CMS Expo Speakers

Dries Buytaert is an innovator. Dries developed Drupal while he was a college student, and opened the code, creating a community of supporters and contributors which continues to rapidly expand to this day.

What started nine years ago as a simple bulletin board solution for a college dorm is now powering the official website at the White House. Not bad for humble beginnings.

We are very fortunate to welcome Dries Buytaert to CMS Expo. His story is sure to inspire others to innovate, build strong community connections, and create the next generation's solutions.

At the 2010 CMS Expo in Chicago, Dries was a Keynote Speaker, and discussed the future Roadmap of Drupal, including Drupal 7, which lauched this year.

His firm, Acquia, returns once again as a Drupal Track Sponsor of the CMS Expo Learning & Business Conference. 

Dries returns to CMS Expo in Chicago in 2011 to share his insights as on the Founders Panel Monday morning. He'll deliver a keynote address on Tuesdya, May 3rd, and share his vision for Drupal 8 and beyond at the Monday Night Meetup on May 2nd.

Shaun Walker is the Co-Founder & CTO of DotNetNuke Corporation. Shaun has 18 years of professional experience architecting and implementing large scale software solutions for private and public organizations. Shaun is the original creator of DotNetNuke, a Web Content Management Platform for ASP.NET, which has spawned the largest and most successful open source project native to the Microsoft platform.
Based on his significant community contributions, he has been recognized as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) since 2004 and an ASPInsider since 2005. He is a frequent speaker at User Groups and Conferences and is a contributing author to a number of books, including Professional DotNetNuke 5 from WROX Press.
Shaun also served as a founding Director for the Codeplex Foundation, a non-profit open source foundation created by Microsoft in 2009.

At the 2011 CMS Expo, Shaun will present DotNetNuke - Open Source Content Management Platform, Tour of DotNetNuke and will co-present with Chris Hammond: Showcasing DotNetNuke.

Sigurd Magnusson is one of three co-founders of SilverStripe Ltd. He has worked in the business for more than ten years and currently focuses on sales and marketing. He's been living and breathing the internet since 1995 when his city council provided the only local internet service, then entirely text-based. The potential of the internet piqued his interest and he began learning computer programming.

Sigurd's strong technical ability and people skills add valuable depth to SilverStripe. While now less involved with programming, he continues to be deeply interested in the technology advances of the web.

Sigurd is an evangelist for the principles and technology of the web, and is an avid supporter of open source, open data, and the web as a modern software platform.

Sigurd has spoken in a variety of arenas including O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) on open source software usability, the MySQL Conference on database abstraction in PHP, and at Google on open source contributions formed through the Google Summer of Code.

He is very familiar with both the commercial and open source segments of the web content management industry and influences the direction of the open source SilverStripe CMS and Sapphire framework.

Off the web, he enjoys spending time with his family, cross-country mountain biking in New Zealand, and experiencing foreign cultures.

 

At CMS Expo in Chicago, Sigurd will present SilverStripe 3.0 Preview. Siguard and John Gregg will be presenting an entire day track of sessions for SilverStripe as well as moderating SilverStripe Top Apps & Add-ons (Extension Modules and Widgets). Sigurd will also be participating in Battle of the Apps with Microsoft WebMatrix.

Liz Strauss is the CEO and founder of SOBCon, author of the popular Successful-Blog.com

Liz is perhaps the most influential non-celebrity blogger on the Internet. People visit her blog to learn, swap strategies, and meet each other. She’s been called a thought provoker, an über connector, an idea machine. No one questions that what she brings is one-of-a-kind authenticity.
Strategic, intelligent, and nice is a powerful combination.

From her father’s saloon, to her years as a teacher, with her understanding of literacy, brain development and writing, her work as territory sales rep for a menswear corporation, to an outstanding international publishing career, Liz has used every opportunity to find the human attractions and connections behind the P&L.

Liz defines irresistible businesses as those with great relationships who constantly

Remove what customers don’t want.
Enhance what customers love.
Add something unexpected customers would die for.

At the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago, Liz will present Irresistible Business and The Secret to a Successful Blog.

Andrew Eddie is the co-founder of the award-winning, and world popular Joomla!® Project, which started in 2005. Joomla! is a free, open source CMS, now powering tens of millions of the world's web sites, and is a Featured CMS at the 2011 CMS Expo Learning and Business Conference.

Toowoomba, Australia is Andrew's home. Andrew has over ten years of web application development and consulting in his repertoire, and is winner of the Queensland Medal for outstanding contribution to Queensland Australia's software industry. He is also the creator and curator of The Art of Joomla, providing tutorials and resources for Joomla!® developers and site designers.

At CMS Expo 2011 in Chicago, Andrew Eddie to present Joomla! in Control.

Per Ploug Hansen is Partner at Umbraco. Before joining forces with Niels and strengthening Umbraco as a partner, Per Ploug Hansen was amongst the first members of the Umbraco community and a very active one! Rolling out some top grade packages and putting love back into the core.
At the HQ Per keeps an eye on the tasks and planning to make sure the focus is right and things get released. He's also the operator of our weekly status HQ calls.
If he's not adding or rearranging post-it's on his whiteboard you can find Per experimenting in the kitchen and spending time with his wife and kid(s).

At the 2011 CMS Expo Chicago, Per will be participating in the Founders Panel on Monday morning as well as presenting Tour of Umbraco and Umbraco: Without Limits.

Jen Kramer is a senior faculty member at the Marlboro College Graduate School.

For over ten years, Jen has been educating clients, colleagues, friends and graduate students about the meaning of a "quality website."  Jen is the Program Director for the Master's of Science in Internet Technologies program (MSIT), advising students and overseeing courses and faculty.
Jen is the president and partner at 4Web, Inc., which specializes in custom-built Joomla! websites. She heads up the Joomla! User Group New England.

Jen is an author for lynda.com for 5 video titles - with three more on the way. She has also recently written her first book, "Joomla! Start to Finish: How to Plan, Execute, and Maintain Your Website,"  published in February 2010. Her second book, Joomla! 24-Hour Trainer, will be published in May 2011.

Jen has presented at both the CMS Expo  2008, 2009 and 2010 including these sessions; Site Builder 1 & 2, Joomla in Action, Website Planning 101 & 201, Joomla! Graphics Basics, Joomla KickStart, Joomla Template Design 1 and 2.

At the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago, Jen will present Joomla! SiteBuilder 1 and Joomla! SiteBuilder 2. Jen will also be walking anyone new to Joomla through the ins and outs of Joomla during Tour of Joomla! And if you are looking for that "right mix" of Joomla for a vertical market, don't miss Jen's session Here Comes Molajo.

The CMS Association welcomes Scott Liewehr, Lead Analyst of the Web Content Management practice at Outsell's Gilbane Group. Scott has had a passion for content management since managing the development of his first large-scale intranet for Starwood Hotels in the late 90's. Since then, he has led ECM, WCM and portal consulting engagements for more than 30 Fortune 500's.

