Speakers 2004

Louis Archambault, Microsoft   Louis is a consultant at Microsoft Canada and he’s working for more than 10 years in consulting and enterprise applications development. Since he joined Microsoft in 2001, Louis’s activities are oriented toward solutions architecture and development based on Content Management Server, Commerce Server, SharePoint Portal Server and Biztalk Server. Louis has given trainings on ASP.NET development, Content Management Server and SharePoint Portal Server.

Guy Barrette, Nurun   Guy Barrette is the Microsoft Team Lead at Nurun in Montreal. Nurun is one of largest consulting firm specializing in e-business solutions. He has been working with Visual Basic since the launch of version 3. His focus is on Web applications with Microsoft technologies like IIS, ASP.NET, Visual Basic.NET, C#, Visual Studio.NET, SQL Server, and Commerce Server. He worked on one of the largest and successful e-commerce site in Canada: www.archambault.ca. He's been a speaker at conferences and writes the .NET book review column on the Universal Thread Magazine (www.utmag.com). Guy is a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer. He is also president of the Montreal Visual Studio User Group (www.guvsm.net).

Scott Bellware, F1 Technologies   Scott Bellware is an independent consultant and mentor based in Austin, TX. Scott is a Microsoft MVP for C#, and the architect and developer of the Norpheme persistence framework for .NET. Scott is the Chairman of the International .NET Association’s (INETA) Speaker Committee, as well a founder and officer of both the Austin NET User Group, and the Austin Software Architecture User Group. He has given talks at technology groups on software quality, reuse, and object-relational persistence. Scott was a speaker at the DevTeach conference in 2003.

Alexandre Boudreault-Ferland, Azur Technologies   Alex is Chief Technology Officer for Azur Technologies, a Montreal-based company that specialize in automating the development of transactional web applications. He is a Microsoft technologies specialist and has participated in the architecture and development of many large-scale projects since 1998.

Richard Campbell, Campbell Associates   Richard Campbell is president of Campbell & Associates in Vancouver, British Columbia. He has more than 20 years experience working with computers and consults with numerous companies including Johnson & Johnson, Barnes&Noble.com and ADP. In addition to consulting on development issues, Richard speaks at a variety of conferences around the world. He is also a technical editor and columnist for Access-VB-SQL Advisor magazine.

Mario Cardinal, Mario Cardinal Consulting   Mario is an independent senior consultant specialized in enterprise application architecture. His primary areas of involvement are object-oriented software development, Unified Modeling Language (UML), design patterns, code generators and software development process. He spends most of his time training and mentoring companies to build well-designed enterprise .NET applications. He speaks frequently for technology user groups (most often for the Montreal Visual Studio User's Group), and writes articles in various technical journals. Mario holds Bachelor of Computer Engineering and Master of Technology Management degrees from the École Polytechnique in Montreal, Quebec. He also holds the titles of Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD) and Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT). Mario is based in Montreal, Canada. . www.mariocardinal.com.

Eric Coté, 3-Soft   Éric Côté is currently a technical trainer for 3-SOFT in Montreal. 3-SOFT is Canada's leading software reseller. The 3-SOFT Training Center is a tech paradise for Microsoft certified training, with its top-notch instructors and great downtown location. Consultant on the Microsoft platform for the last seven years, Éric Côté is now an expert on the .NET architecture. Eric holds many certifications (MCSD, MCDBA, MCT) and holds a degree from Université de Montreal (BSc). Eric's certified trainer status allowed him to instruct developers from many large corporations (Desjardins, Motorola, Bombardier, SoftImage, Télé-Quebec...) and to speak for Montreal's Visual Studio.NET user group. He’s impressed by all the new features that have been added to Longhorn, the future of Windows.

