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Senior IBM Certified BPM Solution Architect

I have dedicated the last 30 years in the search and acquisition of knowledge that has facilitated my quest to categorize the imperatives that characterize success in business (LOB) and technology (IT). During these years I have held a variety of positions; garnering business insight and technical experience, from the bottom of the corporate ladder, all the way to the top.

In my current assignment, I lead a team of enterprise architects that hold the charter to design industry solutions following the BPM discipline, with just the right amount of technology (SOA).

Along the way, I have learned a lot about hardware, software, applications and people; the technology for business.

I have worked for a broad spectrum of computer companies, including a few that I started myself. I am proud to call Springdale, Arkansas home for the last 20 years.

Brian Sullivan is a developer analyst for Falcon Applications, LLC in Shreveport, LA. He has been working with Microsoft technologies for about 5 years, and is interested in increasing the exposure of agile techniques and methodologies in the Microsoft developer community. He is a graduate of Harding University in Searcy, AR.

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Bryan Smith is a Database Specialist with Microsoft focused on data warehousing and business intelligence. In addition to working with customers on their BI solutions, Bryan trains and writes on the topics of Analysis Services and MDX.

Chris Koenig is a Senior Developer Evangelist with Microsoft, based in Dallas, TX. Prior to joining Microsoft in March of 2007, 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://chriskoenig.net, via email at chris.koenig@microsoft.com, or via Windows Live Messenger at chris@koenigweb.com.

Microsoft MVP

Claudio Lassala is a Senior Developer at EPS Software Corp. He has presented several lectures at Microsoft events such as PDC Brazil and various other Microsoft seminars, as well as several conferences and user groups across North America and Brazil. He is a multiple winner of the Microsoft MVP Award since 2001 (for Visual FoxPro in 2001-2002, and for C# ever since), an INETA speaker, and also holds the MCSD for .NET certification. He has articles published on several magazines, such as MSDN Brazil Magazine, CoDe Magazine, UTMag, Developers Magazine, and FoxPro Advisor. More detailed information regarding his presentations and articles can be found in his MVP Profile (https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/Claudio.Lassala). You can also read more about Claudio on his blog (http://claudiolassala.spaces.live.com) or on Twitter (http://twitter.com/claudiolassala)

Microsoft MVP

Corey Roth is a solutions architect at Stonebridge specializing in SharePoint solutions in the Oil & Gas Industry. Corey has always focused on rapid adoption of new Microsoft technologies including Visual Studio 2010, .NET Framework 4.0, LINQ, and SilverLight. For his contributions to Visual Studio 200, he was awarded the Microsoft Award for Customer Excellence (ACE). Corey is a member of the .NET Mafia (www.dotnetmafia.com) where he blogs about the latest technology and SharePoint. He is also Vice President of the Tulsa SharePoint Interest Group

Damon Armstrong is a code poet. Although the phrase may elicit thoughts of elitist snobbery and unnecessary complexities, you can rest assured that his solutions are more like a dirty limerick: short, simple, and straight to the point. Mr. Armstrong, a Senior Architect in Cogent’s Management Consulting practice, has nearly a decade of experience in application architecture and design, data modeling, and development. He possesses a deep knowledge of the .NET Framework, ASP.NET, and SharePoint, which are essential to building solid applications.

Dave Schmid is a Senior Software Consultant with the BMC Software IT Service Management group. Prior to joining BMC Software in 2009, Dave served multiple roles at Citigroup including VP of Enterprise Applications and Chief Infrastructure Architect with additional disciplines including Performance & Availability Management, Virtualization, and Data Center Optimization. Even with 15 years of IT experience, it’s not all bits and bytes. Dave holds a music composition degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City: Conservatory of Music.

