Joe Baumgarten graduated from Iowa State University in 1983 with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. For the next 15 years, he worked at a large data processing shop in Des Moines, Iowa. In this role, he gained AS/400 experience as a Programmer, an Analyst, a Technical Support Representative and, finally, Manager of AS/400 Technical Support. He helped the company define and eventually implement a centralized Help Desk operation. He also assisted in creating/maintaining/enhancing a powerful in-house Change Management system.

In mid-1998, Joe became a Sales Engineer for SoftLanding Systems, Inc. He is active in both the pre-sales and post-sales roles. To be successful in both, he maintains a high degree of technical competence in all of SoftLanding’s products. He also attempts to stay current in new developments in the IBM iSeries/i5 platform.

He enjoys public speaking and has written several articles that have been published in various newsletters and iSeries technical publications.

Alison Butterill

Xuan Chen is a staff software engineer at the IBM Toronto Lab. She has a degree in Computer Science from the University of Toronto.

She is involved in the designing, developing and testing of WebSphere Development Studio Client for iSeries (WDSc), and the projects she focuses on are the problem determination tools in WDSc.

Linda Cole is a Certified Consulting iSeries Specialist. Her current assignment is with the IBM Toronto Lab as the iSeries Tools Innovation Manager. Linda is working with over 100 IBM Business Partners in the iSeries Tools Initiatives for Innovation Program. She has 25+ years with IBM in a variety of assignments including technical support, implantation, education, consulting, sales and marketing roles.

Linda has an extensive background in iSeries and AS400 dating back to 1988 and specialized in WebSphere offerings, Application Development & Business Intelligence. She is a frequent speaker at COMMON, Users Groups and Technical Conferences. You can contact her at lcole@ca.ibm.com

George Farr

George Farr joined the IBM Toronto Laboratory in May 1985 and worked with the RPG development team for seven years where he developed many functions in the compiler. After spending a year with the AS/400 languages architecture and planning team he joined the visual development organization as the compiler development team leader for the first release of VARPG and later became the Visual RPG Development Manager. Currently he is the Technical Manager for all of the RPG compilers on the iSeries and Windows platforms. In addition, he is the technical development manager for a new generation of tooling based on the eclipse technology.

He is a frequent award-winning speaker at COMMON, conferences and user groups worldwide. He has published numerous articles on the subject of AS/400 languages and environments. He authored many books including 'ILE- A First Look', 'RPG IV By example' and most recently he co-authored, with Phil Coulthard the books: ‘Java for RPG programmers’, and 'Java for COBOL Programmers On OS/390 and OS/400''.

Al Grega

Al is responsible for coordinating the entire WebSphere Product line for the IBM eServer iSeries platform Worldwide.
Prior to this position he was the Director of Product Marketing at LANSA USA for two years, and before that an IBMer for over 24 years. He has experience in IBM Systems Development, services and sales.
Al has also taught at the State University of New York at Farmingdale and is currently a Subject Matter Expert (SME) for WebSphere at COMMON (a Users Group – www.common.org).

Malcolm Haines plays an active role on iSeries marketing in Somers, New York.

He worked on the iSeries since long before its announcement and on all the predecessor Rochester systems.

In his landmark book "Fortess Rochester",
Frank Soltis refers to Malcolm as “one of the most creative people in IBM”.

Nazmin Haji has Master's degree in Computer Science from University of Western Ontario.

She started with IBM in 1988. A software developer at the IBM Toronto Laboratory, she have worked in the development of ILE RPG compiler on the iSeries and moved on to the tools for iSeries on the PC.

Currently, Nazmin is responsible for design, development, testing and maintenance of Websphere Development Studio Client for iSeries.

Jackie Jansen is a Certified Consulting IT Specialist. She currently works in the IBM Business Intelligence Solutions Center. Jackie is the author of the columns 'AS/400 Tips from Jackie' and 'Business Intellignce with Jackie' published in various newsletter and magazines. Jackie is a frequent speaker at AS/400 Technical Conferences and User Group meetings.

Tom Kasperavicius has worked in the I.T. industry for over 20 years, in varying roles from Application Developer to Project Manager - with most of those years in the midrange environment. He is now an independent consultant, managing implementations of business application software. He recently achieved his PMP (Project Management Professional) designation, and can offer some practical insights to quality management in your I.T. projects.

After a long career in the aerospace and defence industry Ed formed Project Solutions Unlimited in 1995 to provide project management services to industry. He has taught project management courses, and assisted companies in developing their PM capabilities. Recently, he has been a member of a project management office developing advanced cockpit displays for the F-18 aircraft with the Canadian Forces and the RAAF. One of his responsibilities was the administration of the Risk Management program used on the project. Ed earned his BASc degree (EE) from the U. of Waterloo in 1971. He served as President of PMI's Southern Ontario Chapter in 1999.

Nahla Kor is a management consultant with Kor Capabilities Consulting specializing in Corporate Training, Facilitation and Leadership Coaching.

