Speakers

Reza Alirezaei MVP, MCP, MCPD, MCITP & MCTS for SharePoint 2010, is a SharePoint solution architect focused on designing custom applications with SharePoint, Office, and Microsoft Business Intelligence products and technologies. Reza has helped many development teams architect and build large-scale, mission-critical applications. He has co-authored several books and papers, presented in popular conferences and led many seminars on SharePoint.

David is a software developer and front-end engineer with a passion for designing smooth experiences. Over the past 14 years he has worked in enterprise corporations, non-profits, a university, and 3 home offices constantly striving to eliminate friction between people and software.

David lives in a 100-year-old house in Winnipeg with his amazing wife, five energetic kids, one large dog and one small cat.

Mitch has 20 years of software engineering experience working for companies like Eastman Kodak, Motorola, GE Harris, Cactus Commerce, and Burntsand. Mitch was President of 5by5 Software, a SI/ISV start-up in Calgary for several years. Software Engineering is a Professional Practice in BC and is governed by law. In his role as Senior Platform Architect at Microsoft, Mitch provides software engineering advice on the adoption and use of Microsoft's development platform of new technologies such as Windows Azure, IE9/HTML5, Windows Phone 7/Mango, and B8.

Anthony helps solve wireless mobility communication challenges with business strategies that increase communications and reduce spending. Being an industry expert Anthony has specialized skills to define, implement and plan optimized business solutions through wireless e nablemen ence working within the wireless industry has provided him the capabilities and relationships to provide complete wireless solutions, including strategy, business analysis, hardware and software requirements, system integration, training and support.

Sag is an infrastructure architect with over 10 years of experience designing, implementing and operating enterprise-class systems based on the Microsoft technology stack. He specializes in virtualization, enterprise security, systems management, collaboration and multi-tier server infrastructure solutions. Sag has lived and worked across Canada, extensively throughout the United States, in Europe and in South America. Sag is presently employed as a Senior TSP with AvePoint, a global software company specializing in SharePoint management and administration.

Amir Barylko started his career in 1994 working for IBM as a senior developer while he was finishing his Masters degree in computer science. Since then he worked as team leader and architect for the past 15 years.

Having started with languages like C++ and Java he spent many years coding in C# and training other developers in topics such domain modeling, abstractions, patterns, automation, dependency injection, testing, etc.

Being an incurable geek, always thirsty for knowledge, his passion for technology moved him towards Ruby on Rails a few years ago, becoming an advocate of RoR web development and recently giving his first RoR training.

Amir is a rare combination of high technical skills, lots of experience in a wide range of platforms, exceptional presentation skills and great sense of humor. His presentations are always rich in content and fun to attend.

Richard Baumet has been a SQL Server DBA for Phillips, Hager & North Investment Management Ltd, now RBC Global Asset Management Ltd., since 2001. In 2003, he co-formed the Vancouver PASS Chapter, and in 2007 took over as the Chapter leader. He has also been a presenter at the local chapter as well has previous TechDays, TechFest, DevTeach and SQL Saturday. His position for the last 100 years has allowed him to become an expert in SQL Server Infrastructure dealing with High Availability, Scalability, and Disaster Recovery solutions. He is an avid Canucks fan as well as cyclist, and a proud local of Vancouver, BC.

Damir is a Senior Platform Advisor with Microsoft Canada based in Mississauga, Ontario. He is passionate about technology and how it can help to change the world. He does this by engaging developers, IT professionals, architects, and technical decision makers via in person events, through Twitter, blogging, or any other means available - including sitting down for a coffee or pint when asked.

I'm a Windows / .NET Hacker for GitHub who graduated from The Ohio State University. In my spare time, I hack on some open-source software, play guitar and bass, and in general am within e of really awesome.

Terry Bunio is currently a Principal Consultant at Protegra. Terry never wanted to be a Project Manager. He started as a software developer and found his technical calling in Data Architecture. Along the way Terry discovered that he enjoys helping to build teams, grow client trust and encourage individual career growth, completing project deliverables, and helping to guide solutions. It seems that some people like to call that Project Management.

