Speakers

Energy, laughter and a contagious passion for coding - Mike brings it all to the podium. Mike has worked in a variety of roles including architect, project manager, developer and technical writer. The coolest part of his job? Running into people who are still using (and liking) his software applications. Mike is a published author with WROX Press and APress Books, writing primarily about getting the most from your SQL Server database. Since appearing in Microsoft's DevCast in 1994, Mike has presented technical information at seminars, conferences and corporate boardrooms across America.

Jeff Brand is a .NET Developer in Microsoft's Developer and Platform Group. Jeff assists customers in evaluating, developing and deploying applications built on the .NET Framework and the Microsoft platform. He has been with Microsoft for fourteen years and has served in variety of roles including infrastructure consultant, e-commerce technology specialist, and enterprise technology advisor.

Dan Grigsby is a founding partner at the mobile app agency Drivetrain. Dan previously founded Mobile Orchard, which became the number one iPhone developer news site and podcast. He founded half a dozen other companies, including an early e-commerce provider that was acquired by Microsoft and the only ever successful competitor to PayPal. He received the Business Journal's "40 Under 40" award, Finance and Commerce's "40 Minnesotans On The Move" award, was named one of MPLS/St. Paul magazines "75 Best Brains" and featured as one of fifteen "Innovatives" by Twin Cities Business. Dan is an Adjunct Instructor and Entrepreneur-In-Residence the Carlson School of Business at the University of Minnesota.

Robert Boedigheimer works for Schwans Shared Services, LLC providing business solutions with web technologies and leads Robert Boedigheimer Consulting, LLC. Robert has been designing and developing web sites for the past 14 years including the early days of ASP and ASP.NET. He is a columnist for aspalliance.com, an ASP.NET MVP, an author, an "Early Achiever" MCSD for .NET with C#, an MCPD: Web with C#, and a 2nd degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. Robert has spoken at industry conferences including the Heartland Developers Conference, DevLink, DevTeach, Tulsa Tech Fest, DevWeek, TechEd, AJAXWorld, and numerous national and international VSLive! events.

Eric Bowen is a former Microsoft Architect Evangelist specializing in enterprise architecture and technical project leadership of complex projects using Microsoft technologies. Eric has been programming for 28 years since he taught himself Z80 assembly language on his families TRS-80 Model I Level II. And he has still never worn the t-shirt that Bill Gates signed when he won the programming contest at the Microsoft PDC in 2001. In his spare time Eric works as a photojournalist providing independent coverage of the Minnesota National Guard and the war in Iraq. Eric has made multiple trips to Iraq, and his work has appeared locally on Channel 5 Eyewitness News and MinnPost.Com, as well as nationally on the CBS Evening News and in Parade Magazine. Eric is a former US Army Paratrooper, and former member of the US National Biathlon Team.

Adam Grocholski is a Technical Evangelist at RBA Consulting where he spends time focusing on the Windows Azure Platform as well as the latest UI technologies such as Windows Phone 7 and Silverlight. He also has a penchant for hanging around some of the darker corners of the .NET Framework (i.e. T4 and MEF). In 2010 he was named as a Microsoft MVP for his commitment to the Microsoft development community. From founding and presenting at the Twin Cities Cloud Computing user group to speaking at the local .NET and Silverlight user groups along with code camps and local, regional, and national conferences, he is committed to building a great community of well-educated Microsoft developers.

Donn Felker is the founder of Agilevent a innovative creative development firm that specializes in web, mobile and agile technologies. He has over 10 years of professional experience in various markets that include – entertainment, health, retail, insurance, financial, and real estate. He is the author of Android Development for Dummies and the author of the TekPub.com Introduction to Android video series. He is also a Microsoft ASP Insider, an MCTS in Web Client Development for .NET 2.0 and 3.5 and is also a certified ScrumMaster. He founded and coordinates the Twin Cities Give Camp and leads the Twin Cities Developers Guild. He writes, presents and consultants on various topics ranging from architecture, development, agile and patterns & practices. Follow Donn on twitter: @donnfelker or read his blog here: http://blog.donnfelker.com.