David Walker is an Senior Application Development Manager with Microsoft. He has over 15 years experience in application development with over 50% of that employed as a consultant. He has been an MCP since 2003, MCAD and MCSD since 2005, and was a Microsoft MVP - ASP/ASP.NET from July 2007 – July 2009. Prior to joining Microsoft, he was formerly a board member for INETA (Vice President, Speakers Bureau), President of the Tulsa Developers .NET users group, founder and President of the Tulsa SQL Server Group and Tulsa Java Developers, Vice President of the Tulsa SharePoint Interest Group. He has been the Chairman over the TulsaTechFest event which is going on its fifth consecutive year as the region’s largest technical training event. He also launched the very successul first annual NWA TechFest on July 8th 2010.

Dennis J. Bottjer is a solutions architect, consultant, teacher, blogger and speaker. As a three time Microsoft ASP/ASP.NET MVP, he specializes in SharePoint and Web Development. Dennis has over 12 years of industry experience with an emphasis on the Financial and Banking Sectors. As an associate for a Fortune 100 Financial Services Company, Dennis was a key contributor during the development of an underwriting system and fulfillment system. Dennis builds community by regularly participating in user groups and community events. He has been a user group president and is currently an INETA.org membership mentor. Dennis lives in Tulsa, OK with his wife Carrie, daughter Kate, son Will.

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Forrest has been a Sr. BI Technology Specialist for almost 5 years at Microsoft specializing in reporting, analysis, and performance management. Forrest’s professional career spans almost 22 years with ten years in business intelligence software and professional services sales, fourteen years internal and external analytical and application systems consulting experience in all the major US industries. Forrest began his career as an industry accountant primarily in financial reporting, analysis, and strategic planning.

James Ashburn is a Senior Software Consultant and BSM Solution Architect with the BMC Software’s IT Service Management group in Dallas, TX. James has designed and led some of BMC’s largest and most complex global customers and outsourcers for the last 10 years. He began his professional career working in the call center world, first assisting truckers in the dead of the night as a phone agent and later implementing the technologies that enabled the agents to support their customer better and faster. James has spent his career of 14 years focused on delivering value to customers through optimization of support centers and to that end James is an ITIL Service Manager. His latest adventures are in the rapidly growing area of Cloud Lifecycle Management and the impact on the business.

Microsoft MVP

James is the Principal Technology Evangelist and Application Development Practice Manager for the The Sophic Group in Columbus, OH. James has been involved in software development and architecture for 16 years. He has worked as a developer and architect on everything from small, single-user applications to Enterprise-scale, multi-user systems. His specialties are .NET development and architecture, TDD, BDD, WCF, cloud computing, and agile development methodologies. He is an experienced mentor and author. James is a Microsoft MVP.

James is an active member of the development community. He is the current president of the Central Ohio .NET Developers Group (www.condg.org), Founder and Senior Editor of First Party Content for NPlus1 (www.nplus1.org) and Founder of the Columbus Architects Group (www.colarc.org) and is the senior editor of first-party content for nplus1.org, an educational website aimed toward architects and aspiring architects.

James maintains a blog at www.jamescbender.com and his Twitter ID is JamesBender

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Janet K. Ply, PhD - Co-Founder of Pendére, Janet has over 20 years experience in high end project management and process improvement consulting. She has successfully managed contracts over $200M and 300+ people for the federal government and commercial companies. In addition, she has implemented the Software Engineering Institute's (SEI's) Software Capability Maturity Model (CMM) in six different companies.

Janet has successfully built a number of organizational Project Management Offices (PMO’s) to oversee enterprise initiatives. In addition, she has been involved in providing legal support to several clients on failed projects and has been involved in turning around a number of troubled initiatives.

Janet is a Project Management Professional (PMP), a certification awarded by the Project Management Institute (PMI) and she has served on the board for the Austin PMI chapter. She is a guest lecturer at the University of Texas McCombs Graduate School of Business and an adjunct professor for the Masters in Project Management Program at St. Edward's University. She has developed both commercially available and in-house project management certification programs.

Janet holds a PhD in Information Technology from George Mason University; an MS in Engineering from UT Austin; an MS in Procurement and Acquisition; and a BS in Math.

Janet is an instrument rated pilot and enjoys flying angel flight missions in a Bonanza F33A in her spare time. For more information on Angel Flight, please check out www.angelflightsc.org.

