Speakers
Some of the most talented, experienced, and insightful people in the industry come to MacTech Conference to share their experiences, and teach their craft to you. Here are just some of the already scheduled speakers for MacTech Conference 2013.
Note: All times are approximate. All sessions, speakers and descriptions are subject to change at any time without notice.
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Ed is the Executive Editor of MacTech Magazine, the author of several books, and Worldwide Mac Operations Dude at Google. As MacTech Conference’s Sessions Chair, Ed heads up the sessions, and lab content. |
Neil not only plays host for all MacTech events, but aids the session chairs for all MacTech events (17 events in 2013). Neil has been the Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of MacTech Magazine since 1992. With both a technical and business background, Neil has authored hundreds of articles including most of MacTech’s well known benchmarking articles on productivity applications, virtualization, and performance products. |
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Adam C. Engst is the publisher of TidBITS, one of the oldest and most-respected Internet-based newsletters, distributed weekly to tens of thousands of readers. He has written numerous technical books, including the best-selling Internet Starter Kit series, and many magazine articles – thanks to Contributing Editor positions at MacUser, MacWEEK, and Macworld. His innovations include the creation of the first advertising program to support an Internet publication in 1992, the first flat-rate accounts for graphical Internet access in 1993, and the highly successful Take Control electronic book series. In addition, he has collaborated on several Internet educational videos and has appeared in a variety of radio and TV programs, and the MacHeads documentary. His indefatigable support of the Macintosh community and commitment to helping individuals has resulted in numerous awards and recognition, including the MDJ Power 25 survey of industry insiders, the MacTech 25 list of influential people in the Macintosh technical community, and one of MacDirectory’s top ten visionaries. And how many industry figures can boast of being turned into an action figure? |
As an internationally beloved tech journalist (not to mention that he’s Chicago Sun Times’ Technology Columnist), Andy is insightful, funny, and always a pleasure to listen to. He appears on Leo Laporte’s podcasts, specifically MacBreak Weekly and TWiT. He’s also a regular on the MacNotables podcast, hosted by Chuck Joiner where he often is paired with fellow technology journalists. |
Angel Stone is a Technical Engineer for the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California, where she never says no to client’s technical request (well almost never). She loves working with people and sharing her passion for all things technical. Angel enjoys creating fun and interesting documentation. She also works with groups dedicated to bringing awareness to young women and girls about opportunities in technology and science. |
 Brad Hutchings is the founder of SOLARUG and a REALbasic / Real Studio user since 2001. He has written graphics and database plugins, and developed a SQLite based database server for use with Real Studio. Brad founded Hutchings Software in 1991. He remains General Partner of the business. He has developed numerous commercial products for Mac, Window, Linux, Android, PalmOS, and the web. Brad has a BS in Information and Computer Science (1992), and an MS in Information and Computer Science with a concentration in Theory of Algorithms and Data Structures (1994) from the University of California, Irvine. He lives in Mission Viejo, California. |
Brian Govatos is a Senior Trainer for Microsoft who has also been heavily involved in the Apple community since 2006. From 2006 to 2009, he was a Mac consultant for several small business clients in Las Vegas. With a passion for communicating ideas, Brian loves to discuss technology and to inspire users to make the most out of it! |
Brian is an experienced trainer who writes and edits tutorials on raywenderlich.com, as well as works regularly with Ray Wenderlich on apps. Previous to his work with Ray, Brian developed online games for ESPN.com and also spent time at Disney, building interactive sites for movies and television. |
Charles is the Director of Technology at 318, a Mac-first consultancy based out of Santa Monica, CA. While certified with Microsoft, Symantec and others, Charles spends much of his time writing about and consulting on OS X and iOS. Charles is the author of several books on OS X systems administration, including the Enterprise Mac Administrator’s Guide and the Enterprise iPhone and iPad Administrator’s Guide. Charles speaks at conferences routinely, this year including MacTech and MacSysAdmin. Charles has previously spoken at LinuxWorld, BlackHat, LayerOne and DefCon as well. |
