Functional Summary & Bio

"I'm the specialist of technologies I don't know..."

Please note that I am no longer working as a freelancer. I am now the chief software architect of dotBlox, a Montreal-based consulting firm I co-founded, which specializes in business mobility solutions using Microsoft .NET. I will be updating my bio very soon to reflect this change.

Nickolas Landry works as an independent IT consultant and his primary role is as software systems architect. Typical services he provides include the evaluation and recommendation of technologies for candidate architectures, designing and documenting the high-level architectures of new enterprise systems, performing system audits, writing internal & public white papers, helping development teams in their process reengineering and coaching them at the technical level.

Nickolas specializes in distributed architectures and component-based development, Windows-based systems, the Microsoft .NET Framework, COM/DCOM/MTS/COM+, Windows DNA, and Internet & web-based systems. He has been a fervent advocate of component-based development ever since he discovered its miracles in 1995 and has chosen Visual Basic as his flagship development tool since the very first VB 1.0 in 1992.

Nickolas entered the publishing scene in 1998 as a technical reviewer for various software titles including IDG Books’ Solutions Architecture MCSD Study System and VB6 Database Programming for Dummies. He was also a technical editor on MCSE Windows NT Server 4 in the Enterprise for Dummies and MCSE TCP/IP for Dummies. He is now hard at work on his first book titled Component Development with Visual Basic.NET to be published by Wiley Computer Publishing, provides technical editing services, and is a consulting editor for the same publisher.

In 1997, Microsoft nominated Nickolas as MSDN Regional Director for Montreal, a position he held for nearly 3 years. As such, Nickolas joined a group of select individuals – less than 150 worldwide across 64 countries – who act as 3^rd-party advocates within their community and are responsible for hosting Microsoft Developer Days: the worldwide rollout event for Microsoft platform and developer products. In addition to DevDays, which he hosted in Montreal in 1998 & 1999, Nickolas hosted the Montreal PDC in 1998, was a featured speaker at COMDEX/Montreal in recent years and a guest speaker at user group meetings, in Universities and private seminars. Participation in the Regional Director program provides early access to the newest technologies under development in Redmond.

Throughout his 9 years of experience – many of those spent as a consultant – Nickolas was involved in over 20 software development projects in various fields, including Internet/intranet systems, MIS systems, customer relationship management & sales force automation, financial & insurance services, knowledge management, real-time systems, robotics & motion control, engineering & CAD, security & cryptography, fax & telephony, and education in math & sciences.

Nickolas has maintained a professional accreditation as MCSD since 1997 and was also a member of the advisory council of industry experts assembled by Microsoft to perform the revision of the MCSD credential which was introduced in 1998. In 2001, Nickolas added the IBM Certified Developer credential to his professional profile, specializing in XML and related technologies. In 2000, he joined the Worldwide Institute of Software Architects (www.wwisa.org) and is now a Founding Member of WWISA, an organization of like-minded professionals who work toward the establishment of the profession of software architecture, promote formal academic degrees in software architecture, and advance the software construction industry to new levels.

Nickolas Landry also enjoyed an entrepreneurial venture in the movie & entertainement industry as co-founder and VP Technologies of a small firm – Camera e-Motion – offering on-set VFX services through motion control. There he led the in-house software R&D efforts and had the opportunity to work on visual effects in several motion pictures such as “Driven”, “Pluto Nash” and “The Bone Collector”.

When he finally steps away from his computers, Nickolas dedicates every remaining minute of his day to his passion for classical music and opera. You can either find him nesting in an opera house for a performance of Wagner’s Ring, attending a college recital or shopping around to extend his ever-growing collection of CDs, DVDs & books on the subject.

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