The Experts Conference

Dmitry Sotnikov is director of Cloud Solutions at Quest Software. Sotnikov has more than 10 years of experience working in the Windows management area, and is a Microsoft MVP http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/Dmitry.Sotnikov, author of multiple whitepapers, a regular blogger, and a presenter at numerous trade shows, including Microsoft Management Summit, WinHEC, VMworld, Re-MIX, IT Forum, Platforma, and TechEd. He currently is leading Quest into the era of cloud computing – heading the company’s IT Management as a Service offerings (Quest OnDemand) and coordinating expansion of Quest products to management of cloud systems such as Microsoft BPOS, Google Apps and SQL Azure. He joined Quest with the Aelita Software acquisition, and has held various managerial positions in technical communications, customer support and product management.

James Brundage is the founder of Start-Automating, a company dedicated to saving businesses time and money by helping them automate with PowerShell

Ravikanth Chaganti has 10+ years of experience in the IT industry. At the beginning of his career, he worked at Wipro Infotech managing Windows, Solaris servers and Cisco network equipment. He currently works at Dell Inc. as a lead engineer in the SharePoint solutions group. As a part of his work, he authored several whitepapers on MOSS 2007 and SharePoint 2010 that provide guidance around infrastructure elements of a SharePoint deployment. His work also involves performance testing and sizing of SharePoint workloads on Dell servers and storage. He is passionate about automation and outside of work, he writes regularly on his bloghttp://www.ravichaganti.com/blog about topics related to Windows PowerShell, Microsoft SharePoint and Windows Server virtualization. He wrote a couple of free eguides on Windows PowerShell 2.0 remoting and WMI query language via PowerShell. In 2010, Chaganti received Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award in Windows PowerShell. He is one of the leads at Bangalore ITPro user group, and you can hear him speak regularly at BITPro (http://bitpro.in) meetings and other in-person events at Bangalore, India.

Jeffery Hicks is a Microsoft MVP in Windows PowerShell, Microsoft Certified Trainer and an IT veteran with almost 20 years of experience, much of it spent as an IT consultant specializing in Microsoft server technologies. He works today as an independent author, trainer and consultant. Hicks writes the popular Prof. PowerShell column for MPCMag.com. He also wrote the Mr. Roboto column for REDMOND Magazine for several years. He is a regular speaker at conferences such as TechMentor, TechEd and WinConnections, often speaking about PowerShell, Active Directory, Group Policy and anything else than can make IT Pros more efficient. His books include Windows PowerShell 2.0: TFM (SAPIEN Press 2010), Advanced VBScript for Windows Administrators (Microsoft Press 2006) and WSH and VBScript Core: TFM (SAPIEN Press 2007). His latest book is Managing Active Directory with Windows PowerShell 2.0: TFM 2nd Ed. (SAPIEN Press 2011). If he isn’t writing books then he’s most likely recording training videos for companies like TrainSignal. You can keep up with Hicks at his blog http://jdhitsolutions.com/blog and on Twitter at twitter.com/jeffhicks.

Thomas Lee is a veteran PowerShell MVP who has been involved in the PowerShell community since the very beginning. He provides training and consultancy around a range of Microsoft products, with a recent focus on PowerShell and Lync Server. Lee runs PowerShell training courses around the world, and has been a speaker at conferences across the world for the past decade. In his spare time, he lives with his wife, daughter, and wine cellar in a small cottage in the English countryside. Read Lee’s technical blog, at Under The Stairs, and his PowerShell Scripts blog.

Shay Levy is a System Administrator working for a government institute in Israel. He has worked with Microsoft platforms for more than 20 years, focusing on Microsoft Exchange and Active Directory. As a long time PowerShell community supporter, he has become a moderator of multiple forums and a Co-Director of the PowerShellCommunity.org website. He teaches PowerShell for John Bryce training center. Shay is an MCT, MCSE+Messaging and a Windows PowerShell MVP. He often covers PowerShell related topics on his blog http://PowerShay.com. You can also follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ShayLevy.