He has helped to build awesome teams, grow client trust, encourage individual career growth, and provided Data Architecture and solution leadership for organizations such as Manitoba Public Insurance, LPL Financial, Assante Asset Management, Moventum, Government of Manitoba, Government of Canada, and Investors Group. As a practical Project Manager, Terry is known to challenge assumptions and strive to strike the balance between the theoretical book agile and the real world approaches.

Terry considers himself a born again agilist as Agile implemented according to the Lean Principles has made him once again enjoy Software Development and believe in what can be accomplished. Terry is a fan of Agile implemented according to the Lean Principles, the Green Bay Packers, Winnipeg Jets, Data Architecture, XML databases, and asking why.

Brandon is a software developer and lead consultant for ThoughtWorks, with a wide range of industry experience in multiple platforms. He’s previously been an application developer, database developer and administrator, and technical lead for a high-security build & release automation project. He’s currently the technical principal for ThoughtWorks on behalf of a large telecommunications company.

Richard Campbell has been involved with microcomputers and software since 1977. His career has spanned the industry both on the hardware and software sides, from manufacturing to sales, service, game development, line-of-business software and large scale systems. He's been deeply involved in creating new businesses around software, hardware, services and products in a huge range of roles, including technical, management and financing. During the halcyon days of the DotComBoom he was a consultant to venture capital firms providing technical due diligence and architectural direction.

Today Richard is on the board of directors for Telerik (www.telerik.com), a leading vendor of development, team productivity, automated testing tools, UI components and content management solutions in the Microsoft space. He is one of the co-founders of Strangeloop Networks (www.strangeloopnetworks.com), developing an appliance for web site performance.

He's a partner in PWOP Productions, creating a variety of multimedia programs including ".NET Rocks!, the Internet Audio Talk Show for .NET Developers," (www.dotnetrocks.com) a podcast produced twice a week for more than 150,000 listeners in 120 countries. In addition he's the host of RunAs Radio (www.runasradio.com), a podcast for the IT Professional using Microsoft technologies. Richard also serves as a technical director for Penton Media, planning the content of magazines and conferences that engage technology professionals all over the world.

Kelly is the Manager of Technology Advancement at DMT Development Systems Group. During his 8 years at the company, he has held a number of roles: Developer, Development Manager, Business Analyst, and Project Manager, but has always come back to the technology as it is his main passion.

He is actively involved in the community – primarily with the Winnipeg .NET User Group and New Media Manitoba, but also with other groups in the city – and is always trying to keep up with the ever-changing environment. His main focus is in both web and mobile technologies, both in defining and building solutions but also in maintaining them using analytics and webmaster tools for monitoring and follow-up.

James has been developing software since 1995 with a mix of languages on a myriad of platforms, eventually moving to the .NET stack in 2002. His broad industry exposure has seen him work in everything from oil and gas to heathcare, from public insurance to the food industry and at all three levels of government.

A Microsoft MVP in ASP.NET/IIS, James spends his days working in web development, the MVC Framework, jQuery, web services and other areas, including competing frameworks, libraries and technologies. He is actively exploring Windows Azure and is a self-professed WP7 junkie.

Michael DeFehr is an independent SQL Server consultant doing business throught MDD Solutions Ltd. based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. His career has focused on database administration and development using Microsoft SQL Server.

A SQL Server MVP, Professional Engineer and Microsoft Certified Information Technology Professional in both Database Development and Administration, Mike has spent the past 15 years producing and maintaining database solutions. Mike specializes in the relational and storage engines and his solutions emphasize performance and simplicity.

Mike Diehl is a senior consultant at Imaginet Resources, a Microsoft Gold Partner. Mike has been building and designing enterprise applications for over fifteen years, and specializes in database and business intelligence technologies as well as software architecture and team processes. Mike has also been a trainer and consultant on Microsoft technologies for many large organizations in North America, Europe, and China.

Tyler Doerksen started developing software professionally in the days of .NET 1.1. Since then, he has worked on many different platforms including web, windows, mobile, and cloud computing. Tyler has been a Developer at Imaginet for over four years. In that time he has developed features for enterprise scale solutions, helping businesses achieve their goals through process improvement.

Tyler has a keen eye for efficiency and eliminating waste. Tyler will often walk the line between software and infrastructure with experience in Windows Server environments, IIS, and Hyper-V virtualization. He has been working with Windows Azure since its initial release and has become a cloud leader for Imaginet.

