Sessions and Speakers are subject to change without notice
Itzik Ben-Gan, Solid Quality Mentors Itzik Ben-Gan is a Mentor and Founder of Solid Quality Learning. A SQL Server Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) since 1999, Itzik has delivered numerous training events around the world focused on T-SQL Querying, Query Tuning and Programming. Itzik is the author of Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: T-SQL Querying (MSPress), Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: T-SQL Programming (MSPress), and a co-author of Advanced Transact-SQL for SQL Server 2000 (APress). He has written many articles for SQL Server Magazine as well as articles and whitepapers for MSDN.
Girish Chander, Microsoft Bio not available
Joe Chang, Elemental, Inc. Joe Chang is a freelance consultant specializing in database, architecture, and SQL Server performance and scalability. Joe has over 10 years experience in software, database, and server system performance analysis. Joe previously worked at Intel on Microsoft Exchange scalability with 8-way SMP servers and at Insignia Solutions on Windows NT performance analysis.
Gert Drapers, SQLDEV.net Gert Drapers is a Software Architect in the SQL Server Development group at Microsoft. As a member of the SQL Server Customer Advisory Team, he is involved in providing architecture design guidance and performance tuning for the largest and most challenging SQL Server deployments in the world. Gert brings extensive experience in the areas of application development, database management, data loading, and performance tuning of VLDB environments. Prior to his current position, Gert was working as Software Architect in the .NET Developer Division, responsible for the design and development of the next generation transaction manager and programming model. He started working on SQL Server in 1988 while working for Ashton-Tate. He joined Microsoft in 1991 where he held various development positions within the Developer Relation Group and Microsoft Consulting Services before joining the SQL Server development team in 1996. Gert worked on both SQL Server 7.0 and 2000; first as Software Design Engineer in the SQL Server Storage Engine and later as the Product Unit Manager of the SQL Server Management Tools team and as Architect of SQL Server DTS.
Donald Farmer, Microsoft Donald Farmer has worked in Microsoft Business Intelligence for 9 years, working on several teams and technologies in that time. Mr. Farmer is a popular speaker at international events for both business and technical audiences, with a wide range of interests including data integration, information quality, metadata intelligence, master data management and predictive analytics. He is a Guest Professor at the College of Software and Information Science, Southwestern University at Chongqing, China and is the author of a number of books and articles. Prior to joining Microsoft, Donald worked not only in Business Intelligence but in fields as varied as medieval archaeology and fish-farming.
Carl Franklin, Franklins.Net Visual Studio Connections Conference Co-Chair Carl Franklin, the Visual Basic Track chairperson, has been a figurehead in the VB community since the very early days when he wrote for BasicPro Magazine, which then became Visual Basic Programmers Journal. He authored the Q&A column of that magazine. He authored many feature articles for VBPJ and other magazines on topics such as graphics, serial communications, and sockets programming. 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. Carl is MSDN Regional Director for Connecticut, and has a close relationship with the New England Microsoft Office. His students rave about his teaching abilities and vast knowledge of .NET carl@franklins.net
Ken Getz, MCW Technologies Ken Getz is a senior consultant with MCW Technologies and splits his time between programming, writing, and training. He specializes in tools and applications written in Visual Studio .NET and Visual Basic. Ken has written many technical books, including ASP.NET Developers Jumpstart (Addison-Wesley) with Paul D. Sheriff, and is co-author of several best selling books, including Access 2002 Developer’s Handbooks with Paul Litwin and Mike Gunderloy, Visual Basic Language Developer’s Handbook with Mike Gilbert, and VBA Developer’s Handbook with Mike Gilbert (Sybex). He co-wrote several training courses for Application Developers Training Company (AppDev), including Visual Basic .NET, ASP.NET, Access 2000 and 97, Visual Basic 6, and Visual Basic 5. He has also recorded video training for AppDev covering VB .NET, ASP.NET, VB6, Access 2000, and Access 97. Ken is a frequent speaker at technical conferences and has spoken often at Microsoft’s TechEd conference. Ken also is a technical editor for Access-VB-SQL Advisor Magazine and a columnist for asp.netPRO Magazine and CoDe Magazine. You can reach Ken at keng@mcwtech.com.
Billy Hollis, Author Billy Hollis is co-author of the first book ever published on Visual Basic. NET, VB.NET Programming on the Public Beta, from Wrox Press, as well as numerous other books and articles on .NET. His most recent book is Fast Track Visual Basic .NET. He writes a monthly column for MSDN Online, and is heavily involved in training, consultation, and software development on the Microsoft .NET platform, focusing on smart-client development and commercial packages. He frequently speaks at industry conferences such as Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference (PDC), TechEd, and Comdex. Billy is also a member of the INETA (International .NET Association of user groups) speaker’s bureau and speaks at user group meetings all over the country.
