Meet the Trainers

Ben (CISSP, MVP, MCP, MCT) is a well-known author and enterprise architect specializing in knowledge management, ECM and collaborative technologies. Ben is a Managing Partner at Summit 7 Systems, a company focused on the next generation of Microsoft products, and has been awarded the Most Valuable Professional (MVP) by Microsoft eight years in a row. Ben's philosophy is that the best solutions are inspired by the best ideas and he encourages his team to continuously generate and share ideas. His numerous publications embody his philosophy.

He is a principal author of server books on SharePoint and collaborative technologies.He enjoys writing and often speaks at user groups and private engagements.

Ben has over twenty years of experience designing, managing, implementing and securing datacenter IT solutions. He has worked primarily with the federal government including U.S. Army, Verteran's Administration and NASA.

Jay is quickly becoming a well-known speaker and educator and has presented SharePoint sessions to local user groups, SharePoint Saturday events and conferences, including sessions at the SharePoint Best Practices Conference 2010. Jay received two degrees from Virginia College in Huntsville; an Associates in Applied Sciences – Network Engineering and a Bachelors in Management Information Systems. He also holds multiple certifications from Microsoft including an MCSE with a specialization in Security and MCTS in WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007.

Christina Wheeler is a highly respected SharePoint consultant who is committed to sharing her knowledge. Christina has 10-years of training experience in SharePoint and Office 365 development, administration and branding. As a part-time Trainer for Mindsharp, Christina has a passion for enabling people to build better business solutions.

Training and implementing effective IT solutions are two different things. Christina has built solutions in hundreds of SharePoint farms and Office 365 tenants. Her consulting experience includes graphic design, Web development, and custom development who also specializes in Web Content Management and Business Intelligence platforms including Power BI. Christina brings her real-world experience to the classroom so that she can answer your questions.

Christina is a regular speaker at industry conferences in the United States and Europe. Her publications include contributions as the technical editor of "SharePoint 2007 Developer’s Guide to Business Data Catalog," co-author of the "SharePoint 2010 Field Guide," and co-author of “SharePoint 2013 Inside Out.” Follow her blog at http://www.sharepointwheeler.com/

Matthew has specialized in Microsoft administration since 2002 and has more than 15-years of SharePoint and Office 365 (O365) training experience. His professional credentials include the coveted Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) and the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) for Productivity and SharePoint. Additionally, he earned the Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA) for Office 365. Mathew’s speaks extensively at technology conferences and offers great IT Pro advice on his blog at AbleBlue. Mathew lives in Austin, Texas, where he is an accomplished cook and bartender. In his spare time Matt spends as much time with his wife as his dog will allow.

Steve is well traveled spending most of last 25 years traveling the world for the companies he owns and worked with including achieving his first qualification with Microsoft technologies on NT 4 and IIS 3 in New Delhi India in 1998 whilst based there for 3 years working for an Engineering company. Steve has specialized with Microsoft’s Infrastructure systems since 1996 and been involved in many Microsoft Beta programs which started with Windows 2000, Exchange 2000 and SharePoint 2001.

The last 10 years however has seen a majority of his time with SharePoint and developing and training SharePoint courses and involved in every SharePoint Beta program to date. Much of his time today is spent working on building product and education solutions for companies wanting to make the most out of today’s collaboration products including the new Support+ Application for on demand training and support within Office 365 and On-Prem / Azure cloud hosted applications.

Eric Shupps is the founder and President of BinaryWave, a leading provider of enterprise software solutions for SharePoint. Eric has worked with SharePoint Products and Technologies since 2001 as a consultant, administrator, architect, developer and trainer. He is an advisory committee member of the Dallas/Ft. Worth SharePoint Community group and participating member of user groups throughout the United Kingdom.

Eric has authored numerous articles on SharePoint, speaks at user group meetings and conferences around the world, and publishes a popular SharePoint blog at http://www.sharepointcowboy.com

Chris (BSc), has been working with SharePoint for 6 years and had been training SharePoint for nearly 3 years.

Chris trains power end users with a long term goal of training administrators. Whilst training and studying SharePoint, Chris also manages the product development for our support+ solution, contributing content for the product and finding ways to improve its functionality. He has worked on many projects with businesses involving large scale SharePoint implementation and has written courses for the new Nintex and SharePoint 2013 products. Chris has also worked alongside Penelope Coventry and Olga M Londer as a technical editor for the Step by Step Microsoft SharePoint 2013 book.

Providing IT support and ad-hoc training for his previous company, Chris has a good knowledge on a variety of Microsoft systems, SAP, Java products and has qualifications in both desktop and networking. With experience working in both a call center and also in a IT systems and infrastructure support role, Chris has extended knowledge on supporting SharePoint after it has been deployed. Chris aims to go back to his roots by teaching SharePoint administration and working alongside other SharePoint administrators.

Chris lives in Leicester, UK and has an enthusiastic and entertaining approach to training.

Gary (MCSD, MCSD.NET, MCSE, MCDBA, MCTS and MCT) provides consultancy, custom solutions, training and mentoring on a range of products including SharePoint, BizTalk, SQL Server, Web and .NET development. He has delivered the full range of SharePoint 2007, 2010 and 2013 courses for Combined Knowledge and Mindsharp for the past 8 years.

Gary has also spoken about SharePoint at a number of User Groups and has contributed courseware modules for both Microsoft and Mindsharp. He is currently writing SharePoint 2013 courseware and developing apps for SharePoint 2013.

Gary strikes a balance between consultancy and training and has been instrumental in implementing custom solutions using various technologies such as SharePoint, InfoPath, Workflow, ASP.NET, MVC, HTML5, JavaScript, Umbraco, WordPress and Orchard.
Custom SharePoint solutions include:
• Intranet branding and customization
• Document management and policies
• Records management including custom email routing and auditor control
• Business Data Management and Reporting using custom workflows and PowerPivot reporting
• Highly customised Search with custom refinements and links opening individual document pages