At TechDays, meet renowned technical ICT experts, consultants, developers and architects from all over the world to share their expertise and experience.


Andrew Pardoe
Andrew Pardoe Andrew Pardoe is a Program Manager in the Common Language Runtime of the .NET Framework. He is responsible for many aspects of the execution engine including garbage collection, exception handling and Silverlight CoreCLR for Mac OS X. Before joining the CLR team he spent a few interesting years testing C++ compiler optimizations on the Itanium architecture.

Arlindo Alves
Arlindo Alves Arlindo Alves started his career as an ICT consultant at a Microsoft Partner, with a strong focus and recognized expertise in server based computing. Today, Arlindo is an IT Pro Evangelist at Microsoft Belgium & Luxembourg, focusing on the next wave of technology innovations. As part of the IT Pro team he works closely with the technical community and maintains his own blog at http://blogs.technet.com/aralves

Bart De Smet
Bart De Smet A former Visual C# MVP, Bart De Smet now works at Microsoft Corporation on the WPF dev team in an SDE role. Prior to this new challenge, Bart was active in the Belgian community evangelizing various Microsoft technologies, most of the time focusing on CLR, language innovation and frameworks. In his evangelism role, he’s been speaking at various events and attended several international conferences including TechEd Europe, IT Forum and the PDC. In 2005, Bart graduated as a Master of Informatics from Ghent University, Belgium. Two years later, Bart became a Master of Computer Science Software Engineering from the same university.

Beat Schwegler
Beat Schwegler Beat Schwegler is the Enterprise Lead for early adoption projects in Western Europe. He provides advice and consulting to enterprise companies on software strategy and architecture and he really loves to share his thoughts and ideas and is therefore a frequent speaker at international conferences. Beat has many years of experience in professional software development and architecture and has been involved in a wide variety of projects, ranging from real-time building control systems, best selling shrink-wrapped products to large scale CRM and ERP systems. Recently, his prime focus belonged to the area of Collaboration, Enterprise Search and Software plus Services.

Christian Weyer
Christian Weyer Christian Weyer is co-founder of thinktecture, a European company aiding and supporting software architects and developers in designing and implementing distributed solutions architectures. He has been modelling and implementing distributed applications with Java, COM, DCOM, COM+, Web Services and other technologies. Christian has been focusing on the ideas and concepts of serviceorientation and their practical translation in customer projects in the past few years, with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and Cloud Computing being the main areas and technologies applied recently. He was selected as one of the Microsoft MVPs for Solution Architecture and is an independent Microsoft Regional Director.

Corey Hynes
Corey Hynes

Dandy Weyn
Dandy Weyn Dandy Weyn is born and raised in Belgium, but currently lives in Redmond where he works for Microsoft Corporation. He started with databases by the age of 16, and worked worldwide as a consultant/trainer on Enterprise Database Strategies. As a trainer he was involved in readiness and launch events around SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008, and presented at major conferences all over the world. Dandy is sharing his passion for learning and SQL Server in his daily job, where he is responsible for planning, developing and managing Technical Readiness for Microsoft Enterprise Services and Technical Sales in the Application Platform. When Dandy is not working with SQL Server he loves to explore the great nature in the Seattle area, or find a locate where he can get his favorite Belgian Beer so far away from home.

Daniel Van Soest
Daniel Van Soest Daniel van Soest is working for Microsoft Netherlands as an IT Pro Evangelist. In his role he delivers technical sessions and demonstrations for large audiences on technical infrastructure related issues. Daniel mainly focuses on migration, deployment, security and operational strategies of Windows based infrastructures. Besides local events he also presented on TechEd Israel, TechEd South East Asia, TechEd ITforum Barcelona and other international events.

David De Backer
David De Backer

Dirk Primbs
Dirk Primbs Dirk Primbs works as a Developer Evangelist based in Microsoft Germany. While he’s interested in .NET based development technologies in general, he has developed a sincere passion for secure coding on one hand and game development on the other. He regularly speaks at technology events and is an author in various technology magazines focusing on Microsoft technologies.

Gill Cleeren
Gill Cleeren Gill Cleeren works at Ordina Belgium (blog.n-technologies.be), one of the largest players in the Belgian ICT market as a software architect. He specializes in UItechnologies like ASP.NET, AJAX and Silverlight. He is a Regional Director and an MVP for ASP.NET. You can read his blog on www.snowball.be and www.codeflakes.net.

