The Hello World Podcast

Mikayla works on .NET at Microsoft. She's been working on .NET developer tools for more than a decade, including Xamarin and Visual Studio for Mac, and is passionate about user experience and inclusivity. In her free time, she enjoys game development, gardening and silversmithing.

Focusing on web interfaces that are beautiful, functional, accessible, and usable. Martine Dowden approaches User Experience from both Art and Science, drawing from her degrees in Psychology and Visual Communications. Martine has worked as an artist, educator, and consultant since 2005. She stays active in the industry, teaching developers at a coding academy, attending and speaking at conferences and meetups. In 2015 Martine published a children's book "Programming Languages ABC++", and in 2016 the Workbook Edition sold over 20,000 copies. She then went on to write "Approachable Accessibility: Planning for Success" which was released in June 2019 and "Architecting CSS: The Programmer's Guide to Effective Stylesheets" to be released in 2020.

Stuart Celarier is a principal software architect and developer, primarily on Microsoft technologies. He has worked in a wide variety of industries and problem domains as a consultant and employee, as well as teaching and mentoring. He is an eight-time recipient of the Microsoft MVP award for work in services and integration, and was a Microsoft Regional Director for five years. Stuart is also a speaker at regional user groups, he co-directed the Portland Code Camp, and co-chaired the Birds-of-a-Feather track at eight Microsoft conferences. Outside of software, Stuart is a member of the Oregon Mandolin Orchestra and teaches juggling at Reed College.

Dylan Beattie is a systems architect and software developer. He's been building interactive web applications on the Microsoft stack since the days of Windows NT 4. Today his main interests are HTTP APIs, user experience design, and distributed systems. Dylan lives and works in London and when he's not writing code he plays guitar and writes songs about code.

Mads is the Program Manager for the C# Language. He maintains the language specification and runs the language design process for C#. Many years ago Mads was a professor, and also contributed to a language starting with J.

Scott Hunter works for Microsoft as the Director of Program Management for the .NET team. This team builds the .NET Framework, .NET Core, Managed Languages (C#, F#, VB), .NET Tooling, Web Tooling and the Web and Data frameworks. Before this Scott was the CTO of several startups including Mustang Software and Starbase focusing on a variety of technologies, but programming the Web has always been his real passion. In his spare time he is an avid Hiker and enjoying Formula One racing.

Rowan works as a Program Manager on the .NET team at Microsoft. The bulk of his time at Microsoft has been spent on the open source Entity Framework project. He speaks at technical conferences and blogs at romiller.com. Prior to Microsoft, Rowan worked for a tourism company in Tasmania, Australia doing enterprise application development and integration. Rowan lives in Seattle, Washington with his wife Athalie and their children. The bulk of their time is taken up as a foster family, but in his spare moments Rowan enjoys snowboarding, construction, rocket engines, and pretty much anything that involves being active or tinkering in his workshop.

Sara Ford is a Senior Product Manager at GitHub on the Editor Tools team. Previously she worked at Microsoft for over a decade on their developer tools, including Visual Studio and CodePlex. In 2015, Sara received her Masters degree in Human Factors (HCI / UX) at San Jose State University because she wants to make developer tools usable. Sara's life-long dream is to be a 97-year old weightlifter, so she can be featured on the local news.

Joseph Guadagno has been in software development for about 15 years or so. He started out with a small book on QuickBASIC, then moved the Visual Basic for DOS, then Visual Basic for Windows, then Visual Basic .NET and eventually Visual C#. When I am not working at my full-time job, as a Team Leader at Quicken Loans, he donates his time to several community efforts.

Jeff Atwood considers himself a reasonably experienced Windows software developer with a particular interest in the human side of software development, as represented in his recommended developer reading list on his blog, Coding Horror. Computers are fascinating machines, but they're mostly a reflection of the people using them. In the art of software development, studying code isn't enough: you have to study the people behind the software, too.

Jon works at Microsoft as a Technical Evangelist focused on ASP.NET and Windows Azure. He's co-author of Wrox Professional ASP.NET MVC, writes samples and tutorials like the MVC Music Store and is a frequent speaker at conferences and international Web Camps events. Jon's been doing professional web development for 17 years, including high scale applications in financial, entertainment and healthcare analytics. He's part of the Herding Code podcast, Twitters as @jongalloway and blogs at http://weblogs.asp.net/jongalloway. He likes to travel, but spends most of his time in San Diego with his amazingly patient wife Rachel, three wonderful daughters, a dozen avocado trees and the occasional rattlesnake.

