Speakers

Dan Allen - Senior Software Engineer, Red Hat

Dan Allen, senior software engineer at Red Hat, is a member of the Seam and Weld project teams at Red Hat, the author of Seam in Action, a representative on the JSR-314 (JSF 2.0) expert group, and a frequent speaker at major industry conferences, including JavaOne, Devoxx, TSSJS, Jazoon, and NFJS. In 2009, Dan was awarded the JavaOne Rock Star award.

Dan become deeply involved in free and open source software (FOSS), namely Linux and Java enterprise frameworks, shortly after graduating from Cornell University. His passion for these technologies continue to drive him today. You can keep up with his discoveries by subscribing to his blogs, http://mojavelinux.com and http://in.relation.to/Bloggers/Dan, and by following him on Twitter, http://twitter.com/mojavelinux.

Richard Allen - Team Lead – IBM Client for Smart Work, IBM

Richard Allen is an IBM Software Engineer based in Austin, TX. As a worldwide IBM Client for Smart Work technical lead in the IBM Linux Integration Center, he promotes client for smart work initiatives around the world through customer briefings, proof-of-concepts, skills transfer workshops, and field enablement. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Utah.

SriSatish Ambati - Performance & Partner Engineer, Azul Systems, Inc.

SriSatish is chief tinkerer of Java and enterprise software stacks at Azul Systems. Over the course of a decade or so, he has actively supported, profiled, and scaled hundreds of in-production and in-development Java, enterprise, and database stacks for performance. He uses these experiences to distill system trends and turbulences.

Jason Andersen - Product Manager, Red Hat

Jason Andersen is the senior product manager at Red Hat responsible for the JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform. Jason has been working in various roles within end user software for over 15 years. He has worked with hundreds of customers worldwide in defining and implementing portal, content, and collaboration solutions in many different industries. Prior to joining Red Hat, Jason was a senior product manager at IBM responsible for the delivery if IBM WebSphere Portal and Accelerators.

Max Rydahl Andersen - Principal Software Engineer, Red Hat

Max Rydahl Andersen, principal software engineer at Red Hat, is the project lead for JBoss Developer Studio and the JBoss Tools project, and is a core developer for Hibernate and Seam. Max has spoken at several conferences, including: EclipseCon, JBUG, JBoss World, and Devoxx. He blogs about the JBoss Tools project, Eclipse, and Hibernate at http://in.relation.to/Bloggers/Max.

Keith Babo - Senior Solution Architect, Red Hat

Keith is a JBoss senior solution architect at Red Hat, where he helps businesses and organizations of all sizes adopt open source technologies and stick it to the man. Prior to joining Red Hat, Keith was a senior staff engineer at Sun Microsystems, where he helped create and destroy multiple iterations of business integration middleware.

Jay Balunas - Principal Software Engineer, Red Hat

Jay Balunas, principal software engineer at Red Hat, works as a JBoss core developer and project lead for the RichFaces project. He is the co-author of the DZone RichFaces Reference Card, and a member of the extended JSF 2.0 (JavaServer Faces 2) expert group. Jay has been architecting and developing enterprise applications for over ten years, specializing in Web tier frameworks, UI design, and integration.

Jay has spoken at several conferences such as JSFSummit, JBoss World, and various JUGs. Jay blogs about RichFaces, JSF 2.0, and RIA technologies at http://in.relation.to/Bloggers/Jay.

Bela Ban - Senior Software Engineer, Red Hat

Bela Ban, senior software engineer at Red Hat, manages the JBoss clustering team at Red Hat and leads the JGroups project, which he created. Bela completed his PhD at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Prior to Red Hat, Bela worked at IBM Research and completed NMS/EMS work for Fujitsu Network Communications. Bela’s interests include network protocols, performance, and group communication.

Vedanta Barooah - Senior Solutions Architect – Linux Infrastructure, Technology Services, Hewlett-Packard

Vedanta Barooah is a senior solutions architect with Hewlett-Packard Technology Services and specializes in large-scale implementation of Linux and open source in enterprise datacenter environments. His areas of interest include: virtualization, server consolidation, enterprise directories, systems redundancy, IT infrastructure, middleware, and databases. In his spare time, he prefers developing in PHP, Python, and Perl, and is an enthusiastic learner of web standards and technologies.

Lincoln Baxter III - Senior Software Engineer, Red Hat

Lincoln Baxter, III is a senior software engineer at Red Hat, working on JBoss open source projects as a member of the JBoss Seam project team and member of the JavaServer™ Faces Expert Group. Lincoln is a founder of OcpSoft, author of PrettyFaces, the leading URL-rewriting extensions for Java EE, and PrettyTime, social-style time formatting for Java.

When he is not swimming, running, or playing Ultimate Frisbee, Lincoln is focused on improving the openness of Java, the Java Community Process(JCP), and bringing the Java EE platform to small businesses and freelancers. You can stay current on his latest open source developments by subscribing to his blog at ocpsoft.com, or follow him on Twitter.

Bill Bendrot - Global Learning Services Curriculum Manager, Red Hat

Bill Bendrot joined Red Hat in October 2009 as a curriculum manager for JBoss and was previously the Principal Curriculum Developer for BEA for 8 years. He is currently co-developing our latest Seam training. Bill is also a musician and artist and lives with his wife in North Carolina.

Emmanuel Bernard - Principal Software Engineer, Red Hat

Emmanuel Bernard, principal software engineer at Red Hat, joined the Hibernate team in 2003 and is now a lead JBoss developer. Prior to Red Hat, Emmanuel worked as a developer and architect in the retail industry, where he became involved in the ORM (object-relational mapping) space.

Prarit Bhargava - Principal Software Engineer, Red Hat

Prarit Bhargava, principal software engineer at Red Hat, works in the Kernel Group on hardware-related issues and is also the Red Hat IA64 maintainer. His employment history includes time at SGI and Stratus Technologies. Prarit lives in Somerville, MA.

Marco Bill-Peter - Vice President, Global Support Services, Red Hat

Marco Bill-Peter is responsible for Red Hat’s Global Support Services (GSS). The GSS team is responsible for delivering support to clients and partners for all Red Hat solutions, including JBoss Enterprise Middleware.

Marco Bill-Peter has 20 years of experience in information technology. Prior to joining Red Hat, he worked at HP, Compaq, and Digital in the US, Europe, and Asia. Marco Bill-Peter holds a Dipl-Ing degree from the Interstaatlichen Hochschule fuer Technik in Buchs Switzerland. He is also a graduate of the Executive Development program at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Patrick Black - Senior Technology Engineer, Travelers Insurance

Patrick Black manages the shared JBoss Enterprise Middleware infrastructure at the Travelers Insurance Company. He is the technical lead overseeing Java EE application servers and the deployment and maintenance of applications running on the infrastructure. Patrick has a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Brigham Young University.

Steven Bonneville - Manager, Global Learning Services, Red Hat

Steven Bonneville leads the Linux curriculum development team for Red Hat’s training organization. Bonneville joined Red Hat in November 2000, and was responsible for the initial development of the majority of the courses which make up the RHCA certification curriculum.  He has also delivered hundreds of Linux system administration classes for Red Hat throughout North America.

Prior to coming to Red Hat, he worked for four years as IT manager for the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications at the University of Minnesota. Bonneville holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota and a bachelor’s degree in Biology from Saint Olaf College.

Florian Brand - Chief Instructor EMEA, Red Hat

Florian Brand joined Red Hat Germany in 1999 and has since delivered RHCE and RHCA level classes in more than 25 countries. He serves as subject matter expert and editor for several Red Hat courses. As Chief Instructor EMEA Florian Brand is the technical lead for internal and external instructors in Europe. He was first worldwide to complete the RHCA Certification. Before joining Red Hat Florian Brand studied Physics at the University of Würzburg. In the analog world’ he enjoys playing guitar and sports diving.

