Speakers for
SQLBits Community Conference March 2008.
Aftab Chopra
Cognizant Technology Solutions
Over 18 years of experience across the globe, delivering large scale applications. Certified since 97 on SQL Server. Currently certified as DBA/Dev and on Oracle 10G etc.
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Allan Mitchell
www.konesans.com
Allan is the joint owner of Konesans Ltd, a small UK based consultancy specializing in SQL Server, and most importantly SQL Server Integration Services. Having been working with SQL Server from 6.5 onwards he has extensive experience in many aspects of SQL Server, but now focuses on the BI suite of tools. He is a SQL Server MVP, a frequent poster on the MS SSIS/DTS newsgroups as well as running the sqldts.com and sqlis.com resource sites.
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I am an MCDBA and evangelsit at Microsoft specialising in business intelligecne and data management. I got interested in large databases while at HM Customs in the nineties as part of the move to intelligence led resourcing, but another inititive namely outsourcing meant that my last ten years have been in the private sector working for a number of gold partners, before joining Microsoft last July. I got into SQL Server in v6 and have used this platform almost exclusively since then for a wide variety of clients from tiny breweries to global banks.
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Charley Hanania
UBS Investment Bank
Based in Zurich, Charley Hanania currently works as a Senior Database Management Specialist at UBS Investment Bank.
Prior to this, he provided support and consulting in database development, architecture and administration related areas to numerous organisations throughout Europe and Australasia
With over 13 years experience, Charley has focussed on MS SQL Server since version 4.21 and became active in the SQL Server community in the mid 90's, participating in SQL Server user groups in Australia. He continues to lead an active role in the SQL Server space through community events, the SwissITPro User group, and the Swiss PASS Chapter.
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Chris Webb
Cross Join Consulting
Chris Webb, has been working with Microsoft's Business Intelligence tools since 1998. He is a well-known figure in the Microsoft Business Intelligence community, regularly contributing to newsgroups and online discussion forums, and has spoken at several international conferences. He is a co-author of the second edition of the book "MDX Solutions with Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 and Hyperion Essbase" along with George Spofford. His weblog can be found at http://spaces.msn.com/cwebbbi.
Chris has extensive experience of implementing Business Intelligence solutions on the Microsoft platform across a wide range of industries including pharmaceuticals, banking, engineering, manufacturing and market research. He has worked as a consultant (including three years with Microsoft Consulting Services) and as a permanent employee on internal development teams, and understands the different demands of each role.
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Christian Bolton
Coeo Ltd
Christian Bolton has been working with SQL Server since 1999 and in 2007 became a Director and Database Architect for Coeo Ltd, a Microsoft Certified Partner focused on large scale and complex SQL Server projects in the UK. Prior to this, Christian worked for 5 years as a Senior Premier Field Engineer for Microsoft UK working with some of Microsoft’s biggest customers across EMEA. His specialist areas are High Availability, Scalabilility, and Performance Tuning and he is co-author of Professional SQL Server 2005 Performance Tuning published by Wrox. He works out of London and lives in the south of England with his wife and daughter and can be contacted at http://coeo.com or through his blog at http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/christian.
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Colin Angus Mackay
Scottish Developers
Colin Angus Mackay is a software developer specialising in Microsoft technologies located in Glasgow, Scotland. He is a Member of the British Computer Society, a Microsoft MVP (C#), a Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer, a Core Member of Scottish Developers, Code Project MVP for three years running and while not involved in software related pursuits is an amateur photographer, cyclist, map maker and is also the Vice President of Education for South Side Speakers, the Glasgow South Side Branch of Toastmasters International. And if all that wasn’t enough he is also organising Developer Day Scotland.
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Darren Green
Konesans Ltd
Darren is the joint owner of Konesans Ltd, a small UK based consultancy specializing in SQL Server, and most importantly SQL Server Integration Services. Having been working with SQL Server from 6.5 onwards he has extensive experience in many aspects of SQL Server, but now focuses on BI and SSIS. He is a SQL MVP and a frequent poster on the MSDN SSIS forums as well as running the sqldts.com and sqlis.com resource sites.
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Dr András Belokosztolszki
Red Gate Software
András Belokosztolszki is a software architect at Red Gate Software Ltd. He is a frequent speaker at many UK user groups. He is primarily interested in database change management. At Red Gate he has designed and led the development of many database tools that compare schemata and enable source control for databases (SQL Compare versions 4, 5 and 6), refactor databases (SQL Refactor) and show the history of databases by analyzing the transaction log (SQL Log Rescue). András has a PhD from Cambridge and an MSc and BSc from ELTE, Hungary.