Scott has a broad range of experiences in content management, having been a practitioner, consultant, product vendor and now an analyst. Whether leading a workshop or speaking at a conference, he gets his greatest (work-related) thrills in front of a crowd, sharing his knowledge and passion.

Today, Scott works as an analyst with enterprise and government agency clients on projects ranging from needs assessments and technology selections to strategy and governance. He consults with WCM vendors to advise them on their market positioning and product roadmaps, and he also spends a healthy portion of his time writing about and researching relevant topics in the WCM industry.

Scott chairs the Customers & Engagement track at Gilbane conferences, and is a recognized thought leader in the field, speaking, conducting workshops and writing regularly on the subjects of global digital engagement, collaboration in the enterprise and user-oriented intranets.

Scott is the elected President of CM Pros, the international association of content management professionals, and has served on the Board of Directors since 2009. He also serves on the Board of the School for Language and Communication Development, a Pre-K through 12 school for children with autism-spectrum disorders in Long Island and New York City.

Scott is thrilled to be in Chicago, the home of his beloved Bears, Bulls and Cubs — he is a crazy fan, so don't bring them up if you don't want an earful. He loves spending time with his family and enjoying the 'calm before the storm' that will be his third child and first daughter, due in August.

Casey Neehouse handles Support, Training, and is a Developer for Umbraco.

Casey is a long time user of Umbraco, having been one of the initial users of Umbraco some 7 years ago. He was also the first named MVP of the Umbraco community, and has been providing services and support to Umbraco users for the past 5 years. Casey is now a member of the Umbraco HQ, providing training and support to Umbraco customers throughout North America and the rest of the world.

At CMS Expo 2011 in Chicago, Casey will be co-presenting Developing Great Mobile Experience with Umbraco and Integrating your .Net controls and Code with Umbraco.

Joe Brinkman is a Co-Founder & Technical Fellow at DotNetNuke Corp. Joe has more than 25 years of experience in software development and network administration, and broad expertise in a variety of software and hardware architectures. Prior to Co-Founding DotNetNuke Corp.
Joe was the CTO at DataSource Inc., a 200 person IT consulting and software development company. Joe is the co-author of two best-selling WROX books on DotNetNuke and is the author of the best-selling WROX Blox on “jQuery for ASP.Net Developers”.
When not sitting at the computer, he likes to get his creative energy flowing in his woodturning hobby.  You can read more about Joe on his blog at www.TheAccidentalGeek.com.

At the 2011 CMS Expo, Joe will be presenting A Closer Look at the DotNetNuke Core Modules and co-presenting with Chris Hammond: Taking DotNetNuke on the Road - The Mobile Experience.

John Zavocki is with Drupal Connect. John has been merging Art and Technology since the late 80s, his early days of college. His diverse abilities have lead him to make art in Tuscany, develop Flash applications for telecom behemoths, teach web design to college students, construct multimedia installations for the perfume industry and build websites for rock stars.

John has an unquenchable thirst for Internet technologies and a passion for web design. He uses his experience as an artist and a technologist to help bridge those two (seemingly) disparate worlds together for his clients.

John holds a MFA in Painting from the New York Academy of Art and a BS in Web Technologies from the School of Hard Knocks. When not contributing to open source, he is engrossed in making figurative art. John thrives in Brooklyn with his wife, Kolton, and their two Macs.

 

At CMS Expo 2011 in Chicago, John will present Drupal Theme and Design 1 and Drupal Theme and Design 2.

Bob Baty-Barr is the owner of Malicious thinkTank, Inc, a small suburban Chicago design and marketing agency that specializes in building umbraco driven dynamic websites. Bob has been using umbraco for 5+ years and is level 1 and level 2 umbraco certified developer.

Bob specializes in xhtml/css3, jquery and xslt.

When Bob isn't building websites, he can be found practicing martial arts and enjoying outdoor activities with his wife and three children.

 

At CMS Expo 2011 in Chicago, Bob is the Meetup Monday Night organizer. Bob will also present Creating Dynamic Sites Without Code.

Michael Assad has been a passionate interactive professional since 1999. He completed his first projects with RIM and Nortel Networks during the dot com boom. Despite the economic downturn that followed, he was able to drive growth of Agility to become the fastest growing web development company in Canada earning the Profit Hot 50 Award in 2006 and 2007.

Michael has a broad range of knowledge on all things web stemming from over 12 years of experience acting in the various roles that bring web solutions to life. Starting out as a freelance developer, he has moved through critical roles such as information architect and project manager, learning valuable skills along the way.

Today, Michael harnesses that experience while managing the feature set of the Agility Content Management Suite – a cloud-based solution that is derived from the many challenges he encountered while building world class websites and digital marketing campaigns for brands like Subaru, Whiskas, Doritos, Bing, Campbell’s, Uncle Ben’s, Cineplex and Shoppers Drug Mart.

Michael is a member of the Entrepreneur’s Organization and graduated from the Computer Engineering program at the University of Toronto. He loves to read, write and speak about the web, leadership and business. He lives in beautiful Toronto, Canada.

 

At the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago, Michael will present Content Management for Digital Marketing: Thinking Beyond the Website.

Benjamin Mack, TYPO3 - Over the years Benjamin Mack’s titles have included Core Team Member, Release Manager, and Core Team Leader. Benjamin (or "Benni") has a knack for open source community management and has helped TYPO3 stoke developer adoption by identifying and championing core development initiatives. Benjamin first got in touch with TYPO3 in 2003 while working as an editor and integrator on web portals.

During his studies of computer science, he got to know more of the power and complexity of TYPO3. In 2007, he first contributed to the TYPO3 project by refactoring the TYPO3 page tree with advanced AJAX functionality and since then has some of his contributions have focused on SEO functionality, and improved workflow functionality. He specializes in dealing with complex websites with multi-language and multi-country scenarios, intranet solutions with TYPO3 as well as integration in existing, proprietary systems in areas like eCommerce, document management systems, or Microsoft SharePoint.
Today, Benni runs his own company in Germany, consulting for various agencies around the globe. He is part of the TYPO3 Core Team and also the Release Manager for TYPO3 version 4.4.

 

At CMS Expo 2011 in Chicago, Benjamin will present TYPO3 Overview and TYPO3 in the Enterprise.

Ric Dragon is an exhibiting artist, jazz drummer, speaker, writer, and a search marketing strategist. He is the CEO and co-founder of DragonSearch as well as the founder and former CEO of Oxclove Workshop, where his clients included NASA, American Cancer Society, Schering Plough, and others. Ric has extensive experience in graphic design, information architecture, web development and online marketing. Ric has spoken at SMX East, Brands Conf, Business Edge, and other conferences.

 

At the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago, Ric will present Social Marketing as a Process and Manage Your Reputation.

Justin Kerr is President of Prototaph Interactive. Justin is a veteran online producer, designer and developer who has been building content-focused Internet solutions since 1994.

His experience ranges from Fortune 100 environments to delivering vertical market solutions for small business. He currently helms Prototaph Interactive, a communications and marketing consultancy based in Chicago, and The Site of Big Shoulders, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization that publishes original arts content from the Chicago region.