Jim Duffy, TakeNote Technologies   Jim Duffy is a Microsoft MVP, DotNetNuke Evangelist, and the president of TakeNote Technologies. TakeNote, a Developer's Choice Award winner for hands-on training, specializes in training and helping clients create business solutions with Microsoft enterprise technologies. Jim is a popular speaker due to his knowledge, humor, and quick-witted approach. He is an exceptional trainer, skilled developer, and has been published in a number of leading publications including CoDe Magazine (www.code-magazine.com). Jim's background also includes a Bachelors degree in Computer and Information Systems and over 20 years of programming and training experience. Jim is also co-host of Computers 2K4, a weekly call in radio show (AM 850 The Buzz) in Raleigh, NC.

Sylvain Duford, Avanade Canada   Sylvain Duford is a Senior Architect at Avanade Canada Inc. where he leads the Enterprise Integration Practice. He has been working in the information systems industry for 14 years and specializes in the design and implementation of Enterprise Application Integration solutions and Trading Partner Integration (B2B) solutions using Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET, SQL Server, BizTalk Server, Sharepoint Portal Server, and Commerce Server. Sylvain is an experienced public speaker and an MSDN Regional Director.

Tom Eberhard, CPU Inc.   Thomas Eberhard is the owner of CPU Inc and CIO of InfoLink Screening Services, Inc. He has been working with computers for over 24 years and writing applications in languages long before Visual Basic. During the last 5 years Thomas has worked with Visual Basic, VFP, SQL Server, ASP, COM/ COM+ to create Web applications for smaller and medium size companies, taking legacy systems to the Web. A lot of his applications use advanced object–oriented techniques. Thomas is currently working on re-designing and programming several projects with the .NET platform, taking extensive use of its OOP capabilities, tiered design and advanced business-to-business communications models. He is a frequent speaker at industry events such as VSConnections and VBConnections. He is also a coauthor of OOP Building Reusable Components with VB NET by Microsoft Press.

Markus Egger, EPS Software Corp.   Markus Egger is the owner of EPS Software Corporation and specializes in object-oriented development, Internet development, training and consulting. He has written numerous articles for publications including Fuchs, FoxTalk, FoxPro Advisor and Microsoft Office & Database Journal. Markus is Publisher of CoDe Magazine, a .NET publication focusing in technologies such as COM+, .NET and Web Development. He is the author of Advanced Object Oriented Programming with Visual FoxPro 6.0, from Hentzenwerke.

Samih Fadli, CGI   Samih Fadli is a Principal E-Business Solutions Architect and Microsoft.NET Practice Leader at CGI Group in Montreal. CGI Group is one the four biggest consulting companies in North America. Samih has 11 years experience in n-tier application design using software patterns within 8 years of e-business consulting, software design, development and architecture. In 2000, Samih Fadli started working with Microsoft.NET technologies when the first beta was announced and made available. This has allowed Samih Fadli to even complete and deliver .NET based solutions to customers when others were still on the learning curve or not started with Microsoft.NET technologies.

Carl Franklins, Franklin's Net   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 & Gary’s VB Home Page. He now teaches hands-on VB .NET classes for his company, Franklins.Net. He has taught developers from Citigroup, Aetna, Fidelity Investments, Fleet Bank, Foxwoods Casino, UTC, Hubbell, Microsoft, Mohegan Sun Casino, Northeast Utilities, to name a few. Carl is co-host of a weekly talk show on his website for .NET programmers called .NET Rocks! Carl is MSDN Regional Director for Connecticut.

Cathi Gero, Prenia Software and Consulting Services   Cathi Gero, C.P.A., is founder and development director of Prenia Corporation, providing custom software applications, training, and architectural designing to businesses and developers. Cathi is a Microsoft C# MVP and is an active member of the .NET community. She has extensive experience developing applications using the .NET Framework, Visual FoxPro, SQL Server, and Crystal Reports as well as other technologies. She is a speaker at national conferences, author of white papers for Microsoft, and technical editor for the book '.NET For VFP Developers'. She also has a monthly column, “Cathi Gero’s .NET Tips” which appears in Universal Thread Magazine. Most of the year Cathi travels to various companies providing onsite training, mentoring, and development experience.