Prior to starting her own business, Nahla worked as a internal consultant with several large organizations including Sunlife Financial, Clarica, Manulife Financial and Hewlett Packard supporting senior leadership teams regarding team effectiveness issues.

Nahla is an experienced facilitator and is instructor-certified in several training programs dealing with Change Management, Emotional Intelligence and other professional and career development programs.

Nahla obtained her Bachelor of Commerce Degree from McGill University in Montreal in 1986 and her Training and Development Certificate in 1998 from Ryerson Polytechnic University..

Kou-Mei Lui is the Senior Manager responsible for the IBM WebSphere Development Studio for iSeries family of products, available worldwide. Kou-Mei started her career in technical Software Development after receiving a Computer Science and Engineering degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has since had extensive management experiences in Software development, Strategy development, Business Planning and Control, Services, and Product Management. Kou-Mei speaks at conferences and leads workshops, professionally on behalf of IBM as well as in the community. Kou-Mei works out of the IBM Toronto Development Lab and has an interest in managing transformation of businesses.

Davis Marasco is delighted to be apart of TUG TEC as a member of the WebSphere Development Studio Client for iSeries development team.

Leading the User Centred Design (UCD) initiatives for this application development toolset, she is focused on what users need to make their daily work easier, quicker and in the end, more productive.

She is always looking to meet new customers and learn more about how she can help make their lives easier.

Davis has worked for IBM in the UK and the US, spoken at conferences including COMMON on this and related topics in the US, UK, and Canada, and has written industry articles.

If you see here around, be sure to say hello!

Carol B. Martin, PMP, is President of Infogrinder Inc., offering project management training, consulting, and process improvement services.

Currently, Martin is involved in implementing processes within project organizations to comply with Sarbanes Oxley guidelines. Previous entrepreneurial success included providing IT consulting, advertising and marketing services in Canada and the U.S.

She has worked on both large and small projects with government, engineering, small business and political clients. Often the communications facilitator, she bridges the gap between business and technical groups.

Roy S. Martin

Roy S. Martin is Sr. VP and Chief Engineer of RCM Technologies Canada Corp. in Mississauga, Ontario. With over 26 years of project management experience in both the US and Canada, Martin recently led a $100 million engineering-procure-construct (EPC) project as part of the restart of two of Bruce Power's nuclear units. The Bruce A Unit 3-4 Restart Project was named PowerGen 2004 Project of the Year. This project succeeded because of extraordinary leadership, innovation, and vigilant application of key project management principles.

A successful entrepreneur, Martin was a founder of Fulcrum Group Inc. in the U.S. and CanNuke Technologies in Toronto, both of which have been acquired by RCM.

Kent Milligan is a DB2 UDB Technology Specialist in PartnerWorld® for Developers, iSeries. Kent spent the first eight years of his IBM career as a member of the DB2 development group in Rochester. He speaks and writes regularly on various iSeries and AS/400e relational database topics.

Kushal Munir has been a software engineer at the IBM Toronto Laboratory since 2001. He is responsible for the design, development, testing and maintenance of Websphere Development Studio Client for iSeries (WDSCi). He is one of the architects of the Remote System Explorer, a key component of WDSCi. Kushal has a Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto.

Jon Paris has been involved in the data processing industry for over 35 years.
In 1988, Jon joined IBM's Toronto Lab, where he played a major role in the planning and design of the new RPG IV language.

In 1994, he moved to the AS/400 Application Development Tools Market Support Group, where he was involved in producing educational and other support materials and services related to AS/400 programming languages and development tools, such as COBOL/400, RPG IV, CODE/400, and VisualAge for RPG.

Jon left IBM in 1998 to focus on developing and delivering education focused on enhancing OS/400 application development skills.

Together with Susan Gantner, he runs Partner400, an iSeries and AS/400 consulting company focused on application modernization.
You can find out more about the company at their Web site, www.Partner400.com.

Jon is also a frequent speaker at user group meetings and conferences around the world.

Eric Peters is a staff software developer at the IBM Toronto Lab.

He is involved in the designing, developing and testing of the Web and Web Services tools in WebSphere Development Studio Client for iSeries (WDSc).

Jim Rose is a Senior Technical Consultant (or Senior Software Developer) with Databorough.

He has over 30 years of RPG application development and support on the IBM ISeries platform and all of it's predecessors back to the System/3.

Currently he is working on the RPG Application modernization technologies and projects through Databorough's offices in Toronto, ON.

Ken Sadler has been Manager, Corporate IT, Canada in a Multi-National Company in Toronto. His team develops and leads SAP – based order-to-cash business solutions used throughout North America. They provide SAP solutions that support Standard Costing, Budgeting, Planning, eProcurement, Transportation, Inventory Control, and Warehouse Management.

Ken is a graduate of McMaster University in Mathematics, has 4 children and lives in Markham. He brings a refreshing results-oriented approach to implementing large projects successfully. Project success is based on the business getting the impact on business results expected with a project meeting not just its time and quality goals but its cost goals as well.

