Prairie Developer Conference : Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada

The Prairie Developer Conference is proud to have such a world-class group of speakers for our conference! Twenty-five expert practitioners from all over North America will be sharing their knowledge and expertise with attendees. Below is a listing of our speakers as well as ways you can get more information about them through their blog, website, and Twitter.

Connect with the Best - The Speakers of Prairie Developer Conference

David Alpert, Winnipeg, MB
David is a software developer and front-end engineer with a passion for designing smooth experiences. Over the past 10 years he has worked in enterprise corporations, non-profits, a university, and 3 home offices constantly striving to eliminate friction between people and software. Currently he is proud to work with Anvil Digital, a Winnipeg-based software consulting company that understands the value of user experience. David lives in rural Manitoba with his amazing wife, five beautiful kids, and one large dog.

Amir Barylko, Winnipeg, MB
Amir Barylko is the Senior Solution Architect at MavenThought Inc. Amir received his Master’s degree from the University of Buenos Aires and has over 15 years of experience working as an architect and developer with a variety of applications, platforms, tools and operating systems.
He is very passionate about service oriented architectures, TDD, BDD and model driven applications.

Donald Belcham, Edmonton, AB
Donald Belcham is a senior software developer, independent contractor, and agile development expert who is a strong supporter of fundamental OO patterns and practices. He is co-author of the book, “Brownfield Application Development in .NET” (Manning Press, 2008), and actively shares his expertise with other technical professionals at user groups, code camps and conferences held throughout the world. Past lectures have covered topics that encompass development practices, quality team leadership, and the intricacies of new and emerging technologies.

Craig Berntson, Salt Lake City, UT
Craig Berntson has been a Microsoft MVP since 1996 and has spoken at developer events across the US and in Canada, Germany, and the Czech Republic since 2000. He has written for various magazines and is co-author of “Continuous Integration in .NET”, available from Manning. Craig lives Salt Lake City, UT where he develops hospital database and analytical software for a Fortune 100 company. You can contact him at craig@craigberntson.com, through his blog at www.craigberntson.com/blog, or on Twitter at www.twitter.com/craigber.

John Bristowe, Calgary, AB
John Bristowe is a Senior Developer Evangelist with Microsoft Canada and is based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. John is an experienced speaker and frequently presents at developer conferences and events. Prior to joining Microsoft, John was a member of the Microsoft Regional Director program and was awarded a Microsoft MVP award for his work in the developer community on technologies such as ASP, ASP.NET, and the Microsoft Web services stack.

John has many years of experience developing software for operating systems such as the BeOS, variants of Linux and UNIX and, of course, Windows. He has also spent a great deal of time building Web and rich client applications. John is passionate about assisting the technical community in Canada and spends much of his time talking to students, teachers, and professionals in the industry.

Kelly Cassidy, Winnipeg, MB
Kelly Cassidy is the Senior Business Analyst Manager at DMT Development Systems Group, working as analyst from both the business side and system side on various enterprise-level web-based applications, including the recent delivery of 130 websites and associated tools for various automotive clients. He has previously been a software and web developer, software development manager, and software project manager during his career, creating such applications as an eLearning system, international marketing websites and applications, data warehousing applications and a number of online contest applications. He is currently the president of the Winnipeg .NET User's Group and sits on the Interactive Advisory Board of New Media Manitoba.

Chris Dagenais, Saskatoon, SK
I’ve been fascinated by computers since I was about 10 years old, cutting my development teeth in Q-Basic through a correspondence course in highschool, followed up by taking the Computer Systems Technology course offered at Kelsey (Siast campus in Saskatoon, SK). I was always very interested in what the internet was going to make possible so I naturally looked for a job working at a company building web applications. I found that job at Point2 Technologies, starting out as a Web Developer working on an inventory management and marketing system for heavy equipment dealerships. I knew right away that these were the kind of applications I wanted to be involved with. Through the years I worked on multiple different products at Point2 using a variety of different technologies, and filling a variety of different roles. During my progression through my career my specialization gravitated towards data management, API’s, webservices etc, but in the end my passion for people lead me to a team lead, and eventually management role where I am today as the Director of Software Development, overseeing and coordinating the development of all our Real Estate products. In recent years I played a key role in transitioning our entire development team, and later the entire business, to using Agile principles of project management, and now look for ways to help others with their transitions to Agile as well.

Michael DeFehr, Winnipeg, MB
Michael DeFehr is the primary database analyst/developer at Protegra, a leading technology solution provider based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. His career has focused on database administration and development using Microsoft SQL Server.

