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Nathan Hughes
Nathan Hughes is Co-Founder and Master of Ceremonies at Detroit Labs, the best little mobile development house in Detroit. Nathan has been delivering technology in Southeast Michigan for 15 years. Through those years he’s learned to love things like Oracle database administration, ERP implementation, a handful of programming languages, system administration, leadership and mentorship, and mountains of late night project launches. He’s currently in love with RubyMotion, Android, iOS, and the people that do cool things with them. Prior to co-founding Detroit Labs, Nathan was a Delivery Lead a...
Matt Van Vleet
Matt Van Vleet holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Management Information Systems from Ohio University. He joined Pillar in 2005 as Vice President of Fulfillment for the Ohio Valley Region after years of notable accomplishments. Matt has developed a testing practice focused on functional test automation and application performance management. Mr. Van Vleet founded a company, Solstice Software, that wrote Automated Unit and Integration Testing Products and continues to push the envelope of what is possible with test automation. Within Pillar he is one of the key innovators around our approach...
DJ Daugherty
DJ Daugherty has been using state models and asynchronous processing for many years to solve business problems for companies of all sizes. I like to create business solutions for business problems… this might include the use of technology. I am all about people. I love to take seemingly complex problems and find simple solutions, providing business value and hopefully a great return on investment. @ddaugher
Matt Barcomb
Matt Barcomb (@mattbarcomb) is passionate about building collaborative, cross-functional teams; enjoys being out-of-doors; loves punning; and thrives on guiding organizations towards sustainable, adaptive and holistic improvement. Matt started programming as a wee lad and eventually wound up getting paid for it. It took him nearly 10 years before he realized that the "people problem" was the biggest issue facing most businesses that use software development. Since then he has spent his time and energy trying to find ways of making the business-software universe a better place to work, play and...
Diane Zajac-Woodie
Diane Zajac-Woodie (@agilesquirrel) is redefining the role of the Business Analyst as more than a requirements dictator. Through open and honest conversations coupled with problem-solving prowess, she guides the business toward creative solutions that actually solve problems and eliminate waste. She shares this same approach with her technical teams, facilitating communication, cooperation and continuous learning to ensure success. Diane craves knowledge almost as much as chocolate and could make question-asking an Olympic sport. Her recent passion is to free those that are mired in the statu...
Todd Kaufman
Todd Kaufman has developed, coached, and managed software development teams in Java, Ruby and .NET. Regardless of platform, he is passionate about finding better ways to build systems with low ceremony and high quality. He has been known to occasionally run long distances and drink scotch, although not necessarily at the same time. Todd delivers outstanding software to his clients through Test Double, a software studio in Columbus, Ohio. @toddkaufman www.testdouble.com
Tonya McCarley
Tonya McCarley is a passionate, energetic, and practical user experience strategist who embraces agile methodology.
Michael “Doc” Norton
Michael Norton is an Agile Activist and Coach at LeanDog. Michael is adept at working with teams to improve their processes from inception to delivery, with a special focus on engineering practices. A passion for software craftsmanship, quality, and happy customers is viewable at his blog site Doc On Dev. @DocOnDev www.docondev.com
Kim Manuel
Kim Manuel is a Process Reengineering Specialist at Agile Business Performance Improvement, LLC. She is passionate about helping both companies and individuals adopt an agile leadership mindset for continuous process improvement and a sustainable competitive advantage! www.agilebpi.com
Daniel Davis
Daniel Davis is a Agile Connoisseur who has been dealing in the realms of Agile for the last eight years. He's currently a practicing Agile Coach and Delivery Lead with Pillar and has spent the last few years focused at an enterprise level by helping out companies such as General Motors, Cengage Learning, Delta Dental and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. Daniel's prior work background includes a wide range of diversity spanning aspects such as design, development, web and mobile applications. His prevailing passion lies in helping businesses find true value from the efforts they put forth. ...
Sandra Canzoneri
Sandra Canzoneri has been in the field of technical communication for over 30 years. Her passion is helping people and organizations excel by focusing on personal integrity and excellence in the workplace.