Hans Verbeeck
Hans Verbeeck Hans Verbeeck is an evangelism manager in Microsoft Belgium. He is mostly focused on partners who sell packaged software to their customers and works with them to align product roadmaps. Hans is most passionate about two major trends in software; next generation user experiences and cloud computing.

Ilse Van Criekinge
Ilse Van Criekinge Ilse has been working since July 1 as ICT Consultant, Trainer & Business Development Manager at Global Knowledge Belgium bvba. Before that she worked as an ICT consultant for Atos Origin, where she focused on Exchange migrations and deployments. Prior to joining Atos Origin, Ilse was an Exchange Trainer at Azlan for more than five years. Being an MCT, she offered several companies guidance in their Exchange and MOM deployments, as well as auditing the disaster recovery capabilities in their mail environment. During the last year she has ignited many IT Professionals with the power of Exchange 2007, by delivering trainings, and by cofounding a new user group Pro-Exchange in Belgium focused on Microsoft Unified Communications. Ilse has been rewarded the Exchange MVP award in April 2007. http://www.proexchange.be

Ingo Rammer
Ingo Rammer Ingo Rammer is co-founder of thinktecture, a company providing in-depth support and technical consulting for software architects and developers. Ingo is the award-winning author of the books "Advanced .NET Remoting" and "Advanced .NET Remoting in VB.NET"

Jan Tielens
Jan Tielens Jan Tielens is lead trainer and architect at U2U in the areas of .NET, BizTalk and especially in Information Worker development with SharePoint 2007. Jan is very active in the SharePoint community and is famous for his work on various open source SharePoint projects like the SmartPart and the SmartTools for SharePoint. Since 2005 Jan is a Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) for SharePoint Server.

Jeff Wetlaufer
Jeff Wetlaufer Jeff has been with Microsoft for over 8 years, and in that time has specialized in enterprise infrastructure management, from deployment to operations, from the datacenter to the client. Jeff’s main areas of specialty are; enterprise management, virtualization, windows deployment methodology, Management, Security, Windows and Office product lines, as well as Infrastructure Optimization. In addition to this, Jeff has been heavily involved in build strategy, infrastructure lifecycle management, client and server build automation, Resource Kits (Windows and Office) , Management technologies and the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit. In his time in Microsoft – both in the UK and Redmond HQ, he has worked with international customers and partners on different sizes of organizations, from Small Business up to large scale Enterprise deployments, numbering over 700,000 seats. In these engagements Jeff has assisted in deploying a secure well managed infrastructure, incorporating virtualization capabilities, removing deployment blockers, planning deployment automation, and customizing builds to suit corporate needs. Finally, Jeff has worked closely with the Partner community in service definition and offering development of the Microsoft platform. Previous to Microsoft, Jeff was with a UK Partner specializing in desktop deployments and Novell technology (CNE). Prior to 2000 Jeff lived in Vancouver Canada and was a Network Administrator for the Bank of Montreal. Jeff graduated from the University of Western Ontario in 1996. As a new dad, most of his time is spent with his wife of 13 years, and his new son Gavin. In his spare time, Jeff is active in hockey, cycling, basketball, rowing, golf, skiing and running. He loves to cook and travel in search of great food and wine with his wife (and new son) when the schedule permits!

Jeremy Chapman
Jeremy Chapman Jeremy Chapman is a Senior Product Manager in the Windows client enterprise team. He has worked on operating system deployment solutions across several divisions at Microsoft for more than five years. Prior to joining Microsoft, Jeremy was a consultant in the IT services industry based in Germany, then Mainland China. He is credited with writing the IT professional implementation guidance for Microsoft’s Core Infrastructure Optimization model as well as several publications on OS deployment and operational best practices.

Joel Semeniuk
Joel Semeniuk Joel Semeniuk is a founder of Imaginet Resources Corp; a Canadian based Microsoft Gold Partner. He is also a Microsoft Regional Director and MVP in Team System, and INETA speaker, and has a degree in Computer Science. With over 15 years of experience, Joel specializes in helping organizations around the world realize their potential through maturing their software development and information technology practices. Joel is passionate about Application Lifecycle Management tooling, techniques, and mindsets and regularly speaks at conferences around the world on a wide range of ALM topics. Joel is also a co-author of "Managing Projects with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System" published by Microsoft Press.

Jorge De Almeida Pinto
Jorge De Almeida Pinto Jorge is a Senior Consultant within Oxford Computer Group and is based in The Netherlands. Jorge has been active in ICT since 1997. He worked 2,5 years for OGD as a technician, 8,5 years for CMG/LogicaCMG/Logica as an Infrastructure Consultant and started working for Oxford Computer Group in may 2008 as a Senior Consultant.