CV Rao is the president and lead consulting engineer for TechOne Centre. TechOne Centre has been providing professional IT services to businesses, corporations and education since 1991. In addition to providing professional i.t. services, TechOne Centre is an Apple Authorized Service Provider and Apple Authorized Training Center. CV is an Apple Certified Systems Administrator and member of Apple Consultants Network. He was also an advisory council member of the ACN. |
Dave is currently one of the Technical Leads on Google Maps for iOS, and helps out directly or indirectly with several of Google’s iOS apps. Previously he worked on Chrome, Google Quick Search Box, Google Desktop, and a variety of open source projects. Dave started coding a long time ago on a Commodore Vic-20, and is happy he no longer has to save his code to a cassette tape drive. |
Hailing from Philadelphia, David has a unique background in both the creative and technical worlds. As a SysAdmin, he recently completed a seven-year stint as Mac SysAdmin at The Getty Center in Los Angeles. As an actor, he’s played roles on various popular TV shows including “The West Wing” and “Sesame Street”. As a theatre producer, he’s run “Fake Radio”, LA’s Premier Old-Time-Radio Comedy Troupe. And, as a writer, he is a contributor to MacTech Magazine, The Inertia, GigaOm, Message to America and has sold a screenplay to Fox Family films. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Mary and has been surfing for four years. |
Drew Furney serves as the Technical Director for NewStarship.com, a nonprofit organization devoted to the restoration of the Enterprise-D bridge from Star Trek: The Next Generation. NewStarship’s goal is to create a technology-advanced simulation of the Enterprise and its capabilities, to create exciting, educational, and inspirational experiences for all ages. Drew hails from Redmond, Washington, and is employed as an engineer for the Xbox LIVE team at Microsoft, focused on the architecture of the service delivery platform. |
Greg has created several tools used by Mac systems administrators around the world. Among those are Munki, a software deployment framework, Reposado, a platform-agnostic replacement for Apple’s Software Update service, and the “createOSXinstallerPkg” tool set. Greg is pleased to return to the MacTech Conference for the fourth year. |
Gwynne Raskind began programming when she was 3 years old using a TI-99/4A console. Since then, she’s been an avid Apple user and developer. Self-taught in all respects, she found a fascination with the deepest, darkest secrets of the machine, signing on in 2012 to write the second edition of Amit Singh’s landmark text, Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach. She runs her own tiny consulting company by night and works for Chaotic Moon Studios http://chaoticmoon.com by day. Her passion remains the internals of the systems with which she works, and the effort to share her understanding with those who want to learn. |
Jacqui has been covering Apple and its ecosystem since 2005, and has been studying it for much longer. In addition to Ars Technica, Jacqui’s work has been published in The Guardian, CNN, Wired, The Magazine, US Airways Magazine, and the e-book, “Unmasked.” Jacqui holds degrees in Computer Information Systems Technology and Interactive Multimedia Development, and worked as a back-end web developer for several years before shifting her focus to writing. Her other interests include gardening, cooking, running, cycling, urban sustainability, human rights, and various forms of activism. |
Jaimee’s background runs the gamut from a degree in metal sculpture to professional work as a Production Manager helping coordinate events like broadcast for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games and GUI design, front end development and information architecture in the web start-up days. She has taught management information systems, graphic and interface design at UNLV, partnered in a boutique animation/interactive shop called eatdrink serving some of the worlds largest brands and agencies, and she led the efforts behind the first iPad, iPhone and Android apps for Zappos in 2010/2011. Most recently she was the Director of User Experience at Black Pixel working on top secret iOS projects for Fortune 100 companies and promising startups. Today Jaimee is is a co-founder at Bests.com, a consultant and coach. In addition to writing and speaking, her work is focused in helping Fortune 500 companies, agencies, and startups with the growth and development of their internal design teams, and helping companies plot out their mobile application strategy and design. |