Andrew Kelly, Solid Quality Mentors Andrew J. Kelly is a Mentor and Partner with Solid Quality Mentors™ based out of Myrtle Beach SC. He has over 20 years experience with relational databases and application development on both Unix and Windows platforms. He has been a SQL Server MVP since 2001. In addition to general SQL Server training and mentoring he specializes in Performance, Scalability and Maintainability of large scale SQL Servers.
Don Kiely, Senior Technology Consultant Don Kiely, MCSD, is a senior technology consultant, building custom applications as well as providing business and technology consulting services. His development work involves tools such as SQL Server, Visual Basic, C#, ASP.NET, and Microsoft Office. He writes regularly for several trade journals, including Visual Studio Magazine and Advisor Media, Inc., is a top poster and moderator on the www.asp.net community forums, and trains developers in .NET technologies. When he isn’t living and breathing technology, he is exploring the Alaska wilderness with his dogs Mardy and Izzi, hiking, whitewater kayaking, skiing, and searching for the perfect sun dog. You can reach Don at donkiely@computer.org.
Christian Kleinerman, Microsoft Christian Kleinerman has close to 10 years of experience working with SQL Server - the last five as part of the SQL Server development team in Redmond, WA. He is currently a Program Manager in the relational engine team where he has worked on a variety of features and technologies. Before Microsoft he worked on eCommerce Web site development and previously was co-founder of a development company specializing on scheduling software.
Kevin Kline, Quest Software Kevin Kline is the Director of SQL Server Solutions at Quest Software, a leading provider of award-winning tools for database management and application monitoring on the SQL Server platform. Kevin is also the President of the international Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS - www.sqlpass.org) and frequently contributes to database technology magazines, web sites, and discussion forums. Kevin's most popular book is "SQL in a Nutshell" published by O'Reilly & Associates (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/sqlnut2/). Kevin is also the author of "Transact-SQL Programming" (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/wintrnssql/) and three other books on database technologies. Kevin is a top rated speaker, appearing at international conferences like Microsoft TechEd, DevTeach, PASS, Microsoft IT Forum, and SQL Connections. When he’s not working, Kevin likes to romance his wife, play with his four kids, write, and garden.
Brian Larson, Superior Consulting Services, LLC Brian Larson has 23 years of experience in the computer industry and 19 years experience as a consultant creating custom database applications. He is currently the Chief of Technology for Superior Consulting Services in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a Microsoft Consulting Partner for Reporting Services. Brian served as a member of the Reporting Services development team as a consultant to Microsoft. In that role, he contributed to the original code base of Reporting Services. Brian has presented seminars and provided training and mentoring on Reporting Services and business intelligence across the country. A contributor and former columnist for SQL Server Magazine, Brian is also the author of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services and Delivering Business Intelligence with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 both from McGraw-Hill Professional.
Julie Lerman, The Data Farm Julie Lerman is a Microsoft MVP, .NET mentor and consultant who lives in the hills of Vermont. You can find Julie presenting on data access and other Microsoft .NET topics at user groups and conferences around the world. Julie blogs at thedatafarm.com/blog, is the author of the highly acclaimed "Programming Entity Framework (with a second edition coming soon) and authors the MSDN Magazine "Data Points" column. Follow Julie on twitter at julielerman.
Michele Leroux Bustamante, IDesign, Inc. Michèle Leroux Bustamante is Chief Architect of IDesign Inc., Microsoft Regional Director for San Diego, and a Microsoft MVP for Connected Systems. At IDesign Michele provides training, mentoring and high-end architecture consulting services focusing on scalable and secure architecture design for .NET, web services, interoperability, federated security scenarios, CardSpace, and globalization architecture. Michele participates in Software Design Reviews for products in the Microsoft roadmap, including WCF, CardSpace and other security-focused products. During the Beta 1 phase Michele participated in prototyping elements of the CardSpace technology for the product team. She is a member of the International .NET Speakers Association (INETA), a frequent conference presenter, conference chair for SD West, and is frequently published in several major technology journals. Michele is also on the board of directors for IASA (International Association of Software Architects), and a Program Advisor and instructor for UCSD Extension. Her latest book is Learning WCF (O’Reilly 2007) – see her book blog here: http://thatindigogirl.com. Reach her at mlb@idesign.net, or visit www.idesign.net and her main blog at www.dasblonde.net.