Cory is an international speaker, Pluralsight author, Microsoft MVP, Software Architect, independent consultant, and teacher. He has trained over 10,000 software developers at conferences worldwide on front-end development, testing, and software architecture. He currently specializes in front-end development using React. Cory is author of multiple Pluralsight courses and is active on Twitter as @housecor.

Stacey Mulcahy is a technical evangelist for Microsoft who focuses on IoT, Web Development and Open Source. She is a tinkerer and maker, and has a love for all things microprocessor. She has spoken at several international conferences, has course up on MVA, is a technical editor, associate adjunct professor at NYU ITP and just generally likes stuff.

Jennifer Marsman is a Principal Developer Evangelist in Microsoft's Developer and Platform Evangelism group, where she educates developers on Microsoft's new technologies.  In this role, Jennifer is a frequent speaker at software development conferences around the world.  In 2016, Jennifer was recognized as one of the “top 100 most influential individuals in artificial intelligence and machine learning” by Onalytica.  She has been featured in Bloomberg for her work using EEG and machine learning to perform lie detection.  In 2009, Jennifer was chosen as "Techie whose innovation will have the biggest impact" by X-OLOGY for her work with GiveCamps, a weekend-long event where developers code for charity.  She has also received many honors from Microsoft, including the Central Region Top Contributor Award, Heartland District Top Contributor Award, DPE Community Evangelist Award, CPE Champion Award, MSUS Diversity & Inclusion Award, Gold Club, and Platinum Club.  Prior to becoming a Developer Evangelist, Jennifer was a software developer in Microsoft's Natural Interactive Services division.  In this role, she earned two patents for her work in search and data mining algorithms.  Jennifer has also held positions with Ford Motor Company, National Instruments, and Soar Technology.  Jennifer holds a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Engineering and Master's Degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.  Her graduate work specialized in artificial intelligence and computational theory.  Jennifer blogs at http://blogs.msdn.com/jennifer and tweets at http://twitter.com/jennifermarsman.

Julie Yack is a Colorado-based Microsoft Dynamics CRM MVP serving clients across the globe, providing training, implementation, analysis and insight for companies wanting to take their service to the next level. Julie's blog, www.julieyack.com, addresses pertinent topics of the day, ranging from Dynamics CRM to technology in education to travel to voting rights. Julie is an accomplished author and publisher with several books on different technologies under her belt. Julie is a community leader, nationally, locally and online, serving on education committees and curriculum boards in Colorado and as a founding member of SouthColorado.net and xRMVirtual online. She knows how important it is to have your voice heard and has been honored to speak to elected officials at the US Capitol and to the Executive Staff at the White House on topics of technology legislation and the importance of STEM education in our k-12 schools. Julie loves to spend her free time traveling with her husband and kids.

Over the past 15 years, Kevin Grossnicklaus has established himself as a go-to expert and a local and regional community leader for the software development industry. Prior to founding ArchitectNow in 2009, Kevin spent over a decade as the Chief Architect and Practice Leader for a large St. Louis IT firm. He also spent many years as an instructor at Washington University's Center for the Application of Information Technology (CAIT) where he taught continuing education courses on a wide array of development technologies. Since 2009, Kevin has been recognized annually as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP). This prestigious award puts Kevin in the company of just over 4,000 technology professionals worldwide and recognizes his commitment to technology and working to further the understanding of software development within the region.Kevin has been heavily involved in the Midwest development community and has traveled the world as a consultant and a trainer.

David Giard is a former accountant and a former biochemist, who has been developing solutions using Microsoft technologies for over 2 decades. Currently, David helps people build solutions in his role as a Microsoft Technical Evangelist. David has been very active in the developer community, speaking at numerous major conferences, code camps, and user groups around the world; helping to lead user groups; and helping to organize conferences and other geek events. He is the host and producer of the mildly popular online TV show Technology and Friends. He is the co-author of the Wrox book Real World .NET, C#, and Silverlight. You can read his latest thoughts at www.DavidGiard.com. His hobbies include video, photography, sports, and embarrassing his sons.

Brian Friesen has been pretending to be a developer for the last 9 years and lives in constant fear of being found out. He suspects that someone has been bribing Microsoft on his behalf, as he has received the C# MVP award for the past three years. His presentations always involve live-coding and he prefers topics that don't get much attention. He lives near Detroit and works for an awesome company, Quicken Loans.