Josh Bressers - Senior Software Engineer, Red Hat

Josh Bressers is a senior software engineer for the Red Hat Security Response Team. In this role, Josh is responsible for vulnerability analysis and advisory creation; and he assists various open source projects with vulnerability analysis and disclosure.

Rafael Brito - Lead Analyst, NYSE Euronext

As part of the System Architecture and Engineering (SAE) team, Rafael is responsible for supporting, designing, and troubleshooting the NYSE Euronext production infrastructure, including multi-billion trading applications. He is specialized to combine the business demands with the technical expertize more oriented to tuning and troubleshooting middle to lower levels of the operating system and networking components. Rafael is currently migrating systems to the state-of-the-art datacenters using Puppet and other supporting technologies. He received an MBA in E-business from Pace University and a post-graduation certificate in Leadership and Strategy from New York University.

Robert Broeckelmann - Product Architect, MasterCard Worldwide

Robert Broeckelmann currently works at MasterCard Worldwide as a product architect in the Web engineering group. Prior to this role, he worked in middleware administration for other financial institutions and eCommerce companies. Robert received a master’s degree in Computer Science from Washington University in Saint Louis.

Bill Burke - Senior Consulting Software Engineer, Red Hat

Bill Burke, senior consulting software engineer at Red Hat, is a JBoss Fellow. A long-time JBoss.org contributor and architect, Bill has founded projects, including JBoss clustering, EJB3, AOP, and RESTEasy, and he was Red Hat’s representative for EJB 3.0, Java EE 5, and JAX-RS JCP specifications. Bill authored O’Reilly’s EJB 3.0 5th Edition and RESTFul Java with JAX-RS and has numerous in-print and online articles.

Tim Burke - Vice President, Platform Engineering, Red Hat

Tim Burke is the engineering vice president of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux development team. He has been leading the delivery of Red Hat’s enterprise releases since the initial Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 release.

Bill Burns - Engineering Manager, Red Hat

Bill Burns serves as engineering manager at Red Hat, where he manages KVM and Xen development.

Pat Byers - IBM Systems x Linux Program Director, IBM

Pat Byers is currently responsible for worldwide Linux marketing and business development for IBM System x servers. Pat works with customers, partners, ISVs, and many colleagues in IBM to define IBM System x Linux strategy, manage System x’s Linux operating system offerings, develop Linux sales enablement and marketing materials, and manage the System x relationship with Red Hat.

Thomas Cameron - Solution Architect Team Lead, Red Hat

Thomas Cameron is the solution architect team lead for the central and western US at Red Hat. He has been in the information technology industry since 1993, and has held certifications as a Novell Certified NetWare Engineer and a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and Trainer. Thomas is currently a Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA), a Red Hat Certified Datacenter Specialist (RHCDS), and a Red Hat Certified Virtualization Administrator (RHCVA), and is on the systems management subject matter expert team at Red Hat.

Last Year’s Session: SELinux for Mere Mortals

Brian Carothers - Vice President, Amentra, a Red Hat company

Brian Carothers specializes in assisting clients drive business success through large-scale adoption of appropriate distributed computing technologies. Brian has a wide body experience across multiple Java, .NET, and messaging platforms at all levels of technology delivery, from development to project sponsorship. He currently serves as the Amentra liaison to the JBoss product teams to relay client and market requirements to the product roadmaps and offerings.

Andrew Cathrow - Senior Product Marketing Manager, Red Hat

Andrew Cathrow serves as senior product marketing manager at Red Hat and is responsible for Red Hat’s virtualization products. Prior to this position, Andrew managed Red Hat’s sales engineers. Prior to joining Red Hat in 2006, Andrew worked in product management for a configuration company, and also for a software company that developed middleware and messaging mainframe and midrange systems. Earlier in his career, Andrew held various positions at IBM Global Services.

2009 session: Open Source Virtualization

Akash Chandrashekar - Solution Architect, Red Hat

Akash Chandrashekar is a solution architect at Red Hat, where he works on the systems management subject matter expert team. Akash holds a Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) and Red Hat Network Satellite certifications, and has been in the information technology industry since 1996. He has a bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Sciences from Devry University in Pomona California and a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics Education from California Polytechnic University in Pomona.

Bryan Che - Manager, Product Management, Red Hat

Bryan Che runs product management at Red Hat for its cloud operations offerings, management software, and Red Hat Enterprise MRG, Red Hat’s messaging, realtime, and grid platform. In this capacity, Bryan manages the product strategy and direction for a wide range of Red Hat’s products, from the realtime Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system to messaging middleware to cloud-oriented infrastructure and operations. Prior to this position, Bryan was an integral member of the team with responsibilities for Red Hat’s middleware and developer offerings. Bryan graduated with his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Computer Science from MIT.

William Cohen - Performance Tools Engineer, Red Hat

William Cohen, performance tools engineer at Red Hat, earned a PhD and master’s degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University, and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Kansas.

Kevin Conner - Principal Software Engineer, Red Hat

Kevin Conner is the project lead for the ESB project within JBoss, a division of Red Hat. After graduating from Newcastle University, Kevin worked as a kernel programmer with Integrated Micro Products (IMP), developing fault tolerant network drivers. IMP was later acquired by Sun Microsystems, where Kevin discovered Java . He has over fourteen years experience of Java, predominately Enterprise technologies, which he has used to develop software for technical, financial, and local government clients. Before joining JBoss, Kevin was a senior engineer with Arjuna Technologies, where he worked on the transaction products.

Tom Coughlan - Senior Engineering Manager for Storage Development, Red Hat

Tom Coughlan is the manager of the storage development team at Red Hat, where he is responsible for SCSI, SAS, FC, FCoE, iSCSI drivers, the Logical Volume Manager (LVM), multipath, and Device Mapper (DM). Tom has over 25 years of experience connecting operating systems to storage.

Scott Croft - Linux Consultant, Red Hat

Scott is a Linux consultant with Red Hat Consulting, assisting customers with environmental and architectural issues. Scott received a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Old Dominion University and has a strong background in enterprise computing environments.

Charles Crouch - Manager, Software Engineering, Red Hat

Charles Crouch, manager of software engineering at Red Hat, is currently the development manager for JBoss Operations Network, and has worked on the product team since its inception in 2005. Prior to joining Red Hat, Charles worked in the consulting industry, including stints at Accenture in London and Luxembourg. While working at Red Hat, Charles has led the development of the new Administration Console, which was launched as part of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5.0.

Aaron Darcy - JBoss Product Line Director, Application Platforms, Red Hat

Aaron Darcy leads the product line management effort of Red Hat’s JBoss Enterprise Application Platform portfolio. Aaron joined Red Hat in 2005 as the director of global strategic services, overseeing Red Hat’s technical account managers and all of Red Hat’s global enterprise support partners. Prior to joining Red Hat, Aaron was a director in information technology at UBS Investment Bank, where he held a variety of roles in application development and global program management. Aaron started his career as a technology consultant with Arthur Andersen and is a graduate of Indiana University.

William DeCoste - Solution Architect, Red Hat

William DeCoste has served as a JBoss solution architect in the media and technology verticals at Red Hat since June of 2009. While at Red Hat, William has been a JBoss core developer on the EJB3 team, a technical account manager for Intuit, and an instructor for the introductory and advanced Java EE courses.

