Daniel Sniderman is a Senior Consultant for Magenic, one of the nation's premiere Microsoft Gold Certified Partners. Dan first learned to program FORTRAN in in the late 70’s using a keypunch machine and has twenty-eight years of experience in software development. Since 1993, Dan has specialized on developing business applications on the Microsoft platform. Dan has worked at Magenic since 2004 specializing in customer software development and ALM consulting. In addition to a BA from the University of Illinois, Dan has a MCSD.NET and MCTS in Team Foundation Server 2010. Dan also is a professional trombonist.

Eric began his programming career over 15 years ago when he started his own web design company with a college scholarship. Since then he's worked in video games, building controls, web development and on iPhone apps, for the last 5 as a Software Craftsman at 8th Light.

Eric has spoken at numerous conferences on Ruby and iOS development, written a TDD for iPhone article for the Pragmatic Programmers website, and founded the Chicago iPhone developers users group. This year he'll be finishing his Masters in Video Game Development at DePaul University.

When he's not coding he's chasing around his 5 children.

Devin Rader spends his day’s extoling the virtues of Twilio (www.twilio.com), the amazingly simple cloud telephony platform. Before that he worked at Infragistics where he focused on delivering great user experiences to developers using their controls. He's done work on all of the .NET platforms, but most recently has been focused on ASP.NET and Silverlight. As a co-founder of the St. Louis .NET User Group, a current board member of the Central New Jersey .NET User Group and a former INETA board member, he's an active supporter of the .NET developer community. He's also the co-author or technical editor of numerous books on .NET including Wrox's Professional Silverlight 4 and Wrox's Professional ASP.NET 4. Follow Devin on Twitter @devinrader

Chris Powers has been developing Web applications for the last six years, now specializing in Ruby and JavaScript development. Currently he is enjoying working as a software consultant with Obtiva, where he partners with clients to build and improve Web applications. Chris strongly believes in the power technology has to bring people together and enjoys developing platforms that empower the user. Living in the northern Chicago suburbs with his wife, dog and cats, Chris stays active in the Web development community both online and off. In his free time he enjoys playing the drum kit and writing music.

Igor graduated from DePaul university in 1999. He has been working on various IT projects in banking, insurance and marketing industries. He also has been teaching various programming topics at the DePaul University computer school. He is an author of open source projects ActiveJDBC and ActiveWeb. He likes biking, outdoors and photography.

Throughout his career, Michael has applied mathematical concepts to the construction of software. As a Solutions Architect at AmerisourceBergen, he applies the concepts of eventual consistency, event sourcing, and CQRS to building scalable and robust enterprise systems. He has written about the mathematical underpinnings of various algorithms in C/C++ Users Journal, Delphi Informant, and Code Magazine. Craig Shoemaker interviewed him on the Polymorphic Podcast about Update Controls, an open source project based on the mathematical concept of dependency. You can find out more at qedcode.com.

After a few years wandering around in life, I discovered the challenging and ever changing world of software development. After 6 years of developing a variety of applications, I continue to be excited about solving real-world problems with code. In my current role at a sales and marketing consulting firm specialized in analytics, I've had the opportunity to work on several projects, including a large sales force optimization application, an implementation of the traveling salesman problem (TSP), and the integration of a third-party BI and reporting platform to our application suite.

Kevin McMahon is a software architect for Redpoint Technologies primarily doing mobile development. He blogs at http://www.kevfoo.com and can be found on Twitter at @klmcmahon

Chris McAvoy is the Product Lead for Open Badges, a Mozilla Foundation project (http://openbadges.org). Chris has worked at a bunch of different places, founded the Chicago Python users group, and is a trustee in the Chicago Chapter of the Awesome Foundation.

Geeks of all trade. Creators of Windows Phone Android for Android. Hackathon winners. We develop on Android, Windows Phone, and more.

Follow us on twitter: @Kluesman @LMaung

I have a long history of loving javascript (and more recently coffeescript). I did some time with ASP.Net, but now I'm exploring the world of Rails.