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Eric has been working with SQL Server since version 6.5. He is currently working for IMGroup the MS Worldwide BI Partner for the last 3 years. Prior to this he managed development effort for a number of dotcoms and another consultancy. Eric has presented multiple sessions for UK SQL Server User Group events and written for a number of magazines including Enterprise Server Magazine.
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Hue Holleran
Open Action Limited
Hue Holleran is a professional consultant specialising in database-centric solutions and specifically SQL Server. After 20 years as a consultant to over 100 organisations and some of the largest global brands in various industries - he has established a reputation for leading teams leveraging modern tools and technologies in innovative and practical ways.
Being old enough to remember all too well developing database solutions in 'C' on a mainframe and DBase and FoxBase+ in the mid 1980's and one of the first developers of that "modern" approach: client/server!
Having frequently presented on various topics since presenting for Microsoft at all UK venues for the launch of Visual Studio 6 in 1998, Hue's current focus is on leveraging the enterprise capabilities of SQL Server 2005 to implement truly robust and resilient systems that retain excellent performance even in the most challenging of environments.
Hue is currently consulting in one of those challenging environments with world-leading utilities supplier, Actaris. Many systems with daily loads of 100's millions of records and retained record volumes in the billions - a significant and enjoyable challenge!
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James Rowland-Jones
Conchango
James is a Senior Technical Consultant at Conchango. His focus has been
the development and technical direction of major, mission-critical,
pan-European projects in the enterprise. His experience includes data
and system architecture, information analysis, logical and physical
database modelling and design, highly available implementations, ETL
process architecture and client tools implementations including a number
of major bespoke applications. He has worked in IT since 1998 and with
SQL Server since 6.5.
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Jasper Smith
Nationwide Building Society
Jasper is a member of the Database Services team at Nationwide Building Society focussed on High Availability, Scalability, Performance Tuning and Monitoring. He has been a SQL Server MVP since 2003 and runs www.sqldbatips.com with a focus on providing free tools for the SQL Server community including ExpressMaint, SQL 2005 Service Manager and Reporting Services Scripter.
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Mark Whitehorn
Penguinsoft
Dr. Mark Whitehorn specialises in database technology, data warehousing and OLAP and has written nine books, the most recent of which, on MDX, was co-written with one of the architects of the language – Mosha Pasumansky.
On the academic side he holds a research position at Cambridge University working on the application of multi-dimensional database techniques to improving our understanding of how Darwin developed the theory of evolution. He also holds an honorary position at Dundee University. On the non-academic side he runs his own consultancy company which specialises in data warehousing.
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Martin Bell
Carillon Software Systems Ltd
Martin Bell is a dashing and attractive redhead and you would never guess that he has been a freelance computer consultant in the UK for over 23 years. He’s worked on many relational database systems and since the 1998 has specialized in SQL Server. He was first awarded Microsoft MVP (SQL Server) status in June 2003 proving he is not just a pretty face! As an insight into his masochistic tendancies he currently organises the Scottish Area and Leeds Area SQL Server User Group meetings. He is also a founding organiser of the highly successful SQLBits Community Conferences showing he is slightly mad and very funny!!
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I work at Microsoft in the UK where I'm part of a group that's involved in getting information out to developers about what's happening with the Microsoft platform through online mechanisms like newsletters, blogs, videos and through offline mechanisms such as technical sessions.
At the time of writing (September 2007) my focus is primarily around the forthcoming Version 3.5 of the .NET Framework including LINQ to XML, SQL. I'm also interested in the ADO.NET Entity Framework and LINQ to Entities along with SQL Server in general. On the UI side, I'm keeping a close eye on Silverlight. Beyond that, I try and maintain an interest in most things that might involve code whether that be .NET 1.1 to 3.5 or something a bit more unmanaged :-)
I've been at Microsoft since 2000 and, prior to my current role, I spent three years working within Microsoft's Services division as a consultant on developer technologies working closely with UK software vendors and enterprise customers.
Prior to joining Microsoft, I worked as a developer for a number of different UK based consultancies, software houses and enterprises. I started professional development back in 1991 and spent a few years writing C/C++ code for various platforms (Unix, VMS) using a variety of storage and middleware technologies. Windows development began for me back in 1993 with the first release of Windows NT.
