Summary: Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, announces the judges for the 2012 Windows PowerShell Scripting Games.
Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. We are rapidly drawing to the kick-off day of April 2, 2012 when the 2012 Scripting Games begin. One of the key milestones is the introduction of the judges. This year (as in years past), we have an esteemed panel of judges—a veritable who’s who in the world of Windows PowerShell scripting. I hope you will spend some time reading these mini-biographies, and hopefully get inspired to learn all you can about Windows PowerShell. Maybe one day, your picture and biography will appear in this same virtual location.
Arnaud Petitjean
Arnaud is an author, speaker, system engineer, and trainer. Arnaud is the founder of the French-speaking Windows PowerShell Community. He specializes in managing VMware (by using Windows PowerShell and PowerCLI) and in desktop virtualization.
Website: www.PowerShell-Scripting.com
Rich Prescott
Rich is currently working as a Windows Engineer for a market-leading global financial services firm in New York City. He started learning Windows PowerShell in 2009 while he was working as a desktop engineer. He is an author for the Microsoft TechNet Wiki. He is also a moderator on the Official Scripting Guys Forum, and he recently received the Microsoft Community Contributor award.
Personal blog: Engineering Efficiency
Microsoft blog: WikiNinjas - Official Blog of TechNet Wiki
Microsoft profile: Rich Prescott on TechNet
Twitter: @Rich_Prescott
Niklas Goude
Niklas is an author, trainer and technical consultant for TrueSec in Sweden. Niklas specializes in the Microsoft environment, focusing on Active Directory, SQL Server, and SharePoint products and technologies. Most of his daily work is performed using Windows PowerShell. He is also active as a trainer, teaching courses that are focused on Windows PowerShell, and he has been a speaker at various conferences, such as Microsoft Tech Days, SharePoint & Exchange Forum, and SharePoint conferences in Australia and New Zealand.
Niklas contributes to the Windows PowerShell community by sharing scripts, guides, and ideas. Niklas is active within the PowerShell community, acting as a moderator for the Official Scripting Guys Forum and as an expert at SecretsOfSharePoint.com.
He wrote PowerShell for SharePoint 2010 Administrators with Mattias Karlsson, a former colleague. He wrote e-book about Windows PowerShell (in Swedish), which covers the fundamentals of Windows PowerShell. It can be downloaded for free at www.powershell.se.
Niklas lives in Stockholm, Sweden with his wife Anna, his collection of guitars, and a lot of computers.
Blog: PowerShell.nu
Scott Smith
Prior to joining Microsoft, Scott served 20 years in the U.S. Air Force with split careers in the Precision Measurement Equipment Laboratory and Computer Programming fields. His career ended in San Antonio at the Air Intelligence Agency, where he never wrote one line of code—just designed and architected solutions for three classifications of networks. He joined Microsoft in Jan 2001, and over the past 11 years he filled many roles in what is now premier field engineering: a rapid response engineer, a ROSS manager/engineering service manager, and a PFE manager during the evolution of PFE.
After seven years in mainstream PFE, he moved to Incubation Services and Support to be the team lead in driving the support model for Amalga, Microsoft’s first major investment in the health care world. For the next three years, he worked directly with the Health Solutions Group and Mergers and Acquisition to assist in growing adoption of Amalga across major health care systems. The key customers were the Mayo Clinic, John Hopkins, and New York Presbyterian. In the July 2010, he moved back into management in Amalga and saw it through three releases. Then he was tasked with leading a small team of engineers to learn Office 365 and train mainstream PFEs about IP that is focused on cloud services, which lead to the need to learn Windows PowerShell.
Outside of work, he and his wife love to cruise and travel. In the past year, he began a new passion of scuba diving and he has over 20 logged dives in six months with many scheduled this year. The picture was taken at the Devil’s Den in Williston, FL.
Jeremy Engel
Jeremy works in the health care industry as a lead systems engineer and architect, promoting new technologies and helping drive their acceptance and implementation. Being a fanatic of efficiency and automation, he also focuses on developing programs and scripts to ease the burden of administration for himself, his colleagues, and the community. His most notable contribution thus far is the PowerShell Module for DHCP. He is currently working on releasing a multitude of other modules and scripts.
