SPEAKERS
Here is our fantastic lineup of speakers for the 2013 conference:
SESSION SPEAKERS:

Jarrod Hermer
@JarrodHermerMicrosoft
Technical Evangelist at Microsoft
Jarrod has been involved with computers since before the Internet, cutting his teeth on the ZX Spectrum.
Today he holds a BSc in Electrical Engineering.
Jarrod has a passion for his bicycle and all things geeky, he enjoys creating awesome services using his coding powers.

Simon Stewart
@simonstewartnVisionIT
Projects at nVisionIT
Founder of @FindFreeWiFi, @FindABookShop and others.
I ship stuff.


Evan Knowles
www.entelect.co.zaEntelect on Facebook
Team Lead at Entelect Software
Evan’s been exploring computers since the days when he had to dictate commands for his mother to type as he couldn’t read yet. He eventually pushed his interest far enough to pick up a Masters in Artificial Intelligence, and now spends his days playing with new tech, coding Java and Javascript and fencing.

Robert MacLean
@RMacLeanBBD
Technology Specialist at BBD
Nestled in a typical open plan development office at
BBD, you will find Robert MacLean’s desk where this passionate
technology specialist is often working on the latest and greatest
technology from Microsoft.
This desk is often vacant as he can often be found presenting, demo’ing,
networking or drinking free beer at the many conferences, events, user
groups & communities.
His highlights include a son capable of playing games on Xbox, but not
toilet trained (yet) & winning the Microsoft Most Valuable
Professional (MVP) of the Year in 2011.
When not at work or at community events he can be found still coding for
his many personal projects (that he hopes will bring him fame and
fortune or at least a thank you from a person who has benefited from
them) or for Microsoft through his involvement in the Microsoft Rangers.



Garren Smith
@garrensmithblog
Red Comet Labs
Founder at Red Comet Labs
Garren is the founder of Red Comet Labs.
He has bootstrapped his first product,
Classroom 7, a learning management system for trainers.
Garren spends most his time
programming in Ruby and Javascript. A Couchdb committer, Garren works on Fauxton,
the new Couchdb web frontend, which is built as a single page application.


Pieter Germishuys
@pgermishuysblog
Developer
Business Software Developer by day, stuck in the trenches of ASP.NET Webforms. Escaping to the joys of ASP.NET MVC at night!
Pieter started blogging about game development in 2005 and founded MDXInfo and XNAInfo later which was focussed on tutorials on how to create games.
In 2008, Pieter discovered ASP.NET MVC and divorced ViewState. As a
token of his appreciation, he created an open source blog engine called Subtle using MVC and now hosts his blog (http://www.pieterg.com) on it.


Daniel Temme
@DTemmethoughtworks.co.za
Daniel has been developing software for nearly 15 years.
Not all of which were entirely productive. Some of those years were
spent mostly reading Slashdot (there was no Facebook or Twitter back
then). Eventually, Daniel rediscovered that coding can actually be fun
through focussing on learning, growing his skills and releasing
regularly.
These days he works for ThoughtWorks, where he tries to
help others grow and learn and get better at delivering useful software.
He enjoys having had the opportunity to spend some time in the new
South African office.

Rouan Wilsenach
thoughtworks.co.za
profile
Software developer
Rouan is a software developer from Jo'burg. He studied at Rhodes University, in the Eastern Cape, and at the University of East Anglia in the UK. He's passionate about writing code that makes an impact in people's lives. He's dabbled in Java, Python, Ruby and .NET development and it seems he's now playing around with some Javascript.

Che' Nxusani
@code_dependantInternet Solutions
Software Developer
During the day Che' works at Internet Solutions building large scale enterprise applications. At night he does freelance development under his small dev firm SeamlessSyntax. He has been building single page applications for 5 years, first with vanilla jQuery, then Backbone with Marionette and most recently with Meteor.js.

Martin Cronje
@martincronje
Martin Cronjé is a software engineering coach and consultant with more than 15 years experience.
He spends most of his time mentoring and coaching teams to delivery higher quality software more efficiently.
Martin has worked mostly on enterprise projects where he
focused his efforts on high volume mission critical solutions in the
Financial Services and Government sectors on projects that directly
affected the South African Economy and Democracy.
He has an immense passion for software engineering and
focuses his energy on the delivery of fit for purpose solutions whilst
spending every effort to teach and empower those around him.

Steven McDonald
@stevenmcd_codeChase Software
Developer at Chase Software
Sadly I am not a ninja, a rockstar or a guru in any way
shape or form. I have been in the development field for 7 years now
having started in VB.Net and quickly moving over to C#. I've had the
luck of working with and for some extremely talented people in my career
and continue to do so with the lads at Chase Software. I mostly work
with ExtJS, C# and I am digging into Ruby, Rails and a host of other
open source technologies.
I have a wife, a daughter and too many overactive Huskies. I am a massive football supporter, lover of music and gamer.


Gareth Stephenson
@garethstep
Gareth has around 14 years of experience in the software development field, primarily in the Microsoft space, but has also worked on various PHP and JavaScript projects. A self-admitted bibliophile, any time not spent in front of a computer is used up on reading books about computers and the languages that control them. Gareth is currently enrolled in the JCSE's CPD course at Wits.

Mark Pearl
Driven Software
Developer Coach at Driven Software
@MarkPearlCoZaMark Pearl is a Developer Coach for Driven Software - a Johannesburg based consultancy firm focusing on assisting teams deliver high quality software. Mark also has a passion for software craftsmanship and is actively involved in promoting it in South Africa. From co-hosting the Driven2Dristraction podcast to organizing events for the DeveloperUG, if there is an event happening related to writing software in Johannesburg, you will probably find Mark there.