Paul Litwin, Deep Training Paul Litwin is a developer specializing in ASP.NET, C#, SQL Server, SQL Server Reporting Services, and related technologies. Paul is a Programmer Manager with Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. He is also the owner of Deep Training, a developer owned training company specializing in .NET developer training (www.deeptraining.com). Paul has authored a number of books and training courses on ASP.NET, SQL Server Reporting Services, and Micrsoft Access. Paul is the conference chair of Microsoft ASP.NET Connections, a Microsoft MVP, and a member of the INETA Speakers Bureau. He has spoken at a number of conferences and code camps, including Microsoft ASP.NET Connections, TechEd, and Seattle Code Camp.
Juval Lowy, IDesign, Inc. Juval Lowy is a software architect and the principal of IDesign (www.idesign.net), specializing in .NET 3.0 architecture consulting and advanced .NET 3.0 training. Juval is Microsoft’s Regional Director for the Silicon Valley, working with Microsoft on helping the industry adopt .NET 3.5. His latest book is Programming WCF Services 2nd Edition (O’Reilly 2008). Juval participates in the Microsoft internal design reviews for future versions of .NET and related technologies. Juval published numerous articles regarding almost every aspect of .NET development, and is a frequent presenter at development conferences. Microsoft recognized Juval as a Software Legend as one of the world’s top .NET experts and industry leaders.
Douglas McDowell, Solid Quality Learning Douglas McDowell is the Director of Business Intelligence at Solid Quality Learning, a SQL Server MVP and an author and contributing editor for SQL Server Magazine. He has spent over 6 years dedicated to the delivery of Business Intelligence solutions on the Microsoft SQL Server platform and is very active contributor to the SQL Server community. Douglas organizes Atlanta.mdf, a thriving, Atlanta-based Professional Association of SQL Server (PASS) chapter with a membership of over 700 professionals; he speaks about Business Intelligence at numerous technical conferences, user groups and professional groups each year and has been very involved in delivering SQL Server 2005 awareness events and trainings throughout the world and online. Douglas enjoys delivering client value using the SQL Server business intelligence and data warehousing platform as a mentor, solution architect, and project manager.
Brian Moran, Solid Quality Learning Brian Moran is a Principal Mentor and co-founder of Solid Quality Learning, a partnership devoted to offering the most in-depth high quality SQL Server training in the world. Brian is a SQL Server MVP, president of the Washington DC SQL Server Users Group, and a columnist for SQL Server Magazine. Brian specializes in SQL Server performance tuning and data tier architecture. He can be reached at brian@solidqualitylearning.com.
Russ Nemhauser, Nemhauser Media, Inc. Russ Nemhauser is a Microsoft ASP.NET MVP and a Microsoft Certified Professional, and has served as an Architect, Developer, Team Leader, and Project Manager over the past several years. His projects have included enterprise applications, online commerce sites, and corporate intranets for Wall Street, Universal Studios, Microsoft, Seagram, and others. Russ actively participates in the development community through public speaking and technical writing.
Paul Nielsen, Compassion International Paul is a Microsoft SQL Server MVP and author of SQL Server 2008 Bible. Paul focuses on data architecture and the design and development of high-transaction OLTP databases. As an architect, Paul developed Nordic O/R DBMS (Microsoft Architecture Journal No. 8.) As a performance tuning and optimization consultant, Paul has helped scores of organizations improve their databases and he recently designed and coded a database that runs at 35K tps. As a speaker and trainer, Paul has guided thousands as they learn SQL Server technologies both in-person, through his writings, and through his video courses. Paul speaks at SQL Server user groups and most SQL Server conferences – PASS Summit, Microsoft Tech Ed Dev, SQL Open World (Denmark), and SQL Teach (Canada). Paul serves the SQL Server community on the PASS Board of Directors, and organizes the annual Colorado PASSCamp. Paul participated in the development of Microsoft Certification exams for SQL Server 2008.
Brian Noyes, IDesign, Inc. Brian is Chief Architect of IDesign, a Microsoft Regional Director, and Connected System MVP. He is a frequent top-rated speaker at conferences worldwide including Microsoft TechEd, DevConnections, DevTeach, and others. He is the author of Developing Applications with Windows Workflow Foundation, Smart Client Deployment with ClickOnce, and Data Binding in Windows Forms 2.0. Brian got started programming as a hobby while flying F-14 Tomcats in the U.S. Navy, later turning his passion for code into his current career. You can contact Brian through his blog at http://briannoyes.net.
Carl Rabeler, Solid Quality Learning With more than 15 years of consulting experience, 10 years of SQL Server experience, and 7 years of business intelligence and data warehouse experience, Carl enjoys facilitating knowledge transfer between experts, vendors, and users. He has worked closely with the SQL Server development and best practices teams for the past 5 years to publish a number of training and best practices documentation for SQL Server and Analysis Services. Carl has spent much of the past year working closely with the SQL Server development team and customers to test and document Analysis Services and Data Transformation Services in SQL Server 2005.
