Meet Our Speakers

Kevin Avila
Kevin Avila currently does freelance (mercenary) work for various clients while sitting in his underwear at home, sipping coffee. Kevin has 15 years of experience developing for the Mac and, since its release, the iPhone. Kevin has been involved in every corner of the audio market, from being an engineer at Apple to configuring professional recording studios, and even title-winning dB Drag Racing vehicles.

Peter Bakhirev
Peter Bakhirev co-founded an iPhone gaming startup called ByteClub.com, which has an app currently selling on the Apple App Store. Before falling in love with the iPhone platform and diving into Cocoa and Objective-C, Peter helped architect and build one of the largest online poker sites.

Lee Barney
Lee S. Barney is the creator of the QuickConnect framework for JavaScript-based iPhone installable application development and a professor in the Computer Information Technology Department at Brigham Young University - Idaho. He served as CIO/CTO of @HomeSoftware, a company that produced web-based, mobile data and scheduling applications for the home health care industry. He is the author of the recently published Developing Hybrid Applications for the iPhone.

Erik Buck
Erik M. Buck is the co-author of the 2002 book Cocoa Programming and has just finished writing Cocoa Design Patterns. 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. Erik has also worked in construction, taught science to 8th graders, exhibited oil on canvas portraits, and developed alternative fuel vehicles. He sold his company in 2002 and currently holds the title of Senior Staff at Northrop Grumman Corp.

Mike Daley
By day Mike Daley works for the largest enterprise software company in the world whilst by night his alter ego writes computer games for his children. Mike started writing games soon after getting his first computer in 1983 and has been an avid gamer ever since. He has worked in IT for more than 17 years, spending a significant amount of this time as a developer. The release of the iPhone reignited the passion he'd had way back in the 80's, when a single person could create an entire game. Having experimented and prototyped on the iPhone since its release, Mike's book Beginning iPhone Game Development, due out in the spring of 2010, will be a unique journey into game development.

Bill Dudney
Bill Dudney is a software developer and entrepreneur currently building software for the Mac. Bill started his computing career on a NeXT cube with a magneto-optical drive running NeXTStep 0.9. He is the author of iPhone SDK Development and Core Animation for Mac OS X and the iPhone (Pragmatic Programmers), as well as a series of iPhone development screencasts. He has several iPhone applications currently selling on the App Store.

Daniel Grover
Daniel Grover is the founder of Wonder Warp Software, a fledgling Macintosh software venture. Wonder Warp's philosophy is that software ought to be fun to use and that the best tools are simple ones that require no more thought than necessary. They have released several successful products: ShoveBox, Otis, SimpleChord and PhoneFinger.

Aaron Hillegass
Aaron Hillegass has over 18 years of experience as a software engineer and developer trainer. 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 also the co-author of Core Mac OS X and Unix Programming. Aaron has developed and deployed very large systems for clients including Cogent Design, Nortel Networks, and the United Parcel Service. He has taught at the University of Washington and the New College of Florida.

Andy Ihnatko
Andy Ihnatko is one of the best-known Mac experts and author of The Mac OS X Tiger Book, as well as iPod Fully Loaded (Wiley). He has written for nearly every publication with "Mac" in its name, co-hosts MacBreak Weekly, and is currently a technology columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Daniel Jalkut
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.

Jessica Kahn
Jessica runs Engineering at Tapulous, makers of Tap Tap Revenge, the #1 most-installed game in the App Store. Tapulous was founded just six months before the App Store launched, has been there since opening day, and today, they have 14 titles available for download. Prior to joining Tapulous, Jessica held various positions in Software Engineering at Apple for just shy of a decade, most recently working as a Senior Software Engineer on the Safari web browser.

Bill Licea-Kane
Bill Licea-Kane, Principal Member Technical Staff at AMD, works in AMD's OpenGL Group and has chaired the ARB OpenGL Shading Language workgroup since its inception. He has taught several courses in OpenGL Shading Language at Siggraph and the Game Developers’ Conference. He is a co-author of Open GL Library (currently in its fifth edition) and OpenGL Shading Language, about to be released in its third edition.

Stephen Kochan
Stephen Kochan is the author and co-author of several bestselling books, including Programming in C, and most recently Programming in Objective-C 2.0, published at the end of last year and soon to be available with an accompanying LiveLessons video. He has been programming on Macintosh computers since the introduction of the first Mac in 1984.

Mike Morton
Mike Morton works for Google as an iPhone Engineer on Google Earth. He's been developing software for a living since 1978, working exclusively in Objective-C for nearly 20 years, on NeXTStep, Mac OS X, and iPhone OS. He's worked for other industry powerhouses, including Lotus and Apple, and startups such as Sonos, plus several others too painful to recollect. Mike's written dozens of technical publications in books and magazines such as MacTech, Macintouch, Dr. Dobb's Journal, and BYTE—remember BYTE? He's also written on nontechnical subjects like energy efficiency and anagrams. He co-founded the Hawai'i Apple Programmers Association and more recently the Upper Connecticut River Valley chapter of Cocoaheads. His interests include snorkeling, wordplay, and not writing bios.

Chris Pautsch
As CEO of KeyLimeTie, Chris has been instrumental in setting the vision for both iLime Push and Purchase API services and for KeyLimeTie's commitment to the mobile marketplace as a whole. Since co-founding KeyLimeTie, Chris has successfully orchestrated the growth of the company into the premier technology consulting organization it is today. On a day-to-day basis, Chris is responsible for ensuring KeyLimeTie's products and services not only meet all client objectives, but that they are delivered on-time and on-budget according to the defined scope, timeline and cost parameters.

Jonathan Rentzsch
Jonathan Rentzsch is a Chicago based Mac software developer whose passion and specialty is rapid, value-driven custom software. He eschews big-design up-front development and believes in getting real, working software into the user's hands as quickly as possible. In addition to his day job, Jon organizes the Programming Special Interest Group near Chicago and the C4 conference for independent developers.

Erica Sadun, Conference Chair
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. 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.

Fraser Speirs
Fraser Speirs is a Mac OS X and iPhone Developer and Director of Connected Flow, Ltd. On Mac OS X, he is best known for the FlickrExport plugins for iPhoto and Aperture, and the file and folder comparison application Changes. On iPhone OS, his Flickr client Darkslide has consistently been one of the most popular Flickr apps. In the past, Fraser has written for Mac Developer Journal and blogged at MacDevCenter. He has also worked to support the Large Hadron Collider experiment at CERN.

August Trometer
August lives and breathes code and is a true believer in living on the cutting edge. August previously created iPodderX, the world's very first podcasting application. He's been writing software for longer than he can remember, and over the years has had his hand in the creation of a number of websites and web communities. In his spare time, he develops his own software for the Mac and iPhone. He has written a Digital Shortcut titled Optimizing Your Website for Mobile Safari and is the lead developer behind Yowza!!, a mobile coupon application for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Marcus Zarra
Marcus Zarra is the owner of Zarra Studios, based out of Colorado Springs, Colorado. He has been developing Cocoa software since 2003, Java software since 1996, and has been in the industry since 1985. Marcus is the co-author of Core Animation and blogs regularly at Cocoa Is My Girlfriend. When not writing books, code or blogs, Marcus produces software to Mac OS X and consults on software for Mac OS X and the iPhone.