Deborah Kurata is a professional software architect, designer, and developer. She has authored several books, including the Doing Objects in Visual Basic series (SAMS) and Doing Web Development: Client-Side Techniques (Apress), and is currently working on Doing Objects in VB 2005 (Addison-Wesley). She also writes for MSDN and CoDe magazine (www.code-magazine.com).

Deborah speaks at .NET user groups all over the country as a member of the INETA Speaker's Bureau (www.ineta.org) and at conferences, such as VSLive, DevDays, and TechEd. She enjoys participating in the local .NET community as a member of the Bay.NET board and co-chair of the East Bay.NET user group (www.baynetug.org). For her work in support of software development and software developers, she has been recognized with the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award.

Deborah is cofounder and President of InStep Technologies Inc. (www.insteptech.com), a professional consulting firm that focuses on turning your business vision into reality using Microsoft .NET technologies. InStep architects, designs, and develops object-oriented and service-oriented software for Windows and the Web. InStep provides premier software consulting services to the most successful companies in Silicon Valley, the San Francisco Bay area, and nationwide. Reach InStep at (925) 224-7280 or info@insteptech.com.