Vineet Rao, Microsoft Vineet Rao is a Program Manager in the SQL Server Relational Engine group at Microsoft. Vineet has over seven years of experience in the industry with the past three years in this group. During this time, he has worked on various aspects involved in the server-side programmability area especially the integration of .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR) in SQL Server and its support in Visual Studio 2005.
Doug Seven, Microsoft Doug Seven is a Senior Product Manager for Microsoft Visual Studio Team System, focusing on ensuring development teams are able to collaborate and communicate throughout the entire application life cycle. Prior to this role, Doug was a Senior Development Lead in Microsoft.com where he transitioned a "traditional" cross-functional development team to Agile methodologies using VSTS with Team Foundation Server. This transition included the implementation of test-driven development, paired programming, and Scrum. Doug has co-authored several books on Microsoft technologies, and spends a great deal of time engaging with, and supporting the community.
Sanjay Soni, Microsoft Sanjay Soni is a Sr. Program Manager in Services Reporting IT at Microsoft. He is an MCDBA and specializes in Business Intelligence using MS technologies including Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services. Sanjay has authored and presented a variety of papers at Microsoft conferences with many of these papers being published in SQL Server Magazine as well as on various Web sites.
Ron Talmage, Solid Quality Learning Ron Talmage is a Principal Mentor with Solid Quality Learning. He has over twenty years experience in the IT world, and has been providing mentoring, teaching, and conference presentations on SQL Server for the past ten years. He is a SQL Server MVP, current president of the Pacific Northwest SQL Server Users Group, and a contributing editor of PASS Info Link. He writes regularly for SQL Server Professional, SQL Server Magazine, and CoDe Magazine. You can reach him at Ron@SolidQualityLearning.com.
Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com Kimberly Tripp and Paul Randal are a husband-and-wife team who own and run SQLskills.com, a world-renowned SQL Server consulting and training company. They are both SQL Server MVPs and Microsoft Regional Directors, with over 30 years of combined experience on SQL Server.
Kimberly worked on the SQL Server team in the early 1990s as a tester and writer before leaving to found SQLskills and embrace her passion for teaching and consulting. Kimberly has been a staple at worldwide conferences since she first presented at TechEd in 1996, and she blogs at SQLskills.com/blogs/Kimberly.
Kimberly and Paul have written Microsoft whitepapers and books for SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008, and are regular, top-rated presenters worldwide on database maintenance, high availability, disaster recovery, performance tuning, and SQL Server internals. Together they teach the SQL MCM certification and throughout Microsoft.
In their spare time they like to find frogfish in remote corners of the world.
William R. Vaughn, Beta V Corporation William (Bill) Vaughn is an industry-recognized author, mentor and subject-matter expert on Visual Studio, SQL Server, Reporting Services and data access interfaces. He’s worked in the computer industry for over thirty years—working with mainframe, minicomputer and personal computer systems as a developer, manager, architect, trainer, marketer, support specialist, writer and publisher. In 2000, after 14 years at Microsoft, Bill stepped away to work on his books, mentoring and independent training seminars. He’s written seven editions of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Visual Basic and SQL Server and three editions of ADO.NET and ADO Examples and Best Practices for Visual Basic (and C#) Programmers. He and Peter Blackburn also wrote the best-selling and critically acclaimed Hitchhiker’s Guide to SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services. Bill is a top-rated speaker and frequents conferences all over the world including VSLive, Visual Studio/SQL Connections, DevTeach and VBug. He’s also written a wealth of articles for magazines such as SQL Server Magazine, Visual Basic Programmer’s Journal, .NET Magazine and many others as well as a bi-weekly editorial on developer issues for Processor magazine. Bill spends considerable time answering questions on the data-centric public newsgroups and speaking at user group meetings in Washington, Oregon, British Columbia and at his speaking venues all over the world. Bill was added to the INETA speaker’s list this fall. He’s available for consulting, mentoring or custom training. See www.betav.com or www.betav.comblogbillva.
Erik Veerman, Solid Quality Learning Erik Veerman is an Associate Mentor for Solid Quality Learning focusing on mentoring and architecting solutions on the SQL Server BI platform. His industry recognition includes Microsoft’s Worldwide BI Solution of the Year and SQL Server Magazine’s Innovator Cup winner. Erik has designed dozens of BI solutions across a broad business spectrum—telecommunications, marketing, retail, commercial real estate, finance, supply chain, and information technology. These efforts have included the development of OEM products, broad warehousing initiatives, BI methodology standardization, best practices on Microsoft SQL Server, and lab benchmarking. His experience with high volume multi-terabyte environments and SQL Server 64-bit has enabled clients to scale their Microsoft-based solutions for optimal potential. As an expert in OLAP design, ETL processing, and dimensional modeling in general, Erik is a frequent presenter for his local PASS chapter and speaks at the national PASS and SQL Server Magazine Connections conferences. He led the ETL architecture and design for the first production implementation of Integration Services (SSIS) and is currently driving the ETL standards and best practices for SSIS on Microsoft’s SQL Server 2005 product launch reference initiative, Project REAL.
