Nikolai Tillmann has been with Microsoft Research for 6 years. He is currently leading the Pex project, building an automated test case generation tool for .NET based program analysis. Previously, he worked on Spec Explorer, a model-based testing tool.

Peter Provost is a Sr. Program Manager with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Architect Edition. He is a recognized agile coach, author and presenter and brings more than 10 years of agile development and project management experience. Peter is currently working with VSTS Architect Edition to help create the next wave of architectural and modeling tools.

John has been in the business of debuggers and diagnostic tools for around 15 years. He cut his teeth on debuggers for Windows 16 and 32bit, SunOS and Solaris. After a brief stint doing embedded debuggers at Wind River Systems, John joined Microsoft during the Visual Studio .Net product cycle. He has worked as a developer and lead on native and managed debuggers. John was part of the TeamSystem team from Day -30, working on the VS profiler and code coverage. Since then John has worked on starting the project for the application flight recorder as well as continuing to develop debugging and profiling technologies. John dreams in CodeView records. There is no cure.

Alex Turner is the Program Manager for the C# Compiler at Microsoft, where he makes sure that C#’s new language features and compiler services become a reality. Alex graduated with an MS in Computer Science from Stony Brook University and has been a speaker at TechEd and TechDays.

Frank Savage is veteran game developer with 17 years of professional experience. Starting at Origin Systems in 1991, Frank worked on Strike Commander and was the lead on Wing Commander 3. After leaving Origin in 1995, he worked on the MechCommander game at the startup FASA Interactive. FASA was acquired by Microsoft in 1999 and after completing MechCommander Gold and MechCommander 2 for Microsoft Game Studios, Frank went to work for the Advanced Technology Group in Xbox just before the launch of the first Xbox console. In 2004, Frank joined the XNA team which has evolved into the XNA Community Game Platform team and now works as an architect on the Framework and Tools team delivering XNA Game Studio.

Koby Avital has over twenty years experience as a senior executive, GM (SVP/VP) of Engineering and CTO in highly competitive software companies in enterprise applications and solutions, networking, communications, Internet applications, Internet security and multi-tiers real-time systems. Koby join Microsoft two years ago from SAP (GM composite applications, and a co-GM of SAP’s Enterprise Service Architecture) and from PeopleSoft (Chief Scientist and HCM head of development). With Microsoft Koby is heading CSD technology and products integration projects with internal Microsoft products to achieve better alignment across divisions. Koby is using his broad experience and market understanding to influence Microsoft products direction aiming on providing short and long term solutions to existing and future markets

Brian is a Microsoft C# MVP who has been actively developing in .NET since its early betas in 2000, and who has been developing solutions using Microsoft technologies and platforms for even longer. Along with .NET, Brian is particularly skilled in the languages of C, C++ and assembly language for a variety of CPUs. He is also well-versed in a wide variety of technologies including web development, document imaging, GIS, graphics, game development, and hardware interfacing. Additionally, Brian has co-authored the book "Debugging ASP.NET" published by New Riders, and is currently co-authoring a book titled "Coding4Fun: 10 .NET Programming Projects for Wiimote, YouTube, World of Warcraft, and More" to be published by O'Reilly in November 2008. Brian is also an author for MSDN's Coding4Fun website. You can reach Brian via his blog at http://www.brianpeek.com/ .

Clint Rutkas works for Microsoft as an Academic Developer Evangelist. Before Microsoft, Clint developed web applications with ASP.Net and c# for two separate companies in Chicago, IL. In his spare time, he builds “interesting” c# hardware projects like disco dance floors, self-balancing skateboards, and automated bartenders. He blogs at http://betterthaneveryone.com along with http://blogs.msdn.com/coding4fun.

Scott Hanselman works for Microsoft as a Principal Program Manager in the Developer Division, aiming to spread good information about developing software, very often on the Microsoft stack. Before this he was the Chief Architect at Corillian Corporation, now a part of Checkfree, for 6+ years. He was also involved in a few Microsoft Developer things for many years like the MVP and RD programs and will speak about computers (and other passions) whenever someone will listen. He's written a few books, most recently with Bill Evjen and Devin Rader on ASP.NET. He blogs at http://www.hanselman.com and podcasts at http://www.hanselminutes.com.

I am the Principal Program Manager in the VSTS Test Business which is part of the Developer Division. I enjoy building well integrated set of tools and technologies that enable developers build, test and ship quality software. I started my career at Microsoft 18 years ago in the Windows Division after 3.5 years working as a programmer in India and a M.S.(CS) from Oregon State University. After working as a Developer and Development Lead and shipping several releases of the award winning Routing and Remote Access Services for Windows, I moved to the MS India Development Center (MSIDC) in Hyderabad. I was a founding member of the team of employees who moved from Redmond to create MSIDC. As Development Lead and Manager I shipped the award winning Services For Unix (2.0 and 3.0). I then moved on to build the Windows Sustained Engineering team from ground up culminating in shipping the Windows 2000 URP release. Before joining the Developer Division I was the Product Unit Manager for the Windows Client Servicing group in Redmond.

