The Experts Conference

Gil Kirkpatrick is a well-known expert in the design and development of large-scale distributed software for enterprise networks. He is Microsoft Most Valuable Professional and has more than 27 years of software development expertise. He is a recognized authority and renowned speaker on commercial network directories, including Banyan StreetTalk, Novell eDirectory, and Microsoft Active Directory. In his previous position as Director of Engineering, Kirkpatrick was responsible for the development of directory management products for NetPro and served as the architect and lead engineer for its flagship product, DirectoryAnalyzer. Kirkpatrick joined NetPro in 1994 when the company acquired his previous employer, High Technology Systems. He is the author of Active Directory Programming, published by MacMillan USA.

Brian Desmond is senior consultant with Moran Technologies. He has been a Microsoft MVP for Directory Services since 2003 and is the author of Active Directory, 4th Edition from O’Reilly. Desmond is an Active Directory (and sometimes Exchange) focused consultant leading and delivering on projects primarily for large enterprise (40K – 500K seat) customers. His website can be found at: www.briandesmond.com.

Ikrima Elhassan joined Microsoft in 2006 to work on the MIIS after working in VFX research for 4 years.  He’s helped ship MIIS 2003 SP2, ILM 2007, and FIM 2010.  He worked with internal and external partners to develop the server side & client side authentication framework as well as the out of box shipped Credential Management components.  He was also helped develop the workflow engine infrastructure as well as the out of box workflow activities.  Before leaving Microsoft to provide consulting services for Aesthetix Software, he worked on management components for Active Directory for the next version of Windows Server. He keeps an active blog to share insights and tools on Active Directory & FIM/MIIS Management at blog.aesthetixsoftware.com

Guido Grillenmeier is a Chief Engineer within the Enterprise Services Group at Hewlett Packard. Based in Germany, he deals primarily with global Windows infrastructure deployments for large enterprise customers.  He has helped various HP customers to secure their Active Directory, make the move to 64-Bit Windows, and to utilize Hyper-V at scale even before Windows Server 2008 R2 was released. Grillenmeier has often spoken at the Directory Experts Conference (DEC), now The Experts Conference (TEC), and is also a speaker at various other Microsoft-technology related conferences, such as Microsoft Tech-ED, IT Forum or Windows Connections. He has led the development and delivery for HP’s Windows Server 2008 Academies to HP’s own Services division and has been a Microsoft MVP for Directory Services for the past six years. Besides writing articles for technical magazines, Grillenmeier is also the co-author of Microsoft Windows Security Fundamentals (Digital Press).

Laura E. Hunter is a Principal Technology Architect for Microsoft IT’s Identity & Access Management team, responsible for determining architecture and strategy for Microsoft deployments of products and services across the IAM suite. In previous lives she has been an Identity Management consultant, the Active Directory architect for a global engineering firm, IT Project Leader for the University of Pennsylvania, and Director of Computer Services for a regional headquarters of the Salvation Army. Hunter has a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of the Active Directory Cookbook, 2nd & 3rd Editions, from O’Reilly Publishing, is an unrepentant ADFS technology zealot, and likes to talk about herself in the third person when providing auto-biographical information. She blogs at www.shutuplaura.com, and Twitters (tweets? She’s not cool enough to know the verb form of Twitter) @adfskitteh.

Danny Kim is one of the founders and CTO of FullArmor Corp.   Kim is a Microsoft MVP and recognized industry expert on Windows Group Policy, Active Directory, PowerShell, and Windows Azure. Kim has helped more than 30 Fortune 100 companies, including Bank of America, Boeing, and Wal-Mart, design and deploy their Group Policy, DataCenter, and Cloud based infrastructures. He has also architected and developed several leading Windows policy management and virtualization products which have been licensed by Microsoft, NetIQ, Citrix, HP, Sony, Toshiba and others.  Danny’s current passion is working with disruptive technologies around virtualization and cloud based computing.  Kim holds a BS in Computer Science from Cornell University.

