Speakers

NOTE
The information on this page refers to Software Architect 2008. This site will be updated with information on Software Architect 2009 closer to the event.

Software Architect 2008 features a number of the world’s best-known experts on software development, who between them have written dozens of books and hundreds of magazine articles.

They include:

Kevlin Henney Kevlin is an independent consultant and trainer based in the UK. He specialises in programming languages, OO design, patterns, development process and software architecture. He has been a columnist for various magazines and web sites, including The Register, Application Development Advisor, Java Report and C/C++ Users Journal. Kevlin is co-author of two recent volumes in the Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture series. He is also a regular speaker at various conferences, including DevWeek.

Dave Wheeler Dave is an independent software consultant specialising in Microsoft .NET technologies. He’s particularly fond of WPF and Silverlight, but to remain grounded in reality he also works extensively with ASP.NET and is a moderator on Microsoft’s ASP.NET forums. When not writing software, Dave teaches various .NET courses for DevelopMentor, writes articles and speaks at conferences.

Ralf Westphal Ralf is a freelance author with more than 250 publications, a coach/consultant on software modelling and during architectural reviews, and a speaker at various developer events in Germany and other countries. The focus of Ralf’s work is on .NET software architecture and helping innovative software technologies into the market. Ralf is a Microsoft Visual Developer Solution Architect MVP, and from 1998 until 2005 he was one of the independent Microsoft Regional Directors for Germany.

Christian Weyer Christian is software architect with thinktecture, a European company aiding and supporting software architects and developers in designing and implementing distributed solutions. He is fascinated by the opportunities of both service-orientation and the Web, beyond the browser and colourful user interfaces. With a strong historical background in distributed systems, Christian is currently focusing on the possibilities to leverage the Web for connected systems, inside and outside the firewall.

Neal Ford Neal Ford is a senior application architect at ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy with an exclusive focus on end-to-end software development and delivery. He is the designer and developer of applications, instructional materials, magazine articles, courseware, video/DVD presentations, author of three books, including Art of Java Web Development (Manning 2003), and editor/contributor for the 2006 and 2007 No Fluff, Just Stuff anthologies (Pragmatic Press). He is also a regular speaker at developers’ conferences worldwide. He welcomes feedback; reach him at nford@thoughtworks.com.

Neil Kidd Neil joined Microsoft towards the end of 2000, and has been in the Developer and Platform Group since July 2006 where he spends his time helping development organisations with their Application Lifecycle and development processes. For the previous 2.5 years he was an Application Development Consultant, working with a variety of customers and partners, and assisting them across the whole of the development lifecycle. During this time he tended to specialise in performance and scalability work. Before that he worked in the C++ team in PSS for just over three years.

Dino Esposito Dino is an instructor for Solid Quality Mentors, and a trainer and consultant based in Rome. He edits the Cutting Edge column for MSDN Magazine, and is a regular contributor to various other journals, including VSJ. He is the author of various books, including Windows Shell Programming, Instant DHTML Scriptlets, and Windows Script Host Programmer’s Reference. Before becoming a full-time author and consultant, Dino worked for Andersen Consulting, and he also co-founded www.VB2theMax.com to share knowledge with the global VB community.

Dominick Baier Dominick leads the security curriculum at DevelopMentor. This includes teaching and authoring courses about .NET, ASP.NET, WCF and Vista security. He holds a degree in Computer Science, is a certified BS7799/ISO17799 Lead Auditor, and speaks at various conferences around the world about application security. When not teaching he spends his time researching security, doing audits and penetration tests, and helping other developers worldwide to build more secure applications. He is the author of Writing More-Secure Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Applications (Microsoft Press), and a Microsoft MVP in the “Visual Developer – Security” category.

Eric Nelson Eric has been with Microsoft UK for twelve years, and has spent most of that time helping ISVs to explore and adopt the latest technologies and tools from Microsoft. His current focus is working with ISVs to help them take advantage of .NET Framework 3.5 and IIS 7.0 in their solutions. Before joining Microsoft, Eric was a Unix developer working exclusively with C and 4GLs, writing high-performance calculation engines and delivering line of business solutions built on top of Sybase, Ingres and other RDBMS packages. He can be found blogging about “ISV Stuff” at: .

Steven Kelly Steven is CTO of MetaCase and co-founder of the DSM Forum. He has over fifteen years of experience of tool building and consultancy in Domain-Specific Modelling. As architect and lead developer of MetaEdit+, he has seen it win or be a finalist in awards from SD Times, Byte, Innosuomi, Net.Object Days, and Jolt Productivity. He has authored a book and over 20 articles in journals such as Dr. Dobb’s, and regularly speaks at events like OOPSLA and SD Best Practices. Steven is a member of the IASA, on the editorial board of JDM, and a full-back in the Finnish 3rd division.