Sameer Chabungbam is a Program Manager in the JScript team at Microsoft, where he is focussed at building tools for web developers. Earlier, he had worked on providing Javascript intellisense in Visual Studio. Recently, he worked on the JScript Profiler that shipped in Internet Explorer 8.

Jonathan is a 15 year Microsoft veteran who focuses on studying the intersection of graphics/imaging and networks. He is currently the architect of Microsoft WorldWide Telescope. Jonathan is also an avid amateur astronomer and designed built his own automated domed observatory as well as helped develop the field of DSLR astrophotography. When he is not at work on WorldWide Telescope Jonathan tries keep up with his 5 children and explain to them the majesty of the stars.

Moe is the Lead Program Manager on the Microsoft Sync Framework and has been with the project since its incubation - currently driving the group's incubations and device to cloud strategies related to content flow...

Jason is the Program Manager responsible for syncronization of Personal Information Manager (PIM) data between new windows certified portable devices and PC applications. Jason has come to Windows after working with PIM data on Exchange Server.

Shawn Burke has at Microsoft since 1997, spending all of that time in Developer Division developing UI framworks such as Windows Forms, ASP.NET AJAX, and Silverlight Controls. Shawn is currently the Product Unit Manager of the WPF/Silverlight Controls Team. Shawn holds a Bachelors of Business Administration a Bachelors of Science from the University of Washington in Seattle.

Ben Ravani is a General Manager in the Global Foundation Services at Microsoft. Ben brings 21 years of experience in the high tech industry from business planning and product development to services design and operations support. Ben currently leads an organization that manages over 100 of Microsoft’s online properties with 10,000’s of servers deployed in data centers globally providing services to Hundreds of Millions of users worldwide. The scope of his responsibilities includes managing services with over a Billion transactions per day and 10’s of millions of concurrent sessions. He is responsible for operating a number of platform services including Windows Live ID, Messenger and Anti Phishing. Ben has provided design consulting to services such as WLID, Microsoft’s online Billing platform, Microsoft’s Rights Management Platform, and Microsoft’s award winning Internet Safety platform. Ben joined Microsoft over 14 years. Since then, he has held various leadership roles at Microsoft involved in developing and building a number of products and services. Ben started his career in developing technologies in the automotive and aerospace industries. He led an engineering team in the Boeing 777 development program responsible for the Electrical and Avionics Engineering Computing. He holds a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Danny Kim is a Microsoft MVP and recognized industry expert on Windows Group Policy, Active Directory, and PowerShell. Kim has helped more than 30 Fortune 100 companies, including Bank of America, Boeing, and Wal-Mart, design and deploy their Group Policy and DataCenter infrastructure. He has also architected and developed several leading Windows policy management products which have been licensed by Microsoft, NetIQ, Citrix, HP, Sony, Toshiba and others. Kim holds a BS in Computer Science from Cornell University.

John Shriver-Blake is in his fourth year at Microsoft and with the Live Meeting service engineering team. In his role as a Senior Lead Program Manager, he has been responsible for aspects of the service ranging from architecture to user experience. John was a key contributor to a significant overhaul of the Live Meeting service’s infrastructure and architecture. His work helped improve the services reliability and flexibility, and prepared the platform for the release of LiveMeeting 2007. John is also responsible for the LiveMeeting developer platform, maintaining and promoting the Live Meeting XML-API’s, and working with partners and customers who integrate with Live Meeting. John leads the PM team responsible for driving the user experience and feature set for these areas. John has a passion for software as a service and is excited by the challenges and opportunities available in the Unified Communications space.

Jitendra is a part of Microsoft Technology center at Infosys and an Architect on Catalytic IT, a joint IT Transformation Program with Microsoft. Currently he leads the Cloud Computing group and defines how various solutions and service offerings in Infosys should leverage this disruptive technology to provide a better value to our customers.

Erik Johnson is Sr. Director of Product Research for Epicor Software, the 6th-largest global ERP software supplier and responsible for managing software architecture strategy and relationships with technology partners. Erik represented Epicor at the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I), where he contributed to the WS-I Basic Profile 1.0 and chaired the XML Schema working group. As an enterprise solutions architect, Erik was named to the Microsoft Architecture Advisory Board and a Microsoft Solutions Architect MVP. Prior to joining Epicor, Erik worked as a senior software architect and development manager at DataWorks Corporation.