

Architect Evangelist

Industry Focus: Health & Life Sciences, Financial Services

http://blogs.msdn.com/curtd

Curt Devlin is currently an architect in Microsoft DPE (Developer & Platform Evangelism) focusing on enterprises in the financial services, as well as health and life sciences industries throughout New England. Curt has 20 years of experience with the architecture and design of enterprise class distributed systems on the Windows platform. He is a Microsoft veteran with 11 years of experience at Microsoft, concentrating in the real-world design, development and architecture of enterprise distributed solutions.

For several years, Curt worked at the Microsoft Technology Center helping customers devise or revamp their web applications to achieve better performance and scalability. At the MTC, he developed expertise in transaction cost analysis (TCA), a rigorous methodology for measuring the scalability of multi-tiered applications and then developing an accurate model for predicting and improving the scalability.

Curt has worked across a broad range of customer segments while at Microsoft, including healthcare, life sciences, banking, investment, insurance, human resources, manufacturing, ISVs and many others. In addition, he helped build some of the first online news offering at MSN and MSNBC. He also lead the effort to design and develop a collection of .NET frameworks which later became the Microsoft enterprise application blocks.

At present, Curt has also become interested in the special security challenges that confront SOA and SaaS approaches. You can read his MSDN article on the topic of Enterprise Authorization Strategy.

Danilo (Dani) Diaz

Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey

Developer Evangelist

http://www.smallandmighty.net

Danilo Diaz, aka Dani, is a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft's Mid-Atlantic State district. In this role, he helps developers understand Microsoft's product offerings and strategy. Prior to joining Microsoft, he worked at Perficient Philadelphia where he helped establish their Mobility Practice. Dani has over 8 years of experience in the IT industry. His ability to identify and utilize the right blend of technologies to solve business needs has been an asset on all projects he has worked on. Dani's first .NET project was a Web-based eLearning application which was built on ASP.NET 1.0 Beta 2. As a consultant he has served the roles of system architect, technical lead, developer and mentor on various large and small projects. He has worked on SOA-based applications, Web applications, Windows applications and mobile systems.

G. Andrew Duthie

District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia

Developer Evangelist

http://blogs.msdn.com/gduthie

Andrew is a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft Corporation, covering the Mid-Atlantic states. He has been working with computers since the days of the Commodore PET, hacking game programs loaded from cassette tapes to say funny stuff, and has been writing and speaking about developer technologies for more than a decade. While his developer specialty is web development, Andrew also enjoys gadgets of any stripe, gaming, cigars, and poker. In his free time he can be found spending time with his wife and two sons, reading, or playing music.

Lindsay Rutter

Pennsylvania, Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia

Developer Evangelist

http://blogs.msdn.com/lindsay

How many Microsoft presenters can claim they were "locked in" at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with Mira Sorvino? Lindsay, for one. It's a story you'll have to get straight from the source. She has also produced content for a high traffic television network site and the Internet division of one of America's largest banks, where she helped to choose and implement a deployment tool for multiple data centers. Lindsay enjoys coding in C++, but admits that C# is quickly vying for her affections. She's also proficient in Unix, Visual Studio 2005, OOD concepts, HTML/CSS, XML, Java, JavaScript, Perl, .NET, relational database concepts, and computer security and forensics tools including Autopsy and Encase 5.0. Lindsay graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California, where she was part of a team that researched how to implement an Internet-capable computer lab in a school in N'Djili in the Democratic Republic of the Congo – an area that has no telephone services and receives electricity only three days per week. As a developer, Lindsay loves solving technical problems and formulating solutions that are precisely tailored to her clients' needs.

Zhiming Xue

District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania

Architect Evangelist

http://blogs.msdn.com/zxue

Zhiming Xue, "Z", is a Microsoft Architect Evangelist based in the Mid-Atlantic area. With more than 12 years of IT experience specializing in large-scale software application development and integration, he is eager to get connected with architects and developers in the region and beyond and share what Microsoft has to offer and what he has learned. As an IT professional, he is fascinated with how the Internet has profoundly changed people's lives in a positive way and how individual and institutional creativity and innovation has driven technological, social and economic advancement in the world. As a Ph.D. degree holder in Management Science, he finds learning a lifetime pursuit and reward, and believes that "A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step." In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with his family and getting involved as a parent volunteer in his two sons' sports activities.

Dave Bost

Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin

Developer Evangelist

http://davebost.com/blog/

Dave Bost is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft and co-host of the Thirsty Developer Podcast. Dave has been a Software Developer and Solution Architect for over 15 years. Prior to joining Microsoft, Dave cut his technical teeth working with many Fortune 500 companies as a technical mentor and consultant.

Dave started his technical passion back in the days of the Commodore 64 when he wrote his first assembly-language program that produced a hot air balloon to sail across his Commodore 1701 Video Monitor. From there, he was hooked. This led to a Computer Science degree at Northern Illinois University, where he soon started his professional career in the Unix/C world and a short time later started his Microsoft developer career. For the past decade, Dave has spent most of his time building Web-based applications for the Microsoft platform. As a technologist, Dave doesn't spend all his time in the Microsoft world as he likes to spend his time dabbling with the latest technologies, tools, and movements coming out of the software industry.

Outside of his professional life, Dave enjoys discovering new music with his Zune Pass, defending the universe against 13-year-olds on Xbox Live, and playing golf (whenever his wife lets him). You can read Dave's blog at http://davebost.com/blog or listen to the Thirsty Developer Podcast at http://thirstydeveloper.com.

Dave Isbitski

Pennsylvania, New Jersey

Developer Evangelist

http://blogs.msdn.com/davedev

Ever since creating his first "Choose Your Own Adventure" video game using Commodore BASIC, Dave has been fascinated by the potential of computers and the worlds they can bring to us. Debuting in the Enterprise space with Visual Basic 5, he has over 12 years IT experience and has worked for numerous Fortune 100/500 companies. These include industries such as retail and life sciences on projects ranging from smart Devices, Web services, and rfid to the creation of Web sites within the retail industry. He enjoys talking about technology and has taught full day courses on various Microsoft topics as well as being a presenter at both MSDN Events and Microsoft DevDays. His current passion is showing companies in the Mid-Atlantic states how important good user experience is within the Enterprise as well as how easy it is to get to. In his spare time, Dave enjoys gaming online with fellow Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) users, as well as reliving the 80's arcade classics on X-Box Live.