Atley Hunter is a passionate developer with over 20 years' experience. As one of the most prolific Modern UI developers in the world, he has hundreds of unique apps in the running on millions of Windows devices worldwide. A Microsoft Windows Platform MVP, and Telerik MVP & Insider, he is constantly working with developers worldwide to improve both skills and the platforms themselves. Atley is always sharing his knowledge and connecting with developers through events, his blog, email (devMentor@outlook.com), Twitter (@atleyhunter), Skype (Atley.Hunter) and LinkedIn.

A long-time agile coach specializing in software architecture, Mario Cardinal is the co-founder of Slingboards Lab, a productivity software publisher that help people achieve what is important in their day. An experimenter and an entrepreneur, he love to seize the opportunities that emerge from the unexpected. Since 2004, year after year, he received the Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award from Microsoft. MVP status is awarded to credible technology experts who are among the very best community members willing to share their experience to helping others realize their potential. An experienced Scrum practitioner, he has spent more than 20 years designing large-scale information systems. He is the author of the book "Executable Specifications with Scrum". His friends like to describe him as someone who can extract the essence of a complicated situation, sort out the core ideas from the incidental distractions and provide a summary that is easy to understand.

Rob Hale has over 20 years of software development experience creating solutions for a variety of industries including health and human services, ecommerce, and energy. He currently serves as a Principle Software Engineer at Renewable NRG Systems in Hinesburg, Vermont (http://www.renewablenrgsystems.com/). Rob has presented to user groups in the northeast and the occasional small conference. Building effective communities and teams is a passion of Rob's. He is co-founder of the Vermont Code Camp (http://www.vtcodecamp.org/), co-organizer of the Vermont Coders Connection (http://www.meetup.com/VTCode/), and co-organizer/emcee of HackVT (http://www.hackvt.com/) an annual hackathon in the state of Vermont. Rob is the proud father of two sons and husband to his wonderful wife. Follow him on Twitter at @rob_hale_vt

Miguel de Icaza, co-founder and CTO of Ximian, is one of the foremost luminaries in the Linux development community and one of the world's most prominent advocates for Free Software. Before co-founding Ximian, Miguel was instrumental in the development of Linux for SPARC systems and the Midnight Commander file manager. Miguel is the founder and President of the GNOME Foundation. He was also the first recipient of the prestigious MIT Innovator of the Year award in 1999. Miguel has galvanized Ximian's efforts to make Linux accessible and available to the average computer user, and continues to reach out globally by working with international organizations such as eMexico to introduce affordable technology alternatives, like Linux, to other nations.

Nick Landry (@ActiveNick) is a mobility pioneer and expert specializing in the design and production of mobile applications for consumers and the enterprise using diverse cross-platform technologies including Windows Phone, Windows 8, iOS, Android, Mobile Web, Xamarin and PhoneGap. Nick is a Senior Technical Evangelist with Microsoft in the New York Metro area and works with developers, students and IT pros to help them learn, adopt and use the Microsoft developer platform to design and build the next generation of apps for Windows Phone, Windows 8 and Windows Azure. Nick is also a Nokia Developer Ambassador whose mandate is to educate and support Windows Phone developers to maximize their success. Prior to joining Microsoft, Nick spent almost two years as a Senior Product Manager for mobile, data visualization and geospatial developer tools across multiple technologies and platforms. He previously spent most his career in IT consulting and services organizations across various technical and business roles, designing, building, managing and selling innovative software solutions for some of the world's top brands and Fortune 500 companies.Nick Landry (@ActiveNick) is a mobility pioneer and expert specializing in the design and production of mobile applications for consumers and the enterprise using diverse cross-platform technologies including Windows Phone, Windows 8, iOS, Android, Mobile Web, Xamarin and PhoneGap. Nick is a Senior Technical Evangelist with Microsoft in the New York Metro area and works with developers, students and IT pros to help them learn, adopt and use the Microsoft developer platform to design and build the next generation of apps for Windows Phone, Windows 8 and Windows Azure. Nick is also a Nokia Developer Ambassador whose mandate is to educate and support Windows Phone developers to maximize their success. Prior to joining Microsoft, Nick spent almost two years as a Senior Product Manager for mobile, data visualization and geospatial developer tools across multiple technologies and platforms. He previously spent most his career in IT consulting and services organizations across various technical and business roles, designing, building, managing and selling innovative software solutions for some of the world's top brands and Fortune 500 companies.