Mr. Dupley is the Chief Solutions Officer for the Hewlett-Packard Canada Co.. He is a member of the HP IT Global SWAT team supporting government and private sector companies all over the world. He has over 34 years of experience in information system consulting and development, and electronics manufacturing.

Bill is a specialist in Information Systems Strategic Planning and IT Process Re-engineering. He has designed IT Processes for many leading Canadian corporations and government agencies including Dofasco, SaskTel, GGI (Bell Canada), Canadian Pacific Railway, and Ontario Ministry of the Solicitor General. Bill has lead IT Transformation and Strategic planning teams for over 40 companies and governments globally. These accounts include Toyota North America, Sony Ericsson, Ikea, Raiffesen Bank, Finland Regional Health, Nova Nordisk, Dofasco, Farm Credit Corporation, Comdev, Schneiders and Cenovus. These transformation plans have helped both government and industry reduce the cost of IT, re-engineer their governance models, enabled IT departments to become more agile, and reduced that overall complexity of IT so they are able to address the evolving business model. Bill built the IT Service Management Practice of HP Canada into a world leader in IT process reengineering.

His greatest strength is his ability to forge trusted business relationships with senior management and advise senior IT management how to best re-engineer their Information systems and technology to enable their business to meet its goals Bill has over 30 years of experience at HP in consulting and advisory services, and has held many positions, including Director of Strategy, Director of Consulting Practices, and Chief Solution Manager. He is a graduate of Ryerson University. He is a licensed Kepner Tregoe Project Management instructor and a certified HP Quality instructor. He has completed studies in Strategic Planning, Financial Management and Activity-based costing from the Canadian Management Association. He also holds a Master Level ITIL Certification in IT Infrastructure Service Management from the British Computer Society.

John has been involved in the computer industry for 34 years. He's been an IBM systems programmer, database administrator, lead architect, independent consultant, user group president, and trainer for Software AG and PowerSoft products as well as for his own Systems Development Environments on both platforms. John is currently involved in a major client Oracle development effort as the Tech Lead for a team of 25.

David is a Systems Architect in Dell's Global Infrastructure Consulting Services team. He specializes in Microsoft infrastructure technologies such as Virtualization, Exchange On-Premise, Office 365, Unified Communications, Active Directory, Unified Application Gateway, and Threat Management Gateway.

David has completed and designed major projects for customers both large and small. Designed and delivered Lync 2010 solutions with complex deployments including integration with multiple forests and multiple OS platforms. Integrated into SIP and PBX. David has designed and lead complex migration projects including Exchange and Active Directory cross forest mailbox migrations, and cross platform mailbox migrations.

David has delivered multiple Lync Server 2010 engagements over the past year most recently deploying a full UC infrastructure integrated into a SIP line as a replacement for traditional PBX, tied into an Exchange UM infrastructure for over 3000+ users. David has also designed multiple scenarios for full PBX replacement and integration for customers with global reach.

Before joining Dell, David worked as a Solution Architect for Graycon Consulting Infrastructure Practice consulting team, where he gained experience in various roles and disciplines ranging from Data Centre planning, sales, implementation to Business Continuity. He has been both a member of a team as well as being the technical lead in numerous large scale projects for major banks and school boards.

David works closely with the Microsoft Team to pursue and strengthen Unified Communications projects throughout Canada and the World.

Carl Franklin has been a figurehead in the VB community since the very early days when he wrote for Visual Basic Programmers Journal. He authored the Q&A column of that magazine as well as many feature articles for VBPJ and other magazines. He has authored two books for John Wiley & Sons on sockets programming in VB, and in 1994 he helped create the very first web site for VB developers, Carl & Garys VB Home Page.

Carl is also the MSDN Regional Director for Connecticut, an MVP for Visual Basic, host of .NET Rocks! and Mondays, and CEO of Pwop Productions, which provides podcasting services.

Carl is also an accomplished musician and audio/video producer. He started Pwop Studios in 1999 as a record label for his first album, a collaboration with his brother Jay: Strange Communication. Carl's other band, Solvo, is a funk/jazz/blues/rock band. Solvo is Latin for "to set free or unbind."