Tamar Granor, Tomorrow's Solutions   Tamar E. Granor, Ph.D., owner of Tomorrow's Solutions, LLC, works with other developers through consulting and subcontracting. Editor of FoxPro Advisor magazine from 1994 to 2000, she is currently Technical Editor and co-author of the popular Advisor Answers column. Tamar is co-author of Hacker's Guide to Visual FoxPro 7, New Features in Visual FoxPro 7 and several other books. She is Technical Editor of Visual FoxPro Certification Exams Study Guide. Her books are available from Hentzenwerke Publishing (www.hentzenwerke.com). Tamar, a Microsoft Certified Professional and Microsoft Support Most Valuable Professional, speaks frequently about Visual FoxPro at conferences and user groups.

Doug Hennig, Stonefield Systems Group Inc.   Doug Hennig is a partner with Stonefield Systems Group Inc. He is the author of the award-winning Stonefield Database Toolkit (SDT), the award-winning Stonefield Query, and the CursorAdapter and DataEnvironment builders that come with Microsoft Visual FoxPro 8. Doug is co-author of “What’s New in Visual FoxPro 8.0”, “The Hacker’s Guide to Visual FoxPro 7.0”, and “What’s New in Visual FoxPro 7.0”. He was the technical editor of “The Hacker’s Guide to Visual FoxPro 6.0” and “The Fundamentals”. All of these books are from Hentzenwerke Publishing. Doug writes the monthly “Reusable Tools” column in FoxTalk. He has spoken at every Microsoft FoxPro Developers Conference (DevCon) since 1997 and at user groups and developer conferences all over North America. He is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) and Certified Professional (MCP).

Rob Howard, Microsoft   Rob Howard is a Program Manager on the Microsoft ASP.NET team. He has contributed to ASP.NET features such as Session State, Web Services, and Caching as well as many of the new features coming in ASP.NET 2.0. Rob is also a community lead/evangelist for ASP.NET and works closely with groups such as the ASPInsiders, Microsoft MVPs, and community User Groups to continuously grow ASP.NET developer resources. He additionally is a frequent presenter at conferences, and has recently contributed to books such as ‘Microsoft ASP.NET Coding Strategies with the Microsoft ASP.NET Team’ from Microsoft Press and the ‘ASP.NET Developer’s Cookbook’ from SAMs.

Tom Howe, Control Center, Inc.   Tom Howe is a principal in two companies, Control Center Computing, Inc. and the Legal Technology Group. Both companies offer products and services to law firms, corporate legal departments and state attorney offices throughout the United States. He specializes in application development using ASP.NET, Web Service with SQL Server. He is a regular speaker at Developer Conferences around the world including Microsoft Tech*Ed, Microsoft Exchange Conferences, Informant Conferences, Advisor Conferences, Connection Conferences and others. Tom also co-authored "Access 2000 and 2002 Development Unleashed" by SAMS Publishing and is the technical editor of the Advisor Media .NET journal. He is also an attorney and holds a J.D. degree.

Dan Jurden, EPS Software   Dan Jurden is a Senior Application Developer for EPS-Software Corp located in Houston, Texas. He is a Microsoft Certified Professional. He co-authored the book Creating Visual FoxPro Applications using Visual FoxExpress with BOb Archer, published by Hentzenwerke Publishing. Dan also was the Technical Editor for CrysDev: A Developer’s Guide to Integrating Crystal Reports also published by Hentzenwerke Publishing. He has also written articles published in CoDe Magazine and Universal Thread Magazine dealing with SQL Server and other topics. Dan has presented topics at the German DevCon 2002, Essential Fox, SQL Server Live!, and GLGDW conferences. He has been developing Client-Server applications using SQL Server and Crystal Reports for over 7 years.