Steve Dickson - Consulting Software Engineer, Red Hat

Steve Dickson works as a kernel engineer at Red Hat. For the last eight years, he has been responsible for Red Hat’s NFS implementation in both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora. Prior to Red Hat, Steve worked on DEC’s TruCluster produce and in the infiniband world writing user and kernel applications for Linux. He started his career at Lachman Associates, where he developed and supported SCO’s NFS implementation.

William Dinyes - Global Learning Services Curriculum Manager, Red Hat

Will Dinyes joined Red Hat in March of 2009 as a Curriculum Manager for JBoss. He is currently developing our latest Seam training. If he’s not in the classroom, you can find him stargazing with his kids in the high desert of Arizona.

Timothy J. Dion - CIO, Sensei, Inc.

Timothy J. Dion is the chief information officer for Sensei Inc., a pioneer in mobile and Web-based wellness solutions. With extensive managerial and technical experience, Timothy is responsible for operations, technology implementation, and infrastructure for the company.

Prior to joining Sensei, Timothy was the director of enterprise architecture for Biogen Idec Inc, a $2.5 billion global biotechnology leader with products and capabilities in oncology, neurology, and immunology. While at Biogen Idec, Timothy led efforts centered on enterprise architecture and the technology strategy for the global organization. He also served as a partner and chief technology officer for Riverton LLC, a specialized technology consulting firm providing Fortune 500 companies with enterprise architecture, operational business intelligence, and cross-enterprise integration expertise. In this role, Timothy was responsible for the technical vision and delivery of all of Riverton’s engagements. He helped define the company’s strategy and instituted numerous efficiency programs. Timothy also served as chief technology officer for Primix Solutions Inc., a publicly held, world-leading Internet applications services firm. In addition, he has held positions with Advis Inc., Marble Associates, and Telco Systems.

Timothy has spoken at numerous technology conferences, and has been published in industry publications, including EAI Journal, Mass High Tech, and VAR Business Magazine.

Matt Domsch - Technology Strategist, Dell

Matt is a technology strategist in Dell’s Office of the CTO, focusing on operating systems and virtualization. He has been an active Linux developer since 1999, and lead Dell’s Linux Engineering teams for over a decade. Matt has spoken at previous LinuxCon, LF Collaboration Summit, Linux Symposium, Red Hat Summit, LinuxWorldExpo, and other events. Dell develops and sells Linux on a wide range of server, workstation, desktop, notebook, and netbook products.

Blake Dournaee - Intel SOA Products Group, Intel

Blake Dournaee is currently the product manager responsible for Intel SOA products. As a product manager at Sarvega, he was deeply involved in the development of its flagship XML security, routing, and acceleration appliance products. Blake was a specialist in applied cryptography applications at RSA Security and was a frequent speaker at many RSA conferences throughout the US and Europe. Blake is an established author who wrote the first book on XML security and co-authored “SOA Demystified” from Intel press.

Ulrich Drepper - Consulting Engineer, Red Hat

Ulrich Drepper has been working at Red Hat for the past 13 years. He currently works as a member of the office of the CTO to collect and disseminate information relevant to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Specifically, he deals with low-level technologies like machine and processor architectures and technologies up the stack from that. He is also technical director of a Red Hat group responsible for the software development tools for C, C++, and Fortran (compilers, linker, debuggers), and the basic runtime libraries for those languages. Ulrich also fulfills his duties as the upstream maintainer of the C, math, and thread libraries for Linux. Ulrich received his diploma in Informatics from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany.

Chuck Dubuque - Product Marketing Manager, Red Hat

Chuck Dubuque is the product marketing manager for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and is responsible for market analysis, program strategy, and channel support. Prior to joining Red Hat, he worked for three years at a mid-sized VAR (value-added reseller) where he experienced both the marketing and engineering of enterprise hardware and software, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, VMware, Microsoft Windows Server, NetApp, IBM, Cisco, and Dell. Earlier in his career, Chuck spent eight years in the biotechnology space in marketing and business development. He earned an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College.

David Egts - Principal Architect, Red Hat

David Egts is a principal architect at Red Hat, specializing in the application of open source enterprise infrastructure technologies within federal, state, and local government agencies, the Department of Defense, and educational institutions. Prior to joining Red Hat in 2007, he specialized in visual simulation, virtual reality, human computer interfaces, and scientific visualization at Silicon Graphics, Inc.

David received both a master’s degree and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh, an executive MBA from the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh, and he is a Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA) and a Red Hat Certified Security Specialist (RHCSS).

Ovidiu Feodorov - Open Source Consultant, Nova Ordis

Ovidiu Feodorov is a software engineer specialized in open source Java enterprise back-end. He is currently active as a principal of Nova Ordis LLC, a software services company. He was a JBoss core developer and led the development of JBoss Messaging as project lead. He was, and in some cases still is, involved with multiple other open source projects, including JGroups and JBoss Remoting.

Mike Ferris - Director, Product Marketing, Red Hat

Michael Ferris is the Director of Product Strategy for Red Hat’s cloud computing initiatives where he is responsible for identifying and designing emerging enterprise systems management and cloud offerings. Michael has more than 15 years of experience in enterprise software development and management. He led product marketing and management teams at Red Hat during the definition and introduction of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux flagship product line. Most recently, Michael guided the creation of Red Hat’s enterprise security platform and cloud computing offerings.

Prior to joining Red Hat in 2000, Michael lead design, product management, and development at both start-up and enterprise software firms, including Relativity Technologies, Micro Focus, and Burl Software. Michael holds a master’s degree in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics from Vanderbilt University.

Pierre Fricke - Director of Product Line Management, SOA Platforms, Red Hat

Pierre Fricke serves as director of product line management for Red Hat’s JBoss SOA platforms. In this role, Pierre is responsible for driving the strategy and enterprise messaging for JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform, which includes JBoss ESB, JBoss jBPM, JBoss BRMS and JBoss Rules. Starting in 2005, Pierre led the product strategy for JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform and JBoss jBPM, and he lead Red Hat’s expansion into the SOA market with the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform. Pierre focuses on expanding Red Hat’s market presence in integration, service-oriented architecture, and business process automation, bringing the value of open source and community innovation to customers in these markets.

Pierre started working on UNIX at IBM in 1983 as one of the first AIX developers, building experience in data management, operating systems, communication programs, development processes, and customer support. After holding several software development management positions and completing his MBA at the University of Texas in Austin, Pierre became one of the leading strategists and marketing leaders in IBM focusing on interoperability, integration, WebSphere, Windows NT, UNIX, Linux, and open source. He led the creation of IBM’s “Compete, Leverage, and Interoperate” Windows NT strategy after OS/2 was discontinued. He was one of the eight original leaders on the team that lead IBM into Linux and open source in 1998 and 1999. In 2000, Pierre joined D. H. Brown Associates, a research analyst firm, as vice president of application and integration infrastructure. In this role, he specialized in J2EE, Microsoft .NET, integration, Web services, and open source to drive significant growth in the firm’s middleware business.

Paul Frields - Fedora Project Leader, Red Hat

Paul W. Frields has been a Linux user since 1997 and joined the Fedora Project in 2003, shortly after its launch. As contributor and founding member of the Fedora Board, Paul has worked on a variety of tasks, including writing and editing guides and tutorials, website publishing, toolchain development, marketing and design campaigns, and light software development. He also maintains a number of packages in the Fedora repository. In February 2008, Paul joined Red Hat as the Fedora Project Leader. In this role, he coordinates activities across the Fedora project.

Robert Friske - IBM Power Systems Linux Offering Manager, IBM

Robert Friske has been in the software industry for over 25 years. In the 15 years prior to working at IBM, Robert worked at Ford Motor Company, where he supported both mainframe and open systems servers.