David Solivan

Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey

Architect Evangelist

http://blogs.msdn.com/beaudreaux

David's love affair with technology began with his first programming project in the 7th grade when 64K of memory was overkill. Since that time, David has developed solutions for Fortune 100 companies on the Microsoft platform as well as in Java on midrange systems. David served as a solution and strategy architect at Aetna and as a consultant in the Philadelphia area for 12 years. He has been an Architect Evangelist at Microsoft for 4 years now and works with Health Plan, Pharmaceutical and Financial Services customers to build enterprise solutions.

When it comes to solution architecture, David believes that requirements are king and that an architect's first and best skill should be listening. David is also a sleight of hand artist who will gladly show you how SaaS is best illustrated through rope tricks. If you find him in the right place at the right time, you will hear stories from him as his alter ego "Mr. Beaudreaux".

Doug Turnure

Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi

Developer Evangelist

http://blogs.msdn.com/dougturn

Doug Turnure is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft Corporation, focusing on emerging technologies. He serves in the community as a developer, author, trainer, and occasional conference speaker. His specialties include .NET internals, memory management, and distributed communication, although he enjoys anything pertaining to .NET. Prior to joining Microsoft, he spent five years as an instructor and course author with DevelopMentor and Aggelos, Inc. Doug is based in Atlanta, GA.

Glen Gordon

Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina

Developer Evangelist

http://blogs.msdn.com/glengordon/

Call it a tech-world walk on the wild side. Glen once used a VB 3.0 data control in a production application – and lived to tell about it. Now he's getting his adrenaline fix by diving deep into the .NET technologies. "There's a lot in there!" says Glen, a self-described natural paraphraser who has a knack for explaining complex ideas without inducing snores. Glen, who is MCAD and MCSD.NET certified, has over 12 years of experience as a software trainer and presenter. He's delivered MSDN Events seminars to thousands of developers and spoken at conferences including Tech-Ed and Dev Days. Glen has also managed the design, implementation and deployment of several enterprise software solutions built on Windows DNA and .NET architectures, and has worked extensively with Microsoft SQL and other members of the Microsoft server family. His expertise includes designing for scalability, usability and supportability, and his current passion is developing mobile applications. Glen graduated from Georgia Tech with a degree in Applied Psychology, specializing in learning and human-computer interactions. Originally from New York, Glen lives near Atlanta and spends his downtime relaxing with his wife and three children, playing the piano and performing improv comedy.

Russ Fustino

Alabama, Florida, Mississippi

Developer Evangelist

http://blogs.msdn.com/rfustino/

Russ wisely shelved dreams of rock 'n roll stardom in order to share his vast knowledge with developers nationwide. Given that he can't sing or play an instrument, we're all very grateful. Russ has more than 25 years of software development experience and reportedly passed all three MCAD exams in a 28-hour period – an experience he doesn't recommend to anyone. He's the creator of the Russ' Tool Shed developer seminar series and has donned his trademark suspenders, hardhat and tool belt in presentations for over 50,000 developers at 1,300 events. Russ also has expertise in developing Visual Basic and Web-based solutions using Microsoft tools. Before joining Microsoft seven years ago, Russ worked as a VB instructor, headed up a development department, and created several client/server applications and system software products. He's MCP certified and his specialties include development with VB.NET, XML Web services, ASP.NET, and debugging. But make no mistake - Russ is not all brains. His big heart led him to establish Take a Swing at Cancer, Inc., a non-profit organization that holds softball and golf-based fundraisers to battle cancer.

Chad Brooks

Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina

Architect Evangelist

http://blogs.msdn.com/chabrook/

Chad Brooks is an Architect Evangelist with Microsoft Corporation. He works with Enterprise customers across the entire Southeast to define Systems Architecture around Microsoft products and how those products can fit into today's heterogeneous environments. Chad joined the Microsoft, Healthcare and Life Sciences Services Group in 2000, where he was responsible for architecting .NET-based solutions for some of Microsoft's largest pharmaceutical and hospital customers. Prior to Microsoft, Chad worked as a Technical Architect for HealthAxis, providing benefits administration, claims administration, and imaging solutions for healthcare insurance companies. Chad is based in Atlanta, GA.

Joe Healy

Florida

Developer Evangelist

http://www.devfish.net/BlogFish/RSS/RSSGen.xml

Joe Healy is the Developer Evangelist for Microsoft Gulf States Accounts, based out of Tampa Florida. Joe's geographical responsibility is to provide "developer care" for the Gulf States District for the East Region Developer team. As such, he has responsibilities to bring .NET development to the masses in Florida. Joe serves a multitude of clients, from corporate accounts to broad reach events and User Groups. He lectures on various development and architectural topics focused around the .Net Frameworks, Visual Studio.NET, and associated servers. Joe worked previously for Microsoft Consulting Services in the custom Application Development arena, focusing on Internet, Web Services, Rich Client, B2B, and browser delivered systems for Microsoft Consulting Services. Joe has also served time with eAngler.com, Arthur Andersen, Cap Gemini, EDS, and IBM in various capacities. On a personal level Joe enjoys spending time trying to coax Redfish, Snook, and Trout from various nooks and crannies in Tampa Bay, with an occasional game of poker at Derby Lane. He is married to wife Anne, with two little girls, Ryan and Morgan, who will also grow up to be great "fisher-ladies" one day.

Joe Rubino

New Jersey, New York

Architect Evangelist

Industry Focus: Financial Services

http://blogs.msdn.com/jrubino/

Joe started to work as a software developer in 1984. Over the last 23 years he has worked with every Microsoft OS from MS-DOS through Windows Server 2008. During this time he has written everything from device drivers to portfolio management web sites and has been a programmer, manager, director and architect. One constant has remained during this time, his love for technology in the financial services industry. This has led him to his current role as Architect Evangelist in the Financial Services Industry Evangelism Team, where he educates and assists customers in the early adoption of Microsoft .NET technologies. Joe lives in Babylon, NY where he spends his time working out, playing guitar, swimming, skiing and most importantly, enjoying time with his three children.

Jeff Brand

Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota

Developer Evangelist

http://www.slickthought.net/

Jeff has been with Microsoft for over 11 years. He started with the company soon after the release of Windows 95. Now those were heady days. He's seen the long march of Windows 2000 and was right there for the browser wars. While at Microsoft, Jeff has been a consultant, an ecommerce specialist, and an enterprise technology advisor. He is a .NET Developer Evangelist for Microsoft's North Central District. He lives in Minneapolis and in his current role is responsible for working with developers and customers that are evaluating or using .NET.