Djamel Kacel, Microsoft Canada   Djamel Kacel is a senior consultant at Microsoft Canada. Djamel has more than 11 years of experience in the field of information technology consulting and software development. Since he joined Microsoft in 1999, Djamel has successfully guided Microsoft’s largest enterprise customers clients in the architecture and development of distributed .NET applications, especially with .NET servers such as BizTalk. Djamel has given trainings on .NET, Web Services, BizTalk Server, Commerce Server and Identity and integration server (MIIS)

Don Kiely, Information Insights   Don Kiely, MVP, MCSD, MSDE, is a senior technology consultant specializing in developing desktop and Web applications that integrate databases, Microsoft Office, and related technologies, using tools including SQL Server, Visual Basic, ASP.NET and XML. Don has authored and co-authored several programming books, including Visual Basic Visual Basic 6 Client/Server How-To and Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to the Windows Registry. He writes regularly for many industry journals, including InformationWeek, IEEE Computer magazine, Visual Studio .NET (VBPJ), and many other magazines. Don trains developers and speaks regularly at industry conferences, including TechEd, VSLive!, DevConnections, and others. He earned a BS in Civil Engineering from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA from the University of Colorado, but fortunately learned the error of his establishment ways. In his spare time he roams the Alaska wilderness by foot, dog sled, skis, and kayak, with his dogs Mardy and Izzi.

Kevin Kline, Quest Software   Kevin Kline is the Director of Technology for the SQL Server Solutions group at Quest Software, a leading provider of database management and application monitoring tools. Kevin is also the President of the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS - www.sqlpass.org) and frequently contributes to database technology magazines, web sites, and discussion forums. Kevin's popular book "SQL in a Nutshell" by O'Reilly & Associates (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/sqlnut/) is going into its second edition this fall. Kevin is also the author of "Transact-SQL Programming" (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/wintrnssql/). When he’s not working, Kevin likes to romance his wife, play to his four young kids, write, and garden.

Nickolas Landry, Active Nick .NET   Nickolas Landry is an independent consultant and software architect based in Montreal, Canada. Aside from his work in designing and building mobile business solutions using Microsoft .NET technologies, he publishes articles, case studies and white papers, performs system audits, does R&D work and profiles technologies for various corporate scenarios. Nickolas’ primary goal is to help businesses connect their information, systems and people together in a seamless integration to achieve complete enterprise agility. With more than 12 years of professional experience – starting with Visual Basic 1.0 – and a career almost entirely dedicated to Microsoft technologies, his current fields of specialty include .NET mobility, component-based development, XML Web Services, as well as BizTalk and Microsoft CRM development. Nickolas is the author of “Mobile CoDe.NET” articles on mobile development with .NET for CoDe Magazine, and has been a technical editor for many books titles. Known for his dynamic and engaging style, Nickolas was MSDN Regional Director for Microsoft in Montreal, teaches classes on .NET, Web services and mobility, and is a frequent speaker at major software development conferences worldwide. He is a Founding Member of the Worldwide Institute of Software Architects (www.wwisa.org), has been Microsoft certified since 1995 and is also an IBM Certified Developer on XML. www.activenick.net

Claudio Lassala, Eps Software Corporation   Claudio Lassala is a Senior Developer at EPS Software Corp. and a part time Universal Thread Consultant. He has presented several lectures at Microsoft events as well as several conferences and user groups in Brazil and North America. He is a Microsoft MVP, MCAD, and also a columnist at MSDN Brazil. He is also the author of several training videos for VFP that can be found in the Universal Thread, and have several articles published in various magazines.