Frédéric Harper is a Developer Evangelist at Microsoft Canada. In the IT world for more than 10 years, his expertise is mostly around mobile and Web development with different platforms. If you want to talk about Web technology, Open Source, Open Standard, interoperability and the openness of Microsoft, Fred is your man. Don't be afraid to get in touch with him as he is a social beast. Social media aficionado, he will be more than happy to connect with you on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or Google+. Don't forget to read his blog for any day-to-day subjects or Make Web Not War one, where he writes about any technical topics.

Jason Kaczor is a Microsoft SharePoint MVP and an independent consultant specializing in SharePoint and .NET technologies; architecture, design, governance, operations, training as well as custom solutions & applications. He has been providing technical solutions to business problems for 20 years; covering nearly all industry sectors. Formerly a Premier Field Engineer/Rapid Response Engineer for Microsoft Canada, he provided SharePoint and .NET expertise worldwide. While at Microsoft he was involved in several unique initiatives, including; Bad Guy Patrol and the Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS). He has always been involved in user group and community-based initiatives, most recently a co-founder of the Calgary SharePoint User Group (CalSPUG). Jason is available to speak at conferences & user groups worldwide. For fun he does the typical “old-school” geeky/nerdy activities and is trying to convince his kids that programming is “cool”.

With over thirteen years of systems management experience, Kevin Kaminski is no stranger to the challenges enterprises can experience when managing large deployments of Windows systems. As an independent consultant Kevin uses the opportunity to visit many diverse environments and see the challenges they face first hand.

His contributions to the community can be seen on many sites such as the Microsoft TechNet Forums, Appdeploy.com, MyItForum.com, AppVirtGuru.com, and the Calgary Systems Management User Group (CSMUG.ca).

Dave Kawula is an IT Ninja :) (He's getting a new one drafted up for us, stay tuned!)

As a leader in the SharePoint community, Kanwal has received the SharePoint MVP award for the past two years. He focuses on helping organizations acheive quantifiable goals by leveraging SharePoint technologies.

A sought after speaker, Kanwal has presented in various Microsoft events worldwide. He is very much involved in the greater SharePoint community and is an organizer and speaker for many SharePoint Saturday events, which are free community-driven conferences held worldwide.

James Kovacs is an independent architect, developer, trainer, and jack-of-all-trades specializing in agile development using the .NET Framework. He is passionate about helping developers create flexible software using test-driven development (TDD), unit testing, object-relational mapping, dependency injection, refactoring, continuous integration, and related techniques.

He blogs on CodeBetter.com as well as his own blog, is a technical contributor for Pluralsight, writes articles for MSDN Magazine and CoDe Magazine, and is a frequent speaker at conferences and user groups.

He is the creator of psake, a PowerShell-based build automation tool, to save developers from XML Hell. James is the Agile Track Chair for DevTeach, Canada’s largest independent Microsoft conference. He holds a variety of designations, including MCP, MCAD, MCSD, and MCT. He received his Bachelors degree from the University of Toronto and his Masters degree from Harvard University.

Coming Soon

Chris Moore is the Chief Information Officer at the City of Edmonton. Through this position, Chris provides vision and leadership of the City’s information and technology direction. He continues to partnered with local and global organizations to foster Edmonton’s role as a technology leader. In addition to being a founding member of the World eGovernments Organization, Chris has spoken to audiences all over the world about his experience and ideas for technology in government. Chris has fulfillment and freedom in his work and as a leader desires to see those around him attain fulfillment and freedom as well. Chris has been described as transformational, innovative, disruptive and refreshing. He is an advocate of an Open Ecosystem, Open Gov and Open Data. He desires to see his team embrace innovation, pursuing the possible and building the future together.

Howard Morgenstern is a Senior Business Intelligence Technical Solutions Professional for Microsoft Canada. He is focused on driving the technical adoption and sale of the Microsoft Business Intelligence platform to Enterprise and Public Sector customers in Canada. Howard has been selling Business Intelligence solutions for 9 years, previously working for Crystal Decisions/Business Objects. Howard has worked in the software industry since 1996 and has held various roles such as QA, Software Developer, Technical Consultant and Solution Architect.