Michael Benkovich

Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota

Developer Evangelist

http://www.BenkoTIPS.com

Energy, laughter and a contagious passion for coding - Mike brings it all to the podium. His career has taken him from minion to business owner, and he's been programming since the late '70s, when a friend brought a Commodore CPM home for the summer. He wrote his first software in Basic (including a math game that was shown at the University of Wisconsin in 1982) and later completed a degree in aerospace engineering. In 1994 he started a consulting firm with his brother, focusing on the effective use of relational technologies for scalable, high performance and mission critical applications. Mike has worked in a variety of roles including architect, project manager, developer and technical writer. The coolest part of his job? Running into people who are still using (and liking) his software applications. Mike is a published author with WROX Press and APress Books, writing primarily about getting the most from your SQL Server database. Since appearing in Microsoft's DevCast in 1994, Mike has presented technical information at seminars, conferences and corporate boardrooms across America. This music buff also plays piano, guitar and saxophone - but not at his MSDN Events.

Jeff Barnes

Florida

Architect Evangelist

http://blogs.msdn.com/jbarnes

Jeff Barnes is the Microsoft Architect Evangelist for Florida where he engages with the local Architect community to help solve tough business problems with leading-edge technology. Jeff has been with Microsoft for over 9 years and has spent over 7 of those years as a software architect in the Microsoft Consulting Services organization working with large enterprise customers throughout North America. Prior to Microsoft, Jeff worked for several large insurance, manufacturing, and retail companies in South Florida. Jeff has a passion around the discipline and challenges of software engineering, recognizing that architecture has as much of a social context as a technical one. He especially enjoys the freedom and flexibility that .NET brings to the table in order solve the next generation of really hard technical problems.

Ken Jones

Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina

Architect Evangelist

Industry Focus: Financial Services

http://blogs.msdn.com/kenjones

Ken's development career started as a whitewater rafting guide while attending college. Ken's first production application was a reservation and POS system for this rafting company. Based on that experience, Ken decided to attend school another year to add a Computer Science degree to his Mathematics degree. As they say, the rest is history. Ken has over 13 years of experience in architecting, designing and developing systems. This includes 8 years at Microsoft working in the Financial Services industry. Ken lives with his wife in Concord, NC, where he spends his free time camping, running, playing basketball, playing softball and coaching his three children's sports teams.

Rob Bagby

Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico

Developer Evangelist

http://www.robbagby.com

Rob's philosophy is: "Good software needs to solve real business problems." That core tenet has guided him through 10+ years of consulting and years in IT management. This makes sense, in that Rob's educational background is in business, holding a Master's Degree in International Finance from Thunderbird (The American Graduate School of International Management) and a Bachelor's degree in Business from the College of William and Mary. Prior to joining Microsoft in 2006, Rob co-owned a consulting firm, dotNext, a Microsoft partner for 5 years. Prior to that Rob worked as a Sr. Consultant for a large partner based in Phoenix, AZ. Rob has architected and developed a variety of applications for customers ranging from local companies to Fortune 500 firms.
As a consultant, Rob was heavily involved in community activities, presenting at dozens of user groups, multiple DevDays and was a speaker at the Phoenix .NET launch. Since joining Microsoft, Rob had delivered dozens of MSDN events, including multiple Vista/Office launches. Rob has also played a key role in the creation of launch and MSDN content. His goal in his content and presentations is to illustrate how to exploit Microsoft developer technologies to solve business problems.

Woody Pewitt

Southern California, Hawaii

Developer Evangelist

http://blog.pewitt.org/

When Woody is not out camping with his sons he usually can be found playing with the Common Language Runtime and other arcane parts of the .NET Framework. In his past work he has been a electronics technician for the Navy, a device driver programmer for Windows 3.0, C and then C++ programmer for Windows from 3.0, started Visual Basic in version 1.0 and early .NET tester and adopter. In each environment and language Woody looks for the best way to hack the system to deliver more than most would expect. His hacking started when he modified his TRS 80 16k color computer to have 18k by piggybacking another 8k RAM chip, from that hack on there has been no looking back. In his present job as a Developer Evangelist he gets to help people discover how they can use Microsoft's tools and technology to solve problems and be more productive with their development efforts. Woody feels quite fortunate to get to do this in Southern California and Hawaii.

Lynn Langit

Southern California, Hawaii

Developer Evangelist

http://blogs.msdn.com/SoCalDevGal

What inspires someone from Fargo, North Dakota to dream of becoming a United Nations translator? Love of words, of course. A self-described language geek, Lynn is fascinated by languages and semantics. She understands that life rarely travels in a straight line, and her own career reflects this winding path. Lynn moved from a degree in linguistics to become a business executive, and then launched her own software development, training and consulting company. She’s done production work with all versions of .NET, BizTalk, K2.Net, SharePoint, SQL Server, Analysis Services, InfoPath, MOM, and Active Directory, and holds an array of certifications, including MCT, MCSD, MCITP, MCSE, MCDBA and MSF. Lynn is also the author of Foundations of SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence from Apress. She gets her biggest on-the-job buzz from developing architecture – translating business needs into technical solutions that provide real value and opportunities. In her spare time, Lynn gives back to the community by supporting children’s education. Her current projects include work with the Mona Foundation (Redmond, Washington) and SmartCare (Lusaka, Zambia).

David Chou

Southern California, Hawaii

Architect Evangelist

http://blogs.msdn.com/dachou

David Chou is an architect in the platform evangelism organization at Microsoft, tasked to collaborate with local organizations in the advanced and emerging areas in architecture such as enterprise architecture, SOA, Web 2.0, SaaS, Software + Service (S+S), etc., and to support decision makers on defining technology adoption strategies. Drawing on experiences from his previous jobs at Accenture and Sun Microsystems, David enjoys helping customers create value from using objective and pragmatic approaches to define IT strategies and solution architectures.

Between the different roles, David had the opportunities to participate in many different kinds of projects at organizations in various industries. He helped a Web retail startup built on the Microsoft platform to obtain public status on Nasdaq, implemented a genomics search engine for a biotechnology firm, designed a next-generation Java-based services architecture for one of the largest telecoms in China, and headed architecture teams on multiple Java-based legacy modernization projects at a few of the largest financial services organizations in the U.S. David's recent projects include enterprise SOA platform initiatives using the Microsoft platform at major corporations, as well as Silverlight and Windows Live Platform implementations at Web companies.

