Spring 2011 - Speakers
Jacob VanScoy
Jacob is a senior developer at Atomic Playpen in Minneapolis. Over the past seven
years, he has worked with a wide variety of technologies and programming languages.
Jacob became a father in October when he and his wife Betsy welcomed their daughter
Lucy into the world.
Avonelle Lovhaug
Avonelle Lovhaug escaped the corporate grind in 2003. Since then she's been running
Code Poetry, her
freelance programming venture serving tech savvy small businesses in the Twin Cities.
Avonelle lives just outside St. Paul with her husband, and after raising two geek
sons with careers in tech-related fields, she's done her part for future generations.
She'd tell you how long she's been working with computers, but her age is classified.
Avonelle writes about going freelance at
www.IndyCoding.com.
Marc Harter
Marc Harter is a Web Developer for Applied Data Consultants in Eau Claire, WI. He
is actively involved in the JavaScript community from the browser to the server
side. He enjoys: studying program languages and paradigms, obsessively changing
his theme and background on Ubuntu Linux, and keeping up with the latest in web
development. He has a beautiful wife and two beautiful children.
Brock Noland
Brock Noland is an Instructor at Cloudera where he teaches Apache Hadoop developer
and admin courses to public and private audiences. He attended the University of
Minnesota and is formerly a Lead Software Engineer at Thomson Reuters were he implemented
log processing on Hadoop. He spends most of his time dealing with broken abstractions
and other odd phenomena of large distributed systems. When not working, he likes
to sail, scuba dive, and trek.
Chris Johnson
Chris Johnson is a Software Engineer with Getty Images. He has been developing web
applications since 2003 and has been working with Ruby professionally since 2007.
Chris also works as an independent consultant for business and organizations around
the midwest. In his spare time Chris enjoys photography, spending time with family
and friends, and tinkering with anything electronic or mechanical.
Judah Himango
Judah is a developer with Avtex in Bloomington, where his responsibilities range
from looking busy, to fetching caffeinated beverages for Mike Hodnick. He likes
to pretend to know more than he really does. But he's good at pretending. Of the
few things he actually knows how to do, .NET client dev is his specialty. He thinks
most developers take themselves way too seriously. He can't believe people pay him
to write software. His favorite past times include writing code that will pay for
his early retirement to Cancoon, wrestling with his kids, smooching his wife, playing
the guitar poorly, hoarding free food at developer events, and speaking about himself
in the third person.
Brent Edwards
Brent Edwards is a Senior Consultant for
Magenic, a Microsoft Gold Partner consulting company. Brent has been knocking
around the .NET world for over six years, working on projects ranging from ASP.NET
MVC with C# and jQuery to WPF with VB.NET. In his spare time, Brent develops applications
for the Android platform. His apps have over one million downloads and he was selected
by Google as a Top Android Developer for their Device Seeding Program. When not
cranking out code, you can find him hanging out with his wife and three kids or
riding his wakeboard, snowboard or mountain bike. Check out his blog at http://brentedwards.net.
Aaron Godin
Aaron Godin is a Computer Engineering student attending University of Wisconsin
- Eau Claire. If he's not deep in a Rails application or programming in Ruby, he
spends his time working with all things front-end. He's an amateur designer and
has an interest in user experience design and information architecture. Besides
being a Macophile, his other interests include electronic music, martial arts, skateboarding,
and making fun of iPad commercials.
Christopher Bartling
Christopher Bartling has participated in the IT industry since 1995. He has served
in the roles of application developer, mentor and agile coach and has experience
in biometrics, healthcare, insurance, and legal/regulatory domains. Chris also helps
develop and deliver training for DevJam. Previous to his career in IT, Chris was
involved in electrophysiology and biomedical research at the Mayo Clinic.
Joel Levandoski
Joel Levandoski is a software engineer with over 30 years of experience. For the
past 4 years he has been working as a contractor in the Twin Cities area specializing
in .NET and automated software testing. Joel has written software testing systems
for both Windows and Web applications using numerous testing frameworks including
Fit/FitNesse, SpecFlow, WatiN and WebAii.
Previous to his contract work, Joel was Vice President of Software Development and
co- founder of Advanced Weighing Systems in Chippewa Falls, Wi. Prior to that, he
was Chief CAD engineer in charge of printed circuit board CAD software for Cray
Research and worked on the Cray-2, Cray-3 and Triton supercomputer systems. Joel
received a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Mathematics from the University
of Wisconsin-Stout and a Masters in Software Engineering from the University of
Minnesota. He lives in Menomonie, WI.
