Speakers

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We’re excited to announce a fantastic lineup of speakers delivering keynotes and sessions for this year’s Symposium.

Keynote Speakers

Yousef Khalidi

Yousef Khalidi is a Distinguished Engineer in the Windows Azure team. Windows Azure is a platform for developing, deploying, managing, and hosting cloud-based Web services. Khalidi is responsible for several aspects of the platform, centered on the goal of building a low-cost, automated, large-scale computing system, using commodity hardware, with efficiently managed shared resources. Before Windows Azure, Khalidi led an advanced development team in Windows that tackled a number of related operating system areas, including application model, resource management, and isolation. He also served as a member of the Windows Core Architecture group.

Robert C. Martin

Robert C. Martin has been a software professional since 1970. In the last 35 years, he has worked in various capacities on literally hundreds of software projects. He has authored "landmark" books on Agile Programming, Extreme Programming, UML, Object-Oriented Programming, and C++ Programming. He has published dozens of articles in various trade journals. Today, He is one of the software industry's leading authorities on Agile software development and is a regular speaker at international conferences and trade shows. He is a former editor of the C++ Report and currently writes a monthly Craftsman column for Software Development magazine.

Mr. Martin is the founder, CEO, and president of Object Mentor Incorporated. Object Mentor is a sister company to Object Mentor International. Like OMI, Object Mentor is comprised of highly experienced software professionals who provide process improvement consulting, object-oriented software design consulting , training, and development services to major corporations around the world.

Charlie Kindel

Charlie Kindel joined Microsoft in 1990 and has helped ship numerous technologies and products to developer, IT professional, and consumer customers. In the 1990s and early 2000s he co-founded Microsoft Premier Support, drove Microsoft's platform strategy, designed & shipped Microsoft’s distributed object technology, ran engineering teams responsible for home networking, Windows Media Center, and Windows Media Center Extenders. From 2002 to 2004 Charlie was the Executive Technical Assistant to Sr. Vice President Bob Muglia driving technical and business alignment for Microsoft’s enterprise server products. Charlie was the driving force behind Windows Home Server. Most recently Charlie has been responsible for defining and evangelizing the Windows Phone Developer Experience. Charlie loves anything that moves electrons or makes noise, all-mountain skiing, playing and coaching soccer, restoring cars, and a myriad of other hobbies. He has two amazing teenage children, a wonderful wife, and lives in suburbia.

Jason Zander

Jason Zander is the corporate vice president of the Visual Studio Team in the Developer Division at Microsoft. Zander's responsibilities include the Visual Studio family of products, which covers a range of technologies: programming languages; JavaScript runtime and tools; integrated development environment and ecosystem; Microsoft Office, SharePoint and cloud tooling integration; source control and work item tracking; and advanced architecture, developer, and testing tools.

As one of the original developers of the Common Language Runtime (CLR), Zander's primary technical areas of contribution include file formats, metadata, compilers, debugging and profiling, and integration of the system into key platforms such as operating systems and databases. Before joining the Visual Studio Team, Zander was the general manager for the .NET Framework Team. He has worked on numerous products at Microsoft, including the first several releases of the CLR and .NET Framework, Silverlight, SourceSafe, and ODBC. Before joining Microsoft in 1992, Zander worked at IBM Corp. on distributed SQL and SQL/400 at the Rochester lab.Zander holds a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from Minnesota State University. In his spare time, he enjoys playing with his three children and making furniture in his shop.

Session Speakers

Ward Bell

Ward is a Microsoft Silverlight MVP and the V.P. of Technology at IdeaBlade (www.ideablade.com), makers of "DevForce 2010", the .NET RIA data programmability product he claims is better, faster, easier than you-know-what. Ward obsesses on Silverlight, persistence, design patterns, development practices, and obsession.

Aaron Bjork

Aaron Bjork is a Senior Program Manager for Team Foundation Server (TFS) where he currently focuses on experiences for Agile teams. In TFS 2010, Aaron drove the Agile, CMMI, and Scrum process templates as well as features around reporting and dashboards. Prior to joining TFS as a Program Manager in 2008, Aaron worked as a developer and development lead in Visual Studio. You can follow Aaron on his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/aaronbjork.

Glenn Block

Glenn is a PM on the WCF team working on Microsoft's future HTTP and REST stack. Prior to WCF he was a PM on the new Managed Extensibility Framework in .NET 4.0. Glenn has a breadth of experience both inside and outside Microsoft developing software solutions for ISVs and the enterprise. He has also been very active in involving folks from the community in the development of software at Microsoft. This has included shipping several products under open source licenses, as well as assisting other teams looking to do so. Glenn is also a frequent speaker at local and international events and user groups. When he's not working and playing with technology, he spends his with his wife and daughter either at their home in Seattle or at one of the local coffee shops. Glenn's blog can be found at http://blogs.msdn.com/gblock or you can follow him on twitter at you own risk at twitter.com/gblock

Don Box

Don is a Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft. He is currently the director of development for OData, EDM, Entity Framework, XML, Codename "M", and Visual Studio support for SQL Server. Since joining Microsoft, Don has contributed to WCF, WF, MEF, XAML, and a number of web standards. Prior to joining Microsoft, Don helped the world come to terms with the Component Object Model (COM).