Hong Choing

Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware

Architect Evangelist

Industry Focus: Health & Life Sciences

http://blogs.msdn.com/hchoing

Transforming IT to fit business needs in an Information Management economy is paramount. This is Hong's philosophy where software + services + architecture, when done right, can bring competitive business edge. This has been put in practice in Hong's 16+ year career in business and IT leadership capacity with proven results spanning multiple roles (Consultant, Entrepreneur, Solutions Architect, IT leaders). Prior to joining Microsoft, Hong founded a consulting company during the dotcom era, develop software products in a VC funded company, and worked for a large Pharmaceutical company developing their next generation Clinical Trials Management system. At Microsoft, he covers the East Coast of the United States, focusing on the HLS Industry. Hong is responsible for helping customers and partners solve business challenges by providing guidance to business decision makers, architects and developers building enterprise industry solutions. He works to promote the development of Industry Priority Solutions in HLS that is in alignment with Industry needs by leveraging Microsoft platform technology capabilities to drive down costs. Hong graduated from Drexel University with a Bachelor's in Electrical & Computer Engineering. He is a native of Cambodia and speaks Khmer, Chinese, and English. In his spare time he enjoys catching up with his wife and 3 kids and putting his carpentry skills to work.

Joe Cleaver

Connecticut, Pennsylvania, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware

Platform Strategy Advisor

Industry Focus: Financial Services

http://blogs.msdn.com/jcleaver

Joe Cleaver is a Platform Strategy Advisor for the East Coast, focusing on Financial Services in the Developer and Platform Evangelism Group at Microsoft. In this role, Joe is responsible for articulating the business value of .NET platform adoption and helping key customers in early adoption of new and upcoming Microsoft technologies. Joe also helps to understand current issues and trends that top tier Financial Services customers are contemplating, and working closely with other groups within Microsoft, helps to bridge those issues and trends with Microsoft platform solutions.

Joe joined Microsoft in 2006 after nearly 10 years in Financial Services, and has held senior consultant as well as officer roles in top tier Financial Services Firms. His experience includes strategic analysis and management in areas such as anti-money laundering compliance IT, investment banking IT, and software quality, to name a few.

John McClelland

Alabama, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia

Partner Evangelist

http://blogs.msdn.com/johnm

John McClelland is a Partner Evangelist with Microsoft Corporation. He engages with Microsoft's Custom Development and Web Specialist partner community across the entire East Region to drive awareness, readiness and adoption of developer related technologies. John has 20 years of experience in the software industry as a developer, architect, consultant and evangelist. He began his career as a Mining and Computer Engineer focused on Mining Automation and Robotics research with the Federal Government before moving to the private sector as a Senior Systems Analyst with Westinghouse Corporation. He joined Microsoft in 1997 and spent the next 5 years within their consulting ranks architecting and implementing distributed applications for several of Microsoft's largest customers in the Greater Pennsylvania area. In 2002 he joined Microsoft's Developer and Platform Evangelism team to focus all of his time on the architect and developer community to explore, understand, and implement solutions built on the .NET platform. In addition to his extensive industry experience, John holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and a BS in Mining Engineering from The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania.

Sean Seibel

New York

User Experience Evangelist

A self-proclaimed Swiss Army knife, Sean Seibel is a User Experience Strategy and Design professional covering the East Coast with over 13 years of interactive strategy, design, and technology experience. Accomplished entrepreneur, leader, strategist, information architect, and designer with numerous innovative solutions conceived, proposed, and delivered to Fortune Global 500 companies such as Microsoft, PepsiCo, Western Union, Morgan Stanley, and BMW. Having been President and CEO for 7 years of a Web agency, Halo Technologies, Sean is driven by the pursuit of aligning user needs with business objectives through the use of good design and appropriate technology. More recently, Sean was the director of User Experience and Interactive Strategy for Young and Rubicam Brands where he lead the Microsoft account on all web related marketing campaign activities such as email, landing pages, Web sites, and marketing technology infrastructure. Sean enjoys listening, producing, and DJing electronic music. He also pursues exciting vacation travel and SCUBA diving exotic locales around the world.

Kevin Boyle

Southern California, Hawaii

Platform Strategy Advisor

http://blog.boilerproductions.com

Kevin Boyle started at Microsoft in 1991. He was part of the team that created Visual C++ 1.0 and went on to lead the 150 person product team through the release of version 5.0.

In 1996, Kevin helped found a team to create Internet Explorer for UNIX. Before leaving corporate, Kevin headed up a special UNIX compatibility effort which morphed into the new Windows Power Shell shipped with Exchange 12.

Kevin started in his current role in Southern California in 2003. He advises both the fastest growing and largest companies in the Los Angeles area on how to get the most business value from Microsoft's platform. These customers include American Honda Motor, Newegg, and MySpace. In 2006 he was named Microsoft's "Architect Evangelist of The Year".

Kevin holds a B.S. in Computer and Electrical Engineering from Purdue University. He recently completed a Management Development program at UCLA's Anderson School of Business.

Jason Mauer

Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Northern California

Developer Evangelist

http://www.jasonmauer.com

Jason Mauer is a Senior Developer Evangelist based out of Portland, Oregon, covering the Pacific Northwest and Northern California. He presents frequently at developer events and user groups about topics related to software development. Most of his six years at Microsoft have been as a consultant with Microsoft Services, specializing in application development with .NET, SharePoint, and XML technologies. Prior to Microsoft, Jason was slinging code for a wide variety of platforms, including Mac OS 7, BeOS, and the Newton.

When he isn't busy violating the laws of thermodynamics in his XNA experiments, Jason is an avid musician and plays the guitar and trumpet. His band Floorboard is the loudest and most feared hard rock group in all of southern Vancouver, WA. You can find Jason online at www.jasonmauer.com and on Xbox Live as Supachunk.

Mithun Dhar

Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho

Developer Evangelist

http://blogs.msdn.com/MithunD

An avid reader and Starbucks junkie, you will inevitably find Mithun riding a caffeine high with a book in his hand. Before joining the MSDN Events roster, he served as a product manager with the Microsoft Speech Server team, from the product's incubation to the final release of Microsoft Speech Server 2007. Mithun also conducted a road show evangelizing and recruiting partners and ISVs to expand the Speech Server partner ecosystem and conducted trainings across the country. He's passionate about the unified communications sector and loves applying his technical background and business savvy to make Microsoft a top player in the field. He's spoken at numerous conferences, including SpeechTek, Microsoft Global Briefing, ICCM, Tech Ready, TechEd, and the Microsoft Mobile and Embedded Devices Conference. Before joining Microsoft, Mithun worked at Oracle on the 9iAS product and at Aditi/Talisma Corporation on a CRM product for mid-market users. He enjoys meeting customers with different backgrounds and profiles, and helping them build products that will simplify people's lives. In his downtime, Mithun takes road trips and goes flying – after a round of double espressos, of course.