He is a great admirer of the Windows PowerShell community and is honored to be a judge for this year’s Scripting Games. He wishes all the contestant’s happy scripting and good luck! Jeremy’s proudest contributions to this world are his three wonderful children, who together with his beautiful wife live in the bustling metropolis of Oak Ridge, North Carolina.
Jim Christopher
Jim runs Code Owls LLC, a software development company focusing on process automation and system integration. He delivered his first piece of software at the ripe age of 9, and he since has had the pleasure of coding in the education, defense, gaming, and IT fields. He is a Windows PowerShell MVP, and he manages numerous open-source projects that integrate Windows PowerShell with SQLite, OData, MongoDB, Redis, RabbitMQ, ASP.NET Membership, and Visual Studio. He likes to talk to developers about how they can use Windows PowerShell every day to make their lives easier.
Blog: beefycode: serving all of your beefy code needs
Twitter: @beefarino
Brandon Shell
Brandon Shell is a Microsoft MVP, and a moderator for the Official Scripting Guys Forum.
Blog: BSonPoSH: The Power of Shell
Bartek Bielawski
Bartek is Windows PowerShell enthusiast, and he is still a fairly new Windows PowerShell MVP. He loves automation and he tries to automate systems whenever he can. Bartek describes his work life as, “Just a regular IT pro with a constant urge to learn more and share what he learned with others.” He uses IRC, his blogs, and forums to give back to community what he got from it—free of charge both ways.
Michael Frommhold
Michael is a senior premier field engineer for Microsoft Germany. His technology foci are Active Directory, development (.NET, PoSh, VBS) and platforms. Apart from supporting customer Active Directory infrastructures, he provides workshops and customized knowledge transfers to teach customers how to implement coding and scripting against Active Directory and platform technologies.
Tome Tanasovski
Tome is a Windows engineer for a market-leading global financial services firm in New York City. He is the founder and leader of the New York City PowerShell User group, a blogger, and a regular contributor to the Official Scripting Guys Forum. In 2011, he became a cofounder of the NYC Techstravaganza, coauthored the Windows PowerShell Bible, and received the title of Honorary Scripting Guy from the Hey, Scripting Guy! Blog. Tome has also received the MVP award in Windows PowerShell from Microsoft for the last two years.
Jeffery Hicks
Jeffery is a Microsoft MVP in Windows PowerShell, Microsoft Certified Trainer, and an IT veteran with 20 years of experience—much of it spent as an IT consultant specializing in Microsoft server technologies. He works today as an independent author, trainer, and consultant. Jeff writes the popular Prof. PowerShell column for MPCMag.com, and he is a regular contributor to SMB IT Simplified and the Petri IT Knowledgebase. Jeff is a regular speaker at conferences, such as TechEd, and he often speaks about Windows PowerShell, Active Directory, Group Policy, and anything else than can make IT Pros more efficient and productive.
Steven Murawski
Steven is a senior Windows system engineer for edgenet and a Microsoft MVP in PowerShell. In this role, he supports a dynamic infrastructure that pushes the boundaries of the Windows platform. Windows PowerShell allows him to support this infrastructure in a more consistent and efficient manner. Steven also runs the Greater Milwaukee Script Club, and he is a board member for the Greater Milwaukee IT Pro User Community.
Blog: Use PowerShell | The Shell is Calling
Claus Nielsen
Claus has been working as an IT professional for 13+ years, and he has been spending a lot of his time in the last eight years working with scripting and automation. He uses several languages, including batch, VBScript, AutoIT, and Windows PowerShell. The latter has been his primary scripting platform since 2007.
Aleksandar Nikolic
Aleksandar is a system administrator, Windows PowerShell MVP, and the cofounder and editor of PowerShellMagazine. He enjoys giving Windows PowerShell presentations and reviewing Window PowerShell-related (e)books. He is a proud recipient of two Dr. Scripto bobblehead dolls. Why does he like the Scripting Games? There is no better way to learn and improve your Windows PowerShell skills and have fun all the way through.