Debbie Saugen is the technical owner of iSeries Backup and Recovery in IBM's Rochester, Minnesota, Development Lab. She is also a senior recovery architect/consultant with IBM Business Continuity and Recovery Services.

Debbie enjoys sharing her knowledge by speaking at COMMON, iSeries Technical Conferences, and Business Continuity and Recovery Services Conferences, and writing for various iSeries magazines and Web sites.

Bob Schuster has worked in the computer industry for over 18+ years, having served 16 of those years on the Advanced Technical Support staff as a Certified I/T Consultant; where he has supported IBM mid-range systems(S/36, AS/400, iSeries/i5, Intelligent Work Stations and Personal Computers).

Bob was also an IBM Systems Engineer Specialist in PC Connectivity and AS/400, at a New York City large account banking branch office prior to his time with the ATSS.

He has specific skills in Networking, PC Connectivity, PC Server Environments, (FSIOP, IPCS, INS, IXS, IXA), iSeries and AS/400 Server Consolidation. He also has experience in setup, installation, and operation of IBM iSeries/i5 solutions, Windows NT and Windows 2000/2003 Server environments.

Bob has spoken at numerous Technical Conferences, Seminars, and User Group Meetings all over the Country, and he participates in Customer Planning Sessions and Briefings both in Rochester, Minnnesota, and at customer locations.

He can be reached at: raschus@us.ibm.com

Arnold Shoon, is an IT Specialist with the IBM Canada's Software organization, Arnold focuses on the WebSphere integration product suite including MQ, PM4Data and WebSphere Business Integration Server (WBI).

During his time at IBM, he has completed a High Availability IBM Redbook on MQ/WBI and is involved in architecture discussions surrounding concepts such as the Enterprise Service Bus, Web-Services, Service Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management.

David Slater is the Market Manager for iSeries Application Development products, responsible for the WebSphere Development Studio family of products, including WebFacing Deployment Tool with HATS Technology.

David has been involved with Midrange market for over 27 years. He has served as the iSeries AD Product Line Manager, the iSeries AD Campaign Manager, a technical support representative for AS/400 AD, the ILE RPG Development Manager, the Project Office and Planning Manager for CODE, and the Planning Manager and Performance Manager for AS/400 Language and Utilities.

Dave can be reached at slater@ca.ibm.com or 905-470-8989

Dr. Frank Soltis is regarded throughout the world as one of the most significant computer scientists of the twentieth century. Based on his Ph.D. dissertation research, he created a revolutionary computer architecture, which led to a totally new breed of computers. During the last decade he led the effort to define the architecture of the 64-bit PowerPC processors used in the IBM iSeries and pSeries servers. As the IBM Chief Scientist for System i5 he continues to define future directions for IBM systems.

Currently based at the IBM Development Laboratory in Rochester, Minnesota, he travels the world speaking on IT trends and technology advancements. In addition to his IBM responsibilities, he is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Minnesota where he teaches graduate courses on high-performance computer design. Dr. Soltis is an award-winning author with several books, technical papers and other publications to his credit. He holds more than 25 patents and published invention disclosures related to computer systems. In his spare time he enjoys working on and racing Porsches with his sons.

Garth Tucker is an IBM iSeries/i5 Specialist, IBM Certified in Technical Solutions Design and Implementation, Sales, Linux and Windows Integration for iSeries with OS/400 versions V4R3 through V5R3, as well as being CompTIA Linux+ Certified. Garth has many years of experience with AS/400, iSeries and now i5.

He has helped write the Technical Overviews of OS/400; V4R4, V4R5 and V5R1 with the IBM/ITSO in Rochester, Minnesota and has traveled extensively throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Garth is a partner in i3 Tech Group Inc.

Claus Weiss is an advisory software consultant with the iSeries Application Development Tools team at the IBM Canada Toronto Laboratory.

He has an Industrial Engineer degree and a Computer Science degree from the University of Hamburg, Germany.

Claus worked as a systems engineer with IBM Germany and joined the IBM Toronto Laboratory in 1984. He was a developer and teamleader for System/38 development tools and has been a member of the Design Control Group for the AS/400 development tools. Claus has worked as a planner for iSeries Application Development for the past twelve years specializing in Visual Tools.

Don Yantzi is an advisory software engineer at the IBM Toronto Lab.

He is involved in the designing, developing and testing of WebSphere Development Studio Client for iSeries (WDSc).

Don is a frequent speaker at iSeries user group meetings and IBM eServer iSeries conferences.

Wayne Yung is the National Technical Team Lead for IBM Enterprise Content Management (ECM) in Canada. He is a certified AIIM ECM Practitioner, Content Manager Solution Designer and OnDemand solution expert. He is also a published author of an Email Management Whitepaper.

He is a regular speaker at conferences throughout North America, but operates primarily out of Toronto Ontario covering accounts across Canada and the Caribbean.

Jiayun is one of the key members of the WebFacing development team.

Jiayun joined IBM four years ago after finishing a Masters in Computer Science at the University of Calgary.

She is now the lead developer for the runtime component of the WebFacing product.