Allen Bennett
Al Bennett is an agile coach at General Motors in Warren, MI. He has over 25 years of experience with software development and managing software teams. He likes to help teams improve using creative learning techniques. @allenbenn
Angela Harms
Angela Harms is an agile developer, coach, facilitator, and instigator at LeanDog (on a boat off the coast of Cleveland). She loves beautiful code that emerges from collaboration, and learning new ways to make it work. When she’s not pairing on tests and the code they inspire, you can find her at conferences speaking about how the human connection makes better software, or in open space learning and sharing what she's learned. She lives with her unschooling family in a community of nerds called MakerHouse in Cleveland’s historic Ohio City. @angel...
Brittany Hunter
Brittany Hunter is a software designer at Atomic Object, a custom software firm in Grand Rapids, MI. Atomic Object integrates design and development to produce great software. Brittany works as part of a self-managed, poly-skilled product team, engaging at every point in a software product's journey from a simple idea to a working piece of software. @brittanyhunter http://spin.atomicobject.com
Carol Treat Morton
Carol Treat Morton is a user-centered analyst and designer currently practicing in a Senior capacity for Menlo Innovations. In other words, Carol takes the user experience really seriously!
Renee Pinter
Renee Pinter is a High-Tech Anthropologist® at Menlo Innovations, where she works toward ending human suffering as it relates to technology across multiple industries. Before Menlo, she worked in a variety of design-related positions, from engraving shops to publishing companies. @repinter
Chris Hefley
Chris Hefley is CEO and Co-Founder of LeanKit, makers of LeanKit Kanban. LeanKit Kanban is widely recognized as the premier online Kanban tool, with customers such as NBC, Rolls Royce, Informatica and Monster.com. Chris is passionate about software and systems that make peoples lives better, transforming our relationship with work: "My goal is to make the world of work more humane, making the organization more effective, respecting the individual, and enabling them to be more creative and successful." ...
Dan Neumann
Dan Neumann is an Agile coach with expertise using SCRUM and applying XP practices. He has a record of seeking performance improvement for teams and organizations. Dan, a Certified Scrum Master, maintains an ongoing 'inspect and adapt' culture to achieve continual improvement. His blog site is at NeuManagement. @Dan_SB http://neumanagement.wordpress.com
Maria Matarelli
Maria Matarelli is a Certified Professional Coach and works with management teams, executive teams and individual project teams, consulting large enterprise environments in Agile adoption. Maria enjoys traveling to consult organizations and speak at both national and international conferences. Maria is the Founder and President of the Illinois Regional Agile Users Group, an Agile Coach and Trainer with Bevill Edge, and is published as one of the contributing authors in a Business Leadership Book Series. Maria is passionate about inspiring people to enjoy what they do while working toward achie...
Jason Little
Jason Little is an Organizational Change Coach, internastional speaker and author of Agile Transformation: A Guide to Organizational Change on Safari Books and Lean Change: Evolving Change Management. Jason's is passionate about the people-side of change and has been helping organizations implement Agile practices since 2007. jasonlittle www.agilecoach.ca
Gerry Kirk
Gerry Kirk focuses on improving individual, team, project, program and portfolio performance in the context of organizational change – specifically in reducing the time it takes to move from the birth of an idea to the delivery of customer value. He specializes in bringing to life change initiatives involving Agile, Lean and Kanban, whether it’s across your team, group, division or organization. He delivers creative, engaging learning using training from Innovation Games® and Training from the Back of the Room. @gerrykirk ...
Godfrey Nolan
Godfrey Nolan is the President and founder of RIIS LLC. He is also the author of "Decompiling Android" and "Decompiling Java" and is currently working on "Android Best Practices". @riisllc http://www.riis.com
Jeff “Cheezy” Morgan
Jeff "Cheesy" Morgan is Chief Technology Officer and a cofounder of LeanDog and has been coaching teams on agile and lean techniques since 2004 with a focus on the engineering practices. For the past three years he has experienced great success and recognition for his work focused on helping teams adopt Acceptance Test-driven Development using Cucumber. @chzy http://www.cheezyworld.com
Nayan Hajratwala
Nayan Hajratwala is a Lean/Agile Coach with over 15 years of intensive technical experience. He has a passion for helping software teams increase their productivity and decrease their time-to-market while improving the quality of their product. He is the owner of Chikli Consulting and founder of 313Dev. You can see his blog at http://agileshrugged.com @nhajratw http://chikli.com
Patrick R Welsh
Patrick Welsh helps software teams and their stakeholders learn how to build better software, in a steady flow. With over 30 years of professional software development experience, Patrick has become a specializing generalist. Over the last 10+ years he has worked as an agile coach, specializing in building teams, and training and mentoring programmers, testers, business stakeholders and managers in practices like Pairing, TDD, Refactoring, Legacy Code Rescue, Integration Testing, Storytesting, and Agile Testing. @patrickwelsh
Tricia Broderick
Tricia Broderick is one of the directors of development at TechSmith, which builds innovative tools—Snagit, Camtasia Studio, Camtasia Relay, Coach’s Eye, Jing, Screencast.com, —to facilitate visual communication. Tricia is responsible for creating and maintaining an engaging and empowering environment for software engineering teams to deliver high quality products. @t_broderick
Paul Reed
Paul Reed, senior associate with EBG Consulting, has led agile teams working on complex products in companies of all sizes. He excels at helping companies transition to agile by leveraging an adaptive rollout strategy. Paul is author of Developing Applications with Java and UMLq and ...