Scott Densmore

Scott is a Developer Lead in the patterns & practices group at Microsoft. He led the development team that created that group’s recently released guides covering the Windows Azure. Before that he worked in the Enterprise Library project and the team that built Codeplex. You can find his blog here: http://scottdensmore.typepad.com

Damian Edwards

Damian Edwards is a Program Manager at Microsoft on the Visual Studio Web Tooling team and a former Microsoft MVP in ASP.NET. An "open web" advocate, he specializes in front end web development, has contributed to the CSS Friendly Adapters and is the creator of the Web Forms MVP, Visual Studio 2008 XHTML 1.1 Templates and AccessKeyHighlighter AJAX Control & jQuery plug-in projects. He is a regular speaker at Australian events such as Tech.Ed, Code Camp Oz, and ReMIX on all things web, including ASP.NET, web standards and jQuery. You can find him venting on twitter.com/damianedwards.

Michael G. Lehman

Michael joined Microsoft a senior consultant in 2004, as part of the Microsoft-Siebel partnership initiative. In early 2005, he transferred to the Developer & Platform Evangelism group, where he took charge of the Microsoft Micro-ISV evangelism efforts, building software factory-related technologies known as Project Glidepath, and most recently driving the Feature Builder Power Tool for Visual Studio 2010. Prior to joining Microsoft, Michael was an independent consultant, primarily working for companies located in Silicon Valley, California. Michael holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science with a minor in electrical engineering from Iowa State University. Born and raised in Davenport, Iowa, Michael’s keen interest in technology led him to computers starting in his sophomore year in high school, to design his own home recording studio and produce his own albums, and to become one of the early pioneers in podcasting. Michael blogs at http://blogs.msdn.com/mglehman and was a co-author of Podcasting Bible (John Wiley & Sons Publishers, 2007).

Rockford Lhotka

Rockford Lhotka is the creator of the popular CSLA .NET development framework, and is the author of numerous books, including Expert 2008 Business Objects. He is a Microsoft Regional Director and MVP, and a regular presenter at major conferences around the world. Rockford is the Principal Technology Evangelist for Magenic (www.magenic.com), a company that specializes in planning, designing, building and maintaining your enterprise’s most mission critical systems. For more information go to www.lhotka.net.

Grigori Melnik

Grigori Melnik is a Senior Program Manager in the patterns & practices group at Microsoft. His primary focus today is on driving Microsoft Enterprise Library and Acceptance Testing Guidance projects. Prior to that, Grigori was a researcher, software engineer, and educator long enough to remember the joy of programming in Fortran. His fields of experience span from e-business engineering projects for large corporations and government agencies to applied research. His areas of expertise include agile methods, empirical software engineering, and software testing. Grigori is a regular contributor to software conferences around the world. He is a member of the IEEE Software Advisory board. Grigori holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Calgary, Canada.

Ade Miller

Ade Miller is currently the Development Manager for Microsoft’s patterns & practices group (p&p) where he manages several agile teams. His primary interests are parallel computing and in improving the way people develop software. He is current writing a book on parallel programming, Parallel Programming with Microsoft .NET: Design Patterns for Decomposition and Coordination on Multicore Architectures. Ade also writes and speaks about parallel programming and his experiences with agile software development at Microsoft. Ade received his BSc and PhD in Physics from the University of Southampton, UK

Ted Neward

Ted Neward is the Principal of Neward & Associates, and has spent the past fifteen years building enterprise software systems for a variety of companies ranging from Fortune 500’s to small startups.

Eugenio Pace

Eugenio is a Senior Program Manager in the patterns & practices group at Microsoft. His current focus in the team is application development for the cloud and, identity federation and access control. Before that he worked in the Platform Architecture Team at Microsoft, focusing solely on Software as a Service (SaaS). You can find his blog here: http://blogs.msdn.com/eugeniop

Daniel Piessens

Daniel Piessens is a application architect technical lead for Zywave Inc. and a patterns & practices Champion. Having used patterns & practices on several projects, he found the tools to be a powerful foundation for any .NET application. Daniel served on the advisory board for several releases of Unity and Microsoft Enterprise Library. Daniel holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from Marquette University.

David Platt

David S. Platt teaches Programming .NET at Harvard University Extension School and at companies all over the world. He is the author of eleven programming books. His Introducing Microsoft .NET from Microsoft Press introduced thousands of programmers to that environment. Even today, 5 years after its most recent release, it is outselling Tom Clancy’s Every Man a Tiger on Amazon.com, which tells you what kind of geeks buy their books there. His magnum opus, Why Software Sucks (Addison-Wesley, 2006, www.whysoftwaresucks.com), points out ways in which software MUST improve if it’s to accompany humanity into the twenty-first century. He is famous for his engaging presentation style. "He’s the only guy I know that can actually make a talk on COM’s apartment threading model funny," said one student. Microsoft named him a Software Legend in 2002.