Jeanette Lee has over 20 years of experience in high-performance networking. She has been deeply involved in product sales, marketing and network architect positions with companies at the forefront of their fields such as Ruckus Wireless, Aruba Networks, and FORE Systems. Jeanette has written or co-authored dozens of technology papers on topics ranging from security to educational tutorials and best practices. |
James Rea is the founder of ProVUE Development, and has been developing Macintosh software since early 1984. Mr. Rea has been the lead developer and architect for ProVUE’s flagship RAM based database programs, OverVUE and Panorama. |
Joe is a RapidWeaver Add-on and Mac OSX (Cocoa) developer and enterprise management consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s also the developer of SafariTweet, the successful Safari Extension for Twitter. As an Enterprise Management Consultant for over 12 years, Joe has traveled across the world helping Fortune 500 companies architect, monitor, manage and maintain their vast IT infrastructures (he’s certified in both HP’s BSM Software and ITIL v3 business process and still actively consults from time to time). |
Kelly is a Bloggess, Talkcast Mistress for TUAW including coverage of Apple news and software, including hosting the weekly podcast. By day, Kelly is a Support Jedi for AgileBits wielding mad keyboard skills as a remote support tech, she answers questions about fantastic password management software 1Password. In addition, Kelly spends her time in social media, digital marketing, and evangelism on emerging technologies and social platforms. |
Luis is a Spanish software developer who moved to NYC two years ago. He joined ShopKeep POS, where he helped build both their backend and the their iPad app. Luis currently works for Pixable, as their Lead iOS Engineer. He has several years of experience with TDD and he loves contributing to the open source community. |
Marc Grayson has over 12 years of experience providing Macintosh support for corporate clients, small to medium-sized businesses, secondary schools, and higher-ed. His knowledge encompasses all Apple hardware, from servers to iOS devices. An interest in designing and building Apple networks and teams lead him to his current position at one of New York City’s leading hospitals as the Apple Product Manager. |
Maria is a creative Graphic Designer who likes to use her Illustration ability to communicate and present ideas with precision and clarity. Maria’s background consists of Consumer and Food Packaging Design, Publication, Corporate Identity Branding and Marketing Communications for Print and Web.Technology inspires her to push herself to learn more and grow as an Artist. When she discovered iBooks and realized how to publish an ebook she doveright in. She has published fixed layout children’s books through Mochi Dev on the iBookstore for the past 3 years, and the experience was somethingthat would have been nearly impossible in the past without cooperation with a major publishing house. Mochi Dev publishes books for authors without thehassle of confusing and limiting contracts. Authors provide their content and we do all the development, publishing and distribution. |
Matt Schnittker began his association with Walt Disney Animation Studios in 1998, and currently serves as a Manager in the Systems department. His first film contribution was on Disney’s ambitious 2000 animated feature, “Dinosaur,” and he most recently worked on the Studio’s upcoming feature release, “Frozen”. Schnittker has been involved in both traditional 2D, and fully digital 3D animation pipelines. He has contributed to several Disney patents and won an International 3D Society Lumiere Award for his work on 3D Pipelines. He currently is a manager in technology systems focusing on web and mobile software development. |
Michael Lynn is a Mac OS X and Windows desktop administrator in an Active Directory environment for a moderately sized government department in Washington state. His day job is spent wrangling third-party software and update deployments, workstation imaging, and utilizing commercial tools like Microsoft’s SCCM and open source projects like munki and reposado. In his free time he is a writer for AFP548.com, helps with administration and service hosting for the Mac enterprise ##osx-server channel on Freenode, and is a vocal advocate for the python language and its use in the administration and automation of all things OS X. He has enjoyed using Macintosh computers for over 20 years and loves getting the most out of iOS and OS X by writing scripts and applications in any number of languages – including (but not limited to) python, Applescript, bash, ruby, and Objective-C. His code contributions are credited and can be found in such projects as CreateUserPkg, munki, and Python for iOS. His current programming obsession is writing python-based administration helpers that can be loaded into iOS without jailbreaking with the use of Pythonista. When not dealing with computers, Michael loves spending time with his wife and 2 children, reading hard science fiction, and working on his house. |