Don Vilen, Microsoft Don Vilen is on the SQL Server team in Redmond, Washington, USA, with ten years of SQL Server experience at Microsoft. For the past four years, Don has been a Program Manager on the Storage Engine component of SQL Server, focusing on high availability and the storage of large objects. For the preceding four years, Don created and delivered training for Microsoft''''s SQL Server Support Engineers in EMEA and around the world. Prior to joining Microsoft, Don was a faculty member in the Computer Science Department at California State University, Chico, where he taught a variety of graduate and undergraduate courses over 15 years. During this time Don was also a Vice President of Software Development for a software company based in Chico, California.
Dan Winn, Microsoft Dan spent the last 5 years on the SQL Server Engine Program Management team driving the development of a broad array of SQL Server 2005’s features including Common Language Runtime and Visual Studio integration, Dynamic Management Views, T-SQL Exception Handling, DDL Triggers, SQL Trace.and a variety of others. He has spoken to audiences around the world on how best to take advantage of SQL Server and the new release’s capabilities. Now a member of the product unit’s newly created Strategy Team, he is driving the refinement and adoption of advanced development processes within the organization. Dan received a degree in Computer Science from Princeton University.
Roger Wolter, Microsoft Roger Wolter has close to 30 years experience in the computer industry – the last 7 with Microsoft. He is currently a Program manager on the SQL Server team specializing in SQL Server Service Broker and SQL Server Express. His projects at Microsoft have included COM+, SQLXML, the Soap Toolkit, SQL Server Service Broker and SQL Express.
Itzik Ben-Gan is a Mentor and Founder of Solid Quality Learning. A SQL Server Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) since 1999, Itzik has delivered numerous training events around the world focused on T-SQL Querying, Query Tuning and Programming. Itzik is the author of Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: T-SQL Querying (MSPress), Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: T-SQL Programming (MSPress), and a co-author of Advanced Transact-SQL for SQL Server 2000 (APress). He has written many articles for SQL Server Magazine as well as articles and whitepapers for MSDN.
Bio not available
Joe Chang is a freelance consultant specializing in database, architecture, and SQL Server performance and scalability. Joe has over 10 years experience in software, database, and server system performance analysis. Joe previously worked at Intel on Microsoft Exchange scalability with 8-way SMP servers and at Insignia Solutions on Windows NT performance analysis.
Gert Drapers is a Software Architect in the SQL Server Development group at Microsoft. As a member of the SQL Server Customer Advisory Team, he is involved in providing architecture design guidance and performance tuning for the largest and most challenging SQL Server deployments in the world. Gert brings extensive experience in the areas of application development, database management, data loading, and performance tuning of VLDB environments. Prior to his current position, Gert was working as Software Architect in the .NET Developer Division, responsible for the design and development of the next generation transaction manager and programming model. He started working on SQL Server in 1988 while working for Ashton-Tate. He joined Microsoft in 1991 where he held various development positions within the Developer Relation Group and Microsoft Consulting Services before joining the SQL Server development team in 1996. Gert worked on both SQL Server 7.0 and 2000; first as Software Design Engineer in the SQL Server Storage Engine and later as the Product Unit Manager of the SQL Server Management Tools team and as Architect of SQL Server DTS.
Donald Farmer has worked in Microsoft Business Intelligence for 9 years, working on several teams and technologies in that time. Mr. Farmer is a popular speaker at international events for both business and technical audiences, with a wide range of interests including data integration, information quality, metadata intelligence, master data management and predictive analytics. He is a Guest Professor at the College of Software and Information Science, Southwestern University at Chongqing, China and is the author of a number of books and articles. Prior to joining Microsoft, Donald worked not only in Business Intelligence but in fields as varied as medieval archaeology and fish-farming.