John Petersen has been developing software for over 20 years. It all started when, as a staff accountant, he was asked to get involved in a system upgrade to replace an old IBM Series 1 computer (about the size of a large refrigerator!). Those first programs were written in Clipper in the summer of 1987. Since that time, tools he has used include dBase, FoxBase, Visual FoxPro, and Visual Basic. An early adopter of .NET, he then decided to go to law school. After practicing law for a few years, John realized that technology was a lot more interesting than the law. Today, John focuses on ASP.NET development and is having more fun than ever solving problems for clients. John is a Practice Director for Custom Application Development at Neudesic, a Microsoft Gold Partner and the Trusted Technology Partner in Business Innovation. A 9-time recipient of Microsoft's Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award, John is currently an ASP.NET/IIS MVP. John is also an ASP Insider and is the INETA Mentor for Pennsylvania and West Virginia. John is the author of several books and is a frequent contributor to Code Magazine and DevConnections Magazines. John holds a BS in Business Administration from Mansfield University, an MBA in Information Systems from St. Joseph's University, and a JD from the Rutgers School of Law – Camden.John Petersen has been developing software for over 20 years. It all started when, as a staff accountant, he was asked to get involved in a system upgrade to replace an old IBM Series 1 computer (about the size of a large refrigerator!). Those first programs were written in Clipper in the summer of 1987. Since that time, tools he has used include dBase, FoxBase, Visual FoxPro, and Visual Basic. An early adopter of .NET, he then decided to go to law school. After practicing law for a few years, John realized that technology was a lot more interesting than the law. Today, John focuses on ASP.NET development and is having more fun than ever solving problems for clients. John is a Practice Director for Custom Application Development at Neudesic, a Microsoft Gold Partner and the Trusted Technology Partner in Business Innovation. A 9-time recipient of Microsoft's Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award, John is currently an ASP.NET/IIS MVP. John is also an ASP Insider and is the INETA Mentor for Pennsylvania and West Virginia. John is the author of several books and is a frequent contributor to Code Magazine and DevConnections Magazines. John holds a BS in Business Administration from Mansfield University, an MBA in Information Systems from St. Joseph's University, and a JD from the Rutgers School of Law – Camden.

G. Andrew Duthie, aka devhammer, is the founder and chief consultant for Devhammer Enterprises. Andrew is a consultant focused on helping clients meet their business goals through software. Andrew is also a trainer and writer with more than 15 years of industry experience, including nearly 10 years as a Technical Evangelist for Microsoft's Mid-Atlantic States district, where he provided support and education for developers working with the Microsoft development platform. In addition to his work with Microsoft, Andrew is the author of several books on ASP.NET and web development, and has spoken at numerous industry conferences from VSLive! and ASP.NET Connections, to Microsoft's Professional Developer Conference (PDC) and Tech-Ed. Andrew has been participating in the user group community since way back in 1997, when one of his co-workers dragged him out to the Internet Developers User Group in Tyson's Corner, VA, and he's been hooked ever since. Andrew is also the creator and developer of Community Megaphone, a site designed for promoting and finding developer community events.

Rui is a software craftsman mostly working on Microsoft and web areas since 20 years, from the early Asp 2.0 to the latest DNX stuff. After a long time acting as a consultant for big companies, he focuses today on developing, teaching and mentoring teams on smaller projects like startups to build the right products with simplicity. He use to speak at different conferences about .net web, agility and developer's practices, he also advocates for open source and open minds in the .net community and that's why he leads today the alt.net group in France. Since 2014, he organize a professional developer's conference in Paris, NCrafts with strong focus on new technologies, great practices and design and more globally about crafting software with love.

Bill Wagner is one of the world's foremost C# developers and a member of the ECMA C# Standards Committee. He is President of the Humanitarian Toolbox, has been awarded Microsoft Regional Director and .NET MVP for 10+years, and was recently appointed to the .NET Foundation Advisory Board. Wagner currently works with companies ranging from start-ups to enterprises improving the software development process and growing their software development teams. As a thought leader on C# programming language, Bill Wagner has authored 2 books; a best seller, “Effective C#”, and “More Effective C#”. Bill authors video training through Microsoft Virtual Academy on C# and .NET development. B ill has also written hundreds of technical articles (MSDN Magazine, .NET Developers Journal, Visual Studio Magazine, and many others), as well as actively blogs at http://www.thebillwagner.com/.