Joris Poelmans
Joris Poelmans Joris Poelmans works at RealDolmen, a Belgian IT services company and Microsoft Gold Partner. His main competence area is Information Worker solutions using both Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. He is a MVP for Windows SharePoint Services and one of the founding members of BIWUG - Belux Information Worker User Group - http://www.biwug.be. He regulary posts some SharePoint stuff on his blog at http://jopx.blogspot.com. He also worked as a co-author on “Real World SharePoint 2007” (Wrox, 2007) and SharePoint 2007: The Definitive Guide (O’Reilly, 2007)

Jurgen Postelmans
Jurgen Postelmans Jurgen Postelmans is a trainer and consultant at U2U.

Kai Axford
Kai Axford

Katrien De Graeve
Katrien De Graeve Katrien De Graeve is a Developer Evangelist at Microsoft, responsible for the Belgian & Luxemburger communities.

Kim Oppalfens
Kim Oppalfens Kim Oppalfens is an independent consultant owning his own company OSCC which stands for Oppalfens System Center Consultancy. As the company name implies the primary focus is around designing, implementing & migrating to products in the Microsoft system center family. He was awarded the prestigious Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award in April 2005 and has been re-awarded every year since then. Additionally Kim has been an active Microsoft certified trainer since 2000. He likes to stress that he is happily married, and is the proud father of Lennart and a little baby daughter called Lauren which was born on the 23rd of may in 2008. To top this all of, Kim is a self-proclaimed overall nice guy with a great sense of humor.

Koen Van Tolhuyzen
Koen Van Tolhuyzen Koen Van Tolhuyzen is Technology Advisor on web and content management and collaboration technologies in the Enterprise group at Microsoft Belgium & Luxembourg.

Kurt Claeys
Kurt Claeys Kurt Claeys is .NET Architect (MCT,MCPD) at Ordina Belgium where he focuses on WCF and Software Factories. He publishes on his personal blog at www.devitect.net.

Kurt Roggen
Kurt Roggen Kurt Roggen works as a System Architect mainly around Microsoft technologies as Windows Server/Client, Active Directory, Group Policies, Operations Manager and security. You might have seen and heard Kurt on several of our Microsoft events, including Developer & IT Pro Days 2005/2006/2007, TechEd, IT Forum, TechNet Evenings, TechNet Roadshows, etc... Kurt is also a Microsoft Trainer, where he shares his field experience with customers. As member of the Belgian IT Pro community, Kurt is an active blogger on Windows Server 2008. You can find his blog at http://trycatch.be/blogs/roggenk.

Laurent Bugnion
Laurent Bugnion Laurent Bugnion works as a senior interactive developer for IdentityMine, one of the leading companies for Microsoft technologies such as Windows Presentation Foundation, Silverlight, Surface, Windows 7 and generally User Experience. In October 2008, Laurent wrote the book "Silverlight 2 Unleashed", published at Sams. This book is a complete tutorial about Silverlight. Privately, he codes in ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight and WPF; and writes on http://www.galasoft.ch where he publishes articles, prototypes and demos related to the mentioned technologies. In 2008, Laurent earned a MCTS for WPF. 2009 is his 3rd year as a Microsoft MVP (Client App Dev).

Lieven Iliano
Lieven Iliano Lieven Iliano works at U2U as trainer and developer with deep expertise in .NET Framework 3.5, BizTalk Server 2006 and SharePoint 2007. As a trainer Lieven is well appreciated for his detailed technical knowledge and his will to let you discover the secrets of technology.

Lisa Feigenbaum
Lisa Feigenbaum Lisa Feigenbaum is the Microsoft Program Manager for the Visual Basic Community. She has been a member of the Visual Basic team since 2004. Before her current role, Lisa was the Program Manager for the Visual Basic Editor and Debugger, working on features such as intelliSense, edit-and-continue, and code snippets. You can find Lisa at various US & international conferences and user groups, watch her Channel9 webcasts, or read her posts on the VB team blog http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam. Before joining Microsoft, Lisa earned an M.Sc. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University.

Lynn Langit
Lynn Langit Lynn Langit is a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft, based in Southern California. She speaks live and online about the latest developer technologies, such as Windows Azure, Silverlight, and more. Her current focus is on emerging languages, such as F# and M. Lynn hosts a weekly series on MSDN Channel 9 called geekSpeak. She is creating a multi-part screencast series on developing OLAP cubes and Data Mining structures using SQL Server Analysis Services 2008 now.