Visual Studio Connections Conference Co-Chair Carl Franklin, the Visual Basic Track chairperson, has been a figurehead in the VB community since the very early days when he wrote for BasicPro Magazine, which then became Visual Basic Programmers Journal. He authored the Q&A column of that magazine. He authored many feature articles for VBPJ and other magazines on topics such as graphics, serial communications, and sockets programming. 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. Carl is MSDN Regional Director for Connecticut, and has a close relationship with the New England Microsoft Office. His students rave about his teaching abilities and vast knowledge of .NET carl@franklins.net
Ken Getz is a senior consultant with MCW Technologies and splits his time between programming, writing, and training. He specializes in tools and applications written in Visual Studio .NET and Visual Basic. Ken has written many technical books, including ASP.NET Developers Jumpstart (Addison-Wesley) with Paul D. Sheriff, and is co-author of several best selling books, including Access 2002 Developer’s Handbooks with Paul Litwin and Mike Gunderloy, Visual Basic Language Developer’s Handbook with Mike Gilbert, and VBA Developer’s Handbook with Mike Gilbert (Sybex). He co-wrote several training courses for Application Developers Training Company (AppDev), including Visual Basic .NET, ASP.NET, Access 2000 and 97, Visual Basic 6, and Visual Basic 5. He has also recorded video training for AppDev covering VB .NET, ASP.NET, VB6, Access 2000, and Access 97. Ken is a frequent speaker at technical conferences and has spoken often at Microsoft’s TechEd conference. Ken also is a technical editor for Access-VB-SQL Advisor Magazine and a columnist for asp.netPRO Magazine and CoDe Magazine. You can reach Ken at keng@mcwtech.com.
Billy Hollis is co-author of the first book ever published on Visual Basic. NET, VB.NET Programming on the Public Beta, from Wrox Press, as well as numerous other books and articles on .NET. His most recent book is Fast Track Visual Basic .NET. He writes a monthly column for MSDN Online, and is heavily involved in training, consultation, and software development on the Microsoft .NET platform, focusing on smart-client development and commercial packages. He frequently speaks at industry conferences such as Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference (PDC), TechEd, and Comdex. Billy is also a member of the INETA (International .NET Association of user groups) speaker’s bureau and speaks at user group meetings all over the country.
Andrew J. Kelly is a Mentor and Partner with Solid Quality Mentors™ based out of Myrtle Beach SC. He has over 20 years experience with relational databases and application development on both Unix and Windows platforms. He has been a SQL Server MVP since 2001. In addition to general SQL Server training and mentoring he specializes in Performance, Scalability and Maintainability of large scale SQL Servers.
Don Kiely, MCSD, is a senior technology consultant, building custom applications as well as providing business and technology consulting services. His development work involves tools such as SQL Server, Visual Basic, C#, ASP.NET, and Microsoft Office. He writes regularly for several trade journals, including Visual Studio Magazine and Advisor Media, Inc., is a top poster and moderator on the www.asp.net community forums, and trains developers in .NET technologies. When he isn’t living and breathing technology, he is exploring the Alaska wilderness with his dogs Mardy and Izzi, hiking, whitewater kayaking, skiing, and searching for the perfect sun dog. You can reach Don at donkiely@computer.org.
Christian Kleinerman has close to 10 years of experience working with SQL Server - the last five as part of the SQL Server development team in Redmond, WA. He is currently a Program Manager in the relational engine team where he has worked on a variety of features and technologies. Before Microsoft he worked on eCommerce Web site development and previously was co-founder of a development company specializing on scheduling software.
Kevin Kline is the Director of SQL Server Solutions at Quest Software, a leading provider of award-winning tools for database management and application monitoring on the SQL Server platform. Kevin is also the President of the international Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS - www.sqlpass.org) and frequently contributes to database technology magazines, web sites, and discussion forums. Kevin's most popular book is "SQL in a Nutshell" published by O'Reilly & Associates (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/sqlnut2/). Kevin is also the author of "Transact-SQL Programming" (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/wintrnssql/) and three other books on database technologies. Kevin is a top rated speaker, appearing at international conferences like Microsoft TechEd, DevTeach, PASS, Microsoft IT Forum, and SQL Connections. When he’s not working, Kevin likes to romance his wife, play with his four kids, write, and garden.
Brian Larson has 23 years of experience in the computer industry and 19 years experience as a consultant creating custom database applications. He is currently the Chief of Technology for Superior Consulting Services in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a Microsoft Consulting Partner for Reporting Services. Brian served as a member of the Reporting Services development team as a consultant to Microsoft. In that role, he contributed to the original code base of Reporting Services. Brian has presented seminars and provided training and mentoring on Reporting Services and business intelligence across the country. A contributor and former columnist for SQL Server Magazine, Brian is also the author of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services and Delivering Business Intelligence with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 both from McGraw-Hill Professional.