Michele Titolo is a Senior Mobile Engineer for Prolific Interactive, a product-focused mobile agency with offices in San Francisco and Brooklyn, NY. She is a self-taught iOS developer, and has shipped over a dozen apps to the AppStore in her career. She enjoys debugging, refactoring, and finding elegant solutions to difficult problems. Outside of work, she a Core Team member of CocoaPods, an organizer for Women Who Code SF, and is an avid Doctor Who fan. |
Nick McSpadden is the Client Systems Manager at Schools of the Sacred Heart, San Francisco. He is in charge of the deployment of all client workstations and devices, including the faculty laptops and the school’s 1:1 iPad program. He’s used to working with different models for deployment and management of iOS devices alongside OS X devices. |
Pam possesses an enviable list of qualifications and certifications that attest to a lengthy and successful career as an IT professional and highly sought-after consultant. She may be best known for coining (and trademarking) the phrase It’s Always DNS. Originally an inside joke, the phrase now serves as a calling card for the insightful work of a consultant comfortable working at all levels of networking, applications and operating systems to produce exceptional results for a client list that ranges from Enterprise level to Medium and Small Businesses. It may not always be DNS, but Pam will always dig to find out what it is! |
Peter Hosey is a writer and independent software developer currently residing in Huntington Beach, California. |
Philippe is a Lead Developer at LightSpeed Retail, a Mac-based point-of-sales system. He previously worked on Corel Painter and Mac versions of many AAA video games. After successfully leading his local Cocoaheads user group for five years, he co-organized the critically-acclaimed NSNorth conference in Ottawa. |
Rich Trouton has been doing Macintosh system and server administration for over a decade and has supported Macs in a number of different environments, including university, government, medical research and advertising. His current position is providing support for Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Farm Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia. |
Rich splits his time between software development, teaching and technical writing. He has a strong background in Artificial Intelligence research (machine learning and probabilistic decision making), and software engineering. Rich previously worked as a computer scientist for a small R&D company, developing Java software focused on research and data analysis. Fortunately, he’s been able to put Java behind him. For the last three years Rich has focused on hands-on, freelance consulting work for the iOS platform. During that time, he has developed a broad range of iOS apps with an emphasis on casual gaming. Rich is also the author of iOS development, Creating iOS 5 Apps: Develop and Design (December, 2011, Peachpit Press) and Objective-C Boot Camp: Foundation and Patterns for iOS Development (July 2011, Peachpit Press). Additionally, he has written many articles for MacTech magazine over the last 6 years. Finally, Rich is one of the senior iOS and Objective-C instructors for About Objects. He has also taught iOS development classes for Future Media Concepts and MacAmerica. |
Richard Gaskin founded Fourth World Systems in 1994, offering software design and development services for desktop, mobile, and the Web. In addition to publishing its own productivity applications, Fourth World has partnered with clients to deliver custom in-house tools, online training systems, and vertical-market products used by a wide range of organizations, including AOL, the US Library of Congress, FedEx, thousands of small businesses, and hundreds of hospitals and universities around the world. |