Justin has been a longtime open source enthusiast, and currently serves as a core team member of JoomlaChicago.

 

At the CMS Expo in Chicago, Justin will present CMS Site Costing and Budgeting.

 

Michael G. Uzquiano is the Founder of Cloud CMS, an infrastructure cloud service providing cost-effective ways for developers to incorporate Enterprise and Social Content Management functionality into their mobile and web-based applications.

Michael has been part of the content management scene for nearly 15 years, and is a co-author of the book, Professional Alfresco (May 2010). He has held product development, sales and management positions at companies, including Trilogy, Epicentric, Vignette and Alfresco. He has also contributed to a various open source projects, including the Spring Framework.

Michael has an MBA from Northwestern University and a BS/MS in electrical engineering from Cornell University.  He speaks Spanish and spends his free time trying to learn guitar licks by the likes of Slash, Eddie Van Halen and David Gilmour. :)

Twitter: @Uzquiano
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uzquiano

 

At the 2011 CMS Expo, Michael is presenting two learning sessions ~ MongoDB: Built For Content and BadAss HTML5

 

Ryan Ozimek is the President of Open Source Matters, the non-profit organization managing the Joomla! project's legal, financial, and marketing operations. Joomla! is one of CMS Expo's featured CMSes for 2011.

Ryan is the Co-founder and CEO of PICnet, Inc.  In the eight years since the founding of the company, PICnet has grown from a graduate school idea and concept into one of the most recognized and trusted names in the open source non-profit technology field. Under his management, PICnet has forged relationships open source technology giants, such as the Joomla! project (www.joomla.org) in an effort to provide organizations the sophisticated and affordable services.

Ryan has guided PICnet through a natural evolution in open source business models, including custom development, support services, and currently software as a service (SaaS) models. This business experience, coupled with his work at Open Source Matters (the non-profit supporting the Joomla! project), Ryan has a strong knowledge base of successful lessons learned and best practices for open source business model development.

Ryan has a BA in Communications and a Masters of Public Policy from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

Ryan gave a Keynote and he lead the Future Roadmap: Joomla session at the 2010 CMS Expo.

At the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago, Ryan will once again offer his insights to CMS Expo attendees during the Founders Panel Monday morning as well as at the Monday Night Meetup on Monday evening. Ryan will be delivering the Tuesday morning keynote.

Nathan Totten is a Technical Evangelist at Microsoft. He specializes in Windows Azure and web development. He is also the creator and lead developer of the Facebook C# SDK on Codeplex. Before Microsoft, Nathan was a Senior Software Engineer at Thuzi where he worked on social media applications and analytics tools.

 

At CMS Expo 2011 in Chicago, Nathan will present CMS in the Cloud with Windows Azure.

Blake Hall is a Senior Developer at Lullabot. The week Blake started using Drupal, one of the first community resources he turned to was the Lullabot podcasts episode #1 and #2. It seems suited that he should start his Drupal journey with Lullabot and end up working here!

Drupal sites that Blake has worked on include event registration for a statewide amateur Olympics, a political watchdog blog, the World Adult Kickball Association site, and a social network for young professionals called Brazen Careerist. He helps organize the Madison Drupal Users Group, and has helped lead three Drupal Camps in Wisconsin. Blake is also an active organizer of other tech events in the Wisconsin area such as BarCamps and other user groups.

Blake was born and raised in Wisconsin and comfortably fits several of the stereotypes. He spent some time working in a cheese factory, his family has Packer season tickets and a log cabin in the woods.

FUN FACT: Blake is an avid golfer and just made his first hole in one on the same day he received his formal offer from Lullabot!

 

At CMS Expo in Chicago, Blake will present Social Drupal. 

Marc Infield is founding partner of Infield Design, a San Francisco-based interactive agency. Drawing on his long history in strategic communications and graphic design, Marc has led multichannel campaigns bridging online and offline media for such clients as Home Depot, Stanford University, Cisco Systems, Beringer Winery, Bay Area Discovery Museum, Kansas DOT, Bianchi USA and Qualcomm.

A leading U.S TYPO3 integrator, ID has been implementing client websites with TYPO3 since 2004. Marc and his team are enthusiastic supporters of the CMS, helping to introduce TYPO3 to the community, hosting such events as the SF Bay Area Users Group and TYPO3 Camp. Most recently, Marc is one of the primary organizers for the upcoming third annual U.S. TYPO3 conference in San Francisco.

 

At CMS Expo 2011 in Chicago, Marc will be co-presenting Tour of TYPO3 and TYPO3 and the Enterprise.

Jason Lichon has over 12 years experience in building internet applications and began his career as a web developer during the heyday of the Internet boom, helping many leading brick and mortar retailers establish an online presence when e-commerce was still new. 

Jason's experience with DotNetNuke dates to 2005, when he became a founding partner of a web agency specializing in the implementation of DNN-driven sites.  This experience has lead directly to his latest venture, PackFlash, which is a vendor of modules and skins to the DNN community (www.PackFlash.com).  Outside of the office, Jason can be found in various Chicago music venues playing bass in a Radiohead tribute band.

 

At CMS Expo 2011 in Chicago, Jason will be showcasing a DotNetNuke site. Come see what DNN can do!

Bill Steele is a collaborator with Microsoft. Bill loves creating the applications that often pop right into his head. Unfortunately, it takes his fingers a little longer to type them in. Bill is MCSD certified and has logged more than 20 years as a software developer. Previously, Bill worked for a regional consulting firm where he developed applications that managed internal business operations in areas including IT service management, transportation logistics, and financial management. Bill was responsible for building integration applications between various ISV's products and the client's IT infrastructure.

He also spent more than seven years at StrideRite Corporation, where he honed his development skills in Visual Basic, C++ and a range of IT roles. Bill has been collaborating with Microsoft since 1992, and continues to prize his Visual Basic 1.0 Beta Thunder Clock. He's given over 300 presentations to date, and is currently developing software for a flight computer in NASA’s Small Aircraft Transportation System. One additional item, Bill is also a very active pilot. Want a good story? Ask Bill about his Hurricane Katrina efforts sometime. What's the toughest part of managing a 50-member team? "Those developer types always think they know it all," Bill says with a wink.

 

At CMS Expo 2011 in Chicago, Bill will present HTML5 and the Future of the Web.

Tony Valenti is the original founder of PowerDNN. With nearly 20 years of experience in the IT industry, Mr. Valenti has in-depth experience with all aspects of the IT lifecycle.  As a technologist turned businessman, before starting PowerDNN, Tony was an enterprise consultant to the US Department of Defense and Fortune 500 companies.  On one notable project, Tony designed the floating point unit for an asynchronous (clockless), radiation-hardened processor that could run native java byte code.  Before starting PowerDNN, Tony had just spent 5 years as CTO with a notable Document Management company.

 He loves every aspect of technology, from software development and CISCO networking, to marketing and business planning.  As CEO, Tony focuses a lot of his time and energy on setting the direction and corporate strategy of the company.  In his free time, he loves writing code in C# and playing around in Photoshop.