Merrick Christensen has been programming for ten years and nearly all of that time has been focused in the web space. He's built many high-traffic projects for prolific companies such as National Geographic, ABC Disney, Fox and others. He co-organized ng-conf, the official Angular conference. Was a panelist on the JavaScript Jabber podcast. Spoken at many conferences and maintained even more open source projects. The last five years he has been working at Domo trying to change the way people do business.

Richard is the president of Accentient, a company that helps software teams develop better products by leveraging ALM tools and Scrum. He is a Professional Scrum Trainer, author of Professional Scrum Development with Microsoft Visual Studio, and co-creator of the Scaled Professional Scrum framework. As a software developer and consultant with over 30 years of experience, he understands that software is built and delivered by people and not by processes or tools.

As executive vice president of the Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise group, Scott Guthrie is responsible for the company's cloud infrastructure, server, database, management and development tools businesses. His engineering team builds Microsoft Azure, Windows Server, SQL Server, Active Directory, System Center, Visual Studio and .NET.Prior to leading the Cloud and Enterprise group, Guthrie helped lead Microsoft Azure, Microsoft's public cloud platform. Since joining the company in 1997, he has made critical contributions to many of Microsoft's key cloud, server and development technologies and was one of the original founders of the .NET project. Guthrie graduated with a bachelor's degree in computer science from Duke University. He lives in Seattle with his wife and two children.

Beth is a Senior Product Manager for .NET at Microsoft and a long-time community champion for .NET developers. She helps developers build amazing things. Before Microsoft, she spent many years building business apps for small businesses as well as large enterprises, primarily on the .NET stack, and was a Microsoft MVP. She is a speaker at various software development events and you can find her on a variety of developer sites. Follow her on twitter and GitHub: @BethMassi

Tim Huckaby is an industry luminary focused on Emerging User Experiences, User Interaction Design and the Natural User Interface (NUI). Mr. Huckaby has been awarded many times for the highest rated keynotes & presentations for Microsoft and many other industry & technology conferences like CES and events world-wide. Mr. Huckaby is consistently rated in the top 10% of all speakers at these events. Having worked for or with Microsoft for over 25 years, Mr. Huckaby has been on stage with, and done numerous keynote demos for many Microsoft executives including Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.

Rod Paddock is the editor of CODE Magazine. Rod has been a software developer for more than 10 years and has worked with tools like Visual Studio .NET SQL Server, Visual Basic, Visual FoxPro, Delphi and numerous others. Rod is president of Dash Point Software, Inc. Dash Point is an award winning software development firm that specializes in developing applications for small to large businesses. Dash Point has delivered applications for numerous corporations like: Six Flags, First Premier Bank, Intel, Microsoft and the US Coast Guard. Rod is also VP of Development for SQL Server tools maker, Red Matrix Technologies. (www.redmatrix.com).

Todd Miranda is a consultant, trainer, and author. He has been developing on various platforms for over 20 years and has been involved with .NET since it was first released in 2000. He has worked with many of the .NET platforms but focuses primarily on ASP.NET. He is the owner of NxtDimension Solutions and provides consulting and training on the Microsoft stack. Todd has been awarded a Microsoft MVP for the last 7 years. He is the co-founder of the Birmingham .NET User Group and remains active in the development community. He has recorded hundreds of online training videos on Microsoft development topics including security, JavaScript, Silverlight, WPF, Expression and ASP.NET. He is an INETA speaker and regularly presents at user groups, community events, and technical conferences.

By day, Jim Wooley is a consultant for Slalom Consulting, In his free time, Jim is a frequent speaker, INETA Regional Speaker, MVP, and author of "LINQ in Action". He is always striving to stay at the forefront of technology and enjoys the thrill of a new challenge. He has been active evangelizing LINQ since it's announcement in 2005. In addition, he attempts to pass on the insights he has gained by being active in the community, including organizing and speaking at code camps and regional events, including DevLink, DevWeek, CodeMash, CodeStock, VS Live, and MIX.

Billy is internationally known for his work on user experience design and native software development. His team, based in Nashville, Tennessee, has created modern apps hailed around the world for innovation and effective use of advanced user interface technologies. Billy offers training on user experience design for any platform, and technical classes on XAML technologies, including the Universal Windows Platform. You can see Billy at major conferences all over the world, usually doing sessions to help developers to become more focused on designing and developing software that users love.