Julie Lerman is a Microsoft MVP, .NET mentor and consultant who lives in the hills of Vermont. You can find Julie presenting on data access and other Microsoft .NET topics at user groups and conferences around the world. Julie blogs at 
Michèle Leroux Bustamante is Chief Architect of IDesign Inc., Microsoft Regional Director for San Diego, and a Microsoft MVP for Connected Systems. At IDesign Michele provides training, mentoring and high-end architecture consulting services focusing on scalable and secure architecture design for .NET, web services, interoperability, federated security scenarios, CardSpace, and globalization architecture. Michele participates in Software Design Reviews for products in the Microsoft roadmap, including WCF, CardSpace and other security-focused products. During the Beta 1 phase Michele participated in prototyping elements of the CardSpace technology for the product team. She is a member of the International .NET Speakers Association (INETA), a frequent conference presenter, conference chair for SD West, and is frequently published in several major technology journals. Michele is also on the board of directors for IASA (International Association of Software Architects), and a Program Advisor and instructor for UCSD Extension. Her latest book is Learning WCF (O’Reilly 2007) – see her book blog here: 
Paul Litwin is a developer specializing in ASP.NET, C#, SQL Server, SQL Server Reporting Services, and related technologies. Paul is a Programmer Manager with Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. He is also the owner of Deep Training, a developer owned training company specializing in .NET developer training (
Juval Lowy is a software architect and the principal of IDesign (
Douglas McDowell is the Director of Business Intelligence at Solid Quality Learning, a SQL Server MVP and an author and contributing editor for SQL Server Magazine. He has spent over 6 years dedicated to the delivery of Business Intelligence solutions on the Microsoft SQL Server platform and is very active contributor to the SQL Server community. Douglas organizes Atlanta.mdf, a thriving, Atlanta-based Professional Association of SQL Server (PASS) chapter with a membership of over 700 professionals; he speaks about Business Intelligence at numerous technical conferences, user groups and professional groups each year and has been very involved in delivering SQL Server 2005 awareness events and trainings throughout the world and online. Douglas enjoys delivering client value using the SQL Server business intelligence and data warehousing platform as a mentor, solution architect, and project manager.
Brian Moran is a Principal Mentor and co-founder of Solid Quality Learning, a partnership devoted to offering the most in-depth high quality SQL Server training in the world. Brian is a SQL Server MVP, president of the Washington DC SQL Server Users Group, and a columnist for SQL Server Magazine. Brian specializes in SQL Server performance tuning and data tier architecture. He can be reached at brian@solidqualitylearning.com.
Russ Nemhauser is a Microsoft ASP.NET MVP and a Microsoft Certified Professional, and has served as an Architect, Developer, Team Leader, and Project Manager over the past several years. His projects have included enterprise applications, online commerce sites, and corporate intranets for Wall Street, Universal Studios, Microsoft, Seagram, and others. Russ actively participates in the development community through public speaking and technical writing.
Paul is a Microsoft SQL Server MVP and author of SQL Server 2008 Bible. Paul focuses on data architecture and the design and development of high-transaction OLTP databases. As an architect, Paul developed Nordic O/R DBMS (Microsoft Architecture Journal No. 8.) As a performance tuning and optimization consultant, Paul has helped scores of organizations improve their databases and he recently designed and coded a database that runs at 35K tps. As a speaker and trainer, Paul has guided thousands as they learn SQL Server technologies both in-person, through his writings, and through his video courses. Paul speaks at SQL Server user groups and most SQL Server conferences – PASS Summit, Microsoft Tech Ed Dev, SQL Open World (Denmark), and SQL Teach (Canada). Paul serves the SQL Server community on the PASS Board of Directors, and organizes the annual Colorado PASSCamp. Paul participated in the development of Microsoft Certification exams for SQL Server 2008.
Brian is Chief Architect of IDesign, a Microsoft Regional Director, and Connected System MVP. He is a frequent top-rated speaker at conferences worldwide including Microsoft TechEd, DevConnections, DevTeach, and others. He is the author of Developing Applications with Windows Workflow Foundation, Smart Client Deployment with ClickOnce, and Data Binding in Windows Forms 2.0. Brian got started programming as a hobby while flying F-14 Tomcats in the U.S. Navy, later turning his passion for code into his current career. You can contact Brian through his blog at 
With more than 15 years of consulting experience, 10 years of SQL Server experience, and 7 years of business intelligence and data warehouse experience, Carl enjoys facilitating knowledge transfer between experts, vendors, and users. He has worked closely with the SQL Server development and best practices teams for the past 5 years to publish a number of training and best practices documentation for SQL Server and Analysis Services. Carl has spent much of the past year working closely with the SQL Server development team and customers to test and document Analysis Services and Data Transformation Services in SQL Server 2005.
Vineet Rao is a Program Manager in the SQL Server Relational Engine group at Microsoft. Vineet has over seven years of experience in the industry with the past three years in this group. During this time, he has worked on various aspects involved in the server-side programmability area especially the integration of .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR) in SQL Server and its support in Visual Studio 2005.
