We all started in the .NET community on our own different paths. Our common denominator was being welcomed by an amazing group of people willing to show us what .NET could do. We wanted to take a moment to recognize two outstanding .NET teachers.
Ockert Johannes du Preez
Visual Basic MVP Ockert du Preez (“Hannes”) has been actively engaged with our .NET community since 1998. He has been involved with CodeGuru since 2001 and with VBForums since 2003. He entered into the community in a similar way to a lot us, Hannes initially decided to join a forum because he had a problem that he couldn’t solve on his own. He found the answers to his problems, and after consistent involvement in the community, in 2007 he was appointed moderator of the VB.NET forums on CodeGuru. He has been writing articles for CodeGuru since 2005 and loves helping people properly understand the .NET Framework.
As a trainer in his home country South Africa, he provides sessions on Visual Basic 5 – 6, Visual Basic.NET, C, C++, C#, Java, HTML 4-5, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, VBScript, SQL and ASP.NET. When not teaching, Hannes stays active on the online-community side helping people in forums and continues to write articles based on Windows 8 / 8.1 development.
Richard Campbell
ASP.NET/IIS MVP Richard Campbell could be the poster child for doing good with technology. A 30-year high-tech veteran and one of the co-founders of Strangeloop Networks, Richard has traveled the world, co-hosting conferences in developing countries to talk with young developers about the opportunities that technology can offer them. His message: you don’t need to come to America to work. If you have electricity, an Internet connection and a laptop, you can start building a better world for yourself and others as a developer. Today, he serves as product evangelist, introducing the company’s unique story to advisors, investors, patent attorneys, beta-customer candidates, and potential employees.
He has consulted with a number of leading North American organizations; Barnes&Noble.com, Dow Chemical, Johnson & Johnson Health Care Services, Reuters, Subaru/Isuzu and the U.S. Air Force. In addition to speaking at conferences around the world, Richard is co-host of the .NET Rocks!, the Internet Audio Talk Show for .NET Developers (www.dotnetrocks.com) podcast and the host of RunAs Radio, the Internet Audio Talk Show for IT Professionals (www.runasradio.com) podcast. Follow Richard on Twitter @richcampbell.