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Phil Winstanley
Secret Volcano Lair Ltd
A highly experienced web developer who specialises in ASP.NET, C#, SQL Server and XHTML Database driven Web applications, whom is internationally acclaimed and possesses a burning passion for Internet technologies & solution building.
Having developed and maintained hundreds of web sites receiving in excess of 5 million page impressions on a daily basis, Phil Winstanley is uniquely positioned to deliver high quality, performant web applications.
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Richard Fennell
Black Marble Ltd
Richard Fennell is a Director of Black Marble, a Microsoft Gold Partner based in Yorkshire. He is a Chartered Engineer, Member of the British Computer Society, MCAD and MCSD.NET, with over 20 years experience in the IT industry. Richard is a regular speaker at DDD and other community events, speaking on a variety of subjects. At DDD3 he spoke on automated testing, DDD4 on Continuous Integration and at DDD5 on Visual Studio Team System.
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Richard Siddaway is Microsoft Practice Leader for Centiq Ltd. With over 20 years experience in various aspects of IT Richard is currently concentrating on the Microsoft environment at an architectural level especially around Active Directory, Exchange, SQL Server and Infrastructure Optimisation much of his recent experience has involved migrating enterprises from Windows NT\Exchange 5.5 to Windows 2003\Exchange 2003. Richard has administration experience with several database systemsespecially SQL Server. His initial programming background is still usefulas Richard is a very experienced scripter always looking for the opportunity to automate a process. Having discovered PowerShell 18 months ago he has enthusiastically adopted it in preference to VBScript. Richard founded and currently leads the UK PowerShell User Group. Richard has presented on PowerShell to the Directory Experts Conference 2007, at various events at Microsoft UK, including the last Community Day, and for other UK User Groups.
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Satya Shyam K Jayanty
SSQA.net
Knowledge is the power and you will gain by sharing it;
I'm an Independent Database expert, with over 16 years of experience in application designing, developing and managing database technologies using industry famous technologies & software. I have been working with SQL Server since version 4.2 (1996) and active member & moderator in Technet, MSDN, SQL-Server-Performance.com forums/websites and also writing for http://www.sql-server-performance.com website. I'm a regular speaker and volunteer (Ask The Experts) at SQL Server events such as SQLPASS, Tech-ed etc. and I was awarded as SQL Server MVP since the year 2006. I also update content & manage the website http://www.sqlserver-qa.net.
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Simon Sabin
Onarc Consulting Limited
Simon is an independent Database consultant specialising in the world of search, distributed architectures, business intelligence and application development. He has worked with SQL Server since 1998 and has always focused on high performance reliable systems. He was awarded as an MVP in 2006 and is regular speaker at SQL Server events as well as writing for SQLServerCentral and Simple-Talk.com.
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I have been working with SQL Server for last 8 years. Predominantly I spent most of my carrier building data warehouses and loading the data using various ETL Tools such as DTS, SSIS, Ab-Initio and Informatica. I have work for well known names such as Tyco and Reuters. I have got MBA in Project Management, MCDBA (just on paper) along with MCTS (SQL 2005). I have worked in diverse business sectors such as Financial Services, Media, Share Market Data, Mergers and Acquisition, Pub Management, Security, Building Society, Bank, Mortgages, Publishing and Commercial Finance
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I have been a DBA since 1998, I started out using SQL Server 4.2 and 6.5. I work for RM Education, a provider of hardware, software and services to the education sector in the UK and abroad. Before that I worked for Oxfam. I am pretty much a "bog standard" DBA, with the usual responsibilities of installation, maintenance, troubleshooting and performance tuning. I have written several articles for sql-server-performance.com. I have experience of all versions of SQL Server since 4.2.
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Tony Rogerson
Torver Computer Consultants
Tony started his IT career in 1986 coding on the IBM mainframe programming in such languages as Application System, PL/1, CICS, DB2, System W. Around 1994 he moved into the client/server environment using Visual Basic and C++, Oracle at first and then Microsoft SQL Server, he primarily does SQL Server consultancy but also knows VB.NET and C# but is really SQL Server focused.Tony has been an independent consultant since 1999 based in Harpenden - Hertfordshire. He has a broad client base from a Research Fellow right the way through to enterprise covering a lot of business areas, Banking (Retail, Investment), Retail, Knowledge Management, Manufacturing, Motor Racing, Web Industries and a ton more I don't even know how to classify!In 1998 he founded the UK SQL Server Community (http://sqlserverfaq.com) a community of over 9,000 members. He also co runs SQLBlogcasts.COM with Simon Sabin, Tony’s blog
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