At CMS Expo in Chicago, Tony will be showcasing a DotNetNuke site. This is one you won't want to miss!

Amy Stephen is a free software developer with nearly 30 years of experience in the Information Technology field with experiences in Cobol, Microsoft dotNet and SQL Server, and PHP. For many years, Amy was the Data Administrator for the University of Nebraska and the lead developer for the University data warehouse. She also served as Director of Advanced Application Development for the University.

Currently, Amy is contributing to the Molajo Project which is a Joomla! community-based collaboration building distributions and improving Joomla! codebase. She has been a an active member of the Joomla! project for five years with involvements ranging from supporting users in the forums and writing announcements and blog posts as a member of the Joomla! Communication Team. Currently, Amy continues contributing to the project as a member of the Joomla! Bug Squad.

The Joomla! community has been an important focus for Amy. In 2009, she launched a community website named "All Together, As A Whole" to help build engagement and bring together members of the Joomla! community. Although sometimes a critic of the Joomla! codebase, Amy is always an avid supporter of the project and champion of free software. 

At CMS Expo 2011 in Chicago, Amy will be co-presenting Here Comes Molajo with Jen Kramer.

Colleen Carroll is the Director of People and Process at Chicago-based Palantir.net. During her tenure at Palantir she has worked as a Front-end Developer and Team Lead as well.

Colleen joined Palantir.net from the Art Institute of Chicago where she served as Web Technology Coordinator, responsible for administering the content management system, Serena Collage. She also developed the CMS implementation and training programs for AIC. Colleen has a BA in Studio Art and a BA in Management Information Systems (Business) from St. Xavier University. She provides CMS consultation and project management as well as development, integration, and training services.

Colleen presented Drupal Theme Design 1 & Drupal Theme Design 2 at the 2009 CMS Expo Learning & Business Conference. Colleen presented again at the 2010 CMS Expo on Drupal SiteBuilding.

 

At the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago, Drupal SiteBuilding 1 and Drupal SiteBuilding 2.

Ryan Szrama is a Drupal e-commerce developer for Commerce Guys, focusing on Drupal Commerce.

Ryan got into Drupal development during Drupal 4.6; he's been married and fathered a daughter since that time. Off the clock, he focuses his efforts on church and community ministry and slowly chips away at a Masters of Divinity degree.

Affectionately known as "Mr. Ubercart" in the Drupal world, Ryan got his start in web development through an online sales company based in Louisville, Kentucky. Ryan has made his home in Louisville for over 10 years. It was there that Ryan nursed Ubercart through its infancy. Ryan was the Project Lead and community face of the Ubercart project. Ryan later joined Commerce Guys where he continued to lead Ubercart, until branching out into Drupal Commerce, a new initiative focusing on empowering users to build Drupal based e-commerce sites with the latest new features that Drupal 7 has to offer.

You can find Ryan online at his site, By Wombats.

 

 

At the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago, Ryan will be presenting the Drupal KickStart Program.

Grace Francisco is a Sr. Program Manager, Microsoft.

My love for the Web started way back when I was a developer in the mid-90s with Lotus/IBM and I was working on “webifying” our Windows based Lotus Approach forms and reports to leverage DB2 data on the web. It was an exciting time working with multiple languages – C, C++, HTML, Javascript, SQL, and at the time I seemed to be the only expert in the company on LotusScript. From there I went on to do Java/J2EE and worked for several startups like UpShot and AltoWeb which all focused on bringing enterprise information to the web. For the last 6.5 years I’ve been working for Microsoft in a variety of roles which included program management of some of our community sites such as channel9.msdn.com and visitmix.com. Currently I am the main contact for the Drupal, WordPress and Joomla! communities within Microsoft – driving partnering opportunities and our engagements worldwide.  

I once did a round the world trip which included Japan, China, Egypt, Spain, Greece, Italy, and Austria all in 3.5 weeks. And yes I’m that Grace Francisco who was married in the Chapel of Grace within Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

At the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago, Grace will present Battle of the Apps with Microsoft WebMatrix.

Robert Jacobi is President of Arc Technology Group, a high quality web design, development and content management provider with unique skills that appeal to a broader base of consumers than just IT. The open nature of their solutions focusing mainly on Joomla appeals to those companies that need to execute today yet require flexibility for future business. Arc has experience in working with Fortune 50 companies as well as entrepreneurs. Arc uses a business approach to technology that generates awareness leading to sales for their customers. There business mantra is “open solutions driving business success.”

Prior to starting Arc Technology Group in 2000, Robert spent five years as developer and Vice President, Technology for ReCor Corporation, a local provider of computer based training solutions to Fortune 500 corporations. Previously, Robert worked at IIT Research Institute developing databases for the Department of Defense.

Robert is active in the local business and political community being on the executive board of JoomlaChicago, having been a board member of the MIT Enterprise Forum, Evanston Public Art Committee and program coordinator for Technology Executive Roundtable.

Currently he spends much of his time promoting technology in Evanston independently or through the Technology Innovation Center (The Incubator) including the 22nd Anniversary of The Incubator.  At CMS Expo Chicago 2009, Robert and Tim Johnson from JellyTelly presented CMS Business Case Study: JellyTelly. 

Arc Technology Group has been the Diamond Sponsor for CMS Expo Chicago 2008, Denver 2008, Chicago 2009, Chicago 2010 and once again for the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago!

Robert presented Enterprise State of Mind and Video Content Management: A Case Study (Jelly Telly) at the 2010 CMS Expo.

At the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago, Robert will present a business session on Make Customer Service a Core Asset,  a Joomla session on how to Joomla! Your Business Partner. Robert will also be participating in Battle of the Apps with Microsoft WebMatrix panel as well as the Expert Panel Discussion on Tuesday afternoon.

A native of Scotland, Chris Adams is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of CMS hosting specialist Rochen Ltd. Chris has years of experience in the web hosting industry.

Rochen currently hosts tens of thousands of Joomla, Drupal and WordPress websites with their platform providing full ‘out of the box’ compatibility for all of the major content management systems.

Instead of driving Rochen in the direction of the mass market, like most web hosts, Chris has focused Rochen on a niche providing a premium quality service with high reliability, lightening fast page load times and all backed up by world class 24/7 technical support. Rochen has made massive investments in recent years, buying only the best infrastructure and deploying enterprise features like Rochen Vault, offering twice-daily off-server managed backups, allowing easy recovery of any Joomla, Drupal or WordPress site.

Rochen is also committed to cutting out the middle man and making continual service improvements by owning and managing all of their servers and hosting infrastructure themselves as opposed to renting servers from a larger data center. Rochen operates a hosting location in Dallas, Texas and last year opened a second location in London, England. With Rochen, customers have the choice of where to host their site.

While Rochen provides full ‘out of the box’ compatibility for all of the major CMS, they are most heavily involved with the Joomla CMS project. When the Joomla project forked from Mambo in 2005, Chris and his colleagues at Rochen answered the call to assist the project with their massive hosting requirements by providing several servers at no charge. Today, Rochen now provides multiple large server clusters to Joomla and delivers over 100 terabytes of data across their network for the project annually. Chris also committed Rochen as a Joomla Platinum Development Sponsor at the Joomla Developer Conference (JDC) in New York, NY in December 2009.