Val Gamerman - Nationwide Insurance Company, Senior Consultant, IT Architect

As senior consultant of IT Architecture at Nationwide Insurance, Val Gamerman is responsible for the flexible and cohesive architecture of large IT systems. Val, who has been with Nationwide since 1998, has an impressive background including IT consulting with Mega Solutions and Alltel. His experience includes internal security projects, RSA implementation, and development for Alltel’s new 3-tier call center order management application.

Val holds a bachelor’s degree from The Lviv State University, Ukraine and a master’s degree in Computer Science. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

Paul Gier - Senior Software Engineer, Red Hat

Paul Gier, senior software engineer at Red Hat, is responsible for the build of the JBoss.org Community Application Server project, and is a Maven committer at the Apache software foundation. Paul has over ten years of experience developing Java software. He has been a Java instructor for Sun Microsystems and has developed applications for the healthcare and banking industries.

Steve Giovannetti - CTO, Hub City Media, Inc.

Steve Giovannetti, CTO of Hub City Media, Inc., has worked in information technology since 1988 and was creating commercial applications based on Internet technologies in early 1995. A specialist in the analysis, design, and implementation of distributed multi-tier applications, Steve has applied these skills to the successful implementation of large-scale website infrastructure, trading systems, financial systems, and identity management systems. Steve received a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Rutgers University.

Lamon Gray - JBoss Curriculum Development Manager, Red Hat

Lamon is a JBoss contributor and evangelist. He is currently working as a Red Hat Global Learning Services curriculum manager on the JBoss products. Prior to this role, Lamon served in the capacity of Senior JBoss Consultant based in North America.

Robb Greathouse - Principal Solution Architect, Red Hat

Robb Greathouse is a principal solution architect at Red Hat, specializing in turnaround and work outs of problem software projects. He has over 20 years experience in enterprise application development and IT management.

Jason Greene - Principal Software Engineer, Red Hat

Jason currently leads the JBoss Application Server project, which is a popular open source application development platform. He is a member of the Java Community Process (JCP), and most recently the expert group of the Java EE and Contexts & DI specifications. During his tenure at Red Hat, he has worked in many JBoss Enterprise Middleware areas, including the application server, clustering, Web services, AOP, and security. His interests include concurrency, distributed computing, hardware, and programming language design.

Steve Grubb - Principal Engineer, Red Hat

Steve Grubb leads Red Hat’s security technologies team, which works on security certifications and guidance and maintains many of the security tools that you find on Linux systems. Steve is the primary author of the user space and some of the kernel audit code. He has worked on Linux security for over 10 years, working mostly on flaw discovery and repair for many of the important programs in use.

George Hacker - Global Learning Services Curriculum Manager, Red Hat

George Hacker has been teaching RHCE and RHCA-level for around ten years. As a Curriculum Manager on the Linux team of Red Hat Global Learning Services he serves as subject matter expert and editor for several Red Hat courses. George has a keen interest in classroom setup automation. He studied computer science at the University of California, Riverside in the early 1980′s. He enjoys playing acoustic guitar and playing card games with his family.

William Harden - Lead Technical Architect, USAA

William Harden serves as USAA’s transaction processing architect and is responsible for USAA’s strategic direction for transaction processing platforms, which include Java application servers. William has over 10 years of application server platform experience, ranging from operational and administrative to strategy. William received a master’s degree in Environmental Science and a bachelor’s degree in Earth/Life Science from the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Jean Staten Healy - IBM Director Cross IBM Linux Strategy, IBM

Jean Staten Healy manages a marketing and business development organization with the responsibility for IBM Linux strategy across all company brands. In this role she coordinates the cross-company strategy for Linux including the achievement of revenue goals, ensures rapid response to changes in the market environment, and acts as the IBM spokesperson in the Linux space. Prior to her current position, Jean was the Director of Marketing Strategy in the IBM Software Group, Director of Business Development and Regulatory Affairs in the IBM Systems and Technology Group, Director of Innovation Initiatives at IBM Corporate Headquarters, and the IBM Customer Advocate in the Office of the Chairman and CEO. In addition, Jean has held management positions in the IBM Global Services Group.

Jean has lived and worked in Asia. She holds a master’s degree in theoretical linguistics and a J.D. with a certificate of concentration in International Law. She is licensed to practice law in New York and Connecticut and is a published author on various legal topics.

Itamar Heim - Consulting Software Engineer, Red Hat

Itamar has come to Red Hat through the Qumrant acquistion.

Alex Heublein - Director, Solutions & Strategy – Red Hat Consulting, Red Hat

Alex Heublein is the director of solutions and strategy for Red Hat Consulting. In this role, he is responsible for the technology strategy for Red Hat Consulting, technical enablement of strategic alliance partners, and a portfolio of productized services solutions. Alex has over twenty years of experience in the IT industry encompassing a wide variety of roles, including senior management, strategic technology and business consulting, enterprise architecture, and mission-critical solution architecture, design, and development.

Prior to joining Red Hat, Alex held several management and technology roles at a number of companies, including IBM and HP. Alex holds an MBA and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in business at Georgia State University.

Thomas Heute - Software Engineering Manager, Red Hat

Thomas Heute, software engineering manager at Red Hat, is the project lead for JBoss.org Community project, GateIn, and has been working on portal solutions since 2005.

Jason Hibbets - Project Lead, opensource.com, Red Hat

Jason Hibbets is a project manager in Brand Communications + Design at Red Hat, where he leads a team of writers who are the voices of the Red Hat brand. He also is the lead administrator for opensource.com and has led several Web-based projects at Red Hat. Jason began working at Red Hat in 2003. He has held several roles at Red Hat, including: ISV senior marketing specialist, support project manager for Red Hat Exchange (RHX), Red Hat Knowledgebase maintainer, and Global Support Services technical engineer. He also spent a summer internship at Red Hat in 2000 as the Linux User Group (LUG) program manager. Jason has been applying open source principles in neighborhood organizations in Raleigh, NC for several years, highlighting the importance of transparency, collaboration, and community building.

Brad Hinson - Worldwide System z Sales, Strategy, Marketing, Red Hat

Brad Hinson is the worldwide lead for System z at Red Hat, based out of the Raleigh, North Carolina office. He leads the Linux sales, strategy, and marketing for the mainframe, and provides technical oversight of all System z projects and activities. Brad holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and master’s degrees from UNC Greensboro and UNC Chapel Hill.

Rob Hirschfeld - Senior Cloud Solutions Architect, Dell & RobHirschfeld.com (Agile in the Clouds)

As an early advocate for SaaS and a patent holder in cloud computing, Rob Hirschfeld cut his teeth on solving some interesting problems with hypervisors and the software lifecycle. He started his career as a Microsoft apologist, which led to successful early .NET adoption. Since then Rob has had the good fortune to work with strong teams that shaped him into an Agile enthusiast and open source embracer.

Rob currently works as a senior cloud solutions architect for Dell. In this role, he helps Dell set strategy for cloud computing, bringing interesting cloud solutions to market and talking with customers about their cloud deployments.

Gerrit Huizenga - IBM Linux Technology Center, Cloud Architect, IBM

Gerrit Huizenga is an architect in IBM’s System and Technology Group Emerging Solutions team. Today Gerrit is focusing much of his energy on emerging technologies for cloud computing As part of the Linux Technology Center, Gerrit has been a driver for much of the LTC’s involvement in the Linux kernel, Linux scalability, availability, and serviceability strategies (kprobes, systemtap, kexec), Xen, KVM and virtualization strategies, and hardware and software enablement for IBM and its partners.

