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Global Development and Deployment Conference 2004 Presentations
Speakers' Biography
February 18 - 20, 2004
Microsoft Conference Center, Redmond, WA, USA
The following Microsoft employees presented at the GDDC:
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Yuri Alkin
Yuri Alkin leads the Windows International test group that is responsible for testing all international Windows releases and developing international test technologies and tools. During the last two years, he has developed and driven the new international test strategy for Windows and has advocated it throughout the company. Prior to joining Microsoft, Yuri worked as a developer in several companies producing software on UNIX platforms.
Kathleen Borowski
Kathleen Borowski is a program manager on the Windows International Localization team. She leads a globalization and localizability team focused on documentation.
Vincent Célié
Vincent joined Microsoft after developing real-time embedded software in France, Spain, Mexico and California. He has been at Microsoft for five years working on Exchange Server, Commerce Server and related technologies. Vincent holds an Engineering degree in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics from ENSEEIHT in Toulouse, France. He is currently an International Program Manager on the Microsoft E-Business Servers team.
Simon Daniels
Simon Daniels is a program manager in Microsoft's typography group. He is a graduate of the typography and graphic communication program at The University of Reading in Berkshire, England. Simon has responsibility for the Windows' "core fonts" including Arial, Times New Roman, and Courier New, as well as the western and middle eastern fonts shipped with Microsoft's operating systems, applications and games.
Tristan Davis
Tristan Davis is a program manager in Authoring Services who focuses on data technologies (XML support, Smart Documents, Smart Tags) in Microsoft Word.
Jan Roelof Falkena
Jan Roelof Falkena is a Program Manager in the Windows International team where he works on the localizability of Windows and related products. Jan Roelof has worked on numerous localization projects in Windows International since 1992 in both Dublin (Ireland) as well as in Redmond (USA).
Gerald Heidenreich
Gerald Heidenreich was hired by Microsoft as Localization Program Manager in Microsoft.com. He is now an International Program Manager in the same organization responsible for globalization and localization of the Microsoft.com Search and Download Center sites, as well as internal tools and services for content management, taxonomy and workflow. Gerald holds a Ph.D. and Master of Arts in German literature from the University of Oregon, and Bachelor of Arts in German from the University of Wisconsin.
David K. Hsu
David is a Program Manager in the World-Ready Guides, the evangelism arm of Windows International group. He is currently part of the workgroup driving the globalization of Help/User Assistance at Microsoft and is the webmaster of http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev. Prior to becoming Program Manager, he was a test engineer in charge of testing Active Directory services in foreign language environments. In addition to English, David speaks Arabic, French, and Chinese, and has traveled extensively around the world while growing up.
Laurence Kancherla
Laurence has been with Microsoft since 1996 and worked on Exchange Server, Site Server, BizTalk Server and other international projects. She studied at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Montpellier, France where she earned her Masters in Computer Science. She is currently an International Program Manager on the Microsoft E-Business Servers team.
Michael Kaplan
Michael Kaplan is a Software Design Engineer on the GIFT (Globalization Infrastructure and Font Technologies) team. He works on international features in future versions of both Windows and the .NET Framework, particularly in the areas of keyboards, locales, and sorting (collation). He has written dozens of articles on international development and is the author of Internationalization with Visual Basic from Sams. He has also spoken at development and international conferences around the world. Prior to joining Microsoft, he did consulting as the chief software architect of Trigeminal Software, Inc. (http://trigeminal.com), working on many interesting projects such as being the principal developer for the Microsoft Layer for Unicode on Windows 95/98/ME Systems (MSLU).
Bernhard Kohlmeier
In his role as Director of the Integrated Product Services (IPS) team in Windows International, Bernhard is responsible for localization vendor management, international language services, international packaging as well as vendor process excellence on a company wide scale. A native of Germany, Bernhard has spent the majority of his career in localization with a focus on business, international content and process engineering.
Mark Lammers
Mark Lammers is a lead localization program manager on the Windows International UA Content Localization team. His experience includes project management of outsourced localization for large and small products (e.g. Windows Server 2003, Small Business Server), partnering with core user assistance writing teams, and managing a small team of LPMs. He's been on the team since spring 2001.
Gwyneth Marshall
Gwyneth Marshall is an International Program Manager on the Microsoft E-Business Servers team. With her colleagues, she works very closely with the development teams and Microsoft subsidiaries to ensure that products meet the needs of Microsoft’s worldwide customers. She and her colleagues are responsible for designing international features (such as Multilingual UI support) and for driving code page support, locale support, localizability, etc. For the past six years, Gwyneth has worked at Microsoft as an International Program Manager and contributed to variety of projects, including IIS, COM+, IE, and MSN.com. Gwyneth joined Microsoft after earning a Masters of Science in Management Information Systems from Carnegie Mellon University.