Whatever your hosting requirements, large or small, be sure to take this opportunity at CMS Expo to speak with one of the leaders in the CMS hosting world.

 

At the 2010 CMS Expo, Chris presented Joomla Administration and WordPress Adminstration.

 

At the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago, Chris will present Rochen Admin Tools and CMS Security. Rochen is once again a Diamond Sponsor of CMS Expo.

Tony White is Founder of Ars Logica, a vendor-neutral analyst firm that helps companies evaluate their Web content management (WCM) requirements and select appropriate WCM software. Ars Logica also assists WCM vendors in analyzing the market and planning their product roadmaps.

Prior to founding Ars Logica, Tony ran the Web Content Management Practice at the Gilbane Group; he was a Senior Analyst at the Yankee Group, and served at Interwoven and the Giga Information Group.

Summarizing Tony White's Experience:

• Evaluating content management software
• Analyzing the content management market
• Helping clients assess their content-technology requirements
• Matching clients' requirements with suitable software platforms
• Advising software vendors on product development

Specialties

• Web Content Management
• Document Management
• Portals
• E-Commerce Platforms

 

Download Tony's white paper on Mobile Marketing here.

 

Tony White Co-Presented with John Coonen the opening Keynote session: CMS Head-to-Head: How To Evaluate and Select the Right CMS For Your Business. Tony also presented a 90 minute strategic session on How to Evaluate and Select the Right CMS For Your Business at the 2010 CMS Expo.

At the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago, Tony returns to Co-Present with John Coonen the Opening Keynote Session: Choose the Right CMS.

Gavin Warrener -Senior Program Manager  - Web Applications Ecosystem, Microsoft.

I started my career in the Internet industry and was an entrepreneur for over 10 years in South Africa.  In those 10 years, I founded two successful start-ups: Amorphous New Media, a top interactive agency in 1995 and Mint Net in 2000, which specialized in Enterprise content management and collaboration.

I joined Microsoft in 2004, and worked for the first 6 years of my career in the Middle East and Africa region in web strategy, and was most recently the Web Lead for Microsoft MEA, building a web evangelism business and managing a broad team that executed evangelism initiatives through the ecosystem of consumers, customers, partners, design agencies and hosters, spanning 76 countries.

In 2009, I transferred to Microsoft HQ in Redmond, where I now have responsibility for the global web application ecosystem in DPE.

I am a car nut. I spend way too much time reading about cars and car designers.  I dream of one day owning a classic Ford Mustang of my own, which I will add to my fantasy collection. I love living in Seattle, which is not like Johannesburg, and in my spare time I like going to music festivals and discovering new places of beauty in the Pacific Northwest.

 

At 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago, Gavin will be presenting Razor and WebMatrix: You can have it fast, cheap, or high-quality:  Pick any three.

Tom Canavan is always a "smash-hit" at CMS Expo!

A 22-year technology veteran, Tom is arguably the top security and disaster recovery expert in the Joomla world. Author of two published Joomla! Books, he is genuinely interested in sharing his years of experience. Copies of his second book, "The Joomla Web Security Guide," are availble from Amazon.com. His no-bull approach is refreshing and highly motivating to audiences nationwide. His extensive knowledge in the highly complex security field, steeped in corporate sales and technical training, makes for a totally engaging session. Top that off with a cut-to-the-chase, tell-it-like-it-is politically incorrect frankness that only an ex-corporate official (or a radio jock) can pull off with authority, and you've got Texas Tom Canavan. Actual testimonials from past conferences included: "His one-hour session seemed like ten minutes," and "I couldn't get enough truth serum from that guy!"

In 2010, Tom was a Keynote Speaker at CMS Expo. He also presented Joomla Administration and Secure Your Server. Tom is Co-Founder of SalvusAlerting.com and a published author, his latest title published by Wiley - "CMS Security and Operations Handbook".

 

At the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago, Tom is back by popular demand. Tom will present Cover your Assets.

Michael Reynolds is President & CEO of Indianapolis-based SpinWeb

SpinWeb creates and markets professional websites for associations and corporations. Michael lives in the beautiful city of Indianapolis and has worked in the marketing and technology sector since 1996. He has assisted a number of businesses and non-profits utilize marketing and technology. Michael also serves as a board member for a number of local and national organizations. He conducts regular educational workshops and seminars and is available for speaking engagements on the topics of Internet marketing, technology, social media, business development, extreme productivity, and networking.

 

Download Michael's book: Fire the Web Committee.

 

At the 2010 CMS Expo, Michael presented Twitter for Business and 7 Habits of Highly Effective Websites.

Michael returns to CMS Expo 2011 in Chicago to present Fire the Web Committee and Business Blogging for SEO and Social Media. Michael will also be happy to give you a Tour of Freedom CMS on behalf of Accrisoft.

Rafael Corral is the lead programmer at ‘corePHP,’ a leading custom website development company based in Michigan. Rafael has developed many website applications over the years and specializes in website application security and dynamic applications.
Recently he developed jomCDN. This extension is aimed at using a content delivery network to speed up their site! This extension has grown in popularity thanks to its capabilities and ease of use.
Rafael has extensive knowledge in PHP, MySQL, JavaScript and CSS. He loves his job and everything that comes with it. "Basically he eats, dreams, lives and thinks programming." He enjoys sharing knowledge and helping others with their websites. Please do not hesitate to ask him questions.
Rafael presented Joomla Development 1 and Joomla Development 2 at CMS Expo Chicago 2010. Rafael presented PHP 5 Must-Know Techniques and as a Power Partner, he also provided WordPress for Joomla training at CMS Expo Chicago 2009.

Rafael returns to CMS Expo in 2011 to present PHP Foundations and Speed!

Bryan House runs marketing at Acquia, which he joined three years ago. Previously, Bryan managed product marketing at EMC for Documentum’s collaboration, document management and search technologies. Prior to EMC, Bryan worked in product marketing and product management in the collaboration technology space, after brewing beer professionally for seven years. Bryan lives in the Boston area and is an ardent Red Sox fan. He earned his MBA at Harvard.

At CMS Expo 2011 in Chicago, Bryan will present Drupal in the Enterprise and Accelerating the Drupal Developer Experience - DevCloud, Managed Cloud and the Acquia Network.

Avery Cohen founded Metrist Partners in 2001.

Avery helps marketers use interactive media to gain actionable insights into customer needs. Metrist Partners has helped companies rethink their brand experience, optimize web sites and troubleshoot drops in traffic or conversion rates on web sites. Metrist Partners provides an analytics resource for its clients, providing weekly, monthly or quarterly analyst assessments of Internet marketing activities and results, creating a culture of continual improvement and transforming marketing from an expense to an integrated part of the revenue stream with clear and measurable return on investment.