Microsoft MVP

Jeff Bramwell has over 20 years of software development experience and is currently employed as an Enterprise Application Architect by Farm Credit Services of America. He has been working with .NET technologies since the early pre-release days (in mid 2000) and taught C# at a local university for three years. Having focused on Team Foundation Server for the past few years, Jeff started the Omaha Team System User Group and has presented on Team Foundation Server at the Omaha .NET User Group as well as the Heartland Developers Conference, Tulsa TechFest, VSLive!, and others. Jeff is a Microsoft Visual Studio ALM MVP and, as time permits, answers Visual Studio questions in the MSDN forums and makes every attempt to post useful information (mostly regarding TFS) on his blog at http://devmatter.blogspot.com/.

Microsoft MVP

Father. Husband. Geek. Veteran. Around 25 years IT experience. Co-author of “Windows Developer Power Tools.” Coffee Roaster. MVP for C#. Chief Cat Herder of the CodeMash Conference. Liked 5th grade so much he did it twice. One-time setter, middle blocker, and weakside hitter. Blogger (http://FrazzledDad.com). Quality Lead at Telligent, makers of neat social software. Big fan of naps.

Microsoft MVP

Jim Wooley is a frequent speaker, member of the INETA Speaker Bureau, MVP, and author of "LINQ in Action". He is always striving to stay at the forefront of technology and enjoys the thrill of a new challenge. He has been active evangelizing LINQ since it's announcement in 2005. In addition, he attempts to pass on the insights he has gained by being active in the community, including organizing and speaking at code camps and regional events. In addition to speaking at numerous user groups and code camps in 7 states, Jim has presented at product launch events, MSDN conferences, DevLink, DevWeek, CodeMash, CodeStock, and TechEd.

Microsoft MVP

Jimmy Bogard is a Principal Consultant at Headspring Systems. He is an agile software developer with seven years of professional development experience. He has delivered solutions from conception to production for many clients. The solutions delivered by Jimmy range from shrink-wrapped products to enterprise e-commerce applications for Fortune 100 customers. He is also a Microsoft Certified Application Developer (MCAD) and is an active member in the .NET community, leading open-source projects, giving technical presentations and facilitating technical book clubs. Currently, Jimmy is the lead developer on the NBehave project, a Behavior-Driven Development framework for .NET, AutoMapper, a convention-based object-to-object mapper and the facilitator of the Austin Domain-Driven Design Book Club. Jimmy is a member of the ASPInsiders group, the C# Insiders group and received the "Microsoft Most Valuable Professional" (MVP) award for ASP.NET in 2009 and 2010.

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John Savill is a Microsoft Optimized Desktop Technology Specialist and prior to joining Microsoft has an MVP 11 years in a row. John has written 4 books on Windows Server and Active Directory and runs the popular NT FAQ site at http://www.ntfaq.com.

John Teague has been developing .Net applications since version 1.0. While most of his work has been developing web applications, he tries not focus his attention on specific frameworks or applications stacks. Instead, he focuses on building applications using solid object oriented design principles and patterns with a behavior driven approach.

John is the owner and principle consultant of Avenida Software, a software development, Agile coaching and training firm. He has worked for Fortune 500 companies and small 3 person startups, in a variety of industries including e-commerce/retail, medical and financial. He has worked on building scalable high performance e-commerce websites and international B2B web applications.

He is very active in the .Net and Agile community in Austin, TX. He has organized the Austin Code Camp Conference for the past 3 years and presented several sessions as well. John has also presented private and public training courses on Ajax, Object Oriented Design Principles, and Test Driven Development.

Microsoft MVP

Lee Brandt has been programming professionally for more than a decade and currently works as a Project Lead Consultant with AdventureTech. He speaks regionally about software development practices and has mentored teams on improving their approach to lean software development though achieving technical proficiency. He is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional, one of the leaders of the Kansas City .Net User Group, and serves as the Regional Mentor for .Net user groups in Kansas and Missouri.

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Mark Marcus
Vice President, Office of the Chief Customer Officer
SAP America

A graduate of University of Texas, Mark has over 24 years experience in the computer industry.