Russell Poucher, President and Founder of Creative Resources Technology Group, takes pride in the knowledge that his firm is committed to providing strong technical support, customer service and product knowledge to customers. Prior to starting CRTG, Russell worked as a Macintosh System Administrator for several leading pre-press firms in Orange and Los Angeles Counties. He has numerous certifications in networking, security and system administration as they relate to the Macintosh environment. By combining his knowledge of the pre-press and printing industries, Russell is able to provide fully integrated technical solutions to his customers. In more than 17 years since opening its doors, CRTG has been heralded for its unique blend of technical expertise and customer service. Mr. Poucher, has been recruited by Apple, Adobe and Dell over the last 15 years to help with numerous initiatives. Those would include writing curriculum for Apple’s technical certification classes, presiding and managing an Apple Certified Training Center as well as being an Apple Certified Trainer. CRTG is contracted as an Apple Professional Services provider and put in charge of training Apple Consultants from Orange and San Diego counties |
Ryan Grimes has been working on Apple computers since the age of 5 when he took apart his Apple IIe to see how it worked. He graduated from Illinois State University in 1993 with a degree in Elementary Education. After teaching at the middle school level for a year, Ryan became the assistant technology coordinator for District 89 in Glen Ellyn, IL. He then went on to the role of Mac Genius at the Old Orchard Apple Store. In 2004 Ryan moved to Indianapolis where he started HoosierMac Consulting. His certifications include: ACSA – 10.6, ACTC – 10.5, ACSA – 10.4, ACTC 10.1 |
Samuel Marshall is an iOS and OS X Developer. He has been hacking on Apple Operating Systems since his first computer, a Macintosh LC II. Now a UX designer for iOS and reverse engineering wizard for OS X, he has been honing his programming skills on both platforms for the past 5 years. He is currently working with Chaotic Moon Studios. |
Samuel Keeley has been the Systems Director for United States Senator Mark Kirk since 2010, managing a large fleet of Macs in a secure enterprise environment. He also runs AFP548.com with Nate Walck, and can frequently be found in ##osx-server on Freenode, or on Twitter @keeleysam. |
Scott M. Neal has been utilizing and programming Apple products since first getting his hands on an Apple ][+ and later NeXTcube. Scott believes strongly in automation–getting devices to do your work the way you want to, with minimal effort and stress. Often, the real benefits of device automation are underutilized–Scott would prefer that you be empowered with how to automate (meaning script and program) devices YOURSELF to do what YOU want, not just what you may see yourself limited to by default application and service setups. With that goal specifically in mind, Scott co-created acmefoo, the Apple Technology focused training and development co-op, which offers training, courseware, and consulting on a peer level, without being tied to specific device sales or marketing. |
Tim Nyberg – Entrepreneur, Founder of the MacGuys+ Tim has worked with Apple products since 1984 with only a brief relationship with a Commodore-64. A member of the Apple Consultants Network since 1999, Tim’s certifications include: Network+, A+, Linux+, Apple’s Mobility, ACTC 10.4 through 10.7 as well as a LAN cabling certification. Tim received his B.S. in Industrial Technology with Minors in Business Administration, Journalism and Computer Science, two A.S. degrees (one in Computer Networking and Support and the other in General Studies). Tim is scheduled to start his MBA fall 2013. Tim has been self-employed most of his life, starting the MacGuys+ in 1999 after several years building his client base part time. The only thing Tim loves more than working on the MacGuys+ is going to school and learning. |
Tom Bridge is a founding partner at Technolutionary LLC, based in Washington DC. Technolutionary supports 400 users from small business to medium enterprise in a mix of Mac and PC, with a dash of Linux and a healthy serving of iOS devices. He lives in Brookland, DC, with his wife, Tiffany, their cats, Macro and Bokeh, and a baby to be named later. |
Tonya Engst co-founded TidBITS with Adam Engst back in 1990. TidBITS is an electronic newsletter and Web site about all things Macintosh that was the first Internet publication to have a sponsorship/advertising revenue model. Along with performing nearly every imaginable role involved in running TidBITS, Tonya has worked at Cornell University’s academic computer store (selling Macs, PCs, and NeXTs), done technical support at Microsoft, authored and co-authored several books, written oodles of articles for the likes of MacWEEK and Macworld, and edited many books about technology. She has consistently advocated for the person behind the personal computer, working to make technical writing easy to understand. In 2003, she found her dream job as editor-in-chief of TidBITS Publishing’s Take Control series of ebooks. |