Joe Lax, DB Directions   Joseph Lax is the principal of DB Directions, a company specializing in all aspects of database architecture from design through implementation. Joe got involved with databases when he realized that there was actually a job description where he could put his paranoia to good use. Since then, he has spent the last twelve years providing expertise on performance optimization, test design, and backup and recovery strategies to his clients. He has managed mission critical systems for banks, telecommunication firms, and manufacturing companies and most of the time, he’s managed to get a good night’s sleep while doing so. Joe shares his knowledge of SQL Server with the general public through articles in VBPJ and online at www.devx.com where he serves as the “SQL Server Pro”. He has also delivered customized educational training classes on SQL Server to clients and spoken at conferences and user groups. His enthusiasm for all things database related has even caused him to bite the bullet and learn Oracle too.

Rock Legendre, WX3data Consulting   Rock Legendre, an independent consultant located in the Drummondville area, specializes in system integration and the development of Windows and Web supported database transactional applications. He has successfully developed various types of applications in finance, the automobile industry, Web services, COM objects and B2B systems. Specialized in Microsoft products, he masters a variety of tools, such as Microsoft Visual FoxPro, Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Visual Studio .Net (C#). Rock is vice-president of Montreal FoxPro User’s Group (MFUG) and webmaster of SQL Server Montreal Users’ Group (SSMUG).

Julia Lerman, The Data Farm   Julia Lerman is the owner of Julia Lerman, Inc (dba The Data Farm) and has been developing software applications and consulting to businesses since 1984. Julia is a Microsoft .NET MVP, an ASPInsider, the founder and leader of the Vermont .NET users group (www.vtdotnet.org) and Chair of the User Group Relations Committee for INETA (International .Net Association) www.ineta.org. She is a contributor to Visual Studio Magazine, MSDNAA.com and DotNetJunkies.com and in her pre-Visual Basic days, FoxPro Advisor. She is also the author of a widely read weblog with information on .NET, Tablet PC Development and other technical (and not-so-technical topics) at www.julialermaninc.com/blog.

Igor Lozhkin, Arnica Software Corporation   Igor Lozhkin is a Principal of Arnica Software Corporation, a Toronto-based software company specializing in developing data-driven web-based applications. Igor and his team have been developing mission-critical data-driven applications using VFP and SQL Server for over a decade. In the last few years his company has made a successful transition from traditional client/server architecture to a multi-tier web-based system, with C#, VFP, ASP.NET/ASP as main development tools. Igor is the architect behind Arnica’s products, including Arnica WebFramework, web portal and web reporting tools, and technologies, such as clustering, single sign-on, asynchronous reporting and others. Igor provides strategic consulting and training to many companies in Canada and the US, helping them build web-based data-driven systems or successfully migrate to web technologies. He is a Microsoft Certified Professional, and holds a Ph.D in Technology.

Andrew MacNeill, AKSEL Solutions   Andrew MacNeill is owner of AKSEL Solutions, specializing in developer and end-user development and training for Visual FoxPro and web-based solutions. He is a technical editor at FoxPro Advisor and has been writing since 1995 for various magazines around the world. He has been a speaker at various conferences and user groups.

Jean-Claude Manoli   Jean-Claude Manoli is an independent software architecture consultant with over 15 years of experience and has worked for clients including Unisys (Switzerland), Microsoft (Seattle) and the McGill University Health Centre (Montreal). For the last three years, he has been working full time with the .NET Framework and C#, and has helped several companies making the move to .NET.

Beth Massi, GiftRAP Corporation   Beth Massi is a senior Microsoft .NET software architect for a health care software product company called GiftRAP Corporation. She is currently working on distributed applications and frameworks using Visual Basic NET, ASP.NET, SQL-Server, and Visual FoxPro 8. In the past she has worked for the Visual FoxPro team at Microsoft and has been a consultant for Flash Creative Management. She has helped build back office infrastructures and front-end web sites using Visual FoxPro, SQL-Server, Visual Basic and other Microsoft web technologies. She is well-versed in distributed application development, and has given presentations and written articles on distributed application architectures. She has worked on various projects including developing object-oriented middle-tier frameworks, COM, .NET, and Web-based applications using Microsoft development tools.