Noelle Jakusz - Middleware Solution Architect, Red Hat

Noelle Jakusz, middleware solution architect at Red Hat, has broad experience in the design, development, deployment, and support of enterprise Java applications. She also has a deep understanding of J2EE/JEE and their supporting technologies, and experience applying these technologies to solve real-world problems.

Richard Jones - Senior Software Engineer, Red Hat

Richard Jones, senior software engineer at Red Hat, is a programmer involved in many aspects of Red Hat’s virtualization management, from monitoring (virt-top) to administration (libvirt, libguestfs, P2V, V2V). He also works on many Fedora side projects, including the Windows cross-compiler project and the OCaml software stack. Prior to Red Hat, Richard worked at several UK start-ups and founded one of his own in 2003. Richard received a master’s degree in Computer Science from Imperial College, London.

John Kelbley - Senior Technical Product Manager, Microsoft

John Kelbley is a senior technical product manager with Microsoft’s Platform Tech Strategy Team. He joined Microsoft in 2002 after working at numerous large enterprises as a Management Consultant, IT Manager, and Infrastructure Architect with over 20 years of computing industry experience. John works with customers and partners, helping them understand and deploy new Windows Server-based solutions, including virtualization and HPC.

John is co-author of “Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V: Insiders Guide to Microsoft’s Hypervisor” and a periodic contributor to TechNet Magazine. His contributions to the book largely focus on his obsession with backup and recovery, automation through scripting, and “low cost” approaches to computing problems. John blogs at http://blogs.technet.com/enterprise_admin/default.aspx.

Kurt Keller - UNIX System Specialist, Hilti

Upon returning from several years in Japan and having learned UNIX by himself on the side, Kurt Keller got into UNIX system administration at one of the largest financial institutions in Switzerland. Over the years, he designed and built a large part of the central infrastructure services running on Solaris and later on Linux. He designed, built, and maintained the Linux infrastructure from scratch, conducted tests with zLinux, and helped to build a completely new AIX environment from scratch.

Kurt has worked at Hilti, a world-renowned manufacturer of leading-edge technology for the global construction industry, since May of 2009. He is currently involved in introducing configuration management, redesigning installation/update procedures, and designing the next company-wide hardware/open source bundle, which will be based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Daniel Kinon - Senior Linux Systems Administrator, Choice Hotels

Daniel Kinon is a senior systems administrator with extensive Linux/UNIX operating system and programming experience at Choice Hotels. Daniel received a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Sonoma State University.

James Labocki - Solution Architect, Red Hat

James Labocki is a solutions architect who supports Red Hat’s government team. In this role, James helps the Navy and federal treasury adopt open source solutions. Prior to joining Red Hat, James worked for Verisign and several start-up companies. He is a Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) and a member of the Suncoast Linux Users Group.

Jeff Layton - Senior Software Engineer, Red Hat

Jeff Layton is a senior software engineer at Red Hat, where he is the maintainer of CIFS for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and is a co-maintainer of NFS.

Dr. Mark Little - Senior Director Engineering, Middleware Engineering, Red Hat

Dr. Mark Little serves as the senior director engineering, middleware engineering at Red Hat. Prior to taking over this role in 2008, Little served as the SOA technical development manager and director of standards. Additionally, Mark was a distinguished engineer and chief architect and co-founder at Arjuna Technologies, a spin-off from HP. He has worked in the area of reliable distributed systems since the mid-80′s with a PhD in fault-tolerant distributed systems, replication, and transactions. Mark and his family reside in Newcastle, UK.

David Lutterkort - Principal Software Engineer, Red Hat

David Lutterkort is a principal software engineer in Red Hat’s cloud team, where he focuses on Deltacloud. Prior to this role, he worked on a variety of tools for configuration and virtualization management, and is the main author of Augeas. David holds a PhD in Computer Science from Purdue University.

Ronak Mallik - Architect, Amentra, a Red Hat company

Ronak Mallik has developed an extensive background deploying large and complex JBoss Application Server deployments in a variety of industries and verticals. Ronak has a proven track record providing architectural guidance and management and implementation oversight, including one of the largest single JBoss datacenter instances in the United States.

Michael McGrath - Fedora Infrastructure Lead, Red Hat

Michael McGrath, Fedora Infrastructure Lead, has been working with the Fedora Project for four years and has been the official team lead for three years. Prior to joining Red Hat, Michael worked at Orbitz.

Bob McWhirter - Consulting Software Engineer, Red Hat

As the chief architect for middleware cloud computing at Red Hat, Bob McWhirter leads a team of several engineers that is paving the way for the enterprise cloud computing paradigm shift. Named a Red Hat Fellow in 2009, McWhirter joined Red Hat in 2007 and is responsible for navigating the cloud as it relates to Red Hat’s middleware technologies within the JBoss Community and via JBoss Enterprise Middleware. He also leads the TorqueBox project, creating a Ruby application server on top of the core JBoss Application Server.

Prior to joining Red Hat, McWhirter served as a founding engineer at Radar Networks, where he spent nearly two years working on the semantic-Web platform Twine.com. He is also the founder of the Codehaus open source community.

Andrig Miller - Senior Director, Software Engineering, Red Hat

As senior director of software engineering at Red Hat, Andrig (Andy) Miller manages the JBoss.org Community and its open source projects, development talent, and enterprise platform products, focusing on performance and usability. Andy has 24 years of experience and extensive, hands-on technical expertise working with open source and JBoss technologies.

Prior to Red Hat, Andy was vice president of technical architecture at Corporate Express, where he led the company to move its information systems to open source architecture, improving reliability and performance and reducing costs. This initiative included the strategic decision to deploy JBoss Enterprise Application Platform for mission-critical corporate applications.

Chris Morgan - Senior Product Manager, Red Hat

Chris Morgan came to Red Hat with over 15 years of experience in software development, application management, and systems management. His extensive professional background includes software support, software engineering, sales, and consulting with IBM and others for a variety of Fortune 500 businesses.

More recently, Chris has been working to expand the Red Hat cloud ecosystem to deliver operational efficiencies for enabling Red Hat solutions within public clouds. Chris has a master’s degree in Computer Engineering and an MBA.

Andrew Morris - IT Architecture Analyst, UnitedHealth Group

Andrew Morris, IT architecture analyst for UnitedHealth Group, is responsible for driving the installation, architecture, and adoption of JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform and other middleware technologies as a corporate standard. For the past eight years, he has worked in many different capacities as a portal consultant, focusing on the old Plumtree stack of products (BEA Aqualogic, and now Oracle Web Center Interaction). Andrew has worked for multiple industries and government clients. He has an MBA and a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics.

Jiří Moskovčák - Software Engineer, Red Hat

Jiří Moskovčák has worked as a software engineer at Red Hat for two years and is currently the leader of the ABRT (Automatic Bug Reporting Tool) development team. He graduated from the University of Technology in Brno.

Pete Muir - Principal Software Engineer, Red Hat

Pete Muir, principal software engineer at Red Hat, works as a core JBoss developer. He is the project lead for Seam and Weld (the reference implementation of JSR-299: Contexts and Dependency Injection for Java EE), and is a lead developer on Arquillian, a test harness for Java application servers. Pete also represents Red Hat on the JSF 2.0 Expert Group. Prior to Red Hat, Pete contributed to Seam while working for a UK-based staffing agency as an IT development manager.

Pete has spoken at several conferences, including: Devoxx, JAX, JBoss World, JSFDays, JavaBlend, and numerous JUGs. Pete blogs about Seam, Weld, and Java at http://in.relation.to/Bloggers/Pete.