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
focused on delivering business value through applied technology and one of the nation's
premiere Microsoft Gold Certified Partners. For more information go to www.lhotka.net.
Brian Hogan
Brian Hogan is an author, editor, trainer, speaker, musician, and web developer
who loves to tinker with HTML5, CSS3, Ruby, and JavaScript. He coordinates the RailsMentors.org project which
pairs people who want to learn about Ruby on Rails with experienced mentors. He's
the author of "HTML5 and CSS3" and "Web Design For Developers" and consults. When
not hacking on code or writing, he can be found improving his guitar chops or spending
time with his daughters.
Baskin I. Tapkan
Baskin I. Tapkan works for Imation. Baskin is a technology evangelist and has been
programming over 20 years starting with Turbo Pascal and QBasic . He has been coding
in the .NET framework since its release and now focusing on the ASP.NET MVC and
WCF Services. Prior to joining to Verifications Inc, he has been a software architect
at Healthland, Inc., a consultant with Magenic, and a systems design engineer at
Imation Corporation. He has over 12 years of industry experience in manufacturing,
healthcare, education and consumer services working on various database driven applications.
Baskin holds a Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering from Univ. of Wyoming.
Jon Homan
Jon Homan is an apprentice at Obtiva, where he has primarily worked on web applications
using Ruby on Rails. Lately, he has been interested in NoSQL databases, automated
testing, and software design principals. His non-software interests include sports,
music, and reading.
Aaron Erickson
Aaron Erickson is a software developer/technology writer/agilist for ThoughtWorks,
based out of Chicago, IL. His life's work is to help convert the human intellectual
capital into results for companies that empower both the knowledge workers who produce
software, and the people for whom that software is designed to serve. He frequently
speaks at events such as DevTeach, TechEd, and .NET user groups - with a goal of
furthering the exchange of ideas - be they technology contributions - or observations
about the technology consulting business. He is the author of the book, "The Nomadic
Developer", a career guide for technology consultants. He is a co-author of the
upcoming "Professional F# 2.0". In his spare time he likes to buy random ingredients
at the store and have "iron chef" night with his wife, play video games with his
kids, and occasionally, log on to World of Warcraft where he has a level 80 Rogue
named EffSharper on the Bloodscalp server.
Glenn Leifheit
Glenn Leifheit, CISSP, CSSLP is a Senior Security Architect at FICO. He has worked
in developing, managing, architecting and securing large scale applications for
over 15 years. His day is spent rolling out an Enterprise secure software development
lifecycle and managing PCI requirements as well as secure software reviews. Glenn
is active in the Technology community as the Co-Chair of (ISC)2 Application Security
Advisory Board, President of TechMasters Twin Cities, as an active member of IASA
(International Association of Software Architects) and OWASP (Open Web Application
Security Project) as well as a regional speaker evangelizing secure software. Glenn's
blog is located at www.glennleifheit.com.
Jeff Brand
Jeff Brand is a .NET Developer in Microsoft's Developer and Platform Group. Jeff
assists customers in evaluating, developing and deploying applications built on
the .NET Framework and the Microsoft platform. He has been with Microsoft for eleven
years and has served in variety of roles including infrastructure consultant, e-commerce
technology specialist, and enterprise technology advisor.
Donn Felker
Donn Felker is the founder of Agilevent, a agile and mobile software development
company here in the Twin Cities. He has over 10 years of professional experience
in various markets that include – entertainment, health, retail, insurance, financial,
and real estate. He is the author of the best selling Android Application Development
for Dummies and the Introduction to Android Development on TekPub.com. He is also
a Microsoft ASP Insider, an MCTS in Web Client Development for .NET and is a certified
ScrumMaster. He is the leader of the Twin Cities Developers Group. He presents and
consultants on various topics ranging from architecture, development in general,
agile practices and patterns & practices and of course, mobile. Follow Donn on twitter:
@donnfelkeror read
his blog here: http://blog.donnfelker.com.
Bryan Anderson
Bryan is an up-and-coming .Net developer currently focused on building amazing,
performant WPF and Silverlight applications. He's passionate about teaching other
developers all of the things he's learned about building applications in the real
world and learning their lessons in turn. Bryan is currently a full time employee
at ILM Professional Services.
Jeffrey Byboth
Jeffrey works for Simacor as a consultant, and has been developing software for
the past 12 years focusing on developing solutions in .Net over the past 6 years.