For the first 10 years, Mark held IT leadership roles in some of the top US companies including American Airlines and Holiday Inn Worldwide. While in internal IT, Mark held positions from programmer to Director of IT. At Holiday Inn Worldwide, Mark was responsible for the team that launched the first hotel Internet reservation system for a major hotel chain.

For the last 14 years, Mark has worked in the Software Industry for BEA, Oracle and SAP. During that time, Mark has worked with enterprise customers to recommend software solutions to solve their business problems.

At SAP America, Mark works with SAP’s top customers to make sure they maximize their investment in SAP.

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I have been a Developer and Architect for the past 16 years in areas as diverse as the Canadian Banking System, the UK Defense Industry, and the US and Middle East Oil and Gas Industry. For the past four years, I have been with Microsoft and now hold the position of SAP Solutions Director for the South Central District. In this role I am responsible for helping some of Microsoft’s largest customers extract the greatest value from their Microsoft/SAP relationship and technology. In addition to this am also responsible for delivering our strategy around Azure and cloud computing

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Nathan has over 15 years of experience is the technology industry where he focused on large OLTP and web solutions. He joined Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) in 2005 working with customers on SharePoint deployments, SOA strategies and custom application development primarily using SharePoint as an application platform. Last year he transitioned from MCS to be more product focused as a SharePoint Technical Specialist.

Paul C. Clements is currently a Senior C# developer for Ingenix, a subsidiary of United Health Group where he is continually called upon to present on unit testing, design principles and patterns. Paul co-founded DEVLOOP during his time as a senior developer at Tyson Foods. As a member of the United States Air Force he built and maintained applications in support of NORAD at Cheyenne Mountain using Perl, Visual Basic and C# . While at Lockheed Martin he built a Recall application that went on to become an Air Force Best Practice and distributed to bases around the globe. Paul is a passionate software developer continually searching for and assimilating the best technology and techniques in his pursuit of quality and maintainability.

Microsoft MVP

Phil Japikse has been working with .Net since the first betas, and developing software for over 20 years. Phil is a Microsoft MVP and also holds MCSD, MCDBA, CSM, and CSP certifications. Phil is an international speaker and a passionate member of the developer community, speaking at Code Camps and Days of .NET all across the country as well as serving as the Lead Director for the Cincinnati .Net User’s Group.

Phil works as a Patterns and Practices Evangelist for Telerik (www.telerik.com), is a Firefighter/Paramedic, and a volunteer for the Ski Patrol. You can follow Phil on twitter via www.twitter.com/skimedic and read his blog at www.skimedic.com/blog.

Microsoft MVP

One of the first Microsoft MVP award winners in Arkansas, Randy helped start the NWA .Net User Group and has helped educate and motivate regional developers to the .Net Framework. Randy is the owner of Harvest I.T. Inc which provides Retail Link automation to Walmart Vendors and has 15 years of development experience.

Microsoft MVP

Rob Vettor is a C# MVP, INETA Regional Speaker and Microsoft .NET Architect/Technical for Jack Henry and Associates, a large financial services software company. Rob has built systems for a number of corporations, including Avanade, Raytheon and American Express. Rob lives in Dallas, TX, with his wife, twin sons, three dogs and rooms full of NET computer books. You can contact Rob at robvettor@hotmail.com, and check out Rob’s blog at www.robvettor.com.

Microsoft MVP

Robert Boedigheimer works for Schwans Shared Services, LLC providing business solutions with web technologies and leads Robert Boedigheimer Consulting, LLC. Robert has been designing and developing web sites for the past 15 years including the early days of ASP and ASP.NET. He is a columnist for aspalliance.com, an ASP.NET MVP, an author, an "Early Achiever" MCSD for .NET with C#, an MCPD: Web with C#, MCPD: ASP.NET 3.5, and a 2nd degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. Robert has spoken at industry conferences including the Heartland Developers Conference, DevLink, DevTeach, Tulsa Tech Fest, DevWeek, TechEd, AJAXWorld, and numerous national and international events.

