Keynote Speakers
Hear about the future of the Microsoft platform from Microsoft leaders and luminaries
at the PDC2008 Keynotes. More keynote speakers will be announced soon!
Ray Ozzie
Chief Software Architect
Join Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie, as he opens PDC2008 with Microsoft’s vision
for a comprehensive platform for a software + services world.
Ray Ozzie, an industry visionary and pioneer in computer-supported cooperative work,
is Microsoft’s chief software architect. Ozzie assumed the chief software architect’s
role in June 2006, when Chairman Bill Gates announced his intent to relinquish his
Microsoft day-to-day responsibilities in July 2008. In his role as CSA Ozzie is
responsible for oversight of the company's technical strategy and product architecture.
Ozzie is also directing development of the company’s next-generation software services
platform.
Previously, Ozzie was chief technical officer from April 2005 to June 2006. He assumed
that role in April 2005 after Microsoft acquired Groove Networks, a next-generation
collaboration software company he formed in 1997. Prior to Groove, Ozzie was a founder
and president of Iris Associates, where he created and led the development of Lotus
Notes. Before Iris, he contributed to the development of Lotus Symphony and Software
Arts' TK!Solver and VisiCalc, and was involved in early distributed operating systems
development at Data General Corp.
Ozzie earned a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign, where he was first exposed to the nature and significance of collaborative
systems and computer-supported cooperative work while working on the university's
seminal PLATO project. This work significantly influenced his perspective on collaborative
systems and the projects he has undertaken throughout his career. He’s subsequently
been honored as one of the school’s distinguished alumnus.
Honored as one of seven "Windows Pioneers" by Microsoft, Ozzie was named "Person
of the Year" in 1995 by PC Magazine, and has been inducted into the Computer Museum
Industry Hall of Fame and the InfoWorld Hall of Fame. In November 2000, he received
the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society's
W. Wallace McDowell Award, and in 2001 he was honored as a World Economic Forum
Technology Pioneer. He has served as a member of the National Research Council's
Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, and was a member of the NRC committee
that produced the landmark CRISIS report on the societal impact of cryptography.
Rick Rashid
Senior Vice President, Microsoft Research
Currently charged with oversight of Microsoft Research’s worldwide operations, Richard
(Rick) F. Rashid previously served as the director of Microsoft Research, focusing
on operating systems, networking and multiprocessors. In that role he was responsible
for managing work on key technologies leading to the development of Microsoft Corp.’s
interactive TV system and authored a number of patents in areas such as data compression,
networking and operating systems. In addition to running Microsoft Research, Rashid
also was instrumental in creating the team that eventually became Microsoft’s Digital
Media Division and directing Microsoft’s first e-commerce group. Rashid was promoted
to vice president of Microsoft Research in 1994, and then to senior vice president
in 2000.
Before joining Microsoft in September 1991, Rashid was professor of computer science
at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). After becoming a CMU faculty member in September
1979, he directed the design and implementation of several influential network operating
systems, and published dozens of papers about computer vision, operating systems,
programming languages for distributed processing, network protocols and communications
security. During his tenure at CMU, Rashid developed the Mach multiprocessor operating
system, which has been influential in the design of many modern operating systems
and remains at the core of a number of commercial systems.
Rashid was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 2003, and presented
with the IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award in 2008, for his work in operating systems
and for innovation in industrial research.
He also is credited with co-development of one of the earliest networked computer
games, "Alto Trek,” during the mid-1970s. An updated version of this game has been
developed by Microsoft and has been released under the name "Allegiance.”
Rashid is a member of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Computer Directorate
Advisory Committee. He is a past member of the DARPA UNIX Steering Committee and
the CSNet Executive Committee and a former chairman of the ACM Software System Awards
Committee. Rashid’s research interests have focused on artificial intelligence,
operating systems, networking and multiprocessors. He has participated in the design
and implementation of the University of Rochester RIG operating system (1975–1979),
the Rochester Virtual Terminal Management System (1976–1979), the CMU Distributed
Sensor Network Testbed (1980–1983), and CMU’s SPICE distributed personal computing
environment, which included the Accent network operating system (1981–1985). He
has published papers on computer vision, operating systems, programming languages
for distributed processing, network protocols and communication security.
Rashid received master of science (1977) and doctoral (1980) degrees in computer
science from the University of Rochester. He graduated with honors in mathematics
and comparative literature from Stanford University in 1974.
Chris Anderson
Chris Anderson has spent the last ten years at Microsoft as an advocate for the
working developer. Chris joined Microsoft in 1997 as a developer on Visual
Basic, where he worked on integrating Visual Basic with the Web.
Chris was a part of Microsoft’s Java effort, working as a developer on Visual
J++ and the Windows Foundation Classes for Java. Chris’s primary responsibility
was to ensure that Java developers had a world-class visual design experience
for building Windows applications.
Chris was a founding member of the .NET Framework team where he worked as a
developer/development manager on Windows Forms, ASP.NET and the Base Class
Library (BCL). In this role, Chris was a key contributor to the design and
implementation of every presentation technology used by .NET developers today.
Chris then played a key role in the next generation of this work, Windows
Presentation Foundation (WPF). Chris was an architect on WPF, where he focused
on the unification of Windows and Web presentation models into a coherent
framework. Chris also drove the design and adoption of the eXtensible
Application Markup Language (XAML) that is used to separate the declarative
specification of presentation from application logic.
Since delivering the first version of WPF, Chris has turned his attention to
building languages, frameworks and tools to simplify the task of writing
applications and services. Chris now works on the “Oslo” project where he brings
to bear his passion for user experience and empathy for the working developer.
Don Box
Don Box is an architect at Microsoft working on declarative languages and tools
to simplify developing applications and services. In that role, Don is involved
in creating languages, frameworks, and end-to-end experiences to help people
translate their intentions and desires for software into a machine readable and
executable form.
Don joined Microsoft in 2002 as an architect of Windows Communication Foundation
(WCF), where he worked on software to enable programs to safely and securely
interoperate with one another. Don’s responsibilities included both the design
and architecture of the runtime stack, as well as interoperability protocols
with IBM and other partners.
Before joining Microsoft, Don was an independent consultant focused on software
integration technologies. Don was the leading external voice for Microsoft’s
Component Object Model (COM) and Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) and helped
shape the way developers across the globe experience those technologies. In
1996, Don worked as a consultant to Software AG and Microsoft on the UNIX-based
Distributed COM project; that work gave Don the desire to move away from
shared-runtime distributed architectures and embrace data-centric message
passing using XML. To that end, Don worked with Microsoft and Dave Winer to
create the original SOAP specification in 1998.
Don is a respected writer on software development topics, serving as a series
editor at Addison Wesley and as a contributing editor to C++ Report, Microsoft
Systems Journal (MSJ), and MSDN Magazine. Don’s first book, Essential COM,
remains a part of the C++ developer’s canon. Don was the first blogger to
publish RSS from a Microsoft web property (http://www.gotdotnet.com/)
and now (sporadically) maintains a blog at
http://www.pluralsight.com/blogs/dbox/ Don has a Master’s degree in
Information and Computer Science from U.C. Irvine and a Bachelor’s degree in
Mathematics from C.S.U. Long Beach.