Gus Emery, Minneapolis, MN
Gus Emery is a Principal Consultant with Tech-Pro a Microsoft Gold Certified Partners. Gus has over fifteen years experience architecting and implementing highly-scalable ASP.Net applications and distributed n-tiered applications across a broad array of industries within the Twin Cities area. Gus has been working with Visual Basic since v3.0 and .Net since Beta #1, and loves to seek out new and exciting technologies to serve his customers technological needs!

Cory Fowler, ON
Cory Fowler is an experienced Developer who has focused on ASP.NET, C#, Dot Net Nuke, Silverlight and Programming Best Practices. Cory holds a Computer Programmer Analyst Diploma from Humber College, is studying for MCTS Certification for Client-Based Web Development and Application Development Foundation, and has been a speaker at Tech Days 2009 as well as other Development Community groups. Recent accomplishments include starting up a Coffee & Code chapter in Guelph as well as helping to revitalize the CTTDNUG .Net User Group in Kitchener-Waterloo.

Nathan G. Bertram, Winnipeg, MB
Nathan is a passionate web developer, entrepreneur & innovator. He loves what he does and enjoys learning & expanding his knowledge about the web on a daily basis. In the the past he has worked closely with agencies on developing custom CMS systems for a wide array of clientele. He has worked extensively on large scale enterprise Ruby on Rails applications in the pharmaceutical industry. Most recently at 2012 Technologies Inc. Nathan has been leading the development efforts on Styckyd.com - an innovative online consumer-to-consumer marketplace tailored specifically towards the automotive aftermarket. Nathan is also the founder of Competitor Tab Inc. which is a web application that helps entrepreneurs and businesses keep track of competitors, perform in-depth analysis and make better informed business decisions.

Joël Hébert, Ottawa, ON
Joël Hébert, Opulent ASP Development Inc.is a Microsoft Community Influencer and a Microsoft MVP for ASP.NET.

As the Director / Solutions Architect at Opulent ASP Development Inc., Joël works as a consultant specializing in ASP.NET Enterprise Architecture / Development. He is passionate about web farms / web gardens and distributed caching. His interests are Domain Driven Design - DDD, Distributed Domain Driven Design -DDDD, Enterprise Integration Patterns, Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture, Analysis Patterns and of course wine as he is studying to become a sommelier.

Doug Hennig, Regina, SK
Doug Hennig is CTO of Stonefield Software Inc. He has more than 20 years experience in the IT industry. He is the author of the several award-winning products, including the flagship Stonefield Query. He has written several books and over 100 articles in various software development magazines. Doug has spoken at software development conferences and user groups all over the world. He has been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) designation every year since 1996, and has done extensive consulting and development work for Microsoft.

James Kovacs, Calgary, AB
James Kovacs is an independent architect, developer, trainer, and jack-of-all-trades specializing in agile development using the .NET Framework. He is passionate about helping developers create flexible software using test-driven development (TDD), unit testing, object-relational mapping, dependency injection, refactoring, continuous integration, and related techniques.

He blogs on CodeBetter.com as well as his own blog, writes articles for MSDN Magazine and CoDe Magazine, and administers TeamCity.CodeBetter.com - a CI server for open source projects. He created psake, a PowerShell-based build automation tool, to save developers from XML Hell.

James is a Microsoft MVP - Solutions Architect and card-carrying member of ALT.NET - a group of software professionals continually looking for more effective ways to develop applications. He is the Agile Track Chair for DevTeach, Canada's largest independent Microsoft conference, and one of the organizers for ALT.NET Canada. He holds a variety of designations, including MCP, MCAD, MCSD, and MCT. He received his Bachelors degree from the University of Toronto and his Masters degree from Harvard University.

Aaron Kowall, Winnipeg, MB
Aaron is the Application Lifecycle Management Practice Lead at Imaginet Resources Corp. Aaron has over 16 years in the Application Development and IT arena and his drive and determination has made him a sought after leader. His reputation earned him a spot on EDS’s Top Gun team where he was asked to investigate the very early work Microsoft was doing on ALM tooling and process to see if it could augment or supplant EDS’s own development processes. Aaron’s work directly contributed to MSF 4.0 which was later introduced into VSTS as MSF Agile and MSF for CMMi process templates. As ALM Practice Lead at Imaginet he continues to do consulting on Agile and Lean practices and their implementation with Visual Studio Team System.

Jessica M. Moss, Richmond, VA
Jessica M. Moss, an architect with Ironworks Consulting and a Microsoft SQL Server MVP, is a well-known practitioner, author, and speaker in Microsoft SQL Server business intelligence. Jessica has created numerous data warehousing solutions for companies in the retail, internet, health services, finance, and energy industries and authored technical content for multiple magazines, websites, and the book "Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Integration Services Problem-Design-Solution". Jessica enjoys working with the central Virginia community and speaks regularly at user groups, code camps, and conferences. You can read about her work on her blog, http://www.jessicammoss.com.

