WOPR Organizers

The current organizers are Eric Proegler, Paul Holland, Mais Tawfik Ashkar, Andy Hohenner, and Henrik Rexed.

Other people have served previously as Organizers, Advisors, or Volunteers. WOPR would not exist without contributions from all of these people.

Eric Proegler @3r1c_p (WOPR Organizer, Frequent Content Owner) is a Staff Infrastructure Engineer for Credit Karma, architecting Pipelines, Metrics, and Automation Frameworks. Eric previously worked as senior testing leader, was the product owner for CloudTest, and led a performance testing practice. He has also led performance engineering for a software vendor, consulted as a performance tester and technology architect, and has taught performance testing across the world. He has presented at CAST, TestBash, Agile, PNSQC, CMG Impact, STARWEST, Jenkins World, Quality Sense Conf, Oredev, Nordic Testing Days, Romanian Testing Conference, Yerevan Testing Days, CodeFest, and STPCon. He is a trained LAWST-style facilitator, and has facilitated at several WOPR and CAST conferences.
Andy Hohenner @hohenner (WOPR Organizer) is currently a QA engineer at Enphase Energy in Petaluma CA.
Paul Holland @PaulHolland_TWN (WOPR Organizer, WOPR Facilitator since WOPR3) is a principal consultant at Testing Thoughts (his own company based in Florida, USA), and PLATO Testing (based in Canada). He has been teaching, performing hands-on testing and test management since 1995. Paul has been consulting and delivering training since 2009. He is one of five instructors of the Rapid Software Testing course (created by James Bach and Michael Bolton) through Satisfice(www.satisfice.com). Paul has delivered training to companies such as Intel, Intuit, Progressive Insurance, HP, RIM, LiquidWeb and General Dynamics. Paul has facilitated over 100 peer workshops and conferences around the world.
Henrik Rexed @Hrexed (WOPR Organizer, WOPR 29 Content Owner) is a Cloud Native Advocate at Dynatrace. Prior to Dynatrace, Henrik worked as a Partner Solution Evangelist at Neotys, delivering webinars, building prototypes to enhance the capability of NeoLoad. He has been working in the performance world for more than 15 years, delivering projects in many contexts, including extremely large Cloud testing on the most demanding business areas such as trading applications, Video on Demand, sports websites, etc. Henrik Rexed Is also one of the producers of the Youtube channel PerfBytes and the owner of the Youtube Channel IsitObservable.
AshkarMais Tawfik Ashkar @MaisTawfik (WOPR Organizer and Project Manager, WOPR21 Content Owner) is an Independent Performance Engineering Consultant guiding clients to delivering faster, more scalable and reliable applications. She is focused on performance engineering challenges, evolving technologies, delivering training, and helping her clients implementing innovative solutions around performance practices. She is experienced with leading and implementing performance engineering and data analytics solutions at the enterprise level for highly complex, integrated, and distributed systems. Previously, Mais was a Performance Engineering manager and lead with Pearson Learning Technologies (formerly eCollege), leading their Denver and offshore teams, and overseeing performance and scaling solutions. Mais has over 10 years of experience in the software engineering industry in roles including software performance engineer, test automation engineer, manager and consultant. Mais is an experienced speaker and teacher, a SQUAD board member and an organizer of the Workshop on Performance and Reliability [WOPR].

Previous Organizers
Ross Collard (WOPR Co-Founder, Organizer Emeritus) headed Collard & Company, a Manhattan-based consulting firm which specializes in software quality. A Google search on his name reveals over 100 citations for speeches at major conferences and papers published on software testing. Ross held computer science degrees from Caltech and Stanford, and taught for UC Berkeley and Harvard. His consulting and training clients included ADP, Alcatel, American Express, Anheuser-Busch, Apple, AT&T, Banamex, Bank of America, Baxter Healthcare, Bechtel, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Boeing, British Airways, the CIA, Ciba Geigy, Cisco, Citibank, Computer Associates, Dell, EDS, Exxon, General Electric, Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve Bank, Ford, Hewlett-Packard, Hughes Aircraft, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, JP Morgan Chase, McGraw Hill, Merck, Microsoft, Motorola, NASA, Nortel, Novell, Oracle, Procter & Gamble, Prudential, SIAC, Siemens, State Farm Insurance, Swiss Bank, the U.S. Air Force, and Verizon.
Scott Barber, @sbarber (WOPR Co-Founder) is the CTO of PerfTestPlus, Inc. PerfTestPlus, Inc. is a software testing consultancy that focuses on technical and otherwise challenging software testing, mentoring, methodology development and effective test resource utilization. Scott's particular specialties are testing and analyzing performance for complex systems, developing customized testing methodologies for individual organizations, embedded systems testing, testing biometric identification and security systems, group facilitation and authoring instructional materials. Scott is the author of the widely recognized article series' "User Experience, not Metrics" and "Beyond Performance Testing." Scott has presented at such venues as STPCon, WSE, WOPR, AWTA, PNSQC, StarEAST, the Rational User's Conference, SQE Testweek, local users’ groups, and was invited to be a guest lecturer at MIT based on his article "Automated Testing for Embedded Devices". Additionally, he has numerous papers and articles published through IEEE, Better Software Magazine, Software Test and Performance Magazine, IBM Developerworks and numerous informational websites. He is a member of the Association for Software Testing, IEEE, American MENSA, the Context-Driven School of Software Testing and is a signatory to the Manifesto for Agile Software Development.
Roland Stens @rstens (WOPR Organizer) is an independent consultant based in Vancouver, Canada, who specializes in QA and testing - particularly performance and robustness testing. His broad background in programming, system analysis, database and network management, testing and project/test management enables him to relate to all the issues that play during the software development lifecycle. As an active participant in various forums and workshops related to performance testing, he shares his insights with other testers to help expand their knowledge and vision of the tools and testing processes.
Robert Sabourin @RobertASabourin (WOPR Organizer and Content Owner for WOPRs 8 & 19), amibug.com has been involved in all aspects of development, testing and management of software engineering projects since graduating from McGill University in 1982. He is the Director of Research and Development at Purkinje Inc, a Montreal based International firm specialized in developing medical software. Robert was the Manager of Software Development at Alis Technologies for over ten years. He has built several successful software development teams and champions the implementation of "light effective process" to achieve excellence in delivering timely commercial quality software solutions.