Kevin McNeish, Oak Leaf Enterprises, Inc.   Kevin McNeish is President and Chief Software Architect of Oak Leaf Enterprises, Inc, and a Microsoft C# MVP. He is co-author of the book "Professional UML with Visual Studio .NET", and author of the book ".NET for Visual FoxPro Developers". He is the creator of the Mere Mortals Framework for .NET and for Visual FoxPro, which won the Universal Thread's User Choice Award for "Best Framework". He is also a well known speaker and trainer throughout North American and Europe. He spends about half his time on the road training and mentoring companies to build well-designed, high-performance .NET desktop, Internet and Smart Device applications

Rushabh Mehta, Raymond James and Associates   Rushabh Mehta is a member of the IT Strategic Development team at Raymond James, working on implementing a multi-terabyte Business Intelligence system on 64 bit platform. A former technology consultant, Rushabh has led design, development and implementation efforts on several large enterprise client-server systems as well as decision support systems, which include predictive analysis systems, using Microsoft technologies such as Analysis Services, OLAP and SQL Server. His specialization includes business intelligence, data architecture & design and data quality improvement. Rushabh has also mentored many SQL Server developers and has taught SQL Server and Business Intelligence related courses. He has also helped create multiple development standards for SQL and DTS development and is currently working on writing white papers on configuration management in Yukon DTS for Microsoft. Rushabh is also a recognized speaker for PASS and is also an active volunteer and mentor for PASS chapters in India.

Eric Moreau, Concept S2i Inc.   Eric Moreau is a Senior Consultant for Concept S2i inc., a consulting company in Montreal. He holds Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD) and Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) certifications. He is mainly programming client/server applications using VB and MS SQL Server (and all the stuff surrounding it) particularly for the banking industry. He works with VB since version 4 and teaches it since version 5. He is a member of the Montreal Visual Studio User Group (www.guvsm.net) where he gives some sessions.

Ed Musters, EnvisageInc.com Consulting and Software   “Where more than 2 developers are gathered in .NET’s name, Ed will be there.” Ed Musters is and independent consultant and trainer, and serves as Chief Technology Officer for both a consulting firm Systemgroup Management Services (http://www.systemgroupinc.com) and for a product company Association Server (http://www.AssociationServer.com). Ed is President of the Toronto .NET User Group (http://www.TorontoUG.net) – one of the largest in North America boasting over 1000 members and regular meeting attendance of over 150 developers. Ed has extensive experience using the Microsoft Solutions Framework to empower development teams: Industry-leading processes, principles, and best practices for successfully delivering information technology solutions faster, with fewer people, less risk, while enabling higher quality results. Ed’s authoring credits include Wrox Professional .NET Framework and articles for Pinnacle .NET Developer. Speaking credits include Microsoft Tech Ed 2002, The .NET Show on YTV Television, Developer Days (numerous), local MSDN events, and North America wide MSDN Web Casts. Ed would is looking forward to the opportunity to speak with you!

Ted Neward   Ted Neward is an independent software development architect and mentor in the Sacramento, California area. He is the author of a number of books, including "Server-Based Java Programming" (Manning), the forthcoming "Effective Enterprise Java" (Addison-Wesley) and "SSCLI Essentials" (OReilly) and co-author of "C# In a Nutshell" (OReilly) with Peter Drayton and Ben Albahari. He is also an instructor with DevelopMentor, where he teaches and authors both the Java and .NET curriculum. He speaks frequently for technology user groups (most often for the Sacramento Java User's Group), and writes technical papers for www.javageeks.com and www.clrgeeks.com. He currently labors on behalf of the University of California, Davis, architecting a rebuild of the Davis Accounting and Financial Information Services software system. Past clients include companies like Pacific Bell, EdFund, Synergex and Intuit.