John McConnell
John McConnell is currently the Group Program Manager for the Windows Globalization Infrastructure and Font Technology (GIFT) team. At Microsoft for seven years, John has worked on many projects including NLS, the .NET Common Language Runtime, and the Internet Explorer 4.0 release for Arabic, Hebrew and Thai. In his career in globalization, John has represented four companies on the Unicode Consortium and served stints as a developer and an evangelist. John has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from M.I.T. In his spare time, John looks for holes in the Seattle cloud cover with his telescope.
Garrett McGowan
Garrett McGowan is an International Program Manager in Microsoft’s Developer Division. He has worked in the field of software internationalization for seven years. His current projects include Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System.
Houman Pournasseh
Houman Pournasseh has been a part of the Windows International team for the last five years. During the last three years he has been the program manager of the World-Ready Guides (WRG) who evangelizes World-Readiness to designers, developers, and testers inside and outside of Microsoft. He has also managed the creation of AppLocale and the newly created Glossary Community initiative to support Microsoft Language Interface Packs (LIPs). Before WRG, he was a program manager in Windows Division in charge of Complex Script languages (Arabic, Hebrew, Thai, Indic family, Vietnamese) for Windows 98 Second Edition, Internet Explorer 5.0, Windows NT 4.0 Service Packs, and Windows 2000. He was also a developer for Windows 98 BiDi (Arabic, Hebrew) versions.
Russ Rolfe
Russ Rolfe is a Program Manager with the Windows Globalization Evangelism team. He works as the international customers advocate to the development teams, letting the teams know what Microsoft’s customers’ international issues and needs are. He project managed the creation of Microsoft’s “Developing International Software – 2nd. Edition.” He has been involved with Globalization, Internationalization and Localization for over 20 years. He spent a year developing the Internationalization guidelines for AT&T's $10 billion global venture with BT (British Telecom). He spent 12 years with ALPNET (a global Internationalization/Localization company) developing tools and procedures to improve the globalization process. In the early 80's, he also spent five years with Weidner Communications developing a Japanese to English machine translation system. He was a founding member of the OSCAR group who created the Translation Memory Exchange (TMX) standard and is currently a member of the W3Cs International GEO (Guidelines, Education and Outreach) Task Force.
Achim Ruopp
Achim Ruopp is an International Program Manager in the Developer Division at Microsoft. He works on enabling Visual Studio.NET to create applications for international markets. He has presented on the topics of globalization and localization at TechEd, the Mobility Developers Conference and several Unicode conferences. In 1994 he received a diploma in computer science from the Technical University of Munich.
Rostislav Shabalin
Rostislav Shabalin is a Program Manager with the Globalization Evangelism team of Windows, making sure that design plans and programming interfaces of the future releases of Windows are world-ready. His previous career at Microsoft, which he started as a design engineer in test of complex script support in Windows 98, included involvement with GDI+, Uniscribe, globalization of test processes, studies in internationalization of Web development and other breath-taking assignments. Before joining Microsoft, Rostislav worked in three different countries, but always as a software developer.
Beverly Sherry
Beverly Sherry is an International Program Manager working in the Microsoft SQL Server development team responsible for globalization of Microsoft SQL Server. She has worked in the Microsoft SQL Server development team for the past four years driving globalization and localizability quality into the SQL Server product family. She has 14 years experience in the field of globalization of client/server applications.
Takao Suzuki
Takao Suzuki is an International Program Manager in the MSN division at Microsoft. He has worked on internationalization in projects including Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, and MSN Messenger. He's also participating in the W3C International Web Services effort, and helped with international issues in CSS/HTML. His education includes MSc. in Systems Engineering from Boston University. He was born and raised in Tokyo.
Roberto Taboada
Roberto Taboada has been a program manager on the Word and Authoring team for six years, where he has managed the development of such diverse features as image handling in Word and the Styles and Formatting task pane. Most recently he has been the main designer and driver of the Research Services platform for Office 2003, an incredibly exciting feature with the potential to change the way users access information pertinent to the documents they create in Office.
Connie Wang
Connie Wang is an international program manager working in the Microsoft SQL Server development team responsible for globalization of Microsoft SQL Server. Before that she was a SQL Server Subsidiary Program manager in Microsoft’s China Subsidiary. She has working for Microsoft around seven years and has 11 years experience on developing database applications.
Cathy Wissink
Cathy Wissink is a lead program manager in the Windows Globalization Infrastructure and Font Technology team. Since 1991, she has worked on numerous Windows internationalization projects for both Win32 and the .NET Framework, including the NLS API, Microsoft Layer for Unicode and the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. Cathy is the Microsoft primary representative to the Unicode Technical Committee. Her current focus is the Windows Language Roadmap: the planning and delivery of enabled, culturally accurate and standardized product for new Windows languages.