About the Contributors
Gastón C. Hillar has been working with computers since he was eight. He began programming with the legendary Texas TI-99/4A and Commodore 64 home computers in the early 80s. He has a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science in which he graduated with honors and he also has an MBA (Master in Business Administration) in which he graduated with an outstanding thesis. He has worked as a Developer, an Architect, and Project Manager for many companies in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Now, he is an independent IT Consultant and a freelance author looking for new adventures around the world. He also works with electronics (he is an Electronics Technician). He is always researching about new technologies and writing about them. He owns an IT and electronics laboratory with many servers, monitors, and measuring instruments. He has written two additional books for Packt Publishing, C# 2008 and 2005 Threaded Programming: Beginner's Guide and 3D Game Development with Microsoft Silverlight 3: Beginner's Guide. He contributes to Dr. Dobb's Go Parallel programming portal http://www.ddj.com/go-parallel/ and he is a guest blogger at Intel Software Network http://software.intel.com/. In 2009, he was awarded an Intel® Black Belt Software Developer award. He is the author of more than 40 books in Spanish about computer science, modern hardware, programming, systems development, software architecture, business applications, balanced scorecard applications, IT project management, the Internet, and electronics. He lives with his wife, Vanesa and his son, Kevin. When not tinkering with computers, he enjoys developing and playing with wireless virtual reality devices and electronics toys with his father, his son, and his nephew, Nico. You can reach him at <gastonhillar@hotmail.com>. You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/gastonhillar. Gastón's blog is at http://csharpmulticore.blogspot.com.
Balaji Kithiganahalli has been a computer nerd since 1995. He has a Master's degree in Systems Engineering and is currently serving as CEO and partner for Integrate, LLC. His company specializes in systems integration and custom software development. He has over 15 years of software development and architectural experience. He has consulted with several government and multi-national clients. He is a technology agnostic who used to mainly work on J2EE related technologies. Since 2003, he is mainly involved in implementing SharePoint and .NET technologies. He is currently architecting SharePoint 2010 implementation for a very large government organization in Atlanta, GA. When not working, he enjoys going for bike rides with his kids and reading books about other technologies. He currently lives in Atlanta, GA with his beautiful wife and two kids.
Mike Oryszak is a Consultant and Practice Manager with Intellinet, a Microsoft Gold-Certified Partner located in the South Eastern US. Mike works with customers to design and implement business solutions that leverage SharePoint as a platform. Mike is actively involved in the SharePoint community as a leader to Triangle SharePoint User Group in Raleigh, NC as well as a frequent speaker at SharePoint events and conferences. Mike has been recognized for his community involvement as a three time Microsoft Valuable Professional (MVP) for SharePoint Server. When not working, Mike can be found at home with his family or off hiking the many trails in the mountains of western North Carolina. Mike can be reached at <nextconnect@live.com> or through his blog at http://www.mikeoryszak.com.
Yaroslav Pentsarskyy has been involved in SharePoint solution architecture and implementation since 2003. He is also a Microsoft MVP since 2009 and keeps a close touch with SharePoint product team. Yaroslav frequently presents technical events worldwide as well as online; you can always find a fresh bit of SharePoint information on his blog: http://www.sharemuch.com. To learn everything Yaroslav knows about SharePoint, check out his two new books Top 60 Custom Solutions built on SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2010 branding in practice.
Todd Spatafore is a Professional Web Developer and Software Architect who enjoys living life on the sharp edge of technology. Todd is an expert in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, ASP.NET (WebForms and MVC), C#, and Silverlight. Todd is currently the Director of Technology at Draftfcb. Before starting at Draftfcb, Todd was a Senior Software Architect for MRM Worldwide. Todd was the Principal Software Architect for many of Microsoft's websites including Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Offce 2007 Real Life Tools, and SQL Server 2008. In addition to these defining pages, Todd worked closely with internal teams at Microsoft to introduce a new content management system for www.Microsoft.com, the fourth most visited website on the Internet. These content management systems were designed and built on top of SharePoint 2010. Prior to MRM, Todd was a Software Architect building websites such as the California Teachers Association, Novellus, and Technology Credit Union (TechCU). These sites utilized the Microsoft Content Management System, which has since been integrated into SharePoint. Beyond traditional websites and campaign landing sites, Todd has worked on unique applications such as a Windows Media Center application for ClickStar, a Santa Monica startup designed to showcase independent films from very well-known filmmakers. Todd maintains his own blog at http://www.spatacoli.com/, on which he muses about current programming topics such as Silverlight, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and Hyper-V. Currently, Todd is working on a few independent Windows Phone 7 apps, and speaks at MSDN conferences on web application architecture, RIA development in Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, and SharePoint. Follow Todd on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Spatacoli. Todd graduated from Montana State University with a BS in Physics.