Sam Chenaur

Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho

Architect Evangelist

http://blog.samchenaur.com/

Sam Chenaur is an Architect Evangelist for Microsoft in the Pacific Northwest based out of Bellevue, WA. Sam collaborates with customer and partner software architects in the local community, and he is evangelizes the latest technologies from Microsoft.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Sam held positions with NetUpdate as a Director of Development and Architecture, Avion Systems as Director of Technology, and Ariba as a J2EE Architect and Sales Engineer. Prior to Ariba, Sam performed services as a Sr. Consultant, Project Manager, and Technical Architect for Computer Associates in Atlanta, GA. Sam has supported Fortune 500 clients for the likes of Nike, Safeco, Nordstrom, American Express, JP Morgan Chase, Sprint, Bellsouth, Georgia-Pacific, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Heery International.

Sam obtained his Bachelors of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Washington in Seattle, where he was also multi-year letterman in the varsity Track & Field competing as a Decathlete and Triple-Jumper.

Joe Shirey

Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico

Architect Evangelist

http://www.joeshirey.com

Joe Shirey is a Senior Architect Evangelist with Microsoft focused on working with Microsoft's customers, partners, and community in the Denver and Utah markets. Prior to joining Microsoft, Joe served as Vice President and General Manager at Interlink Group, a regional systems integrator based in Denver. He also has been a Microsoft Regional Director, a member of the Microsoft Architect Advisory Board, and sat on the .NET Partner Advisory Council. Joe attained his Microsoft Certified Architect in Solutions in 2005.

Dan Willis

Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico

Platform Strategy Advisor

http://danlistens.com

Dan Willis has had a long and varied career in the IT industry. He spent his formative years at 3M's corporate headquarters in St. Paul, Minnesota. There he "cut his teeth" on early distributed systems, languages, and project management techniques. He was also in on the first wave of personal computing and networked systems.

Dan left 3M to run his own consulting business and worked with a variety of corporate and government clients. He also found time to be an advisory board member for PC Week/eWeek magazine and a speaker at Tech-Ed and other major industry conferences. He was the technical editor for two best selling technical books and has taught hundreds of students as a Microsoft Certified Trainer.

Most recently, Dan has worked with many organizations on exploiting technology for business advantage. He worked as a principal consultant on numerous collaboration, CRM, knowledge management, and core line-of-business system implementations. In his most recent role prior to joining Microsoft, he was Practice Principal for the HP .NET Technology Leadership Team.

His role in the Microsoft DPE organization is to leverage the breadth of technologies and resources at Microsoft to enable organizations to excel in applying technology to business strategy.

John Stame

Northern California

Platform Strategy Advisor

http://jcstame.wordpress.com/

As a Platform Strategy Advisor at Microsoft, John's overall mission is to secure platform adoption. His key focus is to demonstrate the business value of new innovative Microsoft platform technologies by driving early adoption and mainstream deployment. He engages and collaborates with senior business and technical decision makers, customers and partners on leveraging the breadth of technology and resources at Microsoft to enable them to excel their application of technology to business strategy.

Prior to Microsoft, John's professional experience includes 20 years of IT Management, Solutions Consulting and Selling experience. He has proven success in solutions strategy, delivery, management, building teams, and providing thought and team leadership.  He has experience in eBusiness solutions includes SaaS, Web 2.0, eProcurement, Portals, Document and Web Content Management. Previous roles include Director, Managed Application Services at Commerce One, Sr. Manager, Knowledge Management Applications at Documentum, and Managing Consultant at SHL Systemhouse.

Scott Kerfoot

Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Northern California, Southern California, Hawaii, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico

Director of Strategy - West Region

http://blogs.msdn.com/socalarchitect/

A veteran of Software and Information Technology since 1983, Scott Kerfoot has worked at Microsoft Corporation since November 2000. Since July of 2006 Scott has been the West Region Director of Strategy in Microsoft Developer and Platform Evangelism. He manages the team of Architect Evangelists, User Experience Evangelists and Platform Strategy Advisors that engage with strategic customers building leading edge solutions using emerging Microsoft technology across the Western US. Scott and his team enable these businesses to architect and build solutions based on the Microsoft Platform that reduce costs, increase profits and offer high quality solutions that are more Secure, with Richer End-User Experiences, Improved Reliability, Increased Performance, Greater Scalability and seamless Integration with Existing Systems. Prior to his role as Director of Strategy, he worked as a Principal Architect Evangelist, communicating the value, technologies and architecture of the Microsoft Platform to key customers in Southern California. For the 17 years prior to joining Microsoft, Scott owned and operated a successful Software and Consulting business based in Southern California.

Bruno Terkaly

California

http://www.brunoterkaly.com/

Like James Bond on secret assignment, Bruno spent his pre-MSDN Events days as a Microsoft premier field engineer – traveling around the clock to solve the most hair-raising client problems and meltdowns. From Asia to Latin America to Europe and Canada, Bruno has taught in nuclear power plants, assisted with life-or-death medical applications, and debugged multi-million-dollar financial trading software. Bruno has a finance and accounting degree from UC Berkeley and worked for several years as a money manager. Developing financial models to construct low-risk, high-return investment portfolios sparked his interest in computing, and the rest is self-taught history. Bruno brings two decades of worldwide training experience to his MSDN presentations, instructing students on C#, .NET, C++, SharePoint, J++, HTML, Web Parts and much more. He’s a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer with a wide array of platforms in his repertoire, a seasoned author and Microsoft channel partner trainer, and a confirmed thrill seeker. Bruno’s also a stand-up comedy connoisseur who works hard to make his audiences laugh – just like his role model, Anders Hejlsberg.

Will Tschumy

Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Northern California, Southern California, Hawaii, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico

User Experience Evangelist

http://ux-strategy.com

Will is Microsoft's User Experience Evangelist for the Western region of the United States.

Will has been leading experience design teams to successful launches for the last 10 years. In each of his roles, he's focused on fostering innovation through finding the intersection of the needs of experience ("What is desirable to users?"), business ("What is viable in the marketplace?"), and technology ("What is possible?").

He's worked in a variety of different consulting environments from his own, to large management consulting organizations. As a Director of Experience Strategy, Will led the experience design portion of some of Scient's largest projects. Will also helped in redesigning Scient's delivery processes.

Will created and led the User Experience group at GTECH. While there, he led the redesign of GTECH's industry leading lottery services applications. Today, these applications are used to run lotteries across the United States and Europe. Will was a Lead Information Architect at group at Walmart.com, focusing on Digital Music, Photos and Videos. While at Walmart, Will led the induction of AJAX into the site, yielding a significant improvement in conversion and average order size.

