Markus is the President and Chief Software Architect of EPS Software Corp. In addition, he is a Microsoft Regional Director and one of the longest-serving MVPs (1996-present). Markus has worked on a large number of software projects for some of the world’s largest companies (including a number of Fortune 500 companies) and has been published extensively in many industry publications. He has also worked closely with various product groups at Microsoft, including the Visual Studio team.

The next version of the Microsoft Visual Studio suite of tools, code named “Dev 11”, raises the bar yet again for full-spectrum application lifecycle management (ALM). Come see the latest editions of Visual Studio, Team Foundation Server, and Microsoft Test Manager in action as they all work together to provide the new “state of the art” in agile development.

Ed worked as a consultant for Object Space, Inc. during which time he supported projects in both the travel and automotive industries. He has also worked in the Telecommunications and Health/Life Insurance industries. Ed has provided QA Support, Scrum Master mentoring, Project Management, and Product Owner support for projects ranging from one month to three years with varying hardware platforms, software languages and various project methodologies to include waterfall, RUP, and Agile.. Ed has several years of experience in project life cycle set up Software Quality Assurance and Test groups, practices and processes from the ground up for both start up and established companies.

Ed lives every day to the fullest. He loves sharing life with his wife, Melissa, family and friends, and enjoys spending time with his Grandchildren, Audri, Julian, and Jonah.

While lunch is being served, participating volunteers from the audience will take part in a friendly game of Family Feud. Teams will compete to each out-guess the other on answers to relevant survey questions.

Chander Dhall is a Microsoft MVP, professional software architect/lead developer, trainer, INETA speaker, open source contributor, community leader and organizer with years of experience in enterprise Software Development. He works in a goal oriented, technologically driven, fast paced AGILE (SCRUM) environment. He is the founder of Dallas day of dot net. He has a Master’s Degree in computer science with specialization in algorithms, principles and patterns and is focused on building high performing modular software. Chander leads the .net user group at UTDallas. Chander recently got recognized as “One of the top organizers by Eventbrite.

Chander has been a featured speaker in numerous conferences and code camps all over the world. He is a principal consultant with Ria Consulting, LLC.

As developers, we all have our favorite utilities, some used occassionally and then there are others that we refuse to work without. We might not use all of them everyday, but a good developer should know his options when the need arises. In this session, we’ll discuss the tools, tips and tricks that can make you much more productive as a .Net developer.

Audience: Test Managers, Testers, Development Managers, Developers, Business Analysts

Getting early stakeholder feedback and releasing low defect software is critical to successful projects.  Microsoft invested heavily in test tools with the Visual Studio 2010 release and continues test tool innovation with Visual Studio 11 that allows the team to get early feedback.  Come learn about what is possible today and in the future concerning manual testing, test automation, test management, end user feedback, and lab management.  This session can make an immediate impact on how you test your software and help you prepare for the next release of Visual Studio.

Audience: Scrum Masters/Project Managers, Product Owners, Developers

TFS 2010 supports agile project management, but the user interface and general ease of use has TFS users asking for more.  Come discover how TFS 11 can improve your sprint planning, project tracking, and distributed team management.  Equipped with an entirely new web interface, TFS 11 enables backlog management, team capacity reporting, and task board management.  We also look at how TFS supports the agile developer with a better unit test experience, agile code review, rapid task switching, and disconnected source control.

Microsoft’s latest version of Visual Studio comes complete with many new features to make your coding efforts go more smoothly.  Come to this session and see the latest changes to the flagship development IDE.  In this session we will look at the new Preview Tab, Quick Launch, search features, and much more.  Don’t miss your chance to see the what’s coming in the next version of Visual Studio.