William Assaf ,MCSE, is a Microsoft SQL Server consultant and manager and blogs about SQL at sqltact.com. William has been a designer, database developer, and admin on application and data warehousing projects for private and public clients. He has helped write the last two generations of Microsoft SQL Server certification exams since 2012 and has been a Regional Mentor for PASS since 2015. William and fellow author Patrick Leblanc worked together on SQL Server 2012 Step by Step (Microsoft Press, 2015), having met at and together led the SQL Server User Group and SQLSaturday in Baton Rouge. William and his high school sweetheart enjoy travelling to speak at SQLSaturdays around the south, and hope to see to see you there, too. Randolph West is a Data Platform MVP from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He is coorganizer of the Calgary SQL Server User Group and Calgary SQLSaturday.
He speaks at various conferences around the world, and acts on stage and screen. Randolph specializes in implementing best practices, performance tuning, disaster recovery, and cloud migrations, through his company Born SQL. You can read his blog at bornsql.ca. Sven Aelterman started with SQL Server when he first deployed version 2000 in a failover cluster scenario. Since then, he has worked as IT manager, principal consultant, and IT director. He currently serves the Trojans (students) of Troy University as a lecturer in information systems in the Sorrell College of Business and as director of IT for the College. In addition, he is cloud software architect for Sorrell Solutions, a business services nonprofit through which Trojans can gain real-world business and IT experience.
In a fledgling attempt to give back to the community, he has spoken at many SQLSaturdays and code camps in the southeastern United States since 2005. He spoke about SSIS 2012 at Microsoft TechEd 2011. In 2012, he coauthored a book dedicated to SQL Server FILESTREAM. His involvement with Microsoft Azure resulted in the organization of two Global Azure Bootcamp events at Troy University. Sven blogs about a variety of Microsoft technologies at svenaelterman.wordpress.com and tweets and retweets about technology @svenaelterman. Mindy Curnutt , an independent consultant, is 4X Microsoft Data Platform MVP and Idera ACE.
She has been actively involved in the SQL Server Community for more than a decade, presenting at various User Group Meetings, SQLPASS Summits, as well as SQLSaturdays across North America. For two years, she was a team lead for the SQLPASS Summit Abstract Review Process and since 2015 has served as one of the three SQLPASS Summit program managers. She was a SME for a couple of the SQL 2012 and 2014 Microsoft SQL Server Certification Exams and helped to author SQL Server 2014 Step by Step. Mindy currently serves on the board of directors for the North Texas SQL Server User's Group. She also serves as a mentor to others, helping to educate and promote scalable and sustainable SQL Server architecture and design. She is passionate about Data Security, Accessibility, Usability, Scalability and Performance. You can follow Mindy at her blog, mindycurnutt.com and on Twitter where she's known as @sqlgirl.