Most recently, Will was the Director of Experience at Flock. The 0.7 and 0.9, and upcoming 1.0 release is largely based on Will's work.

Will has a BA in the History of Art from Vassar College. He enjoys art, music, photography, cooking and travel.

Clint Edmonson

Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota

Architect Evangelist

http://www.notsotrivial.net

Architects! Architects! Architects! It's all about the architects! Although educated as a Mechanical Engineer, Clint has spent his entire 15 year career in software development preparing for his role as an Architect Evangelist. His experiences span many industries including utilities, education, call centers, construction, and beer brewing. When not delivering in depth discourses on software layering, he enjoys studying game design and 3D game engine architecture.

Jeff Blankenburg

Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Michigan

Developer Evangelist

http://www.jeffblankenburg.com/

Jeff's Profile

Jeff Blankenburg is a Developer Evangelist for the Microsoft Corporation. Over the past 10 years, Jeff has successfully implemented his technology expertise in numerous industries including retail, education, and healthcare. Jeff has exceptional proficiency in user-interface design, Web Standards, and Web application development. He is a contributor to the O'Reilly title, Windows Developer Power Tools, on the subject of code validation services. Jeff is also an organizer of the CodeMash conference. Jeff holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio.

Jennifer Marsman

Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Michigan

Developer Evangelist

http://blogs.msdn.com/jennifer/

Jennifer Marsman is a Developer Evangelist in Microsoft's Developer and Platform Evangelism group, where she educates developers on Microsoft's new technologies. Prior to becoming a Developer Evangelist, Jennifer was a software developer in Microsoft's Natural Interactive Services division. In this role, she filed two patents for her work in search and data mining algorithms. Jennifer has also held positions with Ford Motor Company, National Instruments, and Soar Technology.

Jennifer earned a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Engineering and Master's Degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Her graduate work specialized in artificial intelligence and computational theory.

Bill Steele

Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana

Developer Evangelist

http://blogs.msdn.com/wsteele/

Bill loves creating the applications that often pop right into his head. Unfortunately, it takes his fingers a little longer to type them in. Bill is MCSD certified and has logged more than 20 years as a software developer. Previously, Bill worked for a regional consulting firm where he developed applications that managed internal business operations in areas including IT service management, transportation logistics, and financial management. Bill was responsible for building integration applications between various ISV's products and the client's IT infrastructure. He also spent more than seven years at StrideRite Corporation, where he honed his development skills in Visual Basic, C++ and a range of IT roles. Bill has been collaborating with Microsoft since 1992, and continues to prize his Visual Basic 1.0 Beta Thunder Clock. He's given over 300 presentations to date, and is currently developing software for a flight computer in NASA’s Small Aircraft Transportation System. One additional item, Bill is also a very active pilot. Want a good story? Ask Bill about his Hurricane Katrina efforts sometime. What's the toughest part of managing a 50-member team? "Those developer types always think they know it all," Bill says with a wink.

Ron Cundiff

Wisconsin, Illinois, Tennessee

Developer Evangelist

http://blogs.msdn.com/ron_cundiff

Ron drinks Red Bull like Homer Simpson swigs beer, so get set for a well-caffeinated presentation. Ron loves challenges, tight deadlines and boosting productivity, but dislikes status meetings, slow drivers and waiting for downloads. Could there be a pattern here? Ron began his programming career at the tender age of 10, when he decided his Commodore 64 games weren't quite cutting it. He then downloaded technical info from BBS and wrote his own games using sprite graphics. Before joining Microsoft in 2002, Ron designed and implemented a global online commodities exchange system for an ISV. He has also held management and technical leadership positions with a Microsoft partner. His certifications include MCSD, MCSE, MCDBA, MCP+I+SB - and he's working on extending the list. Ron has led 56 MSDN events to date and participated in over 20 user group meetings throughout Kansas, Missouri and Tennessee. Ron lives in Memphis with his wife, Lisa, and his children, Kayla and Ryan. No word if their Dad has passed on his passion for the Kansas City Chiefs.

Josh Holmes

Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota

RIA Architect Evangelist

http://www.joshholmes.com/

Josh Holmes is a RIA Architect Evangelist with Microsoft focused on building and educating the dev partners with a Rich Internet Application offering in the Central Region.

Prior to joining Microsoft in October 2006, Josh was a consultant with SRT Solutions working with a variety of clients ranging from large Fortune 500 firms to smaller-sized companies. In most situations, Josh was called in as the technical leader on a project to lead the clients team to success. Josh is a frequent speaker and lead panelist at national and international software development conferences, including VSLive, Software Development Expo (East and West), Basta, and the Rich Web Experience, focusing on emerging technologies, software design and development with an emphasis on mobility and RIA (Rich Internet Applications).

Josh has written and delivered many training classes over time for both public audiences as well as courses tightly tailored for the client's needs. The topics of these classes ranged from XML to ASP.NET to the Compact Framework. Josh speaks from his experience and conviction based on many production successes that his clients have experienced.

Community focused, Josh has founded and/or run many technology organizations from the Great Lakes Area .NET Users Group to the Ann Arbor Computer Society and was on the forming committee for CodeMash. You can contact Josh through his blog at http://www.joshholmes.com.

Larry Clarkin

Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana

Architect Evangelist

http://larryclarkin.com

Larry Clarkin is an Architect Evangelist for Microsoft's Developer and Platform Evangelism group, covering the states of Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. He joined Microsoft in early 2007, bringing with him 15+ years of experience in both application development and architecture. He has worked in a variety of industries, including telecommunications, manufacturing, distribution, insurance, and financial services.

Larry has a passion for technology and how it can be applied to solve business and social issues. Larry is very community-focused and is a frequent participant and presenter at Microsoft and non-Microsoft user groups.

In his spare time Larry enjoys reading, baseball, technology, and spending time with his wife Jodie and their 3 sons. You can follow Larry's adventures at his blog, http://larryclarkin.com or join him on XBOX Live, Gamertag: Bottom9th.

J Sawyer

Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas

Developer Evangelist

http://blog.microsoft-j.net

J Sawyer was born and raised in Baltimore, MD, where he got hooked on cheesesteak subs, a delicacy that has proven difficult to find in Texas. Working his way through college as an English Lit major with a Philosophy minor, J discovered a love and passion for computing and developing ... and that it was also a good way to make extra cash. He earned his MCP and MCSD in 1996 and relocated to Houston in 1997, joining DRT Systems as a consultant. Since he's been in Houston, J has worked on many projects, including eCommerce Web applications, trading application, exploration and production application for energy and partner extranets and was also named MSDN Regional Director for Houston. Joining Microsoft in 2000 as a consultant, he moved to Evangelism in 2002 where he has been active in bringing the joy that is .NET to developers across the South Central District as a Developer Evangelist.

