673  Stories from NDC!

While at the Norwegian Developer Conference, Carl and Richard collected a couple of stories from the speakers at the event. First up is Magnus Mårtensson and Björn Ekengren talking about Java on Azure. No really! Next, Gill Cleeran and Kevin Dockx talk about where Silverlight is going... to version five and beyond!

Magnus Mårtensson is very passionate about .NET, Software Architecture, software patterns and Windows Azure. His Masters in Computer Science landed him in business around the time of the IT bubble. In Sweden Magnus is a well known .NET community leader and speaker which has earned him membership in the Swedish Microsoft Extended Experts Team (MEET). Being a firm believer in that the only way to gain more knowledge is to give yours away Magnus is an international speaker with the INETA speakers bureau. At Diversify Magnus heads a Windows Azure Competence Center where he leads training and Azure labs for ISV and other clients. Magnus is also a passionate OSS enthusiast with several projects on his contribution list for instance Azure Contrib. (@noopman)

Björn Ekengren is a Java professional with over 10 years of experience in the gaming, financial and non-profit industries. Presently Java competence coordinator at Diversify. As a seasoned developer, entrepreneur and technical evangelist he is known for thinking outside the box to exceed customers expectations. Lately Björn has been seen on various .NET conferences hosting sessions on how to marry Java and Azure. Björn is the founder of It's Alive! mobile games and javascriptpatterns.org. Björn holds a Masters of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan in Stockholm.

Gill Cleeren is Microsoft Regional Director (www.theregion.com), MVP ASP.NET, INETA speaker bureau member and Silverlight Insider. He lives in Belgium where he works as .NET architect at Ordina. Passionate about .NET, he's always playing with the newest bits. In his role as Regional Director, Gill has given many sessions, webcasts and trainings on new as well as existing technologies, such as Silverlight, ASP.NET and WPF. He also leads Visug (www.visug.be), the largest .NET user group in Belgium. He's the author of the upcoming book called Silverlight 4 Data and Services Cookbook. You can find his blog at www.snowball.be.

Kevin Dockx lives in Belgium and works at RealDolmen, one of Belgium's biggest ICT companies, where he is a 29-year old technical specialist/project leader on .NET web applications, mainly Silverlight, and a solution manager for Rich Applications (Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, WPF, Surface). His main focus lies on all things Silverlight, but he still keeps an eye on the new developments concerning other products from the Microsoft .NET (Web) Stack. As a Silverlight enthusiast, he's a regular speaker on various national and international events, like Microsoft DevDays in The Netherlands, Microsoft Techdays in Portugal or on BESUG events (the Belgian Silverlight User Group). Next to that, he also writes articles for various Silverlight-related sites, and he wrote a best-selling Silverlight book, Packt Publishing's Silverlight 4 Data and Services Cookbook (https://www.packtpub.com/microsoft-silverlight-4-data-and-services-cookbook/book ). His blog, which contains various tidbits on Silverlight, .NET, and the occasional rambling, can be found at http://blog.kevindockx.com/.