Shan McArthur, Regina, SK
As Vice President, Technology and Senior Architect at Adxstudio, Shan exhibits a profound dedication and proficiency in his field. Having specialized in the IT industry for over a decade, his experience and knowledge support his instrumental role in the architecture and ongoing development of the company’s web development technology.

In 2009, Microsoft recognized Shan by awarding him as Canada’s first Microsoft Dynamics CRM Most Valuable Professional (MVP).

Robert Reppel, Vancouver, BC
Robert Reppel has written his first commercial software application more than 25 years ago. He has seen many since, as architect, team lead and developer, for companies from start-ups to multinationals. He is an experienced agile developer and coach, specializing in introducing test-driven development and other agile techniques into existing projects. He usually develops for the .NET platform, with occasional forays into LAMP and Java.

His main interest is the people side of the business: How do ways of thinking, social interactions, organisational structures and processes influence the shape of software systems? What are the types of decisions which result in a truly useful fit-for-its-purpose cost-effective and maintainable solution?

Peter Ritchie, Ottawa, ON
Peter Ritchie is a software development consultant. Peter is president of Peter Ritchie Inc. Software Consulting Co., a software consulting company in Canada's National Capital Region specializing in Windows-based software development management, process, and implementation consulting. Peter has worked with such clients as Mitel, Nortel, Passport Canada, Innvapost from mentoring to architecture to implementation. Peter's range of experience ranges from designing and implement simple stand-alone applications to architecting n-tier applications spanning dozens of computers; from C++ to C#.

Steve Rogalsky, Winnipeg, MB
Steve Rogalsky is an application architect at Protegra with experience in various industries. Those who know him well would say that he has a passion for efficient process and for 'uncovering better ways'. After experiencing how a limited but misunderstood set of basic agile techniques held promise but produced mixed results, Steve transformed his morning commute into a classroom by listening to any and all podcasts discussing the merits and frustrations of agile techniques such as XP, scrum and lean. The resulting improvements in project practices have proven how lean and agile techniques can improve project costs and schedules, increase quality, and boost project success rates compared to more traditional project techniques.

Joel Semeniuk, Winnipeg, MB
Joel Semeniuk is a founder of Imaginet Resources Corp; a Canadian based Microsoft Gold Partner. He is also a Microsoft Regional Director and MVP in Team System, and INETA speaker, and has a degree in Computer Science. With over 18 years of experience, Joel specializes in helping organizations around the world realize their potential through maturing their software development and information technology practices. Joel is passionate about Application Lifecycle Management tooling, techniques, and mindsets and regularly speaks at conferences around the world on a wide range of ALM topics. Joel is also the co-author of "Managing Projects with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System" published by Microsoft Press as well as dozens of other articles for popular trade magazines.

Shane Sholdice, Ottawa, ON
Shane Sholdice is a Software Developer/Architect working for Anvil Digital of Winnipeg. Shane is passionate about software development best practices and techniques, and considers himself fortunate to have had the opportunity to advance his knowledge and skillset while working on many large enterprise level world class applications.

Dylan Smith, Winnipeg, MB
Dylan Smith is a Solution Architect and Team Lead at Anvil Digital where he works with a team of talented developers and designers building a wide range of world class solutions. He has over a decades experience designing and architecting mission critical applications. In the past 5 years Dylan has focused on agile development techniques and practices. He has led the shift to agile and lean development practices across multiple teams, projects and companies.

David Wesst, Winnipeg, MB
David Wesst is a User Experience developer with Anvil Digital. His work has primarily revolved around the development of the presentation layer in software projects ranging from ASP.NET to WPF. Currently, David is involved with numerous projects at Anvil Digital working to improve the user experience provided by the software and to integrate UX development into the software planning process.

David Woods, Edmonton, AB
David Woods, President and Founder of Solidhouse (www.solidhouse.com), is an accomplished independent contractor and .NET developer specializing in enterprise applications and enterprise level projects aimed at meeting the unique needs and business requirements of a broad spectrum of clients.

He is an advocate of good OO skills and patterns, and is particularly passionate about security solutions and best practices. Dave holds the designation of Microsoft Security MVP, one of only three professionals in Canada to hold this distinction. He has been developing and programming applications since he was a kid, working his way from BASIC (and still has his Apple II to prove it) to .NET.

In addition to his corporate projects, Dave enjoys sharing his knowledge and understanding of some of the Industry’s most innovative and forward-thinking arenas with other professionals and up-and-coming developers. He is an active speaker at a variety of user groups, code camps and conferences throughout Canada and the United States, and via his informative blog; www.haveyougotwoods.com.