Peter Provost

Peter Provost is a Senior Program Manager for Visual Studio Ultimate where he is currently focused on making Visual Studio the supreme environment for agile developers. In Visual Studio 2010, Peter helped drive the extensibility features of the Architecture and Design tools. Prior to that, Peter managed the patterns & practices development team at Microsoft where they created Guides, Software Factories and Application Blocks like Enterprise Library and the Composite User Interface Application Block. Before joining Microsoft, he was a consultant in the Rocky Mountain region focusing on Microsoft technologies and agile software development techniques. He has spoken at a number of conferences and user groups and has written articles on agile development, ASP.NET, Web services and other topics.

Michael Puleio

Michael is a Senior Software Developer, pragmatic agilist, and coffee addict. He's been working for Microsoft for over ten years, and is currently a member of the patterns & practices team. At p&p, he has worked on Prism, the Developing Web Apps guide, the Web Client and Smart Client Software Factories and contributed to guidance on Data Access and Acceptance Testing. At Microsoft, he has also worked with MSNTV (formerly WebTV) and MSN. Previous to Microsoft, Michael worked on a range of software challenges including computer reservation systems, web application development, and 3D modeling for geophysics. Michael blogs at blogs.msdn.com/mpuleio.

Karl Shifflett

Since joining Microsoft two years ago Karl Shifflett has been a Cider Team Program Manager, working on the WPF and Silverlight Designer and recently transferred to the Patterns and Practices Prism Team. He is very passionate about product quality and Microsoft customers. Karl is very well known in the .NET community, loves teaching and writing about the .NET platform.
Before Microsoft, Karl was a software architect, former Microsoft MVP and Code Project MVP. He has been designing & developing business applications since 1989 and transitioned from VAX/VMS to .NET in March of 2003 writing ASP.NET applications. In April of 2007 he joined the list of WPF fanatics & evangelists.
He is a member of Team Mole that delivered the Mole Visualizer for Visual Studio to the world. He is the author of the very popular XAML Power Toys and XAML IntelliSense Presenter; loves WPF LOB and is developing a passion for Windows Phone 7 and ASP.NET MCV.
Karl is a member of the Seattle ALT.NET, Seattle Silverlight User Group and the .NET Developers Association in Redmond, WA.
In his spare time he writes lightweight cross-platform .NET frameworks that handle validation, navigation, data access, etc. Karl is also working on a metadata driven code generation application called Crank. Karl enjoys going on week-long cruises to write code; he says, "Something about the gentle rocking of the ship, cool ocean breezes and panoramic scenery energize creative juices."

Karl’s blog: http://karlshifflett.wordpress.com/ | Karl’s P & P blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kashiffl/ | Prism CodePlex page: http://compositewpf.codeplex.com/ | Cider Team blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/wpfsldesigner | p & p MSDN Home Page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/practices/default.aspx

David Starr

David Starr is a software craftsman, a Microsoft Visual Studio ALM MVP, and a member of the technology training staff at Pluralsight where he heads up the Software Tools and Practices curriculum. He is the founder of ElegantCode.com and the host of the Pluralcast podcast. His passions include Agile software development, building strong teams, Application Lifecycle Management, Visual Studio, and .NET. David has over 18 years of experience in software development and has held numerous leadership positions in technology teams.

Chris Tavares

Chris Tavares is a development lead on the patterns & practices team, producing written and code-based guidance for .NET developers. For the last three years he's been the dev lead on the Enterprise Library project. As part of that role, Chris is the primary author of the Unity dependency injection container. Prior to joining Microsoft, Chris was a trainer, consultant and contractor, worked on shrink-wrap software in several industries, and even did a short stint with embedded systems for the Navy.

Hamilton Verissimo

Hamilton Verissimo is an open source enthusiast who has started and participated in several projects, inside and outside the Apache Software Foundation. He is a seasoned software developer constantly reviewing his beliefs and pursuing better ways to craft software. Currently Hamilton works for Microsoft in the Common Language Runtime team as a Program Manager. In his spare time he tries to help the Castle Project, an open source project for .NET.

Brad Wilson

Brad Wilson spent the first 12 years of his career working mostly for small ISVs as a developer, team lead, architect and CTO. In March 2005, he joined Microsoft on the Patterns & Practices team and worked on Enterprise Library and ObjectBuilder. Today he is a senior developer on the ASP.NET team, working on the ASP.NET MVC project. He is an agile enthusiast and coach, and co-creator of the TDD framework xUnit.net. He has been blogging about .NET and related technologies since 2001.

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