Speakers

Neal is Director, Software Architect, and Meme Wrangler at ThoughtWorks.

He has a degree in Computer Science from Georgia State University specializing in languages and compilers and a minor in mathematics specializing in statistical analysis. He is also the designer and developer of applications, instructional materials, magazine articles, and video presentations. He is also the author of 5 books, including the most recent Presentation Patterns.

Given his degree, Neal is a bit of a language geek, with affections including but not limited to Ruby, Clojure, Java, Groovy, JavaScript, Scala and C#/.NET. His primary consulting focus is the design and construction of large-scale enterprise applications. Neal is an internationally acclaimed speaker, having spoken at over 300 developer conferences worldwide, delivering more than 2000 presentations.

Scott Davis is author of the book Groovy Recipes: Greasing the Wheels of Java and two ongoing IBM developerWorks article series (Mastering Grails and in 2009, Practically Groovy). Scott writes extensively about how Groovy and Grails are the future of Java development. He teaches public and private classes on Groovy and Grails for start-ups and Fortune 100 companies.

Scott is the co-founder of the Groovy/Grails Experience conference and is a regular presenter on the international technical conference circuit (including GIDS, No Fluff Just Stuff, JavaOne, OSCON, TheServerSide and QCON). In 2008, Scott was voted the top Rock Star at JavaOne for his talk "Groovy, the Red Pill: How to blow the mind of a buttoned-down Java developer".

In his role of principal technology officer and global agile thought leader at Capgemini, Sander is continuously involved in the innovation of software development processes, techniques, architectures, patterns, frameworks and technologies, both at Capgemini and its many international clients. Sander has coached many organizations and projects, has written books on UML and agile and published over 200 articles in international magazines. He is an appreciated and inspiring speaker at many international conferences and he hosts seminars and workshops on agile, software estimation, design patterns, software architecture, UML, and .NET. Sander is a member of Microsoft's Partner Advisory Council for .NET and several other editorial and advisory boards, and he is the chief architect of Capgemini's agile software development platform Accelerated Delivery Platform (ADP).

Tom Marrs is a Technical Architect at Perficient, where he specializes in Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). He designs and implements mission-critical web and business applications using the latest SOA, Ruby on Rails, HTML5, JavaScript, Java/EE, and Open Source technologies.

Tom is the author of the upcoming JSON at Work for O'Reilly, and the JSON Refcard for DZone. Tom is also a speaker at the No Fluff Just Stuff (NFJS) and Great Indian Developer Summit (GIDS) conferences.

An active participant in the local technical community, Tom founded the Denver Open Source User Group (DOSUG), has served as President of the Denver Java Users Group (DJUG), and speaks at local user groups.

Pinal Dave is a Developer Evangelist for Pluralsight. He has written over 2300 articles on the subject on his blog at a http://blog.sqlauthority.com. Along with 8+ years of hands on experience he holds a Masters of Science degree and a number of certifications, including MCTS, MCDBA and MCAD (.NET). He is co-author of three SQL Server books - SQL Server Programming, SQL Wait Stats and SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers. His past work experiences include Technology Evangelist at Microsoft and Sr. Consultant at SolidQ. Prior to joining Microsoft he was awarded Microsoft MVP award for three continuous years for his contribution in the community.

Lohith has a decade of industry experience primarily in service based companies. He is well versed with Windows and Web based application development using .NET platform. Currently Lohith works in the capacity of Developer Evangelist for Telerik and takes care of evangelism in South India. He is also an active member and one of the leads for Bangalore DotNet User Group. He is an active speaker in local communities. He enjoys listening to Bryan Adams and watching Friends any time.

Amit Bansal is the CTO of eDominer Systems & Peopleware India. A veteran in technology, databases, SQL Server & business intelligence, he is a sought after consultant, trainer, writer and speaker. Over the last 10 years, Amit has consulted, trained & mentored more than 6000 IT professionals and conducted 450 workshops on SQL Server & business intelligence, working with top notch blue chip companies worldwide including Microsoft, Infosys, Wipro, RBS, HCL, HP, Siemens, IBM and Accenture. He is an MVP awardee on SQL Server, and one of the first Microsoft Certified Trainer in India holding the credential for more than a decade now. Amit frequently speaks at major Microsoft events worldwide including TechED, MSDN and TechNet.

