Kate Gregory

Kate is a founding partner of Gregory Consulting Limited. She has almost three decades of scientific and engineering programming experience in a variety of programming languages including Fortran, PL/I, C++, Java, Visual Basic, and C#. In 1989 Kate finally started using the Internet, after hearing about it for years from friends who were already addicted. In early 1995 Kate co-authored a book on Usenet for Que, kicking off a writing career that now covers well over ten books on programming and related topics including XML, most recently Microsoft Visual C++ .Net 2003 Kick Start. She is also a standup instructor, teaching Microsoft .NET, XML, C++ programming, Object Oriented concepts, and UML for several training companies and selected clients. Kate's outstanding energy and knowledge of her subject matter have put her teaching in high demand around the world. Her recent programming work is almost exclusively in Visual C++ and Visual Basic.NET, on a variety of projects, and typically features Microsoft server-side technologies such as ASP.NET, Sharepoint, and Web Services. On the balance she strikes among the various kinds of work available to her, Kate says:

I absolutely love teaching and speaking, but could never do it four weeks a month -- I'd collapse from exhaustion. But more importantly, what would I have to speak about or to base my teaching on, if I never actually did any of this anymore? Writing books is a great way to get beta software and learn new techniques; programming contracts, web development contracts, and mentoring assignments let me put these techniques and software into harness and really find out what they are about. Then I can take that knowledge to a larger audience and really provide something of value. If Brian or our employees got all the programming and web work, I wouldn't be such a good trainer, speaker or writer. We make a point of sharing that work around.

Kate is also available as a speaker. She has been bringing her enthusiasm and technical expertise to Microsoft's Developer Days since 1997, and many times has toured Canada to deliver DevDays or other all-day developer-focused information for Microsoft Canada. Kate loves to show off new technologies to standing room-only crowds. Many of her Toronto talks have been filmed for use on the .NET show, airing on YTV. She also recorded six one-hour shows in-studio on Developing for Office 2003. Recent conferences include TechEd USA (2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006) TechEd Europe (2003 and 2006) Tech Ed Africa (2004, 2005, and 2006), VSLive Toronto, C++ Connections (with fellow speakers Herb Sutter and Bjarne Stroustrup) and DevTeach Montreal. Upcoming speaking engagements are on Kate's blog. In 2003 she was accepted to the INETA speaker's bureau and travels North America to speak to user groups. Since January 2002 she has been Microsoft Regional Director for Toronto and in January 2004 she was awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional designation for Visual C++. She was named an Outstanding Regional Director in 2004 for her press work and Regional Director of the Year in 2005.

Kate is a founding member of the Toronto .NET User Group the East of Toronto .NET Users Group, and the Kawartha Software Developers Association. She is also an adjunct faculty member of the Department of Computer Studies and Computer Science at Trent University, teaching Object Oriented Design and C++.  She wrote the Visual C++ column at CodeGuru, covering topics such as Managed and Unmanaged C++, migration and integration, interop, and more.

Kate can be reached at kate@gregcons.com or try the interactive FAQ if you have questions for Kate. Check out our Mentoring or Converting to .NET services if you'd like Kate to work with you one-on-one to get you working with new technologies.