Blog: PowerShellers: He who controls the shell, controls the universe
Twitter: @alexandair
Bhargav Shukla
Bhargav is a senior premier field engineer in unified communications, with his primary focus on the Exchange Server and Lync 2010 platforms. Bhargav has been in IT since the beginning of his career 15 years ago. Before joining Microsoft, he managed to work on almost any technology an IT consultant would be required to know, including Active Directory, Exchange, RSA Security, VMware, Citrix, and Cisco. He also holds industry certifications such as Microsoft Certified Master: Exchange 2010, VMware Certified Professional, Citrix CCEA, RSA: CSE, and Cisco CCNA/CCDA.
He started working on scripting with small DOS batch scripts in his early career, and he learned to be a better scripter with new scripting languages. From batch files to VBScript and on to Windows PowerShell, he has written many scripts to address specific needs and reusable functions for repetitive code. When he is not working with customers, Bhargav teaches at MCM Exchange rotations, leads the Philadelphia Area Exchange Server User Group, shares his knowledge on his blog and twitter, plays chess, and has recently fallen in love with photography.
Mark Schill
Mark is a senior architect for a leading federal government service provider in the Atlanta area. He coauthored the Windows PowerShell 2.0 Bible. He is the founder and operator of the Atlanta PowerShell User Group, and he is the current manager for the PowerShellGroup.org user group support site.
Blog: String Theory
Twitter: @meson3902
Ravikanth Chaganti
Ravikanth has 11+ years of experience in the IT industry. At the beginning of his career, he worked at Wipro Infotech managing Windows, Solaris servers, and Cisco network equipment. He currently works at Dell, Inc. as a lead engineer in the SharePoint solutions group. As a part of his work, he authored several whitepapers about MOSS 2007 and SharePoint 2010 that provide guidance about infrastructure elements of a SharePoint deployment. His work also involves performance testing and sizing of SharePoint workloads on Dell servers and storage.
Ravikanth is passionate about automation, and he won a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award in Windows PowerShell. You can hear him speak regularly at Bangalore ITPro User Group meetings and other in-person events in Bangalore, India.
Blog: Ravikanth Chaganti: SharePoint, Virtualization, Automation and much more…
Doug Finke
Doug is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for PowerShell. He is a software developer at Lab49, a company that builds advanced applications for the financial service industry. Doug is a consultant, author and speaker.
Blog: Development in a Blink
Richard Siddaway
Richard has been working with Microsoft technologies for over 22 years, and he spent time in most IT roles including analyst-programmer, server administration, support, DBA and architect. He has been interested in automation techniques (including automating job creation and submission on mainframes many years ago!). He has used VBScript and WMI since it became available on NT 4. Windows PowerShell caught his interest when he first heard about it and he has been using it since the early beta versions.
He founded and runs the UK PowerShell User Group, and he is a Windows PowerShell MVP. He has given numerous talks about Windows PowerShell at various events in the UK, Europe, and the USA. He is a frequent speaker for Windows PowerShell user groups worldwide. He has a number of articles published about Windows PowerShell, including expert commentary’s on the Microsoft Scripting Games for which he has been a judge for the last two years. Windows PowerShell in Practice (Manning) was published in June 2010 and he is currently finishing PowerShell and WMI (Manning) to be published in 2012. Another book about Windows PowerShell 3.0 will be published towards the end of 2012.
Blogs:
Richard Siddaway's Blog: Of PowerShell and Other Things
IT Knowledge Exchange: Get Answers from Your Peers
Jan Egil Ring
Jan works as a lead architect at Crayon, Norway. He mainly works with Microsoft server-products, and he has a strong passion for Windows PowerShell. In addition to being a consultant, he is a Microsoft Certified Trainer. He has obtained several certifications, including MCITP: Enterprise Administrator and MCITP: Enterprise Messaging Administrator.
In January 2011 and 2012 he was awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Award for his contributions in the Windows PowerShell technical community.
Blog: blog.powershell.no: On Windows PowerShell and other Admin-Related Topics
Twitter: @janegilring
LinkedIn: Jan Egil Ring, Lead Architect, Infrastructure
Matt Johnson
Matt is a system administrator, developer, and all around hacker. He runs the Michigan PowerShell Users Group, helps run the Virtual PowerShell User Group Brown Bag Lunch Series, and is a moderator on the Official Scripting Guys Forum. In is free time, he is a member of the #MiSec information security group and spends most of his days lurking around the Internet and trying to solve problems by using Windows PowerShell.