Jon is an IADNUG leader and consultant from West Des Moines, Iowa. He has been programing for the past 15 years and currently infatuated with writing WPF and Silverlight applications. Recently, Jon has created two tools that help .Net Developers write better code – Nitriq Code Analysis and Atomiq Duplicate Code Finder.

Mike Bollinger is a designer, coder, entrepreneur, and explorer. He is founder of Livefront, a mobile software design & development firm, and co-founder of TECHdotMN, a media group covering technology news in Minnesota. Mike has been designing and building mobile and web software for 14 years with clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to start-ups. He is an active member of the Minnesota technology community, a regular speaker at local events, and is on the Board of Directors for two non-profit organizations: Cheerful Givers and BizLounge. In his spare time Mike is an avid world traveler, a musician, a photographer, and a super-fast-sailboat-racer-guy.

Sam Kirchmeier is a software developer at Livefront. Sam has over 10 years of experience as a software developer, building mobile apps for iOS and web apps with a variety of technologies like Ruby on Rails, ASP.NET, and hand-crafted XHTML/CSS. When he's not writing the next big iOS app, you might find him teaching at Hennepin Technical College or out on the disc golf course practicing his technique.

Kelly Heikkila has more than 12 years development experience in web technologies and enterprise platform development, including 6 years software Product Management experience. He currently splits his time between his role as CTO of MixMobi, a post-revenue mobile marketing platform and founder of :coderow, a custom web and mobile application development company. Whenever possible he works in Ruby and Rails but also has extensive experience in a number of other four-letter languages.

Aaron Kardell is the author of iGarageSale, founder of MobileRealtyApps.com, and co-founder of Deals.by. Aaron has now delivered apps in five different "app stores" and his apps have been featured multiple times by Apple.

Phil Crissman is originally from Vancouver, Canada, and has been here in Minnesota since the year 2000. He makes things for the web with ruby and JavaScript, and is currently at Ackmann & Dickenson, Inc.

Avonelle Lovhaug escaped the corporate grind in 2003. Since then she's been running Code Poetry, her freelance programming venture serving tech savvy small businesses in the Twin Cities. Avonelle lives just outside St. Paul with her husband, and after raising two geek sons with careers in tech-related fields, she's done her part for future generations. She'd tell you how long she's been working with computers, but her age is classified. Avonelle writes about going freelance at www.IndyCoding.com.

Brian Hogan is an author, editor, trainer, speaker, musician, and web developer who loves to tinker with HTML5, CSS3, Ruby, and JavaScript. He coordinates the RailsMentors.org project which pairs people who want to learn about Ruby on Rails with experienced mentors. He's the author of "HTML5 and CSS3" and "Web Design For Developers" and consults. When not hacking on code or writing, he can be found improving his guitar chops or spending time with his daughters.

Justin Peck is the Co-Founder and CEO of QONQR: The Geosocial Game of World Domination! But before leaving to hone his Nanoweapons Expertise full-time, Justin completed several tours of duty as a Developer, Development Manager, and Agile Evangelist at several large, humorless, bureaucratic corporations. The experience has scarred him for life. When he's not working on his startup, Justin can often be found at the movies, probably watching something with subtitles and subtext. Follow him on Twitter: @justinpeck.

Brad Candell is an application and web architect with IDEXX Laboratories in Eau Claire, WI. Brad has been developing software and web applications within the Microsoft Ecosystem over the past 15 years, now focusing primarily in C#, ASP.NET MVC, WPF, WCF, Windows Phone 7, Silverlight, and MEF. When not immersed in code, Brad enjoys spending time with his wife and three children, camping, restoring antiques, or making sawdust in his woodworking shop. Read more about Brad at www.BradCandell.com and follow Brad on Twitter - @bradcandell

Nazmul is a consultant with over 15 years of software development experience primarily on Microsoft platform. He began his career writing client applications and switched between client and web application development. His interests lie in distributed architecture, object and relational modeling as well as developing design patterns and raising code security, performance, maintainability, and scalability awareness. He’s currently the CEO of Naz-Tek, and regularly blogs on technology matters and leads the local WCF user group, hosting monthly (1st Wednesday of the month at noon) knowledge share meetings at Bloomington Microsoft. His main focus is to bring efficiency and quantitative measures into the software development industry and reorient the general concept of information technology as an investment center rather than a cost center.