Reed Mullen - IBM, IT Optimization and Consolidation Initiative Leader, IBM System z

Reed Mullen joined IBM in 1981 as a Junior Programmer in the VM/SP Development organization located in Endicott, New York. Since then, he has held management, product planning, and strategy development positions in the IBM mainframe organization. In 1999, Reed played a key role in developing the Linux-on-S/390 business plan that leverages the mainframe’s ability to host large-scale virtual server environments. Since then, Reed has applied his expertise in the areas of strategy, business development, and technical marketing support to help grow the Linux on System z business. He is currently the IT Optimization and Consolidation initiative leader for IBM System z.

David Norwood - Red Hat, Global Learning Services Courseware Manager

Drawing on many years of experience with JBoss and JEE technologies, David Norwood is now an instructor for JBoss. In this role, David travels to locations around the country teaching classes ranging from JBoss Administration, Hibernate (intro and advanced) and EJB 3.0 for developers on the JBoss Enterprise Middleware suite of products. When he isn’t teaching, David writes and revises courseware for the Enterprise JBoss stack.

Nick Otto - Senior Director, Information Technology, Red Hat

J. Nick Otto currently serves Red Hat as senior director, IT business systems and business continuity planning. Prior to this role, Nick served two years as director of IT Infrastructure for Red Hat, where he was responsible for IT operations, information security, networks, and service desk. In prior lives, he ran infrastructure operations for a Fortune 500 retailer, consulted in infrastructure design and strategy, and earned stripes as a systems / network engineer.

Andrew Overholt - Senior Software Engineer, Red Hat

Andrew Overholt, senior software engineer at Red Hat, leads the Eclipse Linux Tools project and has been involved in the Eclipse community for several years.

Ronald Pacheco - Principal Partner Manager, Red Hat

Ron Pacheco, principal partner manager at Red Hat, has over 20 years experience in the silicon, systems, and software business, and has product managed operating systems for enterprise and mission critical environments. In his current role, Ron works closely with Red Hat’s partners to drive the seamless and timely integration of hardware and software features and operating system enablement.

Benjamin Paillereau - Product Manager, eXo WCM, eXo Platform

Benjamin Paillereau is product manager for eXo Web Content Management (WCM), where he is responsible for technical direction and development. Benjamin joined eXo with nine years of Java software engineering and content management technologies experience, including almost five years at Business & Decision, a publicly traded consulting and systems integration firm based in Paris. Most recently, he was at M6 Métropole Télévision, where he oversaw its eXo implementation. Benjamin holds computer science degrees from Ecole Supérieure La Baronnerie and IUP Mime.

Bryan Pennington - Senior Systems Administrator, Whole Foods Market

Bryan has worked at Whole Foods Market in Austin, Texas for the past 10 years. While at Whole Foods Market, he has served as a PeopleSoft developer, worked in middleware administration, and he has been a Red Hat Systems Administrator for the past four years. Until the addition of a systems administrator in 2009, Bryan solely managed the Whole Foods Market environment, which has grown to over 120 systems. Bryan was awarded the 2009 Red Hat Innovator of the Year for his work with Red Hat Network Satellite.

Ian Pilcher - Senior Solution Architect, Red Hat

Ian graduated from Michigan State University in 1988 with a degree in Financial Administration. After a few years as a federal credit union examiner, he began working as a contract employee in IBM’s mailroom and by 1999, he was an IBM IT architect. Ian now works as a senior solution architect at Red Hat and has received Red Hat Certified Architect and Red Hat Certified Virtualization Administrator certifications.

Shyam Pillalamarri - Vice President of Engineering, Co-Founder, Azul

Shyam Pillalamarri brings over 15 years of expertise to Azul in transforming technology research into real-world product innovation. As Vice President of Software Engineering, Shyam is instrumental in developing a clear and focused vision for the company’s software efforts and providing strategic direction to Azul product teams.

Prior to co-founding Azul Systems, Shyam was Vice President of Software Engineering for the IP Services business unit at Nortel Networks, having joined Nortel through their acquisition of Shasta Networks. At Shasta Networks, Shyam led the software development organization, from inception to product delivery, for the innovative Shasta Broadband IP Services Platform.

Shyam was Director of Software Engineering at ZeitNet/Cabletron where he led the development of various ATM products and core ATM protocol software. Shyam also held management and engineering positions at Hewlett Packard, where he led several TCP/IP, OSI and STREAMS development projects on their Real Time and UNIX platforms.

Shyam holds a MSCS degree from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree from IIT, Madras, India. He has been granted four patents in high performance computing and communications.

Robert Proffitt - Senior Solution Architect, Red Hat

Robert Proffitt is a senior solution architect at Red Hat, and has over 20 years in the IT industry, with nearly 10 years as a Red Hat Certified Engineer. Robert has authored Linux documentation and presented at numerous industry events, including LinuxWorld and the Red Hat Summit. Robert is based near Denver, Colorado.

Reza Rahman - Independent Consultant, Cognicellence

Reza Rahman is an independent consultant specializing in Java EE with clients across the greater Philadelphia and New York metropolitan areas. He is currently focused on the Resin EJB 3.1 Lite/Java EE 6 Web Profile implementation. Reza has been working with Java EE since its inception in the mid-1990s. He has developed enterprise systems in the financial, healthcare, telecommunications, and publishing industries, and has worked with EJB 2, Spring, EJB 3, and Seam.

Reza is the author of EJB 3 in Action from Manning Publishing, and is a member of the Java EE 6 and EJB 3.1 expert groups. He is a frequent speaker at seminars, conferences, and Java user groups, including JavaOne, and is an avid contributor to TSS.

Chris Ramsdale - Developer Programs Engineer, Google

Chris Ramsdale, developer programs engineer at Google, is currently working within Google’s developer relations team to help educate and advocate Google Web Toolkit. Prior to Google, Chris worked in the mobile space, holding software engineering, technical lead, and product management roles, with Motorola, AppForge, and Air2Web. He has lived in the Atlanta area for the past 13 years.

Jason Ray - Developer and Scrum Master, CONNECT

Jason Ray serves as Scrum Master on CONNECT, an open source system and community that promotes IT interoperability in the U.S. healthcare system. In a past life, he developed healthcare IT systems for the DoD as part of the AHLTA project. Jason’s current hobby involves drinking the Agile kool-aid and pontificating Scrum principles.

Rik van Riel - Senior Software Engineer, Red Hat

Rik van Riel is a senior software engineer at Red Hat and a long-term contributor to Linux kernel development. He has contributed to the memory management subsystem, scheduler, and several of the moving parts involved in virtualization. In addition, Rik is active in community projects like kernelnewbies.org and works on spam filtering software in his spare time.

Isaac Roth - CEO, Makara

Before founding Makara, CEO Isaac Roth spent five years at Wily Technology, helping to grow the APM leader from a few handfuls of customers through the $375M acquisition by CA, Inc. His contributions at Wily ranged from fire-fighting critical application problems for the largest companies in the world, to leading partnerships with critical development frameworks, to the “intrapreneur” role of growing a nascent business unit at CA from $100K in revenue to over $25M in two years. Prior to Wily, Isaac was a founder or early employee of three enterprise infrastructure start-ups of various success, and worked on IOS in the earlier days of Cisco Systems. Before earning a degree from Stanford University, he helped former Red Hat CEO, Bob Young, sell Linux CDs out of his living room.

Bikash Roy Choudhury - Solutions Architect, NetApp

Bikash Roy Choudhury is a solutions architect at NetApp, where he designs and architects solutions around NFSv3/v4, vitualization, and database. He also performs competitive analysis on performance evaluation and protocol analysis with different storage vendors over NFS. Prior to this role, Bikash was a NFS partner engineer, partnering with vendors including Red Hat. He also managed and provided technical support for enterprise accounts including Oracle, Broadcom, Chevron, and Motorola.