Blog: MWJ Computing
Michigan PowerShell Users Group
Glenn Sizemore
Glenn is a technical marketing engineer at NetApp, where he combines Microsoft with NetApp, using Windows PowerShell as the glue. Glenn started scripting early in his IT career, and he has made a living off it ever since. Along the way he started a blog, wrote a book, and he is the proud father of two beautiful children.
Blog: get-admin: Lessons of a Datacenter Administrator
Book: VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration
Oliver Lipkau
Oliver is a Windows PowerShell enthusiast, sporadic Hey, Scripting Guy! Blog guest poster, MCC, and Official Scripting Guys Forum moderator.
Blog: Oliver's Blog: My germs!
Sean Kearney
Sean “The Kraken” Kearney is an infrastructure support analyst, Microsoft MVP in Windows PowerShell, and member of the Springboard Technical Experts Program. He is also one of this year’s first ever Honorary Scripting Guys and the mystery persona behind The BATCHman and Cmdlet. He is presently writing a book about Windows PowerShell.
He is so passionate about Windows PowerShell that he tried naming a pet gerbil “Cmdlet,” and then he attempted to use a Get-Wheel | Invoke-Run on it. We have been advised that he is also barred from any caffeinated beverages when he is presenting due to “The Edmonton Affair” at TechDays Canada.
Boe Prox
Boe is currently a senior systems administrator with BAE Systems. He has been in the IT industry since 2003, and he has been working with Windows PowerShell since 2009. Boe looks to script whatever he can, whenever he can. He is also a moderator on the Official Scripting Guys Forum. Check out his current projects published on CodePlex: PoshWSUS and PoshPAIG.
Blog: Learn PowerShell | Achieve More
Guest posts on Hey, Scripting Guy! Blog
Twitter: @proxb
Georges Maheu
Georges is the PFE security technology lead for Microsoft Canada. As a senior premier field engineer, he focuses on delegation of authority (how many domain admins do you really have?), on server hardening, and on doing security assessments by using his own scripts.
Georges has a passion for VBScript, Windows PowerShell, and WMI, and he uses them on a regular basis to gather information from Active Directory and computers. Also, Georges delivers popular scripting workshops to Microsoft Premier Customers worldwide.
Guest posts on Hey, Scripting Guy! Blog
Jonathan Medd
Jonathan has been working with IT infrastructure products since 1997. A few years ago, he discovered Windows PowerShell, and he now cohosts the Get-Scripting PowerShell podcast. Since April 2010, he has been a Microsoft MVP for Windows PowerShell, and in 2011 was honored as a VMware vExpert. He is co-author of VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference.
Don Jones
With more than fifteen years of IT experience, Don is one of the world’s leading experts on the Microsoft business technology platform. He’s the author of more than 35 books, including Windows PowerShell: TFM; Windows Administrator’s Scripting Toolkit; VBScript, WMI, and ADSI Unleashed; PHP-Nuke Garage; Special Edition Using Commerce Server 2002, and Definitive Guide to SQL Server Performance Optimization. Don is a top-rated and in-demand speaker at conferences such as Microsoft TechEd, Windows Connections, and TechMentor, and he is an accomplished IT journalist with features and monthly columns in Microsoft TechNet Magazine, Redmond Magazine, and on websites such as TechTarget and MCPMag.com. Don is also a multiple-year recipient of Microsoft’s prestigious Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award, and he is the editor-in-chief for Realtime Publishers.
Ed Wilson
Ed is the Microsoft Scripting Guy and a well-known scripting expert. He writes the daily Hey Scripting Guy! Blog. He has spoken at TechEd and at the Microsoft internal TechReady conferences. He is a Microsoft-certified trainer who has delivered a popular Windows PowerShell workshop to Microsoft Premier Customers worldwide. He has written nine books, including six about Windows scripting that were published by Microsoft Press. He also contributed to nearly a dozen other books. His Windows PowerShell 2.0 Best Practices book for Microsoft Press was recently published.
Ed holds more than 20 industry certifications, including Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) and Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP). Prior to coming to work for Microsoft, he was a senior consultant for a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, where he specialized in Active Directory design and Exchange Server implementation. In his spare time, he enjoys woodworking, underwater photography, and scuba diving.
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