When not spreading the word about .NET, J can often be found riding his Ninja 500 around Houston. A car has yet to beat him off the line ... even the occasional Camaro. He is, however, still thirsting to challenge a Porsche.

Zain Naboulsi

Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas

Developer Evangelist

http://blogs.msdn.com/zainnab

Technology is useless if it doesn't serve a clear purpose. That's Zain's philosophy. In fact, showing people how technology can make their lives better delivers his greatest on-the-job thrills. Zain has over 12 years of experience in software development and has taught a wide range of advanced technologies to thousands of students in more than 5,000 presentations He's been a Microsoft Certified Trainer since 1995 and holds all major Microsoft certifications, plus credentials from Cisco, Checkpoint and CompTIA. Zain launched his development career with Visual Basic 3.0 and honed his implementation skills with Windows NT 3.51 and OS/2. Lately, he's been focused on the OO programming languages and developing his extensive knowledge of .NET technologies. When he's not behind the podium, Zain is polishing his gaming chops and hoping that someone will hire him as a professional video game player. You can also find him sneaking off to eat Dairy Queen Blizzards whenever he's on the road. Just don't tell his wife.

Phil Wheat

Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas

Architect Evangelist

http://blog.austinwheats.net

Philip Wheat started out in development back when you learned from Compute Magazine (by typing in the code) and had to know something about soldering to expand your memory with most computers. When he entered college he had his eyes set on Aerospace Engineering, but between the call of the code, and the job market at the time, he quickly realized that there was pay in knowing about his passion, and he completed his studies in Computer Science.

After his graduation, he worked in the field for a number of years, and seeing the state of the industry decided to go back into the Master's Program in Computer Science – which was one of his better ideas as it brought him to the attention of Texas Instruments, which called him to their Dallas campuses and enabled him to work with the early stages some of the groundbreaking technologies that are in use today, such as ASIC design, DLP manufacturing, DSP development, and floor and wafer fabrication systems. But as incredible as the opportunities there were, the Internet Gold rush was on and he was convinced after a time to head to Austin, TX to work with a small consulting firm on the cutting edge of development and solutions delivery.

He spent several years at Catapult Systems as their most demanded consultant, being called in to Microsoft to do briefings on Collaborations, Portals, and other Web information management technologies (in addition to his project delivery role) before moving to a regional role with Avanade, Inc. There he led regional Collaboration Solutions efforts and was a primary resource globally for SharePoint technologies. During this time he ran dual projects in the Office 2007 TAP program that led to successful deployments of custom solutions based upon SharePoint 2007 even before official release of that platform. He currently works with the Microsoft Developer and Platform Evangelism group as the Community Architect Evangelist for Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana, engaging with Architects on the needs and requirements of their role and the encouragement of more developers to step up into the Architecture space.

Some of his personal projects include Embedded Systems, Knowledge Management, Augmented Reality, and Autonomous Systems. You'll find him supporting groups of both geek social, and developer focus, and connecting with as many interesting people as he can. If you see him around, come up and introduce yourself, and let him know what you're doing. He's always interested in hearing what people are doing, and learning from the innovative people he knows, passionate developers, designers, and architects! If you want to keep up with where he is and what he's doing, you can find out some of his current activities at his blog (http://blog.austinwheats.net).

Denny Boynton

Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota

Architect Evangelist

http://blog.dennyboynton.com

It all started with a brand-spanking-new Commodore 64 at the age of 13. The big blue screen, the enormous blinking cursor and this little programming language called BASIC. From that point on, Denny was hooked. Passion. That's the first thing you'll see when talking to Denny. This passion for technology and how it can change the world comes from his 12+ years of experience in the software industry (not including the Commodore 64 work), where he's worked as network administrator, developer, enterprise architect and held various roles in IT management. As an Architect Evangelist for Microsoft, Denny uses this passion and experience to help people do great things with Microsoft technology. Outside of Microsoft, you'll find Denny playing drums in the local St. Louis band Meteor Pilots, reading, writing, and spending time with his wife, Maria, and their three daughters Zoe, Josephine, and Gwynneth.

Jon Box

Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio

Architect Evangelist

http://blogs.msdn.com/jonbox/

Jon Box joined Microsoft as an Architect Evangelist with 20+ years in software development in 2006. He has worked in a variety of environments and languages that include COBOL, Assembler, Clipper, C, C++ (Borland, ATL, MFC, Win32, COM/DCOM), VB5/VB6, and .NET. Before joining Microsoft, Jon was the Microsoft Regional Director for Memphis and a Microsoft MVP (Solution Architect). He also spent the previous six years employed at Microsoft partners doing training, course development, writing, presenting, consulting, and management. Jon co-founded the Memphis .NET Users Group, presented at past DevDays and TechEd, gave MSDN webcasts, and spoke at other Microsoft and INETA sponsored events. In addition to several whitepapers on MSDN on .NET and mobility, Jon co-authored Building Solutions with the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework back in 2004. He also served as the Mobility Editor for the ".NET Developers Journal". Now, Jon lives to help architects leverage the Microsoft platform to build game-changing system innovation. Jon has a more detailed bio on his MSDN blog, Out Of The Box.

Chris Bernard

Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota

User Experience Evangelist

http://www.designthinkingdigest.com

Chris Bernard is a passionate design professional experienced in linking the value of design to business and measurable objectives. Chris' mission as a design professional is to apply and facilitate the principles of contextual research, cultural, human, physical, and social factors to the products, services, and systems that he develops in cross-functional and cross-disciplinary teams.

Chris Bernard is currently a User Experience Evangelist for Microsoft. Chris works with the software design and development community and business to communicate and provide insight on the importance of user experience in software design and its connection to the myriad of digital and physical consumer and business touch points.

Before joining Microsoft Chris was a creative director and competency leader in one of IBM's centers for e-business Innovation. Previously, Chris has served as a designer, design director, and strategist for companies such as Accenture, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Gatorade, and the NCAA and began his design career as a motion graphic artist designing and animating rich media for broadcast and interactive media-based applications.

Chris has also worked with Fortune 100 customers in the automotive, consumer electronics, and manufacturing industry bringing over 14 years of expertise in design, consulting, strategy, business frameworks, design research, analysis, synthesis, planning, and implementation.

