Stephen Balkum
Stephen Balkum has been leading best-of-breed teams for over a decade. He knows the difference between a technology company and a business that needs enabling technology. By using modern software development methodologies in cooperation with the business, Stephen leads teams that stay in constant communication with the business, and thus, repeatedly deliver to the needs of the business.
Most recently, Stephen was Vice President of Technology with Callaway Golf Interactive, formerly FrogTrader, Inc. Stephen joined FrogTrader while it was in startup mode and grew its technology department from the launch of Callaway Golf Pre-Owned, through the company's purchase by Callaway Golf, and then the launch of Shop.CallawayGolf.com.
Prior to Callaway Golf Interactive, as 212 Studios' Director of Engineering, Stephen Balkum led the development of 212's patent-pending Storekeeper System. Storekeeper's use of Balkum algorithms employing AI technology constituted a revolution in DB Management and Reporting Systems. Previously, Stephen led the development of the award-winning Jack Nicklaus 5 containing the most realistic 3-dimensional characters and scenery ever developed for a golf simulator.
Stephen was a member of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Texas focusing on infrared spectroscopy research. With data from McDonald Observatory and the Kuiper Airborne Observatory, he developed algorithms to reduce 10's of thousands of images of the same stellar object to a single, super-high resolution image.
John Teague
John has been developing .Net applications since version 1.0. While most of his work has been developing web applications, he tries not focus his attention on specific frameworks or applications stacks. Instead, he focuses on building applications using solid object oriented design principles and patterns with a behavior driven approach.
John have worked for Fortune 500 companies and small 3 person startups, in a variety of industries including e-commerce/retail, medical and financial. He has worked on building scalable high performance e-commerce websites and international B2B web applications.
He is very active in the .Net and Agile community in Austin, TX. He organized the 2008 Austin Code Camp Conference and presented several sessions as well. John has also presented private and public training courses on Ajax, Object Oriented Design Principles, and Test Driven Development.