Prior to joining NetApp, Bikash worked as a professional service provider, a system administrator for UNIX setups in the education industry, and on various communication projects funded by the government. Bikash received a master’s degree in Computer Information Systems from the University of Phoenix, San Jose and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science Engineering from Regional Engineering College in India.

Andrew Rubinger - Senior Software Engineer, Red Hat

As a senior software engineer at Red Hat, Andrew Lee Rubinger is primarily tasked with development of the JBoss community’s EJB 3.x implementation. His role as a core developer within JBoss Application Server is supplemented by leading the EmbeddedAS and ShrinkWrap projects. He is the author of the upcoming Enterprise JavaBeans 3.1, 6th Edition from O’Reilly Media and his work can be followed via http://twitter.com/ALRubinger or in more colorful format on his blog at http://exitcondition.alrubinger.com.

Randy Russell - Director of Global Learning Services, Red Hat

Randy Russell is the director of certification at Red Hat. He joined Red Hat in 1999 and leads the team responsible for Red Hat’s industry-leading certification program. Randy is on the Board of Directors of the Performance Testing Council, an association of testing professionals, and served as Chairman of the Board in 2009. Prior to joining Red Hat, Randy was a system administrator and programmer with an economics consulting firm.

2009 Session: RHCE and RHCT Focus Chat Sessions

Anil Saldhana - Lead JBoss Security Architect, Red Hat

Anil Saldhana is the lead JBoss security architect at Red Hat, and is the technical lead for the JBoss common criteria evaluation process. He represents Red Hat at security-related standards working groups and technical committees, including those at the Oasis, W3C, and the JCP.Further, Anil is the technical lead for the JBoss Common Criteria Evaluation Process.

Bhavna Sarathy - Technical Engineering Lead Red Hat Alliance, AMD

Bhavna Sarathy works for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), as the technical lead for the Red Hat alliance. Bhavna works with Red Hat product management and engineering teams to ensure AMD products and features are enabled prior to product launch. She is also responsible for improving technical relationships with Red Hat technical community through effective collaboration. Bhavna has master’s degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from The Ohio State University. She has worked on Linux kernel and device drivers for the last 12 years.

Tim Scully - Partner – Systems Engineer, Jackpine Technologies

Tim Scully is a partner and systems engineer, specializing in systems infrastructure, virtualization, provisioning, and security at Jackpine Technologies Corporation. Jackpine Technologies Corporation has supported the information technology and infrastructure needs (architecture through implementation and support) of the United States Air Force, Navy, and Department of Defense for over 10 years.

Prior to joining Jackpine Technologies Corporation in 2007, Tim served as a Captain in the U.S. Air Force where he was the Global Command and Control System – Air Force (GCCS-AF) Engineering Division Chief. Tim received a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and is a Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE).



Chip Shabazian - Vice President / Consultant II, Bank of America

Chip Shabazian, vice president / consultant II at Bank of America, works as the bank’s Linux subject matter expert and Red Hat Enterprise Linux architect. As an engineer, he was responsible for the definition of the global build infrastructure and has become a regular contributor and community speaker about all things kickstart.

D. John (Shak) Shakshober - Senior Consulting Software Engineer, Red Hat

D. John Shakshober (Shak) works in the Red Hat CTO office as a senior consulting engineer. In this role, he focuses on kernel, virtualization, and messaging and realtime performance. For the past five years, Shak has worked with a team to ensure Red Hat Enterprise Linux delivers peak performance on benchmarks and real customer applications, including high-end databases, webserver, and FSI markets. His responsibilities include: offering feedback to the core UNIX kernel, participating in server and IO design groups, and partnering with OEMs and customers on key applications. Shak received a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology.

Rich Sharples - Director of Middleware, Product Management, Red Hat

Rich Sharples is the director of product management for JBoss Enterprise Middleware application platforms and developer tools at Red Hat. He has spent the last decade evangelizing, using, and designing enterprise Java middleware. Prior to Red Hat, Rich worked for Forte Software and Sun Microsystems and as an independent software developer and consultant.

Justin Sherrill - Software Engineer, Red Hat

Justin Sherrill, software engineer at Red Hat, has been a member of the Red Hat Network Satellite engineering team since 2007. Prior to this role, he supported Red Hat Network Satellite and other Red Hat solutions as a member of Red Hat Global Support Services. Justin has worked on many of the features of Red Hat Network Satellite 5.1 through 5.3.

Robert Shiveley - Mission-Critical Server Product Manager, Data Center Group, Intel

During his 13 years at Intel, Robert Shiveley has worked in datacenter product and solutions marketing, which involves mission-critical computing, enterprise manageability, security, IT infrastructure optimization, IT business value, and business regulatory compliance. Prior to working at Intel, Robert worked in strategic and product marketing, solution sales, and business development at enterprise ISVs.

Simo Sorce - Principal Software Engineer, Red Hat

Simo Sorce works in Red Hat’s security engineering division, where he works on identity management software (FreeIPA, SSSD). Simo has more than 10 years of experience with Samba and is also a Samba developer and Samba team member.

Manik Surtani - Principal Software Engineer, Red Hat

Manik Surtani is a principal software engineer and core JBoss research and development engineer at Red Hat. He is the founder of the Infinispan project, which he currently leads along with the JBoss Cache project. His interests lie in cloud and distributed computing, autonomous systems, and highly-available computing.

Manik has a background in artificial intelligence and neural networks, a field that he left behind when he moved from academic circles to the commercial world. Since then, he worked with Java-related technologies at a start-up company that focused on knowledge management and information exchange. He also worked as a technical lead focusing on e-commerce applications on large Java EE and peer-to-peer technology for a London-based consultancy. Manik is a strong proponent of open source development methodologies, ethos, and collaborative processes, and has been involved in open source since his first forays into computing.

Bob Sutor - Vice President of Open Source and Linux, IBM

Dr. Bob Sutor is the Vice President of Open Source and Linux for the IBM Corporation. In this role he has the responsibility for driving the IBM strategy, sales enablement, and technical pre-sales for software running on Linux and other open source environments. He works with customers, partners, government leaders, analysts, and the press to understand the value of adopting business-critical open source and Linux. He is also responsible for driving and executing the cross-company business and policy strategy for open standards as they relate to software, hardware, services, vertical industries, and emerging markets.

Burr Sutter - Senior Product Manager, Red Hat

Burr Sutter, senior product manager at Red Hat, is a current Sun Java Champion, president of the Atlanta Java Users Group, and founder of the Atlanta Chapter of the International Association of Software Architects. He has over 20 years of software design and development experience and has been a speaker at various developer conferences, including JavaOne, No Fluff Just Stuff, JBoss World, and numerous JUGs.

Forrest Taylor - Global Learning Services Project Manager, Red Hat

Forrest Taylor has been with Red Hat since 2004. He started as an instructor in Denver, CO, and has since become a Curriculum Manager based in the Washington, DC area. He wrote the RHS429: Red Hat Enterprise SELinux Policy Administration manual and the EX429 exam, and he was one of the first in the world to become a Red Hat Certified Security Specialist (RHCSS). Forrest is a Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA) and teaches all of the RHCE and RHCA classes. Outside of the computer world, he enjoys playing volleyball and basketball, as well as paying with his children.

Michael Tiemann - Vice President, Open Source Affairs, Red Hat

Michael Tiemann, VP of open source affairs at Red Hat, is a true open source software pioneer. He made his first major open source contribution over a decade ago by writing the GNU C++ compiler, the first native-code C++ compiler and debugger. His early work led to the creation of leading open source technologies and the first open source business model.