Doug Seven is a Senior Product Manager for Microsoft Visual Studio Team System, focusing on ensuring development teams are able to collaborate and communicate throughout the entire application life cycle. Prior to this role, Doug was a Senior Development Lead in Microsoft.com where he transitioned a "traditional" cross-functional development team to Agile methodologies using VSTS with Team Foundation Server. This transition included the implementation of test-driven development, paired programming, and Scrum. Doug has co-authored several books on Microsoft technologies, and spends a great deal of time engaging with, and supporting the community.
Sanjay Soni is a Sr. Program Manager in Services Reporting IT at Microsoft. He is an MCDBA and specializes in Business Intelligence using MS technologies including Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services. Sanjay has authored and presented a variety of papers at Microsoft conferences with many of these papers being published in SQL Server Magazine as well as on various Web sites.
Ron Talmage is a Principal Mentor with Solid Quality Learning. He has over twenty years experience in the IT world, and has been providing mentoring, teaching, and conference presentations on SQL Server for the past ten years. He is a SQL Server MVP, current president of the Pacific Northwest SQL Server Users Group, and a contributing editor of PASS Info Link. He writes regularly for SQL Server Professional, SQL Server Magazine, and CoDe Magazine. You can reach him at Ron@SolidQualityLearning.com.
Kimberly Tripp and Paul Randal are a husband-and-wife team who own and run SQLskills.com, a world-renowned SQL Server consulting and training company. They are both SQL Server MVPs and Microsoft Regional Directors, with over 30 years of combined experience on SQL Server. 
William (Bill) Vaughn is an industry-recognized author, mentor and subject-matter expert on Visual Studio, SQL Server, Reporting Services and data access interfaces. He’s worked in the computer industry for over thirty years—working with mainframe, minicomputer and personal computer systems as a developer, manager, architect, trainer, marketer, support specialist, writer and publisher. In 2000, after 14 years at Microsoft, Bill stepped away to work on his books, mentoring and independent training seminars. He’s written seven editions of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Visual Basic and SQL Server and three editions of ADO.NET and ADO Examples and Best Practices for Visual Basic (and C#) Programmers. He and Peter Blackburn also wrote the best-selling and critically acclaimed Hitchhiker’s Guide to SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services. Bill is a top-rated speaker and frequents conferences all over the world including VSLive, Visual Studio/SQL Connections, DevTeach and VBug. He’s also written a wealth of articles for magazines such as SQL Server Magazine, Visual Basic Programmer’s Journal, .NET Magazine and many others as well as a bi-weekly editorial on developer issues for Processor magazine. Bill spends considerable time answering questions on the data-centric public newsgroups and speaking at user group meetings in Washington, Oregon, British Columbia and at his speaking venues all over the world. Bill was added to the INETA speaker’s list this fall. He’s available for consulting, mentoring or custom training. See 
Erik Veerman is an Associate Mentor for Solid Quality Learning focusing on mentoring and architecting solutions on the SQL Server BI platform. His industry recognition includes Microsoft’s Worldwide BI Solution of the Year and SQL Server Magazine’s Innovator Cup winner. Erik has designed dozens of BI solutions across a broad business spectrum—telecommunications, marketing, retail, commercial real estate, finance, supply chain, and information technology. These efforts have included the development of OEM products, broad warehousing initiatives, BI methodology standardization, best practices on Microsoft SQL Server, and lab benchmarking. His experience with high volume multi-terabyte environments and SQL Server 64-bit has enabled clients to scale their Microsoft-based solutions for optimal potential. As an expert in OLAP design, ETL processing, and dimensional modeling in general, Erik is a frequent presenter for his local PASS chapter and speaks at the national PASS and SQL Server Magazine Connections conferences. He led the ETL architecture and design for the first production implementation of Integration Services (SSIS) and is currently driving the ETL standards and best practices for SSIS on Microsoft’s SQL Server 2005 product launch reference initiative, Project REAL.
Don Vilen is on the SQL Server team in Redmond, Washington, USA, with ten years of SQL Server experience at Microsoft. For the past four years, Don has been a Program Manager on the Storage Engine component of SQL Server, focusing on high availability and the storage of large objects. For the preceding four years, Don created and delivered training for Microsoft''''s SQL Server Support Engineers in EMEA and around the world. Prior to joining Microsoft, Don was a faculty member in the Computer Science Department at California State University, Chico, where he taught a variety of graduate and undergraduate courses over 15 years. During this time Don was also a Vice President of Software Development for a software company based in Chico, California.
Roger Wolter has close to 30 years experience in the computer industry – the last 7 with Microsoft. He is currently a Program manager on the SQL Server team specializing in SQL Server Service Broker and SQL Server Express. His projects at Microsoft have included COM+, SQLXML, the Soap Toolkit, SQL Server Service Broker and SQL Express.