Chris attended the University of Iowa where he received a B.A. in film production, film theory, and communications science. He received an M.S. in Marketing Communications from the Stuart Graduate School of Business and a M.D.M (Master of Design Methods) from the Institute of Design. Both of these schools are affiliated with the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Chris is currently an adjunct lecturer at the Institute of Design and has published articles on design thinking and practice in International Design Magazine. Chris regularly creates customer specific white papers, analysis, and reports on the value of design and innovation to the enterprise, user observation methods, and on how technology can enable growth and value.

Brian Gorbett

Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois

Developer Evangelist

http://briangorbett.com/blog

Brian Gorbett is a Developer Evangelist in Microsoft's Developer & Platform Evangelism (DPE) Division, responsible for engaging communities around developer tools and platform technologies. An active Web developer and technologist, Gorbett has contributed to national publications on Microsoft technologies and still codes on a daily basis.

Before joining Microsoft, Gorbett managed a team of developers and designers responsible for delivering next generation rich Internet applications. He is a Certified ScrumMaster and regularly speaks on agile development and foundation principles in development.

With a design and development background, Gorbett has more recently been working with Silverlight and the Expression tools, demonstrating the flexible workflow with designers and developers. He resides in Chicago, IL, but can be found on Twitter, LinkedIn, Second Life, BrianGorbett.com, or just about any other social network.

Brian H. Prince

Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee

Architect Evangelist

http://brianhprince.blogspot.com

Brian H. Prince is an Architect Evangelist with Microsoft focused on building and educating the architect community in his district. Prior to joining Microsoft in March 2008, he was a Senior Director, Technology Strategy for a major Midwest partner.

He has achieved over 13 years Information Technology management and consulting experience including e-commerce, extranets, and business technology. Brian has successfully implemented his technology expertise in numerous industries including real estate, financial services, healthcare, retail, and state government institutions.

Brian has exceptional proficiency in the Microsoft .NET Framework, Service Oriented Architecture, building ESBs, and both smart client and Web-based applications.

In addition, he has maintained numerous executive positions where he applies management capabilities in the field of developing marketing and strategy efforts to improve and enhance Web-based technologies.

He is a co-founder of the non-profit organization CodeMash. He speaks at various regional and national technology events including Tech-Ed.

Brian holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Computer Science and Physics from Capital University, Columbus, Ohio. He is also an avid gamer.

Charles Sterling

Washington

Community Lead

http://blogs.msdn.com/charles_sterling

Charles Sterling (also known as "Chuck") has over 15 years of Developer tools experience at Microsoft. He came to Microsoft from being a marine biologist working for the United States National Marine Fisheries doing marine mammal research on the Bering Sea. An MCSE and MCSD, he started out at Microsoft in developer support focusing on FOXPRO, Visual Basic and the Platform SDK. He then worked as an engineer for the database teams on ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), Open Database Connectivity (ODBC), and Microsoft SQL Server. From there, Charles took a position with the Solutions Integration Escalation Team, which focused on assisting Microsoft customers with the integration of disparate software technologies into viable enterprise solutions. On this team, Charles focused on Microsoft Message Queue (MSMQ), doing numerous talks at conferences, writing papers, and teaching classes on the topic. Charles was the product manager for the .NET Framework in Redmond before moving to Australia for the last seven years. Chuck is currently back in Redmond working as a Program Manager in the Visual Studio Team System Team.

Brian Johnson

Florida

Developer Evangelist

http://brianjo.spaces.live.com

Brian's Profile

Brian Johnson is a developer evangelist and has been at Microsoft for 9 years. During his Microsoft career, he has been a programming editor for Microsoft Press, a content strategist for MSDN, and a product manager for Office for Mac. Before coming to Microsoft, Brian was technical editor of Microsoft Office and VBA Developer Magazine and was a columnist for Visual J++ Informant Magazine. He has authored a number of books including Zune for Dummies, Xbox 360 for Dummies, Inside Visual Studio, and Microsoft Image Composer for Dummies.

Joel Reyes

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Northern California, Southern California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming

Developer Evangelist

Industry Focus: US Public Sector

http://blogs.msdn.com/bloggercoaster/

Back in the days as a GW-Basic-Kid (GBK), it never crossed my mind the possibility of working for the very company that inspired me to pursue a career in systems engineering and computer science… And here I am!

RIT, Xerox and now Microsoft have had the most profound impact in my professional life which has always been Software. From developer, project manager, people manager, then consulting and now evangelism, I have enjoyed seeing the impact of software in the life of corporations as well as individuals. Today I have the privilege of working in helping make our Local Governments more efficient and more connected with the people. Privately, I enjoy family life, computers and direct involvement in my community to make a difference of those less fortunate. So the journey goes on…

Marc Schweigert

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Northern California, Southern California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming

Developer Evangelist

Industry Focus: US Public Sector (DoD, Federal, State, and Local Government)

http://devkeydet.com

The trick is to do something you like, then it's not work. Nope, I never had any aspirations of being a professional athlete. Ok, that's not true. I did want to play tennis for a living. I also wanted to be a rock star, but who didn't? I even had the long hair and jean jacket with patches from Metallica, AC/DC, etc. and all. That's a stark contrast from my genetically inspired shaved head! Even though I'm the youngest pup on my team (they never let me forget it), I can't remember a day when computers weren't a part of my life. Since my dad was a Computer Science major in the 70s, I can't remember a day when "computer" wasn't in my mind. I had a computer in the house before most people knew what a PC was. My first computer was an Osborne running CP/M. I've had an interesting journey from then to now. Somehow, I landed here at Microsoft as an Evangelist focusing on all things dev (primarily Visual Studio, .NET Framework, and Silverlight). It's like being a kid again. I get a new toy, dismantle it, and figure it out. The difference is that I now paid to go around and talk to people about how cool the proverbial toy is.

Robert Shelton, Jr.

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Northern California, Southern California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming

Developer Evangelist

Industry Focus: US Public Sector

http://www.sheltonblog.com

My philosophy is to understand, and most importantly, demonstrate how Microsoft technology can be used to solve "real world" scenarios. From a technology perspective, I focus on general .NET programming (technologies and strategies), SharePoint Development, SOA and Workflow development. I like to focus primarily on the middle-tier technology and approaches. My customer focus is primarily around our largest partners and the work that they are doing with our largest end-customers. I am a typical computer "geek", I mean "Professional", so I spend much of my free time reading about software development, and building and playing computer games (I'm a PC Gamer).