Co-founder of Zencoder, a Y Combinator-backed startup that provides awesome video encoding as a service in the cloud. Before Zencoder, ran a Ruby on Rails development shop, blogged at http://railspikes.com, wrote a Master's thesis on philosophy and theology, and made a failed attempt to become a Lisp hacker.

Cory has more that 16 years experience developing for the web, when formmail.pl and 56k ISDN lines were leading technologies. He worked as a VBScript, ColdFusion and PHP developer in prior lives and has been writing Ruby full-time for over two years. He enjoys exploring technologies with no immediate utility and is a practicing code deletionist. Cory is currently the lead software engineer at GoKart Labs, a digital innovation company and has been involved with launching two successful startups as part of the GoKart Labs team.

Tom's software development assignments include designing and delivering several enterprise applications. He has coauthored two books, "Professional Design Patterns in VB .NET" and ".NET Security"; written a few articles; and presented on a broad range of topics. Tom currently works as an application architect.

Matt is a member of the technical staff at Pluralsight, where he focuses on connected systems (WCF, Windows WF, BizTalk, AppFabric) and web technologies. Matt is also an independent consultant specializing in Microsoft .NET application design and development. As a writer Matt has contributed to several journals and magazines including MSDN Magazine where he authored the workflow content for the Foundations column. Matt regularly shares his love of technology by speaking at local, regional and international conferences such as Tech Ed. Microsoft has recognized Matt as an MVP for his community contributions around connected systems technology.

Scott is a seasoned consultant with over a decade of consulting experience on both the Microsoft and Java platforms. Scott began working with Silverlight in the 1.1 Alpha, and continues to focus on Silverlight 4 and Windows Phone 7 as his primary developer focus. Scott is also the leader of the Twin Cities Silverlight User Group. He was honored to be invited by Microsoft to deliver the keynote address at the Windows Phone 7 Developer Launch conference in Minneapolis last fall. Scott is currently the owner and principal consultant for his consulting firm Ignition Point Solutions, as well as COO of QONQR, a tech startup in the mobile gaming industry. He is heavily engaged in the Twin Cities entrepreneurial community, and is the current president of BizLounge, an entrepreneurship group for emerging and aspiring entrepreneurs across all industries.

Brent's nearly 20 year career has spanned platforms from the mainframe to mobile devices and industries from manufacturing to entertainment software. He started working with the Windows Azure Platform during its CTP phase and is now focused on helping fellow IT professionals explore the promise of cloud computing. Brent is also one of the inaugural Microsoft MVP's for the Windows Azure Platform.

Luke Francl is a long-time web application developer, using everything from Perl to Tcl (yes, really!). Lately, he's focused on Ruby on Rails and Google App Engine. A Y Combinator alumni, he is also co-founder of Minne?, which organizes MinneBar, one of the largest BarCamps in the world. He is the co-author of the PeepCode ebook "Receiving Email with Ruby" and has spoken at conferences around the world. Luke blogs at http://www.recursion.org and can be found on Twitter @lof.

Jeff Lin is the Founder of Bust Out Solutions, Inc. [http://bustoutsolutions.com/] and an adjunct faculty member at Hennepin Technical College where he teaches Web Design and Production. He started Bust Out Solutions in 2004 while house sitting in Hawaii. Yeah, tough work. In addition to a decade and a half in the software/web/mobile industry, Jeff also enjoys competitive soccer, paddles a hot orange kayak around the lakes, drinks good beer with lots of friends (or lots of beer with good friends), and hangs out with his wife and dog in Uptown, Minneapolis. Follow him @jefflin.

Paul fell in love with programming at first sight on an Apple ][+ in 1982, and never looked back. Living a secret double life as a classically trained composer and pianist, he brings a musician's passion for aesthetics and nuanced detail to the craft of writing software.