S P E A K E R S

David has over 15 years experience with the Rexx language and writing external function packages for Rexx.   He is the author of the OS/2 GammaTech Rexx Superset/2 product and many shareware and freeware packages.  

In addition, David has extensive experience in the open source community and is the project leader for three SourceForge projects: Mod_Rexx, GTKRxDlg, and OS2Linux.   David is also a developer on the OpenHPI project.  

He has worked on projects using everything from embedded processors up to large IBM mainframes.   He has over 20 years of software development experience using multiple architectures, development environments, tools, and operating systems.

Uwe Berger has worked for 25 years for IBM Germany.   He is familiar with operating systems, including PC systems, UNIX-like systems, and z/OS systems.   He started working with the Rexx project in the Böblingen Laboratory in 1997.   Over the years he was involved in Rexx for the Object REXX test environment, Object REXX web pages, Rexx product announcement preparations and customer support.   He concentrates on z/OS-related topics like Rexx on z/OS, as well as on the REXX Compiler and REXX Library.

Don's 30+ year IBM development career also included stints at training customer programmers, consulting on corporate technology focus teams, as well as shepherding customer development projects tying mainframes with client OO platforms (e.g. Smalltalk).   Don is currently on 'sabbatical' (read 'transitioning') out of IBM and, after taking some time to catch up on things left lying around, now looking into ways to 'pay back' on all of the (mainframe arena) experience.

Mike Cowlishaw has worked in both hardware and software design and is currently the leader of the IBM decimal arithmetic initiative.   He has long been interested in the human aspects of computing, including the Rexx and Java programming languages, color perception, neural networks, text processing, and decimal arithmetic.

He is an IBM Fellow, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and a Visiting Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Warwick, UK.

Chip has over forty years of programming experience in various low- and high-level languages.   He has used the Rexx language since 1980 and has written several major applications in Rexx, including a VM/CMS emulator for AIX.   He is active in the Rexx, Linux, and OS/2 computer users groups in the Research Triangle Park, and currently serves as President of the Rexx Language Association.

As a professional trainer, Chip teaches Rexx, IBM Assembler, and a slew of UNIX courses for commercial clients around the country.   An instrument-rated pilot, Chip flies his own plane to class locations, and helicopters for fun.

Rony G. Flatscher is the author of several small Rexx utilities (e.g. datergf2) and the external Rexx function package BSF4Rexx, which allows Rexx to be used from Java, and allows Rexx to use all of the Java functionality.

He works as a professor for Business informatics ("Wirtschaftsinformatik") at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration (Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien) and uses Open Object Rexx for teaching Business Administration and MIS students the object-oriented paradigm, as well as remote-controlling (automating) Windows and Windows end-user applications (e.g. MS Office, Open Office) as well as Java and Java applications.

Howard Fosdick has been an independent DBA consultant for 15 years. He founded the International DB2 Users Group with a few friends in a room; today the group holds conferences on three continents for its 3,000 members.  

Fosdick is the author of Rexx Programmer's Reference and over 100 technical articles, including a half dozen recent articles on Rexx scripting.

Virgil Hein is a Business Manager in an IBM organization responsible for managing mature technology (including softcopy technology, Office products, REXX, etc.) Virgil works at the RTP, NC lab where he manages a software organization, supporting multiple mature/growth products. He also funds and directs a team in Germany for the REXX product.

Virgil has been with IBM for thirty seven years with the past eight years in his current position. He moved to RTP in 1996 from the Westlake lab in Roanoke, Texas, where he worked on Office related products. Virgil has extensive software development background with twenty eight years experience as a business/product manager and ten years prior technical experience in software product development.

As product owner, Virgil is responsible for all facets of the mature technology products in his portfolio. This includes responsibility for strategy, business management, development, marketing, sales, service, and support. In this position, the main goals are focused on maintaining/increasing customer satisfaction, supporting customer efforts to migrate to follow-on solutions, and/or finding creative means of increasing mature/growth product revenue.

Mark Hessling was a member of RexxLA's initial Planning Committee for ooRexx and is the current Project Manager of the ooRexx project.   Mark has significant involvement in several Open Source projects including the Regina Rexx interpreter and THE (The Hessling Editor).

Mark is the author of several Rexx external function packages, such as Rexx/SQL, Rexx/DW, Rexx/gd, Rexx/CURL, Rexx/Curses, Rexx/Trans, Rexx/Wrapper.  Mark is also the current principal maintainer of The Regina Rexx Interpreter, Rexx/tk, and PDCurses.  In his spare time, Mark is the Webmaster for RexxLA, and is a Volunteer Rural Fire Fighter.

Lee Peedin, Vice President of Research & Development for Safe Data, Inc. (SDI) started using Rexx under OS/2 in 1997.   He has served as Vice President of the RexxLA since 2000.   Lee is part of a team of six Rexx programmers at SDI that provide telephony and web based Rexx applications primarily to the agriculture and home care/hospice industries.  

Lee was one of the first Windows Object Rexx users to take full advantage of the ActiveX/OLE interface.   In addition to using this interface with existing applications such as Microsoft Excel, Lee has developed an ActiveX PrinterObject that provides full printing capabilities to any scripting language.

Manfred Schweizer is Development Manager in the IBM Laboratory in Böblingen, Germany.   He is responsible for the development and service of the program products REXX Compiler, REXX Runtime Library and Object REXX for Windows, AIX, Linux, and zLinux.

He joined IBM in 1974 as a system engineer in the IBM sales organization.   After a couple of years he moved to IBM's application development laboratory, where he worked in different positions within software development, with the past seven years in his current position, responsible for REXX.

Bob Stark is a principal at ProTech Professional Technical Services in Pittsburgh, PA.   He started in data processing in the 1970's as a computer operator and FORTRAN programmer, using punch cards and OS/MVT.   In his 13 years at Legent Corporation, he worked on the Unicenter CA-MIM Resource Sharing and automation products, architecting the CA-AutoMate/MVS product in 1986, and the original Unicenter Automation Point product in 1988.  

He has trained thousands of REXX and Object REXX students and consulted in systems management at several dozen data centers.