He holds a Masters in Software Engineering from the University of St. Thomas.
Erik Mau
Erik Mau is an architect on the Innovation Team at Avtex (formerly Inetium). He
brings a balance of .NET development, SharePoint platform expertise, and Dynamics
CRM integration experience to architect business solutions for Avtex customers.
He has over 10 years of experience on the Microsoft stack and has just recently
started developing applications with Silverlight.
Brent Stineman
Brent is a Manager Consultant and National Solution lead for Windows Azure with
Sogeti USA. His 18+ year career has spanned everything from the mainframe to mobile
devices. He's been working with the Windows Azure platform for over two years and
was selected as one of the first of the Microsoft MVP's for the Windows Azure platform.
Jim White
Jim White is the director of training, partner, and instructor with Intertech, Inc.
He is co-author of Java 2 Micro Edition (Manning) and a frequent contributor to
various journals and on-line magazines including recent articles at DevX.com. Jim
also heads Intertech's Cloud Computing practice and is co-lead of the Windows Azure
User Group (www.azureug.net), which is a national virtual user group of nearly a
thousand members. He has twenty years of software development experience including
time as a senior technical architect at Target Corporation.
David Boike
David is a solution architect at Inergize Digital in Bloomington. For 8 years he
has been developing a variety of solutions in the .NET space, and tries to do so
according to his mantra: "Build. Optimize. Make Awesome." Recently he has taken
a particular interest in distributed systems architecture. David's blog can be found
at www.make-awesome.com.
David Boike
David is a solution architect at Inergize Digital in Bloomington. For 8 years he
has been developing a variety of solutions in the .NET space, and tries to do so
according to his mantra: "Build. Optimize. Make Awesome." Recently he has taken
a particular interest in distributed systems architecture. David's blog can be found
at www.make-awesome.com.
Dave Stienessen
Dave Stienessen is a Senior Consultant for Magenic, a Microsoft Gold Partner consulting
company. For 17 years, Dave has been developing and designing enterprise applications
built with Microsoft technologies and working with .NET since its release in 2002
and SQL Server since version 6. Currently Dave works with clients on enterprise
application architecture, database design and architecture, and multi-tenant custom
SaaS applications.
Kurt Christensen
Kurt Christensen has been paid to write code in a variety of different languages
for a variety of different industries for the last 15 years. Since 2003, Kurt has
also helped multiple companies transform their development processes using "agile"
methods.
Keith Dahlby
Keith Dahlby is a .NET developer, language geek and C# MVP from Cedar Rapids, IA.
He works as the technical lead at J&P Cycles and blogs about various software
development topics with Los Techies. Keith has spoken at community events around
the midwest and studied Human-Computer Interaction at Iowa State University. His
talks have been described as "terrific!", "very interactive!", and "the best I've
seen all hour!"
Dan Chamberlain
Dan Chamberlain is an independent contractor working in the Twin Cities. His interests
include Scala, concurrency, functional programming, and working on interesting problems.
Zach Mattson
Zach possesses over 10 years experience in the DBA industry, particularly working
in development, administration and automation. He is currently the DBA team lead
for a company in St. Paul, MN that sells toothbrushes, drugs and knee braces. In
addition to this, Zach has shared his industry knowledge with the SQL community
by publishing articles on SQLServerCentral.com and speaking at SQL Saturdays in
Minnesota and Arizona.
Todd H. Gardner
Todd H. Gardner is a software developer and architect with over 5 years of professional
experience in corporate and commercial system design and implementation. He is passionate
about software development process and driving cloud platforms. Follow Todd on twitter:
@toddhgardner
or find out more at http://www.toddhgardner.com/.
Mike Hodnick
Mike Hodnick has been a developer in the Twin Cities area for over 12 years and
currently works at Avtex in Bloomington, MN. He enjoys digging in to more obscure
topics such as Silverlight digital audio synthesis and WPF 3D. At Avtex he has most
recently developed apps for Kinect and WPF, Windows Phone 7, and Azure-based web
sites with ASP.NET MVC. He also works with Judah Himango, who grooms Mike's llamas.
Mike enjoys playing hockey, writing music, and playing Halo: Reach every Monday
night #HaloReachMondays.
Vince Bullinger
Vince Bullinger is a Senior .Net Devloper with Anytime Fitness and has an MCSD for
.NET with C# who's been developing with Microsoft technologies for over five years.