Charles Nurse has been working with the .NET Framework since its first release, specializing in Web Applications using ASP.NET and he is a Microsoft MVP (since 2007) and an ASPInsider (since 2008). Since 2006 he has been Senior Architect for DotNetNuke Corporation the creators of the DotNetNuke Open Source Web Application Platform.

He has spoken at many major conferences including the Software Developers Conference (SDC) (www.sdc.nl), MIX (live.visitmix.com ), DevConnections (www.devconnections.com), DevTeach (www.devteach.com), VSLive (www.vslive.com), Prairie DevCon(www.prairiedevcon.com), Microsoft Tech Days, and DevReach(www.DevReach.com). He is a frequent speaker at local User Groups and Code Camps.

Andrew is a developer at Microsoft, working on the Windows Azure Application Platform Team. He works on the Razor view engine, and on integrating that view engine into ASP.Net MVC and other platforms. He has worked on and around ASP.Net for most of his technical career and has contributed to open-source projects such as NuGet and DotNetNuke.

David currently works as a Lead Developer at P2 Energy Solutions, building commercial software products for the energy industry. At P2 David also serves on an internal architecture review board, making recommendations on several commercial products and building prototype systems using leading-edge technologies.

David has several years of experience in designing and developing software for energy and agricultural companies. David has a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from the University of Saskatchewan. David is active in the software community giving presentations both locally and at international conferences. David also serves as the President of Calgary .Net User Group. Outside of work, David enjoys outdoor activities such as camping, fishing, and skiing of all varieties.

Steve Rogalsky first started experimenting with agile and lean techniques as a child. He learned the importance of ‘test first’ and the folly of ‘test last’ after starting a snow ball fight with the older kids in the neighbourhood. While playing the popular lego game of ‘zoom your vehicle towards your brother’s vehicle and see which one breaks first’, he honed his simple design and iterative development skills.

As a pre-teen, while playing Monopoly on the Commodore 64 with his younger brother, he discovered the value of user stories. Modifying the BASIC code, he implemented the following user story successfully: “As an [older brother], I want to [secretly add cash to my younger brother’s account], so that [he will continue playing even when he is hopelessly losing].”

Today, Steve applies these childhood lessons as an agilist and team member at Protegra. He works with fellow team members and clients to apply agile principles and practices in order to build quality in, increase communication, and improve the outcome of projects. Known to experiment with new agile techniques, he is often testing out new practices on his unsuspecting team members as part of his commitment to continuous improvement. Steve is also a founder of the Winnipeg Agile Users Group, a Post-It and Sharpie junkie, green bar addict, speaker, dad and husband.

Jonathan is a developer evangelist that comes to Microsoft from the corporate world. Having managed both small and large development teams, Jonathan has experience in corporate development and a passion for helping developers and companies improve their application development practices. In his previous roles, he is known as the person that brings others along, showing developers how they can improve their skills and careers, and most importantly, showing them what's possible. He is an active member of the developer community and brings a wealth of technical experience across Microsoft technologies such as .NET, SharePoint, Dynamics CRM, and Windows Azure, and interoperability across many others. You can catch him on the Canadian Solutions Developers' Blog, Canadian Developer Connection, Twitter, LinkedIn, and live events throughout Canada.

Dave Sharrock is VP Professional Services for agile42 consulting, the agile coaching company, with responsibility for North America. As an agile leader with extensive business experience, from multi-nationals and start-ups, in-house production teams and offshore IT service delivery, Dave now focuses on coaching management teams through agile change and building and coaching technology and product development teams.

Dave drives change within technology-driven organizations through the introduction of agile product development practices, using agile frameworks such as Scrum. As an agile coach, Dave works closely with clients to help introduce agile change into an organization, providing direction and coaching to executive management introducing and working with agile/Scrum teams, and product owners, scrum masters and development teams practicing agile/Scrum methods.

Dave serves many customers as a strategic advisor, agile coach and consultant to the IT organization, helping in implementing Scrum effectively with distributed teams. Dave is a CSP and holds a PhD and an MBA.

Bil Simser is a Solutions Architect with over 15 years in software development. He has helped build many large-scale mission critical systems along the way. In his role as a mentor, he guides clients on how to implement development standards and guidelines, evaluates and recommends new tools and technologies, and helps teams and projects progress into the .NET world. Bil also has a special interest in coaching clients on Agile and General Software Development Best Practices.