Miha Kralj
Miha Kralj As a senior architect on the Platform Architecture Team, Miha Kralj is responsible for leading architectural communities, helping the architectural profession to mature and grow, and coordinating activities within professional architectural organizations and bodies. Miha has had a varied career at Microsoft. In 1998, he joined Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) as a senior consultant based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he specialized in networking, identity, and Windows Server workload solutions. He later became principal consultant for the Balkan region and then transferred to the Microsoft subsidiary in New Zealand. While in the Asia-Pacific region, his responsibilities included that of subject matter expert for the project management profession, leading a community of regional architects in Southeast Asia, and designing and delivery of managed intellectual property solutions for the global market. Before Miha joined Microsoft, he worked for IBM Corporation in Central and Eastern Europe as a technician, trainer, and sales support engineer, specializing in OS/2, Notes, and Domino. Miha is a Microsoft Certified Architect (MCA), Project Management Professional (PMP), and Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP).

Nigel Cain
Nigel Cain Nigel Cain is responsible for driving customer focused design and development efforts across the entire group. His primary product responsibilities include System Center Service Manager and System Center Virtual Machine Manager. Nigel joined Microsoft in 1998 as technical consultant and moved into a Program Management role in 2003. Since then he has worked on a number of different products and initiatives but his primary focus has always been on solutions that make Microsoft technologies easier to manage.

Patrick Viaene
Patrick Viaene In the BeLux subsidiary, Patrick is responsible for promoting the correct Volume License options to customers and partners, assuring customers make the best licensing choice for their current and future software usage. In a prior role, Patrick was the Anti-Piracy manager for a few years; he joined MS as a Partner Account Manager, in 2000.

Peli de Halleux
Peli de Halleux Jonathan "Peli" de Halleux is actively working on Pex, an Automated Whitebox Testing tool for .NET. Peli also collaborates with his colleagues from CHESS and Contracts. On the side he is also wrote MbUnit, an extensible unit test framework, many Reflector addins and other fun geek projects. Peli joined the Research in Software Engineering group in October 2006 where he has been working on Pex since then. Peli worked in the CLR as a tester in charge of the Just In Time compiler (2004-2006) and earned a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the Catholic University of Louvain (2000-2004).

Peter Himschoot
Peter Himschoot Peter Himschoot is an architect and trainer for U2U, specializing in .NET, Team System and BizTalk. He is also a Microsoft Regional Director. You can reach him at peter@u2u.net.

Rhonda Layfield
Rhonda Layfield For over 25 years, Rhonda Layfield has helped people securely deploy, protect, and streamline their IT resources. She began her career in the US Navy where she spent 7 years as communications specialist with a top secret clearance. Later as Sr. Security Analyst for an electrical utility company operating nuclear power plants she discovered serious security flaws in software about to be acquired. She also consults for large customers showing how to quickly and cheaply roll out 50,000 Vista desktops, she always gets the job done for her clients.

Ronald Beekelaar
Ronald Beekelaar Ronald Beekelaar is an independent consultant and trainer. He specializes in virtual machine technology, Windows Server security, and network infrastructure design. Ronald often presents at industry events world-wide on topics such as Virtual Server, VM Optimization, IPSec and ISA Server. Ronald is also an MCT, and MVP of Virtual Machine Technology.

Ronny Bjones
Ronny Bjones Ronny Bjones is working for Microsoft EMEA (Europe, Middle-East, Africa) headquarters as security strategist. He has 23 years experience in ICT, 17 of those in security. Ronny published QuEST together with several industry specialists in the subject of electronic signatures. The book is a comprehensive guide on how to implement Electronic Signatures solutions and can be downloaded from Microsoft.com.

Sam Hassani
Sam Hassani Sam Hassani has been working with Microsoft’s Premier Support customers as a Premier Field Engineer in the area of MOSS 2007 for the past two years. Sam’s expertise lies in operations and support. When working with customers Sam’s mission is to help them to deploy and operate healthy environments avoiding the need to raise expensive support calls with Microsoft Support. Primarily this is achieved through extensive risk-assessments of enterprise-MOSS environments and knowledge transfer to technical staff. Sam has recently presented at the Microsoft TechEd IT-Pro event in Barcelona.

Scott Galloway
Scott Galloway Scott Galloway is a Program Manager on the ASP.NET team at Microsoft in Redmond. Prior to joining Microsoft in 2005, Scott spent 10 years as a web developer and architect in his native Scotland. He is passionate about ASP.NET and web development in general.

