Speakers
Aaron Hillegass has more than 20 years of experience as a software engineer. He wrote the Big Nerd Ranch course on Cocoa, drawing from his experiences as a trainer and curriculum developer at Apple Computer, Inc. and NeXT Software, Inc. Aaron is the author of Cocoa® Programming for Mac® OS X, 3rd Edition. This book is generally regarded as "The Book" from which to learn Cocoa programming. He is the creator of Campwhere, an iPhone application for finding campgrounds.
Bill is User Experience Lead at the Omni Group, one of the world’s most accomplished and affable Mac and iOS developers. His is the nebulous job of making software civilized enough to bring out in public. This involves lots of squinting six inches away from the Cinema Display at 3200% zoom and consulting etymology dictionaries to properly label buttons. It often ends up entwined with documentation, marketing, quality assurance, customer support, and Dungeon Mastering too.
Before Seattle, he lived near Chicago, where he wrote odd code for companies on the Board of Trade, and in Green Bay, where he operated nocturnally for a year. He also spends a prodigious amount of time in Tokyo, and has learned exotic foreign languages such as Dvorak, Python, and New Standard Tuning.
When not shoveling pixels or graphemes, Bill likes creating video games, translating video games, and, occasionally, playing video games.
Brent Simmons
Brent Simmons has been writing apps for Apple computers for over 30 years, since his first Apple II Plus in 1980. His professional apprenticeship was at UserLand Software where he worked on Frontier and on Manila, an early blog platform. Later he created apps such as NetNewsWire, TapLynx, Glassboard, and MarsEdit. Brent lives in Seattle with his wife Sheila and his cat Papa, who’s named for both Ernest Hemingway and the great designated hitter Edgar Martinez.
Chris Adamson
Chris Adamson is an iOS and Mac developer, editor, and author, based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is the co-author of Core Audio (Addison-Wesley Professional) and iPhone SDK Development (Pragmatic Programmers), among others. He has several apps on the App Store, including the navigation app "Road Tip". He maintains a corporate identity as "Subsequently & Furthermore, Inc.", and has thus far owned 11½ Macs.
Daniel Jalkut is the founder of Red Sweater Software, makers of the popular Mac blog-authoring software, MarsEdit. Daniel has nearly 15 years of experience developing for the Mac and, since the day the SDK was released, for the iPhone platform. Prior to founding Red Sweater Software, Daniel was a software engineer at Apple.
Erica Sadun
Erica Sadun is the bestselling author, co-author and contributor to over two dozen books on programming, digital video and photography and web design, including the widely popular The iPhone Developer's Cookbook: Building Applications with the iPhone 3.0 SDK, 2nd Edition. She has blogged for TUAW.com, Mac Devcenter and Ars Technica.
In addition to being the author of more than a dozen iPhone-native applications, Erica holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech's Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center. A geek, a programmer, and an author, she's never met a gadget she didn't love. When not writing, she and her geek husband parent three adorable geeks-in-training, who regard their parents with restrained bemusement.
Erik Buck
Erik Buck is the author of the upcoming "Learning OpenGL ES for iOS: A Hands-on Guide to Modern 3D Graphics Programming" and co-author of "Cocoa Design Patterns" (2009, Addison-Wesley Professional) and "Cocoa Programming" (2002). Erik founded EMB & Associates, Inc. in 1993 and built the company into a leader in the aerospace and entertainment software industries by leveraging the NeXT/Apple software technology that would later become Apple's Cocoa frameworks. He sold his company in 2002 and currently operates Cosmic Thump, a start-up iOS entertainment software company. Erik also teaches an iOS programming course at Wright State University, managed a software product line for a Fortune 100 company, worked in construction, taught science to 8th graders, exhibited oil on canvas portraits, and developed alternative fuel vehicles.
Graeme is a 30 year industry veteran who has worked on everything from a TRS-80 to a Xbox 360. In the early nineties he pioneered CD-ROM gaming with the breakthrough title "The 7th Guest", he went on to become the lead designer on "Quake III Arena" and "Halo Wars". Graeme started GRL Games in December 2010 to focus on bringing entertaining titles to the iPhone, iPad and Mac Desktop.
Jason Festa
Jason Festa is an Associate Creative Director at Disney Mobile in Palo Alto, CA. He has been designing mobile focused products for 10+ years, working directly with client, backend, and frontend engineering teams. Jason joined Disney Mobile in summer 2010 when Disney acquired Tapulous, the makers of the most downloaded iOS game "Tap Tap Revenge".