Andrew Annet
Andrew Annet is a coach and facilitator passionate about helping teams improve product delivery. He is focused on promoting shared understanding through better communication practices. He's currently using leanstartup techniques and kanban to foster organizational change.
Jim Benson
My career path has taken me through government agencies, Fortune 10 corporations, and start-ups. Through them all my passion remained consistent – applying new technologies to work groups – in each case asking how they can be leveraged to collaborate and cooperate more effectively. I love ideas, creation, and building opportunities. I love working with teams who are passionate about the future. I love pushing boundaries. I love inclusion. My goal with all technologies is to increase beneficial contact between people and reduce the bureaucratic noise which so often tends to increase costs and d...
Matthew Heusser
A Consulting Software Tester and Contributing Editor for STQA Magazine, Matthew Heusser is a member of the board of directors of the Association for Software Testing. The lead editor of "How To Reduce the Cost of Software Testing", Matt was also the lead organizer of the 2008 Agile Alliance Sponsored Workshop on Technical Debt. You can see him again at the Agile Conference in August, where Matt is co-chair of the test and quality track. You can follow Matt on twitter @mheusser or email him at matt@xndev.com. ...
Jean Tabaka
Jean Tabaka, Agile Fellow with Rally Software, is continuing on her 30 year journey of learning about software development principles, processes, and practices for people. She seeks a humane approach to bringing high value to our communities of creators and consumers. This has led her to move into Kanban and Lean approaches. Systems thinking, complexity theory, and lean startups drive her thinking now as well. Her fundamental belief in collaboration and team wisdom remains core to her work moving forward. Jean holds a Masters in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University. She is the autho...
Bill Wagner
Bill Wagner has spent his entire career in the software industry, spanning both technical and business roles. He spent eight years as a self-employed consultant before co-founding SRT Solutions with Dianne Marsh. Over the past decade they’ve grown SRT Solutions into a premier software development company, amassing 4 FastTrack awards (2011, 2010, 2008, 2007), the Michigan 50 Companies to Watch award (2011), and making the Inc 500/5000 list (2011 and 2012). Bill was also awarded Automation Alley’s Emerging Technology Leader award in 2011.
Jeff Hoover
Jeff Hoover is a software craftsperson and coach for Pillar. His work is focused on the interface between engineering practices and sometimes-overlooked "soft skills". His passions for helping others and developing talent have been demonstrated as a contributor to AgileSkillsProject.org, a facilitator for several Day in the Life of Agile classes for Pillar, co-facilitation of CodeRetreats, and participation in several weekends of "Coding in the Clink" at Marion Correctional Institute in Ohio.
Justin Wheeler
Justin is a High-Tech Anthropologist® at Menlo Innovations. He brings a variety of experience from film production to floral design and puts it to use observing and identifying target users, helping companies hone in on the problems they are trying to solve, and designing solutions that work for the end user. At Menlo, Justin has also gained experience in QA, consulting, and teaching Menlo classes.
Tracy Beeson
As an employee of Menlo Innovations, Tracy uses her ten years of quality assurance (QA) experience to help Menlo seamlessly integrate QA into their agile practices. In her six years at Menlo Tracy has also gained experience in many areas beyond quality assurance such as High-Tech Anthropology®, project management, sales, software development, writing and teaching Menlo's training courses, and more. Prior to working at Menlo Tracy has been a high school computer science teacher, Mercury Interactive Certified Product Instructor, and quality assurance specialist.