Robert has been the author of several papers and presentations relating to software development at a number of international conferences. Robert is a frequent guest lecturer at McGill University where he relates theoretical aspects of Software Engineering to real world examples and demonstrations.

Robert has completed a short book illustrated by his daughter Catherine. "I Am a Bug" ISBN 0-9685774-0-7 uses the style of a children's book to explain elements of the software development process in a fun easy to read format.
Dan Downing @dandowning_ma (WOPR Organizer, WOPR12 Content Owner, Co-Content Owner WOPR17) is a co-founder and Principal Consultant at Mentora Group, Inc., a testing and managed hosting company. Dan is the author of the 5-Steps of Load Testing, which he taught at Mercury Education Centers, and of numerous presentations, white papers and articles on performance testing. He teaches load testing and over the past ten years has led over 200 performance projects on applications ranging from eCommerce to ERP with companies ranging from startups to global enterprises. He is a regular presenter at STAR, HP Software Universe, Software Test Professionals, and Workshop on Performance and Reliability (WOPR) conferences.
Greg McNelly @gregmcnelly (WOPR Organizer, WOPR16 Content Owner) Greg McNelly is currently an in-house software testing consultant at Progressive Insurance in Cleveland, Ohio. He advises management on the testing-related aspects of enterprise-level IT initiatives, coaches testers and test leads, and supports teams faced with critical, challenging testing problems. Greg is a programmer turned tester, with roughly twenty years of experience developing programs that have helped people insure automobiles, predict laboratory test results, precision-align machinery, process payrolls, practice math facts and, of course, test software. Consequently, his work in the field of software testing began around 2003 as a fascination with test automation, the hazards of which led him to a profound respect for the cognitive challenges of software testing, and for those who do it well.
John Meza (WOPR Organizer) works for ESRI.
Jude McQuaid works for Salesforce.

Advisors, Contributors, and Volunteers
James Bach @jamesmarcusbach (WOPR14 Content Owner, WOPR1 and 2 Facilitator and Advisor) www.satisfice.com is the author of Lessons Learned in Software Testing, consults and teaches in rapid software testing and test automation. James has served as both an advisor to the organizers on LAWSTly style workshop issues and logistics and as the facilitator for both WOPR1 and 2, in addition to being the content owner for WOPR14.
Cem Kaner @DrCemKaner (WOPR Advisor) www.kaner.com is currently a Professor of Software Engineering at Florida Institute of Technology where he instructs and researches in the areas of software engineering, primarily software testing, software metrics, and computer law & ethics. Cem holds a Ph.D. in experimental psychology (McMaster University), a law degree (J.D. Golden Gate University) and an undergraduate degree focused in mathematics and philosophy (Brock University). Cem has been a programmer, software development manager, tester, test manager, writer, technical publications manager, director (managing primarily the writing and test groups), software salesperson, and a consultant in many of those areas. In his spare time, Cem has managed to author “Lessons Learned in Software Testing” with James Bach, & Bret Pettichord (John Wiley & Sons, 2002), “Bad Software: What To Do When Software Fails” with David Pels ( John Wiley & Sons, 1998) and the best selling book on software testing in the history of the field “Testing Computer Software (2nd Ed.)” with Jack Falk, & Hung Quoc Nguyen (International Thomson Computer Press, 1993)
Doug Hoffman @dhoffman0000 (WOPR Advisor/Volunteer) www.softwarequalitymethods.com has attended (at last count) 30 LAWSTly style workshops and been kind enough to share the lessons and observations of that experience with WOPR organizers. Doug has thirty years experience as a consultant, manager, and engineer in the computer and software industries. Twenty years experience in evaluating, creating, and turning around software quality departments in medium and small startup companies. Experience with corporate, quality assurance, development, manufacturing, and support functions and procedures. Management Consultant, Course Developer, Instructor, Author, and Project Manager for SQM, LLC. Adjunct Instructor for the University of San Francisco. Instructor for UCSC-Extension, ASQ-CSQE, ASQ-CQM, ISO 9000 Auditor. Chair of ASQ's Santa Clara Valley Section (0613). Founding member, Past Chair, and current Treasurer of the Santa Clara Valley Software Quality Association (SSQA), a task group of the ASQ. Program Chair for the Third International Conference on Software Quality (ASQC Software Division). US Program Chair for the First World Congress on Software Quality (ASQC Software Division). Conference Chair for the Third SSQA Software Quality Conference. Publisher of dozens of papers and speaker at numerous conferences.
Linda Hamm (WOPR Advisor) is a Systems Developer at SAS Institute Inc. in Cary, North Carolina. She has worked in various software development and testing positions for the past 15 years. Linda holds a BS in Computer Science from North Carolina State University. She has extensive experience with ISO and CMM audits and software development process improvement. She is the author of the SQE article "An Effective Technique for Verifying Software Design". She spends most of her free time with her wonderful husband Jeff and daughter Jessica.

The following people have assisted us in numerous ways organizing our meetings:

Please suggest any other contributors we should recognize.

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