Avery and the staff at Metrist Partners have developed expertise in web analytics, search engine optimization, search advertising, email marketing, test design and social media. Metrist Partners engages with strategic visions and executes successful Internet marketing tactics on behalf of clients in diverse industries. Clients include Advertising Age, Crain’s Chicago Business, and Peapod.

Prior to founding Metrist Partners, Avery held leadership positions in information technology and Business Intelligence. During that time, he helped organizations collect, design, manage, develop and interpret data from their business systems. He worked in a wide variety of industries, and with clients that include Fortune 500 business managers, marketing executives and entrepreneurs. His experience includes supporting and developing a state-of-the-art planning and forecasting system for an international business, managing information technology and introducing new technologies for Fortune 100 companies, and managing consultants on an extensrive range  of business intelligence platforms.

Avery has presented at the 2009 and 2010 CMS Expo on Google Analytics and SEO.

 

At CMS Expo 2011 in Chicago, Avery will present SEO Marketing Made Simple and Google Analytics 2011.

Christopher Hammond is the Director of Training Programs, DotNetNuke Corporation. Chris started working with DotNetNuke shortly after the initial release in December 2002, initially as a hobby that ultimately turned into a full-time job.  Chris has worked with key players in the DotNetNuke ecosystem including other web design partners and module and skin vendors. He has provided training and consulting services to both large and small organizations.

Recently a published author (DotNetNuke 5 A User's Guide: Get Your Website Up and Running), Chris has been a frequent presenter at conferences, user groups, and organizations around the world. When not working on a DotNetNuke web site, he can be found with a helmet on, racing cars.

At the 2011 CMS Expo, Chris will be presenting Extending DotNetNuke Using the Extensive Ecosystem and will be co-presenting with Joe Brinkman: Taking DotNetNuke on the Road. Chris will also be co-presenting with Shaun Walker: Showcasing DotNetNuke.

Merav Knafo is the founder of California-based iJoomla.com and UsabilityTesting.tv.

Merav has years of experience as a Web Product Designer and Developer. Merav specializes in developing web applications that are user-friendly yet powerful. Her experience ranges from developing high-end Joomla extensions to dating sites and business networking sites. She is passionate about usability and bridging the gap between developers and users. Her goal is to help website owners achieve their goals by helping them create sites that look "big" with a small budget using her iJoomla extensions, or by providing web site developers with helpful advice about usability. Merav first presented Usability for Business ROI at CMS Expo Chicago 2009.

 

At the 2010 CMS Expo, Merav presented Usability for Maximum Business ROI.

At the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago, Merav will present Usability Means Sales-ability and a Usability Testing Workshop.

Jeff Eaton has been building software for the Internet and desktop applications for over a decade.

Jeff has participated in projects ranging from web-portals for communities and nonprofits, to enterprise client-server applications for retail industries, to large-scale web applications for companies like Dow AgroSciences and Prudential Real Estate. In 2005, he began developing solutions based on the open-source Drupal content management framework. In the years since, he's become a core developer for the Drupal project, specializing in architecture and API development.

In his capacity as a consultant for Lullabot Consulting, LLC, he's helped plan and build the software infrastructure for MTVUK's music portal, SonyBMG's artist site platform, Fast Company's groundbreaking business networking site, Verizon Wireless' company-wide intranet, and many others. Jeff has presented on a variety of technology and business topics at conferences like South by Southwest, Drupalcon, and the CMS Expo Learning and Business Conference.

At the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago, Jeff will be presenting Going Social With Drupal, a look at building social sites; and Editors Are Users Too, a guide to improving the user experience for a site's content team.

John Gregg is the Training and Quality Manager for SilverStripe Australia. He began his IT career in 1984 as an Electronics Engineer working in the area of digital imaging. After travelling the world in his role as a systems integrator, he landed in Australia where he has been based for the past 16 years.

John is a qualified trainer with over 25 years experience in both the US and Australia. His easy going nature and ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical people lends itself to producing successful training outcomes.

He has conducted workplace and tertiary training in a variety of IT disciplines including digital imaging, web content manangement, EDMS and records management, business applications and web development.

John has also worked in the Australian government sector, implementing business quality systems and is a registered auditor of quality management systems under the ISO 9001 standard.

 

At CMS Expo 2011, John and Sigurd Magnussen will present entire day track of sessions on SilverStripe CMS. Track Sessions include: SilverStripe KickStart 1: Introduction, SilverStripe KickStart 2: Content, SilverStripe KickStart 3: Themes , SilverStripe KickStart 4: Extensions. John will as co-moderate with Sigurd Magnusson moderating SilverStripe Top Apps & Add-ons (Extension Modules and Widgets).

Nick Martinelli took the plunge into the Joomla! Open Source world when he needed to provide a CMS based solution for Sourcebooks, Inc. the independent book publisher he works for. Based in Naperville, Illinois. He’s rolled out numerous large Joomla driven ecommerce and community websites. Nick specializes in ecommerce, digital media, CSS, SEO and design.
Nick is also President of Joomla Rockers his Joomla! consulting business which provides Joomla! website development, consulting and training. Joomla Rockers seeks to provide top-notch user friendly training and unique web solutions to businesses and artists. It started out as a passion for music and bringing it to the masses. Nick still contributes back to the music community by offering up his free time to build CMS based websites to indy bands in the Chicago area.
Along with that, Nick serves on the core leadership team of JoomlaChicago CMS Group  where he has taught a plethora of topics including ecommerce, digital media and the four-part introduction to Joomla! series (in which help co authored). Nick brings a passionate and upbeat approach to teaching Joomla to the masses.
Besides being a technology nut he enjoys spending time with his family, playing guitar, listening to heavy metal music, playing xbox and taking long walks with his Italian Greyhounds. Be ready to rock and roll when attending the kick start class he’s co-presenting. Nick and Kendall Cabe presented the Joomla! KickStart Program at CMS Expo Chicago 2009 & 2010.

 

At the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago, Nick will co-represent with Kendall Cabe the Joomla! CMS KickStart Program: Introduction, Content and Navigation , Templates and Extensions.

Michael Pignataro is Vice President of Operations for corePHP, LLC and co-founder of kaGO Commerce. He oversees all aspects of marketing and sales for 'corePHP'. He serves as professional Joomla! trainer for 'corePHP' and has led training sessions for community Joomla! and social media seminars.
Years of customer service and sales experience has provided him with a genuine insight into the true wants and needs of consumers, allowing him to bring new ideas and innovation to 'corePHP' from the user's point of view
Michael's combined experience in customer service and financial management makes it possible for 'corePHP' to offer high-quality enterprise products and services at an affordable price. He works hard to help 'corePHP' grow to new levels in the Joomla! community, and his philosophy is "If you can dream it, we can do it." 

At the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago, Michael will present E-Commerce the Joomla! Way.

Kendall Cabe is owner of Times Two Technology.
One of JoomlaChicago's Founding members in 2007, Kendall Cabe brings more than 10 years of IT-industry experience, with a high concentration of programming, data analysis, and user training experiences.

As a trainer and coach in the Open Source CMS world, Kendall's specialty is in Joomla. With his experience as a website developer, designer and extensions creator, Kendall's "hands-on" approach makes him a highly effective instructor, bringing a breadth of experience to the table.

