Simon Guest, Microsoft Snr. Dir. Of Technical Strategy, DPE Group

Simon Guest is the Senior Director of Technical Strategy in the Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) group at Microsoft, responsible for helping developers worldwide deliver practical and elegant solutions using Microsoft technologies.

Since joining Microsoft in 2001, Simon has led the Microsoft Platform Architecture Team, acted as Editor-in-Chief of the Microsoft Architecture Journal, pioneered the area of .NET and Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) interoperability, worked with customers on mission critical .NET solutions, and has been a regular speaker at many conferences worldwide, including PDC, TechEd, and JavaOne.

Before joining Microsoft, and with over 18 years in the IT industry, Simon held architect-level positions at many organizations, including Zoho Corporation, a Silicon Valley startup; Conchango, a UK based consultancy; and Herbert Smith, a leading law firm in the UK. He also worked for several years at GEC in its semiconductor manufacturing division.

Simon was born in England, and has been living in the U.S. for approximately eight years. He holds a Masters Degree in IT Security from the University of Westminster, London, and a Higher National Certificate in Software Engineering from Plymouth College. Simon is the author of numerous technical articles and books about Java, Microsoft .NET, and Web technologies, as well as maintaining a blog at http://simonguest.com.<>