Kirk Munro is a four-time recipient of Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award for his deep involvement with the Windows PowerShell community. He has worked in the IT industry for more than 14 years, with the last four years focused 100% on Windows PowerShell and software solutions that use Windows PowerShell like PowerGUI Pro and PowerGUI. These days he spends a lot of his time working with PowerShell in the community. He is President of the PowerShellCommunity.org site, a central hub for all things PowerShell. He is also a frequent blogger, and presents at conferences, launch events and user group events whenever he gets the opportunity. Blog: http://poshoholic.com; Twitter: http://twitter.com/Poshoholic; Linked-in Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kirkmunro; Personal Profile: http://poshoholic.com/about

Aleksandar Nikolic is a PowerShell MVP and a system administrator at one of the largest insurance companies in Serbia. A long time script junkie, Nikolic is one of the earliest adaptors of Windows PowerShell and uses it on a daily basis to automate Active Directory management and to write auditing scripts designed to keep systems secure. He is a frequent speaker at the conferences in Serbia and participates regularly in IT Pro user groups worldwide. Recently, Nikolic co-authored the highly respected Administrator’s Guide to Windows PowerShell Remoting. He presented at the first PowerShell Deep Dive Conference during TEC 2011 in Las Vegas. Follow him on Twitter: http://twitter.com/alexandair

James O’Neill is the author of several publicly available PowerShell libraries as well as the  Hyper-V one for which he is best known, he wrote the Powershell Management tools for OCS provided as part of the Office Communications Server resource kit and the Powershell part of the Windows Scripting Bible (pub. John Wiley). From 2000 to 2010 he worked for Microsoft in England.

Brandon Shell has been in the IT industry since 1994. He spent his early years as a PC technician and general fix-it guy for numerous companies. In 1999, Shell started a consulting company focused on building, designing and supporting networks built around a Microsoft Windows infrastructure. As a natural segue, Shell also offered training on the solutions and products he provided. In 2000, he joined Microsoft as contractor for the Directory Services team and later joined Microsoft in 2002 as a full time rapid response engineer focusing on Directory Service support for the larger customers in the North East. In 2004, Shell left Microsoft and took a position that allowed him to build on his Active Directory experience and incorporate new technologies, such as Citrix’s XenApp and XenDesktop products. Today, he maintains his love of all things Active Directory but has adjusted his focus on another newer passion, PowerShell. In 2007, he joined the PowerShell MVP ranks and has spent the past several years building his PowerShell skillset and assisting/persuading others in building theirs.

Richard Siddaway has worked with Microsoft technologies for more than 22 years, having spent time in most IT roles including analyst-programmer, server administration, support, DBA and architect.  He has been interested in automation techniques (including automating job creation and submission on mainframes many years ago!), and has used VBScript and WMI since it became available on NT 4.  PowerShell caught his interest, and he has been using it since the early beta versions.  Siddaway founded and runs the UK PowerShell user Group, and he is a PowerShell MVP.  He has presented numerous talks on PowerShell at various events and has had a number of articles on PowerShell published. In addition, PowerShell in Practice (Manning) was published in June 2010, and he is currently writing PowerShell and WMI (Manning).

Dr. Tobias Weltner is a Germany-based writer, software architect and trainer. Weltner has published more than 100 books on IT topics such as Windows operating systems, Security and Script Automation. As a software architect, he designed rich and innovative commercial script development environments such as SystemScripter (VBScript) and PowerShellPlus (Windows PowerShell) and is co-founder of PowerShell-communities like powershellcommunity.org and powershell.com. He currently specializes in high-profile PowerShell trainings and consulting throughout Europe. Weltner graduated at Hannover Medical School in 1998 and was a research doctorate in trauma surgery. He enjoys travelling and supports youth exchange at the local Rotary club.