Rod Paddock is president and founder of Dash Point Software, Inc. DPSI is an award winning software company based in Seattle, WA . Dash Point Software specializes in application architecture, development and software training. Clients include Six Flags, First Premier Bank, Microsoft, The US Coast Guard and US Navy.

Dash Point specializes in Visual Studio .NET (C# and VB.NET), Visual Basic, Visual FoxPro, and SQL Server development. Rod has been a very popular speaker at a wide variety of developer conferences in North America and Europe since 1995. His most recent speaking appearance was at the DevTeach 2005 conference in Montreal Canada . Rod was made an MSDN Canada speaker in 2004 and is currently a Microsoft VB.NET MVP.

Rod is also editor in chief for Code Magazine (www.code-magazine.com) and has written numerous articles and books on software development.

Rod can be contacted via his web site www.dashpoint.com or his blog http://blog.dashpoint.com

Microsoft MVP

Tim Rayburn is a Principal Consultant with Improving Enterprises, and a Microsoft MVP for Connected Systems Development. He has worked with Microsoft technologies for over 13 years, and is the Founder of the Dallas/Fort Worth Connected Systems User Group, the organizer of the Dallas TechFest, and blogger at TimRayburn.net. When he’s not pursuing the ever moving technology curve, he is an avid gamer, from consoles to table-top RPGs and is the host of a podcast called Radio Free Hommlet. He welcomes questions about any of the above to tim@timrayburn.net.

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I have 29+ years of experience in field positions within IBM. For the majority of those years I have been a technical sales support specialist with various hardware specialties and have been responsible for designing and implementing client solutions. I am currently responsible for working on complex multi-brand solutions for clients including solutions for data security and encryption, business continuance and high availability, infrastructure consolidation, virtualization and cloud computing.

Microsoft MVP

Toi B. Wright is an independent consultant who has been working as a software developer for over 25 years. She has a BS in Computer Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University. She has been a Microsoft MVP in ASP/ASP.NET since 2005.

Ms. Wright recently completed a book titled "ASP.NET 4 24-Hour Trainer" that is available at your favorite book retailers. In the book she covers both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC 2 by using hands-on lessons to teach important concepts. Everything is shown using both technologies.

Ms Wright was the organizer of the original We Are Microsoft - Charity Challenge Weekend, www.wearemicrosoft.com. She is the Founder and President of the Dallas ASP.NET User Group, www.dallasasp.net. She has been involved with various user groups around Dallas since 1994 and has been running one or more user groups since 2000. She most recently helped organize the new Geeks in Pink group, www.geeksinpink.org, for women in technology.

Microsoft MVP

Ty Anderson is a partner at Cogent Company in Dallas, Texas. As a Microsoft MVP, he spends his time consulting and building software using Microsoft technologies. In addition to consulting, Ty speaks & writes frequently about Microsoft products including VSTO, SharePoint, Office, SQL Server, etc. His work has been featured recently as part of MSDN's "How Do I" video series. Additionally his articles have been published on MSDN, Microsoft TechNet, Devx.com, DevSource.com, Simple-Talk.com, and CIO.com. Lastly, Ty recently wrote Getting Started with Word 2010 and Pro Office 2007 Development with VSTO (both Apress)…choosing to write instead of sleep.

Ty Recently presented sessions at 2009 Tech-Ed and will be a speaker at the 2009 Fall DevConnections conference.

For over 15 years Zain has been working with the latest Microsoft technologies. He’s been a consultant and trainer since 1995. He currently creates the Visual Studio Tips and Tricks series. Also, he created Online Community Evangelism; which is an effort to build communities in virtual places like LinkedIn, Facebook, and elsewhere. He is not only a proponent of the community aspect of online environments but also is a supporter of the myriad business applications that these new mediums offer.

Zain’s efforts have been featured by eWeek, Redmond Developer News, and many others. He has been interviewed by Forrester Research, Gartner, and the Science Channel for his work. He is a frequent speaker at events in LinkedIn, Facebook, and other online venues. Zain also lectures world-wide on a variety of developer topics.