Rod Paddock, Dash Point Software, Inc.   Rod is president and founder of Dash Point Software, Inc. DPSI is an award winning software company based in Seattle, WA, specializing in application development and software training. Dash Point specializes in Visual Studio .NET, VB 6, Visual FoxPro, and SQL Server development. Dash Point Software was the winner of the 1999 Visual FoxPro Excellence Award and a finalist in 1998. Dash Point was also a finalist in 1996 at Windows World Open. 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 XML Connections conference in October 2002. Rod is the editor for CoDe Magazine and his writing credits include articles for database publications such as Data Based Advisor, FoxTalk and Dbase Advisor. He has also authored a number of books including Visual Basic 5 for Web Development, Visual Basic 6 for Web Development, and Visual FoxPro 6.0 Enterprise Development. Rod is also the V.P. of Technology for Red Matrix Technologies and the architectural visionary behind the DataClas middle-tier component and SQLAudit product lines.

Les Pinter, Pinter Consulting   While working toward a Ph.D. in economics at Rice University in Houston, Texas, Les Pinter teamed up with two high-school friends to market the fourth word processing program ever written for microcomputers - the Magic Wand. A year later, Les had sold the Magic Wand to a 23-year-old Bill Gates and began Pinter Consulting. He bought copy number 253 of FoxBASE, and published a newsletter about FoxBASE and FoxPro for over 10 years, including a Russian edition. Les continues to publish articles on FoxPro, SQL, VB.NET and ASP.NET on his website and in Les Pinter's Database Journal, a bimonthly newsletter. Les has been a speaker at numerous FoxPro conferences in the US, Mexico, France, Spain, Russia and Canada. He gives seminars in five languages, most recently at the MCFUG FoxPro Developer's Seminar in Mexico City, where Pinter Consulting de Mexico's corporate office is located. Les lives in San Mateo, California with his wife Ying-Ying Chang. He is a private pilot, and once played lead guitar in the road band for Jerry Lee Lewis.

Roman Rehak, Competitive Computing   Roman Rehak is a senior developer at Competitive Computing in Burlington, VT. He specializes in SQL Server development, database performance tuning and writing DBMS utilities. He regularly contributes SQL Server related articles to Visual Studio Magazine and other technical publications. He is an active member of Professional Association for SQL Server, he was a speaker at the last PASS conference and this year he was selected to be the track leader for the "Database & Application Development" track for the upcoming "2003 PASS Community Summit" conference in Seattle. Roman holds multiple Microsoft certification titles and is currently working on upgrading his certifications to .NET.

Marcie Robillard, Datagrid Girl

Carol Roy, Microsoft   Carol Roy is working for Microsoft Canada since three years. His actual role is .NET Architect Specialist for the public sector. In this role, Mister Roy is working with architects to show them how they can leverage Smart Client application, Web Services and Service Oriented Architecture with .NET. Before Microsoft, Mister Roy spent eleven (11) years in IT consulting in developing and architecting solutions on n-tier client/server, graphical user interface, object-oriented and transactional web site. Mister Roy gained this experience with large organization like Air Canada, Hydro-Québec, Desjardins and Quebec’s government.

Martín Salías, Universal Thread   Martín Salías (Buenos Aires, Argentina) is Research & Development Director at Merino Aller, a software company producing ERP and MRP applications for the Latin-American and Spanish markets. He has twenty years as a developer and has used all versions of FoxPro since FoxBase+, and several other languages from Assembler and C to C# and VB.Net. He is also the Editor in Chief for Universal Thread Magazine.

Joel Semeniuk, ImagiNET Resources Corp.   Joel Semeniuk is a founder and VP of Software Development at ImagiNET Resources Corp, a Manitoba based Microsoft Gold Partner in Ecommerce and Enterprise Systems. Joel is also the Microsoft Regional Director for Winnipeg, Manitoba. With a degree in Computer Science from the University of Manitoba, Joel has spent the last twelve years providing educational, development and infrastructure consulting services to clients throughout North America. Joel is the author of “Exchange and Outlook: Constructing Collaborative Solutions”, from New Riders Publishing and contributing author of “Microsoft Visual Basic.NET 2003 KickStart” from SAMS. Joel has also acted as a technical reviewer on many other books and regularly writes articles for .NET Magazine and Exchange and Outlook Magazine on a variety of infrastructure and development related topics.

