Microsoft PDC is upon us again for the first time in three years. There is a packed 5-day agenda running from Sunday October 26th through to Thursday October 30th.
I always get excited about going away with Red Gate. It’s such a big change from the work that we all do in the office. Much as I like being in contact with people overseas I can’t help but relish the time away from my PC. The chance to meet so many new people, and the opportunity to catch up with people that we only get to see face-to-face maybe once a year at most is really refreshing for developers, tester, sales and marketing alike.
I wanted to take a minute to introduce you to the Red Gate team that will be jetting over to Los Angeles, CA to get involved in the action next week, and to encourage you to come and talk to us!
First up is our beloved Head of Development, Tom Harris. Tom was the third Red Gate employee, which means he’s been with the company for nine years! He was the brains behind the original version of ANTS Profiler and has since turned his hand to Mixology – the art of cocktail creation. He is a mojito connoisseur and will leave LA knowing where to go to find the best one.
Second in line is Alice Easey, Test Engineer Extraordinaire and subject of the best staff photo on our company intranet. Alice has a plethora of interesting jobs on her CV, the highlight for me being a muse for a comics’ artiste … dressed up as a dinosaur. Brilliant.
Next we have one of my favourite sales people, Angus Chudleigh. Angus takes care of the Northern regions of the United States, so if you’re based in Vermont you may well have been in touch with him. A keen golfer and wine-lover (although not before tee-time!), he used to work as a Deputy Manciple (wine steward) for a Cambridge University college. If you’ve got any Californian recommendations for him, stop by the booth and make his day.
Charles Brown joined Red Gate as a Product Manager earlier this year. If you ever want to relax with a cup of tea and the crossword from the Guardian newspaper, make sure you are there before Charles and the rest of the Product Management team. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve narrowly missed the opportunity to exercise my cerebral capacities because I was too slow! The upsetting part is, he only uses the crossword to warm up his synapses before moving on to the cryptic crossword!
For all those motorcycle enthusiasts at PDC, you’ll find a friend in Greg Tillman our .NET Sales team leader. One of Greg’s most prized possessions is his Suzuki GSXR 600 (apparently the ‘600’ makes all the difference!). Greg is going to be taking a road trip to visit a few of the sights around California and Nevada after the conference. If you have any top tips drop by and let him know.
Ben Hall is one of our SQL tools project leads, and like all true developers and Simple Talk authors, he is a big fan of beer. He was awarded his C# MVP status on July 2nd 2008 for "extraordinary efforts in Visual C# technical communities during the past year." Pretty impressive. But when you bear in mind that Ben lives, eats and breathes software development it’s difficult to see why he wasn’t nominated sooner!
Finally there’s me. I’m Rachel, and I am responsible for community marketing at Red Gate, which is a corporate way of saying I look after Red Gate’s presence at conferences and community events. Resident gossip queen and purveyor of more than one embarrassing trade show photograph of Red Gate staff, I’ll be the one on the stand who can’t stop talking and would very much like you to stop by for a chat.
The Red Gate PDC team will be at booth numbers 410 and 412. Let us know if you’re going to be there and leave us your messages below.
We’re looking forward to seeing you!