Micah Martin is a Software Craftsman and President of 8th Light, Inc. He is co-author of the book "Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#" and lead developer of the open source FitNesse tool. He has 10 years of experience consulting, training, and developing software focusing on agile development practices. Since 2006, Micah has been working almost exclusively with Ruby, stressing it to the edge, developing enterprise systems.

In the academic world, I completed my undergraduate degree at Grinnell College in Iowa and am currently working towards a master’s degree from DePaul University. I am pretty keen on education, so in addition, I tend to take random online courses and read technical papers.

Professionally, I have several years of experience in web development and enjoy working with various technology stacks. Presently, I am thrilled to be developing in Scala, and would recommend you use it, too. This combination of academics and experience helps me stay in tune with current buzzwords without being carried away by the hype.

I tend to specialize in programming languages and web services, focusing on stability, scale-ability, and security. Presently, I am the chief developer at Toodalu, writing all of the back-end logic and a majority of the web application.

Justin Love has programmed everything from microcontrollers to SQL and FoxPro to C++, but stirring up Ruby, Javascript, and Smalltalk is where he really started to understand OOP. Justin has been independent for over a year, talking at several user groups and conferences.

Steve is a software craftsman at 8th Light.

Colin builds quality software at 8th Light for clients in the Chicago area and beyond. He mostly codes in Ruby and Clojure, and works on a number of open-source projects, including REPL-y, Clojure Koans, Leiningen, and consistency_fail.

I burn my daylight hours helping Groupon change the world of local commerce. Perviously I was a principal consultant at Obtiva, a well known Agile development shop. I reside in Chicago with my wife and two children.

I'm also involved in numerous developer communities and have presented at many conference and user group meetings across the United States. My recent interests include functional & multi-paradigm languages and genetic algorithms.

Mike spent 5 years in Madison, WI working at a medical software company before discovering test driven development and craftsmanship at 8th Light in 2011.

He's spent the past 9 months writing (and rewriting) Backbone.js code for clients and for himself. He has several open source client JS projects available on Github (http://github.com/mjansen401).

Joe is an author, consultant and tenured professor of Computer Science, with a PhD from the U. of California, Irvine. He has been specializing in Microsoft technologies since 1992, in particular Microsoft's parallel and high-performance computing initiatives. This includes Windows HPC Server, cluster programming (MPI, SOA, LINQ to HPC, Excel), and many-core programming (TPL, PPL, OpenMP, CUDA). Joe has co-authored two books on Windows development, hosted more than 60 MSDN webcasts, and taught courses worldwide. He works for Pluralsight LLC, the U. of California, Irvine, and as a private consultant. When he’s not working, Joe is an avid sailor, residing in the Chicago area with his wife and daughter.

Ray Hightower is the founder of WisdomGroup, a software company that builds apps for the web (Ruby on Rails) and for mobile (iPhone, iPad, & Android). Hightower is also an organizer of the ChicagoRuby user group and a few tech conferences: WindyCityRails, WindyCityDB, and WindyCityGo.

Senior developer at Metromix/Gannett Digital. Blogger at codefixes.com. Worked in a wide range of roles from embedded programming, high performance automated trading, web development, and automated backend processing. The work I've done has been in .NET, C++, Perl, Ruby, Python, and Lua.

Aaron is a veteran technology consultant, writer, and developer at ThoughtWorks. He is the author of "The Nomadic Developer" and most recently a co-author of "Professional F# 2.0". His life's work is helping organizations better leverage technology by contributing to solutions that have substantial positive economic impact for his clients. He is an enthusiast of agile software development and continuous delivery. He is also an "armchair economist" with lots of unfounded opinions on the topic, a deeply mediocre skier, and has an XBOX 360 GamerScore well approaching 15,000.