In his spare time, he likes to work on the house and yard, work out, play video
games and learn everything there is to know about everything.
Brian Hugh
Brian Hugh has been a consultant/systems integrator for the past 17+ years, implementing
large enterprise solutions for companies in the Twin Cities. His company, Business
Technology Solutions, focuses on both the business and technology aspects of an
implementation project. His most famous project was the Revenue Control System/e-Park
for the Mpls./St. Paul Int'l Airport. Technologies include Oracle, Microsoft and
Open Source. Roles range from Application/Solution Architect, Analyst, Project Lead,
DBA, and Developer. He recently has been exploring the mobile development arena
on his own and with some of his clients.
Jon von Gillern
Jon is an IADNUG leader and consultant from West Des Moines, Iowa. He has been programing
for the past 15 years and currently infatuated with writing WPF and Silverlight
applications. Recently, Jon has created two tools that help .Net Developers write
better code – Nitriq Code Analysis (www.nitriq.com)
and Atomiq Duplicate Code Finder (www.getatomiq.com).
Chris Black
Chris Black is a lead developer who focuses on building cross platform interactive
content for mobile devices. His latest application runs on Android, iOS and the
BlackBerry PlayBook without any change in code by utilizing Adobe AIR. Chris has
spoken at a number of conferences both locally and internationally. He graduated
from the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire with a degree in Computer Science
and covers a number of topics relating to mobile development on his blog, blackcj.com.
Jon Stonecash
Jon Stonecash is a senior consultant at Magenic, a Microsoft Gold Partner consulting
company. Jon Stonecash has worked in software development for much longer than he
would like to admit. In that time Jon has had the opportunity to make most of the
serious software development mistakes at least once. He has programmed in over a
dozen languages including several different assembly languages, Fortran, COBOL,
SNOBOL, classic Visual Basic, VB.NET, and C#. He has survived the structured programming
revolution and the object-oriented revolutions. Jon's software development activities
have included the development of operating systems, scientific and engineering applications,
and enterprise systems. He has worked in every phase of software development from
the initial specification of requirements through to customer support. Along the
way, he picked up a BS in Mathematics and an MBA. He still has hopes of finding
something that he can be reasonably good at. His long term interests center about
databases and the aspects of the application that handle data access and business
logic. He is also interested in the tools and processes that assist the development
process. Jon can be reached at jons@magenic.com.
Jon also has an active blog on "Designing Out Loud in the .NET Space" at http://blog.magenic.com/blogs/jons/default.aspx.
Jason Strate
Jason Strate, Digineer Inc, is a database architect and administrator with over
fifteen years of experience. He is a recipient of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional
(MVP) for SQL Server since July, 2009. His experience includes design and implementation
of both OLTP and OLAP solutions as well as assessment and implementation of SQL
Server environments for best practices, performance, and high availability solutions.
Jason is a SQL Server MCITP and participated in the development of Microsoft Certification
exams for SQL Server 2008. Jason enjoys helping others in the SQL Server community
and does this by presenting at technical conferences and user group meetings. Most
recently, Jason has presented at the SSWUG Virtual Conferences, TechFuse, numerous
SQL Saturdays, and at PASSMN user group meetings. Jason is also a contributing author
for the Microsoft white paper "Empowering Enterprise Solutions with SQL Server 2008
Enterprise Edition." Jason is an active blogger with a focus on SQL Server and related
technologies.
Kenny Goers
Kenny is a Mobile Architect with the ITR Group working with mobile platforms since
1998. He has worked with Windows CE, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone, iPhones, iPads
and Android extensively in that time.
Joshua Ramirez
Joshua has over 10 years experience as a software engineer and consultant. He's
passionate about crafting highly integrated enterprise applications and service
oriented systems. Joshua is currently a senior consultant with ILM Professional
Services and has worked with firms across the Twin Cities such as General Mills,
US Bank, Lender Processing Services, and others.
Brad Candell
Brad Candell is an application and web architect with IDEXX Laboratories in Eau
Claire, WI. Brad has been developing software and web applications within the Microsoft
Ecosystem over the past 15 years, now focusing primarily in C#, ASP.NET MVC, WPF,
WCF, Windows Phone 7, Silverlight, and MEF. When not immersed in code, Brad enjoys
spending time with his wife and three children, camping, restoring antiques, or
making sawdust in his woodworking shop. Read more about Brad at www.BradCandell.com and follow Brad on Twitter - @bradcandell.