Bil has been involved with Microsoft's .NET platform since the early betas and has a deep passion for good Architecture and Software Design. He specializes in SharePoint, .NET, Agile, TDD, Windows Phone 7 development, and computer game programming. Bil also runs several successful open-source projects. He contributes to the software development community, taking the time to review and edit SharePoint and Agile publications, and speak at user groups, code camps, and conferences, including TechEd, DevConnections, PDC, and DevTeach.

Bil has been a Microsoft SharePoint MVP since 2004 and a member of the MSDN Canada Speakers Bureau. Bil currently lives and works in Alberta, Canada, with his wife, daughter, a Beowulf cluster of computers, every gaming console known to man, and a small menagerie of animals.

Dylan Smith is an ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) consultant for Imaginet where he spends his time helping teams become more successful at delivering software. Dylan has over a decades experience designing and architecting mission critical applications. In the past 7 years Dylan has focused on agile development techniques and practices. He has led the shift to agile and lean development practices across multiple teams, projects and companies.

Mike Stockdale is the founder and principal software developer of Syterra Software (http://www.syterra.com). His focus is on software craft, automated testing and performance tuning of enterprise application software. He wrote his first code in Fortran, on punched cards. Not too agile back then.

He was introduced to agile in 2001 and soon realized that this was a major advance in our ability to deliver quality software and business value. He works for a variety of corporate and government clients and continues to seek better ways of automated testing as the lead developer for the open source project fitSharp (http://github.com/jediwhale/fitsharp).

Paul is a former .NET developer gone rogue. After several years developing software for in the accounting field, Paul co-founded Big Nerds In Disguise (BNID) as well as his own company App Empire Inc. Currently the CTO at Robots and Pencils Inc, Paul spends the majority of his time pushing apps from idea to App Store.

In 2011 Paul’s first app with BNID crossed the 10,000 user mark and won a Microsoft award for best design. Through his work at Robots and Pencils, Paul has touched over ten apps that are now in the app store including an app that hit #4 top grossing (World Explorer for MineCraft). More recently Paul brokered a deal to bring one of Warner Brothers most popular games to the mobile space.

Some say that he doesn’t understand toasters and that he can out squint Clint Eastwood all we know is that he’s called Simon Timms. Simon is a founder of Wopsle and currently works as a developer for GeoTrac International.

GeoTrac is a leader in GPS fleet management focusing on the oil sector in Western Canada. Simon’s background is in release management, source control and .net development but he now spends his days working on distributed systems and applying whatever nonsense he just read on Fowler’s blog. This week it is opportunistic refactoring.

Kent, a graduate of the University of Regina, has 10+ years of IT experience. This experience includes working on projects for Provincial and Federal Governments, a multi-national bank in the United States, Health Care projects in Eastern and Western Canada and he is currently employed by a large Electricity Distribution company in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. In Kent’s current role, he is responsible for managing a Middleware team that focuses on Line of Business System integration using Microsoft technologies.

David Wesst is a Senior User Experience Specialist at Imaginet based out of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Since earning his Bachelor of Computer Science, David has always been passionate about user experience and technology. He has continued to follow his passion by focusing his professional efforts on user interface and user experience development for all types of software over the past five years. Outside of development, David spends a great portion of his time working with the community to educate them on the importance of user experience. David is also an avid presenter at conferences ranging from Microsoft TechDays to smaller more intimate community events where he takes a practical look at HTML5 and how developers can use it to benefit the businesses they work for. Through his community work, David has earned the title of Microsoft MVP in the area of Internet Explorer and continues to educate the technology community about the latest in web standards and how to apply them in real-world scenarios.

Dave White is a Technical Program Director for Imaginet whose focus is Agile processes and enabling technologies. An Agile evangelist and practitioner with over 13 years of experience in the industry in a variety of roles from developer, team lead, project manager and trainer, he is passionate about helping all levels of organizations become more Agile.

Whether talking to CxOs and senior managers, or grass-roots developers and project team members, he brings to the table a broad range of technical and process experiences that he loves to share and leverage to make those around him better.

Dave has developed and taught numerous Agile courses for organizations and is also CSM, CSPO, MCPD:Windows and MCT certified.