Steve Plank Steve is an identity architect working in Microsoft’s Developer and Platform group. He works with customers and partners to help them design and formalise architectures that focus on digital identity and its related data. He works on enterprise identity and also large-scale Internet identity, and is engaged with governments on formal identity projects such as border controls, identity registers and citizen identity cards. He is a regular speaker at conferences such as RSA, TechEd, IT Forum and Infosec, and he writes books and magazine articles.

Andy Clymer Andy is a freelance IT consultant specialising in .NET-based technology. His last ‘real’ job was at Cisco Systems, where he was a lead architect for Cisco’s identity solutions. Prior to Cisco he worked in various small startups. He teaches various .NET courses for DevelopMentor, including Guerrilla .NET and Essential .NET 2.0.

Robert Annett Robert has been a software developer for over ten years, and has worked for Sun Microsystems and various consultancies. Most of his projects have been in investment banks where he has worked on complex trading applications with demanding latency and throughput requirements. He is spending less time worrying about how code functionally works and more and more about how it fits into the real world.

Dean Smith Dean has been a technical infrastructure specialist for over ten years. Amongst other roles, he spent five years as the systems architect for Guardian Unlimited, and has recently been technical design authority on a project to move Guardian News and Media to a new home including two new data centres, new national network and a virtualised IT platform. He is now MD of a consultancy firm specialising in systems infrastructure projects, and is currently focused on using virtualisation to solve problems other than just IT consolidation.

Simon Brown Simon is a hands-on software architect who works within Detica’s Global Financial Markets group. He has been involved in projects ranging from desktop clients and web applications through to highly scalable distributed systems and service-oriented architectures. His specialist technology is Java, and as a hands-on technical authority, he advises on and shapes solutions; defining, delivering and assuring the chosen architecture is fit for purpose. Simon has written and co-written a number of books, spoken at various conferences, and founded “Coding the Architecture” – a website that presents a practical and pragmatic view of software architecture.

Richard Blewett Richard has worked in software development for 19 years, with experience ranging from mainframes to distributed Windows-based systems. He has worked on a number of high-profile projects, such as the UK National Police Systems, as well as developing software for several large financial institutions. He spends his life these days in the world of connected systems with WCF, Workflow and BizTalk. Richard is the CTO of DevelopMentor UK.

Kevin Seal Kevin has been working with Java for ten years, in defence research through dot com to investment banking. Currently he works at Detica’s Financial Services business unit. While getting on well with server-side Java, Kevin’s also a keen Swing developer (and possibly masochist) and a regular contributor to “Coding the Architecture”.

Eoin Woods Eoin works for Barclays Global Investors, where he is the lead software architect for a new portfolio management system, supporting the active equity business. Eoin has worked in software engineering since 1990, for companies including Groupe Bull, Sybase, InterTrust and UBS Investment Bank, working in the areas of applied research, server product development, consultancy and application development. His main technical interests are software architecture, distributed systems, computer security, and data management; he is co-author of the book Software Systems Architecture: Working With Stakeholders Using Viewpoints and Perspectives, published by Addison Wesley.

Mark Whitehorn Dr Mark Whitehorn specialises in database technology, data warehousing and OLAP, and has written nine books on these subjects. He works as a consultant for a number of national and international companies, designing databases and BI systems. He has been leading such projects for many years, and was recently invited by Microsoft to help define the role of BI architect. This definition was captured as a USD (Unified Skills Domain). That domain has subsequently been used to define all of Microsoft’s BI training material, and Mark has recently completed the technical review of that material.

Matt Deacon Matt is the chief architectural advisor for the Developer and Platform Group at Microsoft UK. His primary role is to serve as an advisor to Microsoft’s customers, and the public, on all matters relating to IT Architecture. He chairs the Microsoft UK Architect Council, and is the owner of the Microsoft Architect Forum and Architect Insight events. Matt has over 16 years experience in the IT industry, and has delivered many mission-critical enterprise solutions on both Microsoft and Java platforms. He was founder of the UK region of the International Association of Software Architects (IASA), and is now the IASA European Regional Chair.

Robert Morris Rob is Chief Strategy Officer for GT Software, and is responsible for the planning, integration, and marketing of GT Software product solutions to the global market. Prior to GT Software, he held a variety of positions at industry leaders KnowledgeWare, Forté Software, ClientSoft (now NEON systems) and Jacada. He has an extensive background in application development and integration, including experience with CASE methodologies, distributed systems, as well as midrange and mainframe environments. He speaks frequently at industry conferences, including Gartner Symposium, Java One, and various IBM events.

Mark Dalgarno Mark has worked in the software industry for over twenty years at all levels, from programmer to head of software development. He works for Cambridge-based Software Acumen – a software consultancy specialising in Software Product Lines, Architecture Management and Software Process Improvement. He is also the editor of the Code Generation Network and organiser of the associated Code Generation conferences. Mark is a regular conference speaker, having led sessions at SPA, ACCU and SPLC. In his spare time he is involved in the BCS Software Practice Advancement group, and helps organise meetings in Cambridge.

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