Dominic Sevigny, CGI   Dominic is a Senior Developer at CGI in Montreal. CGI is the largest consulting firm in IT in Canada. For the past six years, Dominic has concentrated his specialization strictly on Microsoft Technologies and for the past three on .NET Technology. He has carried out several major projects in the past and the most recent one, being the biggest, a .NET project at La Fédération des Caisses Desjardins du Québec in Montreal. Being MCSD certified on Visual Studio 6, he has now acquired his MCAD certification on the .NET technology. In addition to his accomplishments he was a key speaker at many events, in part, the Montreal Visual Studio User Group.

Drew Speedie, Vision Data Solutions. Inc.   Drew develops Visual FoxPro applications and provides technical direction on FoxPro projects at Vision Data Solutions, Inc. He is the chief architect of the Visual MaxFrame Professional application framework and is also responsible for creating VDSI's VFP and VMP training classes. For the past several years, Drew has been a contributing editor to FoxPro Advisor Magazine. He has been a judge for the Visual FoxPro Excellence Awards each of the years they have been awarded. Drew is a frequent speaker at various international FoxPro events.

Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies   Rick Strahl is president of West Wind Technologies on Maui, Hawaii. The company specializes in Web and distributed application development and tools with focus on Windows 2000, ISAPI, Visual FoxPro, .NET and Visual Studio. Rick is author of West Wind Web Connection, a powerful and widely used Web application framework for Visual FoxPro and West Wind HTML Help Builder, a documentation tool for developers. He's also a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional, and a frequent contributor to magazines and books. He is co-publisher and co-editor of Code magazine, and his book, "Internet Applications with Visual FoxPro 6.0", is published by Hentzenwerke Publishing.

Michiel Van Otegem, ASPNL   Michiel van Otegem is Software Architect for The Vision Web, a solution provider in based in the Netherlands. He is specialized in Microsoft and XML technologies, and writes articles for magazines and websites about these technologies. He is also a frequent seminar speaker, and the author of Sams Teach Yourself XSLT in 21 Days. Michiel is a very active member of the ASP and .NET community, both on forums and mailinglists, as well as through the Dutch community website ASPNL.com, which he co-founded. For his work in the community Michiel has received the Microsoft MVP Award for ASP.NET. In his spare time Michiel is the president of the Dutch .NET user group, dotNED, and on the speaker bureau for the International .NET Association (INETA).

Christian Weyer, Christian Weyer: Web Services & .NET   Christian Weyer is a recognized XML, Web services and service orientation expert. As a Microsoft MVP and one of the few independent Microsoft Regional Directors, he has made a name for himself in the developer community. He has worked for many years with Microsoft technologies like COM/DCOM, COM+ and .NET. Christian is a speaker at many well known developer conferences and forums and is a book author, as well as an editor and writer of numerous articles for various German and international technical magazines. Visit his Weblog (http://weblogs.asp.net/cweyer/) to find out more new and interesting information about Web services and SOP/SOA.

Kurt Windisch, Levi, Ray & Shoup, Inc.   Kurt Windisch is a senior technical specialist with Levi, Ray & Shoup, Inc. (MCSP and CTEC), an information technology firm based out of Springfield, Illinois (www.lrs.com). He has over 13 years of experience in IT and is currently a DBA and web application developer for LRS's internal IT department. Kurt is on the Professional Association for SQL Server's (PASS) board of directors, holds an MSCD certification, has written for SQL Server Professional, and has presented at the past five PASS North America conferences.

Speaker Archive