In 1989, Michael’s technical expertise and entrepreneurial spirit led him to co-found Cygnus Solutions, the first company to provide commercial support for open source software. During his ten years at Cygnus, Michael contributed in a number of roles from President to hacker, helping lead the company from fledgling start-up to an admired open source leader.

Michael serves on a number of boards, including the Open Source Initiative and the GNOME Foundation. He also provides financial support to organizations that further the goals of software and programmer freedom, including the Free Software Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Michael received a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Moore School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.

Mark Tomlinson - LoadRunner Product Manager, HP Software

Mark Tomlinson, LoadRunner product manager at HP Software, has over 15 years of experience in quality assurance for software, including experience in performance engineering, life-critical testing, and quality management.

Carl Trieloff - Technical Director, Cloud Engineering, Red Hat

Carl Trieloff works as a technical director at Red Hat, where he focuses on cloud architecture. Prior to this role, Carl worked as a Red Hat senior consulting software engineer and director of Red Hat Enterprise MRG. He has over 18 years of enterprise engineering experience in trading exchanges, middleware, messaging technologies, and distributed systems (SOA), including work on mission-critical control systems.

Carl is also the chair of Apache Qpid, an open source messaging project, and was one of the founding members of the AMQP Working Group. Prior to joining Red Hat, Carl served as director of open source at IONA Technologies, driving the creation of commercial, open source ESB’s, Eclipse tooling, and other open source software projects. Carl also served as CTO and vice president at Development of Exchange America, where he was responsible for technical strategy, the development team, and service operations. Carl has experience in designing and implementing control systems and large, distributed, highly-available command and control networks. He received bachelor’s degrees in Electronic Engineering and Micro-Processor Design from the University of Pretoria.

Jim Tyrrell - Senior Solution Architect, Red Hat

Jim Tyrrell, senior JBoss solution architect at Red Hat, has 13 years of IT experience working across various different verticals, including government, insurance, financial, and manufacturing. Jim has been with Red Hat for three years, and enjoys snowboarding in Colorado where he resides.

Vinny Valdez - Senior Enterprise Architect, Red Hat

Vinny Valdez is a senior enterprise architect on the solutions and strategy team with Red Hat Consulting. He is a Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA) who has over 15 years of IT experience. Vinny joined Red Hat in 2007 and works with Red Hat’s alliance partners, customers, and internal groups to define strategic services solutions.

Prior to joining Red Hat, Vinny held a number of technical roles in system administration, consulting, and engineering with various companies, including: Dell, the State of Texas, and other private consulting and software companies.

Mark Wagner - Principal Software Engineer – Performance, Red Hat

Mark is a principal software engineer in the CTO’s performance engineering team. His work at Red Hat focuses on the new and emerging technologies, and his responsibilities have included: network performance evaluations, technical lead on KVM performance, and technical lead on the performance engineering aspects of management platforms. Mark has over 20 years of experience in software engineering and eight years of experience in network hardware design.

Daniel Walsh - Principal Software Engineer, Red Hat

Dan serves as a Principal Software Engineer for Red Hat and since joining the company in 2001, he has led the SELinux project, concentrating on the application space and policy development. Dan has worked in the computer security field for over 25 years. Prior to Red Hat, Dan worked on Netect/Bindview on HackerShield and BVControl for UNIX vulnerability assessment products. He also worked for Digital Equipment Corporation on the Athena Project, where he helped to design and develop the AltaVista Firewall and AltaVista Tunnel (VPN) products. Dan holds a master’s degree in Computer Science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from the College of the Holy Cross.

James Ward - Technical Evangelist, Adobe Systems

James Ward is a technical evangelist for Flex at Adobe and Adobe’s JCP representative to JSR 286, 299, and 301. Much like his love for climbing mountains, he enjoys programming because it provides endless new discoveries, elegant workarounds, summits, and valleys. His adventures in climbing have taken him many places. Likewise, technology has brought him many adventures, including: Pascal and Assembly back in the early 1990s; Perl, HTML, and JavaScript in the mid 1990s; and Java and many of its frameworks beginning in the late 1990s. Today, he primarily uses Flex to build beautiful front-ends for Java-based back-ends. Prior to Adobe, James built a rich marketing and customer service portal for Pillar Data Systems.

Paul Waterman - Professional, IT Systems, Motorola, Inc.

Paul Waterman is a Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA) working as the Linux technical lead in Motorola’s Midrange UNIX Operations team. In this capacity, he provides Linux leadership to 24 sites in seven countries. He fell in love with UNIX on a DEC MicroVAX II in 1987 and installed Linux for the first time on a salvaged PC-MOS system with a 16mhz 80386 processor in 1997. He has since used or deployed Linux for everything from running five-hundred player Magic: The Gathering tournaments to simulation pools to virtualized test environments to developing next generation WiMax and LTE infrastructures.

David Webster - System's Engineering Chief Architect, Java Application Servers and Middleware, Union Pacific Railroad

David Webster, system’s engineering chief architect at Union Pacific Railroad, currently oversees the direction and implementation of Java technology at the railroad. Prior to joining Union Pacific Railroad, David served as director of information technology at Porter Chadburn, PLC, senior consultant for critical business systems at Baldwin, Hacket and Meeks, Inc., lead eCommerce systems at Oriental Trading, and director of war fighting mid-tier systems at US STRACOM.

John Weeks - Computing Systems Manager, Utah State University

John Weeks has worked as a senior Linux/UNIX systems administrator for numerous Silicon Valley dot-coms, including several start-ups and Sun Microsystems, for the past 20 years. John currently resides in scenic Logan, UT, where he provides support for Utah State University.

As a computing systems manager at Utah State University, John implements open source tools to provide highly-supportable enterprise-class solutions. The university uses a variety of Web publishing platforms to promote, support, and document projects in an easily-searchable format.

Ric Wheeler - File System Team Manager and Architect, Red Hat

Ric works at Red Hat as the manager and architect of the file system team. He has extensive experience in storage and file systems after spending ten years at EMC in its Symmetrix and Centera groups, four years at The Open Group’s Research Institute, and four years at Thinking Machines, where he worked on the CM5 operating system. In the distant past, Ric worked on the original MOSIX process migration system at Hebrew University’s distributed systems laboratory.

For the past ten years, Ric has been active in the Linux file system and IO world where he helped organize workshops, inform open source developers about high-end storage, and helped advance the robustness of the Linux IO and file system stack.

Galder Zamarreño - Senior Software Engineer, Red Hat

Galder Zamarreño is currently based in the Neuchatel, a city in the French region of Switzerland. Galder was born in Bilbao, a northern Spanish city, where he attended the ESIDE faculty at University of Deusto to study Computer Science. After spending the last six months of his degree at Bath University, he joined a UK retail banking software solutions company as a graduate software developer where he developed J2SE and J2EE applications running on JBoss Application Server.

In February 2006, Galder joined JBoss as a 3rd level support engineer and for three years, he contributed features, fixes to JGroups, JBoss Cache and JBoss Application Server projects, provided support to Red Hat’s middleware customers, and delivered public JBoss administration and JBoss clustering trainings. His contributions to open source projects led to his JBoss core developer status. Galder currently works on the Infinispan and JBoss Cache open source projects.

Curtis Zinzilieta - Regional Manager, Solution Architects, Red Hat

Curtis Zinzilieta serves as a manager for Red Hat’s solutions architecture team. He is a Red Hat Certified Engineer with over 15 years of Linux and open source experience. Since joining Red Hat in 2001, Curtis has assisted customers with performance tuning, clustering, custom application development, and project architecture. Curtis is currently leading a team of architects focused on open source optimization and solutions development.