Komar is the president of Komar Consulting Inc. in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Komar has worked in partnership with Microsoft over the past three years as a subject matter expert on network security and Windows 2000 Active Directory design. Over the past year, Komar has spent the majority of his time researching the deployment of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and the various technologies that depend on a PKI to provide authentication and encryption services. Between writing assignments, Komar speaks at industry conferences around the world, such as WinConnections, MCP TechMentor, Microsoft Tech Ed, and the Microsoft Enterprise Conference (MEC). He is known for delivering the “under the hood” sessions that look at the details of technology and reveal how systems really work in a network.

Craig Martin speaks in the third person when writing his own brief biography. He has been sync’ing for longer than he ever thought possible. He has also done work integrating ILM and CLM, spending countless hours weeding out issues in his lab environments learning CLM lessons the hard way in order to beat his chest in triumph and share his scars as lessons in a self-deprecating manner.

Tomasz Onyszko is well-recognized expert in areas of directory services/identity and access management. He has gathered his vast experience during more than 11 years of working in the IT industry designing, building and maintaining systems in complex environments. He spent the past six years on Id&AM projects in Microsoft Consulting Services and now is working on building Connected Dots Id&AM practice. Onyszko has delivered technical sessions at major events such as TechED Europe, The Experts Conference and Microsoft Technology Summit. In the past, he was awarded twice with the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award in Directory Services area (which he is hoping to get back … one day).

Jeremy Palenchar is a founding partner of Orcas Consulting. Previously, he was a senior manager with EdgileGroup and a director at Avanade, Inc. where he focuses on Directory Services and Identity Management. Palenchar is responsible for the planning, design, and implementation of Directory Service and Identity Management solutions. He is a Microsoft Certified Architect in Directory Services and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University. He lives and works in sunny, downtown Seattle.

Mark Parris is a Microsoft MVP and Certified Master in Directory Services, with over 20 years of experience in IT.  He has worked as an independent Active Directory consultant since 1999.

Jorge de Almeida Pinto is a Senior Consultant within Oxford Computer Group and is based in The Netherlands. He has been active in ICT since 1997. He has worked with Windows infrastructures since 1997, and he specializes in Windows Server, Active Directory and ILM/FIM. Besides that de Almeida Pinto has a very large interest in other Microsoft Identity and Access Management technologies like Certificate Services (CS) and Unified Access Gateway (UAG). He is MCSE certified and enjoys writing articles in a Dutch technical magazine (NetOpus). He is also a frequent contributor and active member of several forums/mailinglists/newsgroups on the internet. His blog can be found at: http://blogs.dirteam.com/blogs/jorge/default.aspx.

Brian Puhl is an Architect on the Microsoft IT Identity and Access Management team. He started with Microsoft in 2001, as an Active Directory engineer, and has recently been delivering solutions around MSIT’s adoption of cloud services.

Holger Reiners is a Principal Consultant at Microsoft Consulting Services in Germany. He provides Security and Identity consulting services for the major organizations in Germany since he joined Microsoft in 2001. He has lead several Infrastructure and Active Directory design and migration projects in mayor companies. He implemented Identity solutions based on the technologies Forefront Identity Manager 2010 and Certificate Services. He has been a member of the architecture board in several consolidation projects coordinating the identity technologies and dependencies to the identity consumers. In his spare time he like riding motorcycle, traveling and have some fun with digital photography.management.

Ulf B.Simon-Weidner is a senior consultant with a European provider for infrastructure solutions in Germany. He also is an independent author, consultant, speaker and trainer. He has been repeatedly awarded MVP for Windows Server – Directory Services. Throughout his professional career, Simon-Weidner has had many consulting engagements with major European corporations, mostly in the financial sector. His certifications include Microsoft Certified Trainer and Microsoft Certified System Engineer (Security) for all Operating Systems since NT4.

Mark Wahl has 19 years experience in enterprise directory, security, and identity management systems. He is co-author and editor of the LDAP protocol specifications; implementor of the first LDAP firewall; designer of the directory service products used at many major companies worldwide; architect for the Sun directory products; and is currently an architect for Microsoft security; identity and access management products. He also taught information science assurance and computer security auditing at the University of Texas at Austin, and has spoken at industry conferences in the U.S., Europe and Asia on the future of enterprise identity management.