Shy Cohen
Shy Cohen I’ve been with MS for over 12 years. In the last year and a half I’ve been working on Oslo as a Customer Experience PM, and for 5 years before that I worked on WCF as a Feature PM (part of the original design team). I’m a seasoned presenter, and have presented in numerous MS and other events. This year I presented at TechEd Israel, TechEd US, TechEd Africa, TR6, TR7, all with great feedback (e.g. #1 chalk-talk at TechEd Africa). In the past I have presented at TechEd EMEA, PDC, VS Live, DevConnections, and other US and international conferences. I write on http://shycohen.com/

Steffen Krause
Steffen Krause Steffen Krause is a Technical Evangelist for Application Platform at Microsoft Germany. After working for seven years as a BI and information management senior consultant for for various enterprise customers, he now supports the SQL Server community for Microsoft TechNet, specializing in large databases, data mining and SQL Server Security. He is a regular speaker at various European events, like TechEd EMEA ITProfessionals and PASS European conference. You can read his blog on http://blogs.technet.com/steffenk

Stephen Forte
Stephen Forte Stephen Forte is the Chief Strategy Officer of Telerik, a leading vendor in .NET components. He sits on the board of several start-ups including Triton Works and is also a certified scrum master. Prior he was the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and co-founder of Corzen, Inc, a New York based provider of online market research data for Wall Street Firms. Corzen was acquired by Wanted Technologies in 2007. Stephen is also the Microsoft Regional Director for the NY Metro region and speaks regularly at industry conferences around the world. He has written several books on application and database development including Programming SQL Server 2008 (MS Press). Prior to Corzen, Stephen served as the CTO of Zagat Survey in New York City and also was co-founder of the New York based software consulting firm The Aurora Development Group. He is currently an MVP, INETA speaker and is the co-moderator and founder of the NYC .NET Developer User Group. Stephen has an MBA from the City University of New York.

Tom Decaluwé
Tom Decaluwé Born in 1978 I have been fascinated by technology and more specific computers since I was very young. After a wonderful youth studying and discovering the world I graduated with an IT degree and started my fist job as an IT-technician at a small local company gradually building up my skills and certifying myself on a number of platforms (MCSE – CCNA – ITIL). As of today I’m working as a network and systems manager for an international footwear retail group based in Belgium. Apart from my day to day job I founded the IT-Talks community. Our community in contrast to others doesn’t focus on one single product, we focus on the concept of hands on community based learning and sharing of knowledge and experiences. On a regular basis we organize Talk events where everybody brings over their laptop and like at a Lan party we plug-in to a co-shared network and boot up virtual labs.

Tony Krijnen
Tony Krijnen Tony Krijnen is a Technology Advisor in the Microsoft Platform Group in The Netherlands. In this job he is delivering technical presentations and demonstrations at tradeshows, events and partner sessions. Tony is 13 years with Microsoft now and has a broad knowledge of Microsoft Windows Vista, the Microsoft Office System, the Microsoft Server System and the Mobility platform. Tony has spoken previously at the Belgium TechDays, Microsoft TechEd, Microsoft IT Forum and at a variety of other conferences including the Microsoft Partner conference, Gartner Conferences and IDC.

Vikram Ghosh
Vikram Ghosh Vikram is a Product Manager with the Branch and Storage Solution Team at Microsoft. He has over 9 years of experience in Network Consulting, Information Security and IT Risk Management. Vikram has worked extensively with large corporations and governments across South East Asia and India, helping define their wide area network architecture and their information security strategy. After graduating from Bangalore University, with a major in telecommunications engineering Vikram went to work for Compaq/HP and then McAfee; before joining Microsoft in the Indian Subsidiary in 2006, In his previous role at Microsoft, Vikram was part of the Incubation Sales Team in Asia Pacific and helped setup the Forefront, IAG and ISA Servers business within the Indian Subsidiary. In his current profile Vikram is responsible for customer outreach and product management for Microsoft’s Branch Office Strategy.

Vittorio Bertocci
Vittorio Bertocci Vittorio Bertocci has over 13 years experience in the industry and has worked in various fields, being recognized as a breakthrough visionary of digital identities. With his work in the SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) he received the Circle of Excellence award, an award that is presented to the highest standards of quality and technology, providing a model and goal for all businesses. He works with major G100 enterprises worldwide, facilitating the early adoption of technologies such as Identity and Access Management. The book he has co-authored, "Understanding Windows CardSpace", will be published in January 2008. The book focuses mainly on the introduction to the concepts and challenges of Digital Identities. You can read his blog on: http://blogs.msdn.com/vbertocci.


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