Whether it's creating full-blown websites for small, mid-sized or enterprise-level organizations, Kendall's been there, and he's done that. Through his company and partnerships, he's now helping others achieve their goals.

It's interesting to note, the Joomla KickStart Program was created over the course of two years, based to a great deal upon a four-part series of Joomla basics lessons both Kendall and his co-presenter, Nick Martinelli, have been teaching every month at the highly popular JoomlaChicago CMS Group meetings. Kendall serves on the JoomlaChicago Core Leadership Team.

Kendall and Nick Martinelli presented the Joomla! CMS KickStart Program at the 2009 & 2010 CMS Expo in Chicago.

 

At the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago,·Kendall, along with Nick Martinelli, will present the

Joomla! CMS KickStart Program: Introduction, Content and Navigation , Templates and Extensions.

Paul Sterling is a Partner at Umbraco. Paulis a long-time web developer come Umbraco evangelist.  Having seen the hard way to create and maintain web content he is now a rabid Umbraco fan-boy.    He lives to tell you about Umbraco, write some simple code to do great things, and generally improve everyone's experience with Umbraco and web content management in general.  He is the co-author of the forthcoming “Umbraco User Guide” from Wrox Press.

Paul lives and runs in Bellingham, Washington where being web-geek, runner, and beer-drinker can be combined without attracting much attention.

At the 2011 CMS Expo Chicago, Paul will be presenting Umbraco: Starter Kits and Skins.

Barb Ackemann is the Founder and Lead Developer at IrisLines, LLC. She is also an Adjunct Faculty member, Marlboro College Graduate School.

As a student at the Marlboro College Graduate School, Barb won the President’s Award for her capstone project in 2006 - a Joomla 1.0 site. Since then, she’s been instructing the Designing with Web Standards course at Marlboro College Graduate School.

Barb's been teaching colleagues and students about technology for over 20 years. Prior to launching her own web developent firm, IrisLines Designs, Barb was a teacher, librarian and computer coordinator in public schools of southern Vermont.

A presenter at Joomla! Day New England events and active member in the Joomla! New England User Group, Barb lives in Brattleboro, Vermont.

Barb presented two sessions at the 2010 CMS Expo on Joomla! Template Design.

 

At the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago, Barb will present Joomla! Template Design 1 and Joomla! Template Design 2.

Jason Levitt is Director, Developer Network and Partner Integrations for Kaltura.

A Journalist, book author, web developer, and entrepreneur, Levitt is a seasoned generalist. He currently resides in Austin, Texas. Interests include digital publishing, web services, APIs, developer frameworks, anything simple and powerful, and anything simple and elegant.

At 2011 CMS Expo, Jason will present Video In Your CMS.

Emma Jane Hogbin - Blogger at EmmaJane.net and Author of Front-End Drupal, Emma Jane Hogbin has been working as a Web developer since 1996. She is well known in the Drupal community not only for her technical knowledge, but also for her engaging and humorous means of bringing Drupal to a wider audience—such as the Drupal socks and their GPL-ed pattern.

Her wildly successful theming book, Front End Drupal (co-authored with Konstantin Kaefer), was launched this spring. Emma volunteers with the Drupal documentation team and blogs at emmajane.net.

In 2010, Emma Jane presented Basic Design for Drupal & Advanced Design for Drupal at CMSX.

At the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago, Emma Jane is co-presenting Drupal Theme Design 1 and Drupal Theme Design 2, along with Chad Goodrum.

Jonathan Shroyer is a Co-owner & CTO of Battle Creek-based ‘corePHP'. 'corePHP' has grown to become one of the nation's largest Joomla-focused development firms, co-owned by Jonathan and his partner, Steven Pignataro.  Jonathan has over 13 years of experience in graphic design and web development.  Interestingly (and for the "Ripley's Believe It Or Not" fans, Jonathan has worked on over one million images in Photoshop. Jonathan works simultaneously on a Mac and PC and now works almost exclusively on web development projects. He specializes in XHTML+CSS tableless and accessible designs that are cross-platform to reach the widest possible audience. Joomla! has become his CMS development platform of choice.

Jonathan presented Killer Photoshop Tips and CSS Done Right at the 2009 CMS Expo in Chicago. At the 2010 CMS Expo, Jonathan presented two sessions on CSS: CSS Basics: Extremely Useful CSS Techniques and Badass CSS: What They Don't Teach You In Design School

Jonathan returns to CMS Expo in 2011 to present Badass CSS and Coding for Better SEO and Accessibility.

Kyle Ledbetter is Co-Founder of PixelPraise, LLC in the music capital of the United States - Austin, Texas. At CMS Expo 2010, Kyle presented Web Design Essentials and ProjectFork.

At the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago, Kyle will present Joomla 1.7 Dashboard and Mobile Joomla.

Ken Lyle: Long ago and far away, in a time when storage devices were measured in megabytes, the manual for Paradox (for DOS!) still referenced Ansa Software and Excel came with "run-time" Windows...After attaining degrees in Chemical Engineering and Statistics (yawn!), Ken Lyle found a string of positions in which his title was like "Environmental Engineer," but convinced management to let him engage in his hobby, er...work...more like "Systems Analysis"...and interesting projects involving OCR, ISC, PCA, and other TLAs ensued.

After leaving the turbulent environmental industry, there was a cool GIS project for an emergency notification company, and a CUE before a Y2K project for DoD.  At least two of these projects he "conceptualized, sold, and implemented" yielded in excess of $1 million of sales or market value, but, alas, not for him.

In a demonstration of the wrong way to 'beat the market', he was one of the first Citrix resellers, *only a few short years* before Microsoft re-embraced the technology now known as Terminal Services and made it a core technology of the Windows Server line.

After a stint with a financial services startup that successfully emerged from the principal's basement to reach cash-out, Ken discovered Joomla's predecessor in the 2004 range. Ken now works to empower non-profits and small businesses via Joomla powered web sites.

He's been on the beta test teams for a few Joomla components, including Community Builder, and is credited in ECJoomCommerce as a contributor. Ken presented a dynamic presentation of Must-Have Joomla! Extensions at the CMS Expo Denver 2008. Ken presented training on Community Builder at the CMS Expo Chicago 2009.

At the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago, Ken will present MailChimp Integration with Joomla!

Ken Wasetis is President and CMS Solution Architect at Contextual, and GM of numerous fantasy sports teams, who holds CMS Expo 2010 honors for 'Most Pensive Panelist' (see photo at right.) 

Contextual is a Chicago-area-based open source software solutions firm that specializes as a Plone CMS integrator, developing custom functionality, designs, and integration connectors to weave best-of-breed web business solutions for its fantastic clients.  No, seriously.  We're also proud to be the first Plone integrator to be working with CMS Expo (as of 2009)!