Sandeep Chanda is a Director of Solutions at Neudesic, a Microsoft National Systems Integrator and Gold Certified Partner. He has been working on several Microsoft technologies (including but not limited to .NET, Azure, BizTalk, SharePoint and Dynamics CRM) for the past ten years, building large scale enterprise applications spanning multiple industries. He is a technology enthusiast and a speaker at various corporate events and public webinars. He has authored several articles on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 and is the author of books Windows Identity Foundation Cookbook by PacktPub and Begining ASP.NET 4.5 Databases by Apress. Most recently he has been involved in evangelizing aspects of ALM and developer collaboration using TFS 2012 and was the speaker on the subject at GIDS 2012. He spends quite a bit of time traveling and training different teams on the new features of .NET Framework 4.5 and Windows 8 Metro application development. Sandeep holds an MS in Software Systems from BITS, Pilani and his areas of interest include service oriented computing, pervasive computing and haptic devices.

Harish is a Technical Evangelist with Microsoft India, currently focussing on building the Windows 8 ecosystem. He is a widely recognized expert in ASP.NET, Windows Azure and other Microsoft Technologies. Harish has more than 13 years of industry experience and has donned various roles in Microsoft as well as during his earlier stints with other companies.Harish is the author of http://geekswithblogs.net/ranganh one of the leading blogs on Microsoft Technologies. He is an established speaker in various Microsoft and third party forums and his popularity with the technical community has led to people building a Facebook Fan Page for him.When not at work, Harish tries his hands at cooking, cricket and chess. He is passionate about technology in general and making it solve real world challenges.

Raj has been a part of the IT Industry for over a decade and has worked on a wide range of Microsoft products and technologies ranging from VC++, MFC and Win32 programming to the latest developments on the Web front, JavaScript and .NET. His current focus is on building high quality app experiences on Windows 8, advances in Web development, building rich internet applications and Windows Azure. His work responsibilities include driving awareness and excitement around Microsoft technologies.When he's not tinkering with a computer, Raj can be found reading, playing tennis, listening to music, or playing computer games.

Ujjwal Kumar is a "Technical Evangelist" at Microsoft Corporation, India. He mainly works on for Windows Phone and Windows 8 platforms and focusses on apps and game development. Prior to this he worked as Partner Consultant and development platforms Worldwide Specialization Lead at Microsoft. He has over 9.5 years of industry experience and he has been with Microsoft for 6.5+ years. In the past he has extensively worked on C++, C#, Windows Azure, Windows Internals, Robotics Studio, game development and image processing. In the current role, he works with business startups, enterprises and partner organizations and assist them in adoption of latest platform and technologies.

Abhijit is a Solutions Consultant focusing on workflows that empowers designers & developers to create for the web and mobile devices. He is primarily responsible for building enterprise solution for customers and evangelizing Adobe tools and framework. Abhijit is an Adobe Certified Expert on Adobe Dreamweaver and Adobe LiveCycle.

Vasudeva is a developer evangelist, working as part of the developer relations India team. He has worked with leading chipset vendors in mobile space like TI and Qualcomm, and with OEMs like LG. He was entrepreneur having his own startup in the publishing space before joining the BlackBerry evangelist team.

Sarim Aziz heads BlackBerry's Developer Relations Team in Asia Pacific. Sarim joined BlackBerry in 2004 and has over 10 years of experience in working with enterprise and consumer software solutions. He lives and breathes mobile solutions and trying and in his free time struggles with the technological issues of our time, i.e. does technology drive society or is it the other way around?

Sarim's background consists of a degree in Computer Science, and his specializations include multimedia, performance optimization, and what it takes to create a Super app experience! Twitter: @dakulla

Ranbijay has over eight years of work experience in the area of IT, R&D and software systems, with significant exposure to the onsite-offshore delivery model. His experience includes Team Management, Mobile Application Development, Architecting and Consulting Engagements and Client Interfacing. Ranbijay is a PhD candidate and about to submit his thesis on Mobile Cloud Computing. He has also published many articles in international journals. As part of BlackBerry's Developer Relations organization, Ranbijay is responsible for managing relationships with BlackBerry's developer community and strategic partners, focusing specifically in India and South Asia. He provides support and guidance to BlackBerry developers working to integrate their applications with the BlackBerry platform. With support for a wide range of BlackBerry platform services, Ranbijay is extremely excited to see how they can be leveraged to augment the BlackBerry experience, and to take BlackBerry apps to the next level! He also maintains a personal blog at http://ranbijay.blogspot.in and very active on developer community on RAN_BB10_Group.

Dhanya is a Technical Evangelist working with Infosys Limited, Bangalore. Dhanya's role involves evangelizing Web and Mobile technologies at Infosys Limited, where she also spends a lot of time consulting on web technologies. Her area of interest is in developing cross platform mobile applications using HTML5 for Mobile, Sencha Touch and jQueryMobile.