Currently Software Architect at Quicken Loans, Peter Ritchie has over 12 years' experience working with .NET applications in C#. Prior to focusing on C#, Peter worked primarily in C/C++, which accounts for the majority of his 26 years of programming and design experience. Peter works with a variety of applications and systems including WinForms/WPF applications, client server applications, distributed applications, and web applications. Components include Windows services, TCP servers, TCP clients, HTTP server, and HTTP clients. Peter has also worked with a variety of middleware products including RabbitMQ and MSMQ.Peter has spoken internationally on a variety of topics including unit test design and management, asynchronous programming, advanced .NET language features and syntax, concurrent and parallel programming and distributed programming. Peter is the author of Refactoring with Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 Best Practices.

Rick Strahl is the Big Kahuna and janitor at West Wind Technologies located on the beautiful island of Maui, Hawaii. Between windsurf sessions and spikey haired adventures, Rick has been a software developer for over 25 years, developing business and Web applications since the very early days of the Web when you needed a hand crank (or a pair of wire splicers) to get online. Today Rick builds client centric Web applications and services for customers with HTML5, JavaScript and mobile Web technologies, using AngularJS on the front end, and  the ASP.NET stack on the back end. Rick's company West Wind Technologies also produces a number of developer related tools including West Wind WebSurge, West Wind Web Monitor and Html Help Builder.  He also maintains a host of open source libraries at  http://github.com/RickStrahl and you can find Rick's blog at weblog.west-wind.com or contact him directly at rstrahl@west-wind.com.

Jeff Handley works at Concur and is focusing on the UI for web applications. He previously worked at Microsoft as the Development Lead for NuGet and WCF RIA Services. Jeff has been building and maturing software projects for 20 years. His largest projects have covered education, healthcare waste management, fantasy football, credit/mortgage, and point of sale. Throughout his career, he keeps getting drawn back to web application development.

Barry is the security czar for ASP.NET which means he gets to look at the framework, tools and template code, searching for potential insecurities and sometimes even fixing them. He also triages publically and privately reported vulnerabilities before getting someone else to fix them which means he gets all of the fun and none of the responsibility. He is rude and objectionable on twitter as @blowdart.

With over 25 years in the software industry, Matt Pietrek has had quite the interesting ride. Starting at Borland in the late 1980s during the heady days of the Microsoft/Borland “compilers wars”, he got his first, intoxicating taste of OS internals, debuggers and tools. From there he spent a decade at NuMega Technologies, working on seminal, award-winning products like BoundsChecker and SoftIce. Next was a seven year stint at Microsoft where he worked on the Visual Studio debugger & profiler teams, Red Dog (now known as Azure), and Hyper-V. He currently works at Skytap, a cloud computing company. Along the way, he wrote several books on Windows internals, as well as numerous articles and columns for magazines just as MSJ/MSDN, PC Magazine, and Byte. When not slinging Python code or groveling through logs, Matt indulges his passion for distilled spirits and cocktails. He's got a serious, ever growing collection of rums, and writes the CocktailWonk blog about his spirited adventures: http://cocktailwonk.com

Frans Bouma is the creator and lead developer of LLBLGen Pro, a leading ORM and Entity Modeling solution for .NET. Programming professionally since '94, after he (finally) got his B.sc in Computer Science. Frans wrote his first code back in '86 on a Toshiba HX-10 MSX computer and has been fascinated about telling computer hardware to do what you want by writing software ever since. In his spare time he spent more than a decade in the underground scene called 'Demoscene', first on Commodore Amiga 500 and later on PC, writing graphical demos and computer music.

Keith Elder is the co-host of the popular online technology podcast Deep Fried Bytes. He is also a Director of Software Engineering at Quicken Loans, the nation's largest online mortgage lender based in Detroit, MI. Keith is an experienced technologist, systems administrator, software engineer, speaker, trainer and all around geek. He speaks throughout the United States at major technical conferences, Code Camps, and .Net User Groups. Keith's ability to explain complex topics with a friendly common sense southern attitude make him a highly regarded speaker at technical conferences. You can read more about Keith's interests, hobbies, rants and raves on his blog at http://keithelder.net/ and follow him on twitter at http://twitter.com/keithelder.