Contextual's client list might have started with Ken's running club 8 years ago, but over the years has grown to include the U.S. Government, U.S. Bank, Clear Channel Entertainment, Gap Inc., UCLA, high-tech startups, such as Chicago's very own Cleversafe, as well as numerous non-profits and associations such as Mercy Corps, College of American Pathologists, The Center for Association Growth, Fresh Energy, and Illinois Principals Association.

Ken is a member of the Plone Foundation and has presented at numerous CMS Expos and Plone Conferences, and has been involved with various Plone sprints over the years, in an attempt to help with the continuous improvement and evangelism of the Plone project.  Ken has converted numerous other CMS developers/integrators from the Dark Side, and if you attend this presentation, he's sure to make you a true (Plone) believer too... in addition to impressing you with how much content can be squeezed into a 45-minute session, so coffee-up!

Contextual's custom Plone add-on modules include connectors that allow Plone to integrate with SugarCRM, iMIS and Avectra Netforum Pro member management applications, HigherLogic collaboration service (ask us about 'OpenAssociations'), Monster.com Jobs web services, ecommerce, and static deployment/publishing features, just to name a few.

Recent fun, challenging, and interesting Plone-powered projects for Contextual include:
• A federal government agency mobile site using the most excellent new theming approach for Plone... Diazo (which can actually be used to theme any CMS!)
• A federal government website that supports over a dozen languages
• An intranet site for a large financial institution that provides the 1,000+ concurrently-logged-in enterprise users superior functionality, flexibility, scalability, security, and (huge) cost savings versus the other commercial and open source tools they had evaluated.  #Plone #opensource #winning !

At previous CMS Expo events in 2009 and 2010, Ken presented: Guided Tour of Plone, Plone Security, SSO, and SaaS, Plone for Education, the Plone Recap/Q&A Panel, and co-presented 'What About Plone?' with business partner, Brett Wangman of The Center for Association Growth.

Yes, of course you can follow #Plone and/or Ken's ramblings (@ctxlken) on Twitter!

At CMS Expo 2011, Ken will present Tour of Plone, so come see the latest, greatest features of Plone, as well as what's in store in upcoming releases. You'll be glad you did!

Rick Blalock is a native South Floridian that currently works for Appcelerator as a customer engineer. He is also a co-founder of the South Florida web firm, Expression in Design (XiD). XiD specializes in CMS consultancy and custom web solutions.

Rick's passion is training clients with one-on-one session, as well as creating video tutorials, and just having fun helping others find their way through the Joomla! and mobile world.

Rick also operates BeautyInDesign.com, a training resource for all things web design and development, the mobile space, and more. His iPhone app won the Wufoo 'API Battle Axe' competition.

Rick Blalock presented Joomla SiteBuilder 1 & Joomla SiteBuilder 2 at CMS Expo Chicago 2009. In 2010, Rick presented This Is Adobe Air and Building Your Open Source Web Business.

Rick returns in 2011 to CMS Expo Chicago to present JQuery Mobile, M-Commerce: Beyond the Buzzword and Titanium: App-ify Your CMS Site.

Matthew Lechleider is an Active member in the ACM, IEEE, and Upsilon Pi Epsilon: International Honor Society for Computing Disciplines. Graduated from DePaul University with an undergraduate in computer science majoring in network technologies.

Matthew Lechleider is a product of the Nintendo Generation. He has spent 10 - 15 hours online everyday since before the Internet was cool. Matthew enjoys traveling the world speaking at conferences, skateboarding, and Linux.

Organizing the Chicago Drupal Meet Up Group (cdmug.org) and the annual Drupal Camp Chicago takes up the majority of his volunteer efforts. In addition to saving companies money by utilizing open source technologies, Matthew provides high performance Drupal development and training services as PhamilyDev.net.

Matthew presented Drupal Administration and he and Doug Vann teamed up to present the Drupal KickStart Program at the pre-conference in 2009. At the 2010 CMS Expo, Matthew presented Drupal Administration.

At the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago, Matthew returns to organize and lead the Drupal Meetup session on Monday evening.

Sudhi Seshachala is the Founder and Chief Architect of Hooduku Inc - A Texas based corporation specializing in professional services and delivering Cloud solutions through their flagship site - Hooduku Cloud.

Under his leadership - Hooduku has built several automation tools and site monitoring tools to proactively manage and monitor Joomla sites and web assets hosted within  corporate datacenters or public cloud setup.

Supported Joomla 1.5 on Oracle database and Joomla! 1.6 on multiple databases (SQLServer, SQLAzure, and Oracle) through single code base to extend the scope, reach and mindshare of Joomla to enterprises.

I am of the belief that Joomla can scale and function at the same level as Drupal if not better by the power "WE". 

Sudhi and his company was a Silver Sponsor at the 2010 CMS Expo.

At the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago,  Sudhi will present Joomla 1.6: Mutiple Databases and SQL or NoSQL.

Doug Vann is an independent Drupal Developer & Trainer.

Doug entered Geekdom as a fifth grader in 1983 with a Commodore 64 and a 300baud connection to CompuServe. Twenty-eight years later he leads the Indiana Drupal Users Group and is a full time provider of Drupal Training and Drupal Development.

Doug believes in the power of Drupal to meet complex business needs in a rapid-deployment system. Catch his blog at www.DougVann.com. Google "Drupal Song," and you're likely to find a few videos of Doug, jamming on the guitar, unabashedly proclaiming his passion for Drupal!

His love for learning and experimenting in Drupal is overshadowed only by his love to teach and evangelize it. He has presented in Minneapolis, Toronto, Houston, Indianapolis, multiple LinuxFests, DoItWithDrupal, and DrupalCamps in Dallas, Madison, Atlanta, Chicago, Orlando, Nashville, Denver, Los Angeles, South Carolina, and DC. You can often find Doug on the FREENODE IRC Network in Drupal-support helping people get through the steep learning curve of Drupal. Doug, his wife of 14 years, and their 4 children reside in Indianapolis.

Doug and Matthew Lechleider presented the CMS KickStart Program at 2009 CMS Expo. At the 2010 CMS Expo, Doug presented: Guided Tour of Drupal and Drupal Top Modules.

At the 2011 CMS Expo in Chicago, Doug will participate on the Battle of the Apps with Microsoft WebMatrix panel.

John and Linda Coonen co-host the annual CMS Expo.  Armed with over 25 years in marketing, fundraising and planning for start-ups, political campaigns, associations and non-profit organizations, John and Linda launched the CMS Expo conference in 2008.

Linda's analytical background in market research, project management and fundraising, combined with John's creative background in design, writing and broadcast media make for a powerful combination. That said, it was really their combined experience in the volunteer world - their church, the local food pantry, their user group and the US Jaycees - which they credit for breathing life into CMS Expo, giving it an authentic sense of community, with a genuine purpose.

 

With the help of a generous cast of supporters on a local, national and international level, John and Linda have spent several years nurturing and growing a high-tech community that's uniquely high-touch.  Their grass-roots approach toward building an authentic international tech community has resulted in a series of highly engaging and energizing events that re-defines what today's "tech business" is all about.

The intimate, face-to-face, supportive atmosphere found at a local user group is what you can expect to find under their leadership at CMS Expo, only on an international stage.