Linux and Multimedia Specialist, Having 11+ years of experience in development of Embedded S/w for Mobile and Multimedia System On Chip (SoC), at Intel I have started working on Mobile Application development and ISV Enabling.

Goutham is a Partner Technical Consultant on the Partner Technical Services team, having around 7 years of IT experience with Satyam and Wipro before joining Microsoft. His role involves guiding partners in adopting and implementing the latest Microsoft technologies. He is passionate about Microsoft technologies and has worked on NET 4.0, Silverlight, WPF, Asp.Net and needless to say, Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 application development.

He has also worked on emerging technologies like HTML 5, WebMatrix, LightSwitch, RIA Services, EntityFramework and LINQ. He is playing a critical role in Accelerate to Windows 8; a specifically designed offering for partners to make their cool app idea a reality on Windows 8.

Harish Sivaramakrishnan is a front end technologies geek, with over a decade of experience working with various front end technologies. Extremely passionate about client side programming languages and web animations, Harish is also a keen observer and commentator on modern UI and UX patterns. Harish is currently the front end architect at Myntra.com, helping Myntra build the next generation of user experiences across platforms. Prior to joining Myntra He spent 8 years at Adobe as an evangelist for Web & Open Standards as well as Flash. Harish blogs at hsivaram.com, tweets @hsivaram and contributes to open source at github.com/hsivaramx.

William leads Google's Outreach efforts across Emerging Markets where he and his team are responsible for building and supporting communities which deliver more intensive experiences of Google products for our most valuable and passionate future users and advocates. William champions open and equal access to information, the web as a learning platform and the ability for technology to help mankind reach its full potential. Prior to joining Google, William was Head of International Sales and Marketing for Blackboard Collaborate, a leader in education technologies. At Blackboard William and his team were intimately involved with the growth and widespread use of real-time collaboration solutions around the world with leading institutions such as The Open University in the UK, the National eLearning Centre in Saudi Arabia, and schools in Europe, Asia and Latin America. Throughout his career, William has had experience providing technology solutions for a broad range of industries. Home is currently outside London where he lives with his wife and two daughters.

Gary Illyes is a webmaster trends analyst dedicated to creating a better search experience for users by helping webmasters create amazing websites. When not crunching data to find ways to improve web search, Gary is contributing to the Webmaster Central Blog and helps users debug their websites in the Google Webmaster Forums.

Prior joining Google in 2011, Gary was teaching online journalism in Romania and abroad. He was a technical consultant for several high profile media outlets, and he spent his free time on online forums helping webmasters troubleshoot web - and news-search related issues. He has studied IT at the University of Phoenix and holds an associate's degree in journalism from the Ady Endre College of Journalism in Romania.

As a part of Mobility Group at Intuit, Amrit works on developing Android applications and helping accelerate adoption of Android in Intuit. Prior to Intuit, he worked with IBM and was the Architect for the Android Platform Development Group and was part of Enterprise Mobility Group. Amrit also co-organizes BlrDroid (Bangalore Android User Group), one of the largest open community for Android developers.

Bruno Georges is currently heading Red Hat's Enterprise Application Platforms Engineering group. Prior to this he was the APAC/Japan Middleware Solutions Director at JBoss, a division of Red Hat. Bruno has over 20 years IT experience working in the Banking, Trading, Insurance and Telco industries, where he has been primarily involved with the architecture of eCommerce Solutions and managing Software Development Teams. Bruno previously headed the Application Development Group at Glencore International AG, one of the world largest private companies based in Switzerland. He was responsible for initiating and driving the adoption of an Open Source based SOA strategy, leading to a highly successful deployment. Prior to Glencore, Bruno was the Lead Architect at XBridge Ltd, the UK's leading SME Finance Portal, and also served in other major Investment banking and Insurance Companies.

Sarath Gollapalli is a technology lead with about 10 years of work experience in IT, Product development in Java / J2EE technology space. His experience ranges from designing & developing Java applications to building Enterprise systems. He is currently working extensively in building Enterprise reporting and data analytics systems in financial services space. He is also focused on Big Data Analytics both from a volume, processing time perspective and exploring business opportunities and insights in the data from data science perspective. He is one of the key members of the Java / Bigdata Technology council at Broadridge India

Chinni Krishna is a technology evangelist with over decade on work experience IT, R&D & product development in Java / J2EE technology. His experience ranges from architecting, designing & developing web applications, real time communication interfaces across multiple systems & real time alerting & analytics. His primary focus is managing the technology change & adoption of the new technologies within business. He leads the team in building reusable components & frameworks that enable the applications / products to adopt key technology changes quickly as well as addressing some of key common challenges. He is also one of the key members of the Java Group at Broadridge Financial Solution India Private Limited.