Scott Stanfield is the founder and CEO of Vertigo Software, Inc., a digital design and development shop for the media & entertainment business. He is a frequent public speaker, presenting on software technology and design for the past 20 years. Vertigo is making TV Everywhere happen for the major US broadcasters on mobile, desktop and consoles. Before starting Vertigo in 1997, Scott worked at Pixar in Point Richmond, California, which happens to be the current home of Vertigo. Scott holds a BS in Computer Science for Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Follow Scott on Twitter at @seesharp or email to scott@vertigo.com.  

Dave Ward is an independent consultant and author, specializing in projects ranging from ASP.NET, to Node.js, to JavaScript single page applications, to hybrid mobile apps. With twenty years of experience developing for the web, he has been recognized as a Microsoft Regional Director, ASP.NET MVP, and member of the ASPInsiders. To learn more or to get in touch with Dave, you can visit his blog at http://Encosia.com or find him on Twitter as @Encosia.

Steve is an entrepreneur and software developer with a passion for building quality software as effectively as possible. He is currently the Chief Technology Officer of Falafel Software. Steve has published several courses on Pluralsight, covering DDD, SOLID, design patterns, and software architecture. He's a Microsoft Regional Director and MVP, a frequent speaker at developer conferences, an author, and a trainer. Along with his wife and business partner, Michelle Smith, Steve was also the founder of Lake Quincy Media (acquired by The Code Project) and NimblePros (acquired by Telerik). Steve's an ex-Army Engineer officer and Iraq veteran who enjoys playing games and spending time outdoors.

Rockford Lhotka is the CTO of Magenic, and is the creator of the widely used CSLA .NET development framework. He is the author of numerous books, and regularly speaks at major conferences around the world. Rockford is a Microsoft Regional Director and MVP. Magenic (www.magenic.com) is a company that specializes in planning, designing, building and maintaining your enterprise's most mission critical systems. For more information go to www.lhotka.net.

Deborah Kurata is an independent software consultant/developer specializing in Web and .NET development using AngularJS, VB.NET, and C#. She has also published several Pluralsight courses.  Deborah has authored several programming books including the popular "Doing Objects" series and is a speaker at conferences such as VSLive! and TechEd. She is also the co-chair of the EastBay.NET user group in the San Francisco Bay/Silicon Valley area.

Steve Evans has been doing DevOps since before the term DevOps was invented. He is a Pluralsight Author, five time Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), and technical Speaker at various industry events. In his spare time he manages a DevOps team at a Silicon Valley Biotech focused on improving the lives of cancer patients. For over 15 years Steve has focused on making technology better for businesses by bridging the gap between IT and Development teams. You can follow his technical blog at http://www.LoudSteve.com or find him on twitter at@TheLoudSteve.  

Walt's enthusiasm for crafting software interfaces blossomed early.  Just a few days after discovering how to make pixels move around the screen of a borrowed computer he was devouring books on the topic of computer graphics and UI design.  Now he travels the world speaking at software conferences and teaching a diverse portfolio of programming topics for corporate clients. On the consulting side he continues to work with customers like Microsoft, HP, Intel, and Intuit and enjoys being part of the Wintellect consultant group.He has over fifty hours of video training courses available in the WintellectNow, Lynda and Udemy catalogs.  He writes for several publications including Code Magazine and has a new "HLSL and Pixel Shaders for XAML Developer" book available from O'Reilly Media. His current UI obsession revolves around the Windows 8 Metro, Mobile, ASP.NET MVC and WPF APIs.  This year he is learning as much as he can about Xamarin. You can find his blog at xamlwonderland.com. Walt is also a Microsoft MVP and author of the free Shazzam Shader Editor (shazzam-tool.com). He is also deeply involved in the local developer community — founding the .NET Developers Association in Redmond, WA and continues to help organize the Seattle Code Camp, developer hackathons and other local events.  

Kate Gregory has been using C++ since before Microsoft had a C++ compiler, and has been paid to program since 1979. She loves C++ and believes that software should make our lives easier. That includes making the lives of developers easier! She'll stay up late arguing about deterministic destruction or how C++ 11 is not the C++ you remember. Kate runs a small consulting firm in rural Ontario and provides mentoring and management consultant services, as well as writing code every week. She has spoken all over the world, written over a dozen books, and helped thousands of developers to be better at what they do. Kate is a Microsoft Regional Director, and a Visual C++ MVP, an Imagine Cup judge and mentor, and an active contributor to StackOverflow and other StackExchange sites. She develops courses for Pluralsight, primarily on C++ and Visual Studio. In 2014 she was Open Content Chair for CppCon, the largest C++ conference ever held, where she also delivered sessions.