At Tapulous, Jason was responsible for building/managing internal and external creative talent as well as being a central point between art, design, and engineering. In his own words.... "I love building products with small, focused teams. From concept to design to determining market share and how the products we build can make revenue. I enjoy ownership over A/B testing ideas to increase growth (whether that be users, revenue, DAU, etc). My strategy is to build fast, test it like crazy, and listen to early adopters."
With co-founder Vikas Reddy, Jeff led the development of RedLaser, the iPhone's most successful barcode scanning application. After selling over two-million copies, Occipital sold RedLaser to eBay in June, but remained independent to focus on new computer vision technologies. Since then, the company has released ClearCam, a multiframe resolution-enhancing app, and 360 Panorama, an app that makes panorama capture instantaneous.
Marc Held
Marc is Zazu's CTO, leading the development of Zazu and its mobile and web products. He has a long-standing passion for robotics and internet technology. He’s previously done consulting, operations work, development, teaching, and researching at organizations like EMC, Tippingpoint Labs, Northeastern University, Newton Public Schools, and MIT. He has a soft spot for girly music and listens to Beyonce's Single Ladies on repeat.
Mike Ash
Mike Ash has been programming for Apple platforms for over two decades and for Mac OS X since the Public Beta. He is the author of the bi-weekly Friday Q&A blog series on deep technical topics related to Mac and iOS programming, as well as the compilation book The Complete Friday Q&A: Volume I. In between abusing the Objective-C runtime, he flies his glider over the beautiful Shenandoah Valley. When not flying, he holds down a day job at Plausible Labs. Mike's blog can be found at http://mikeash.com/pyblog/.
Mike Bluestein
Michael Bluestein is a software developer, consultant, active participant in the MonoTouch developer community, and Author of Learning MonoTouch. A former Principal Software Engineer at Dassault Systèmes Solidworks Corporation, he has developed software professionally since the early 1990s.
Mike is co-founder of 71Squared.com and author of Learning iOS Game Programming. 71Squared.com is an indie development shop that produces OS X based tools for game developers, such as Particle Designer and Glyph Designer. Mike also produces video tutorials through the 71Squared.com blog that cover the basics of game engine design using a relaxed, easy-to-follow approach. Mike is a strong believer in delivering resources that help new game programmers by breaking things down and introducing simple approaches first. This allows people to see results and not get too bogged down before they even get started. In what time he has left he flies light aircraft, plays games and tries to introduce his children into the world of all things Apple.
Ray Wenderlich is an iPhone developer and gamer, and the founder of Razeware LLC. Ray is passionate about both making apps and teaching others the techniques to make them. He has written a bunch of tutorials about iOS development available at http://www.raywenderlich.com. Ray is a coauthor of Learning Cocos2D: A Hands-On Guide to Building iPhone and iPad Games with Cocos2D, Box2D, and Chipmunk.
Rod is the founder and lead developer of the studio Prop Group, www.prop.gr. Rod's journey in physics and games started way back with an Apple ][ writing games in Basic. These days Rod enjoys helping others get started on their paths to making games. Originally from Rio de Janeiro, Rod lives in Atlanta, GA with his wife and two sons. Rod is the author of Learning Cocos2D: A Hands-On Guide to Building iPhone and iPad Games with Cocos2D, Box2D, and Chipmunk.
Shawn Welch has designed and developed iOS applications since the launch of the first iPhone in 2007. Most recently, Shawn has taken on the role of iOS designer and developer for Kelby Media Group and the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, developing apps for their online training site, Kelbytraining.com, and annual conferences and events such as Photoshop World.
A graduate of Kansas State University in Computer Engineering, Shawn has also worked as Senior Media Editor for Digital Strategy for Pearson Higher Education, Arts and Sciences, managing and producing digital technologies and mobile applications for Pearson’s college level A&S textbook division.
Tom Harrington
Tom Harrington switched from writing software for embedded systems and Linux to Mac OS X in 2002 when he started Atomic Bird, LLC. After six years of developing highly regarded Mac software, he moved to iPhone in 2008. He develops iOS software on a contract basis for a variety of clients. Tom also organizes iOS developer events in Colorado. When not writing software, Tom can often be found on his mountain bike. His website is www.atomicbird.com.