Michael Eaton is the founder of Validus Solutions, a custom software development and coaching company that specializes in leveraging client-based technologies. Validus has been developing solutions using Microsoft tools and technologies since 2001 and serves clients throughout the mid-west. Michael speaks throughout the United States at various regional events, user groups and conferences sharing his love of client development to other developers. He also spends time coaching and mentoring other developers. Michael runs the Kalamazoo X Conference and is a C# MVP. When not working on projects or spending time with his family, he treats his World of Warcraft addiction with ample doses of…World of Warcraft.

Steven has been writing software professionally for half a decade, using a diverse variety of languages and libraries. After writing iPad and iPhone products with Big Nerd Ranch, Steven moved on to 8th Light where he is currently a software craftsman. In his spare time he uses and advocates the language Go as the ideal language for a great many common software domains.

Joel Cochran is an Expression Blend MVP, the INETA Mentor for Virginia, and a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) in Windows Forms and WPF. He is the founder of BlendSIG, a virtual Special Interest Group focused on Expression Blend and author of "Expression Blend in Action" by Manning Publications. He is also the author of "The Practical MVVM Manifesto" (http://practicalmvvm.com). He has been developing for Windows since 2003 and is a self-proclaimed "Blend Evangelist". You can find him online at http://www.developingfor.net or on Twitter at http://twitter.com/joelcochran. Joel is a Senior technology Consultant for Lotic Factor, Inc. in Roanoke, VA.

I have over 12 years of experience creating J2EE applications. These applications have run the gamut from secure email server using a proprietary PKI solution to dynamic customer facing web applications. I firmly believe in polyglot programming and the need to use the right tool for the right job. My professional experience includes using Java, Python, Groovy, Objective C, JavaScript, and Ruby.

Keith Burnell is a Senior Software Engineer with Skyline Technologies and vice president for the Fox Valley .Net User's Group. Keith has been developing software for over 10 years specializing in large scale ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC web site development and architecture focusing on Agile and Test-driven Development as well as other cutting edge methodologies. Keith is an active member of the .Net community who speaks at the majority of the large upper Midwest developer events including Chicago Code Camp, Twin Cities Code Camp, Fox Valley Day of .Net, and Chippewa Valley Code Camp. Keith has also speaks at the national level including Visual Studio Live. When not coding, Keith enjoys spending time with his family, karate, golf, and woodworking. Keith can be found on his blog and on Twitter.

Jonathan Baltz is a Salesforce.com Software Engineer. After starting his career as a Lotus Notes developer, he moved into positions as a Business Analyst and QA analyst for a good part of the 2000s. He has been a certified Salesforce.com Consultant and Developer for the past 4 years and has done everything from week long implementations to seemingly endless integrations. In his current position as a Software Engineer at CareerBuilder working on the Force.com platform, he hopes that his next airline flight will strictly be for enjoyment.

Jonathan is the organizer of both the Chicago Force.com Developers User Group and the Chicago Heroku User Group, both which can be found on Meetup.com. He is also a founding partner of Formula Design Group, an interactive agency and design firm in Chicago. When he’s not burning his retina with the light from computer monitors, he enjoys spending time with his wife and daughter (until they go to sleep, when he tries to do some development in .NET or Ruby, Python and other open source languages).

A passionate .NET developer interested in WPF, C#, C/C++ and mobile development

Professionally, I work for Centare as a Staff Consultant focused on bringing fast. forward. thinking. solutions to clients in the area of .NET/C++.

Prior to Centare, I had worked for Motorola working in the area of two-way radio systems and the Customer Programming Software that programs them.

I am active in the software development community where I help run an active 600 member development community that is focused on learning about software development and sharing best practices for software development.

I also actively blog on my website, jeffalstadt.wordpress.com, about trends in software development.

Heather Acton is a WordPress Developer in Chicago, IL. She’s built her freelance business while being home with two small children and would have it no other way (glutton for punishment maybe?). Heather’s passionate about the WordPress community. She organizes WordCamp Chicago and the WordPress Lake County Meetup Group. When she’s not building sites or teaching WordPress, she’s playing Legos with her kids or enjoying a craft beer at a Guster concert.