Chris Givens

Bio

Chris began his technology career in Tulsa, Oklahoma as a Computer Science major at the University of Tulsa. Chris was selected early in his college years by technology firm IBM. During his 5 year career at IBM, he was able to soak in the experiences of working with C-Level executives on major business problems and solving them with technology. After his term at IBM, Chris continued working with leading edge technology through several Washington State based startups, most notably focused on Gift and Loyalty Systems. At one such start up, Chris helped with on-going design and support of the Starbucks Express platform and later went on to be a co-architect of Subway's Gift and Loyalty system. This system currently runs a majority of the Gift and Loyalty transactions in the Quick Service Industry and processes several millions of transactions every day.

Chris started volunteering time back to the community in the form of teaching and it is here where he learned that giving back to the community and moving the world towards Trek-ism (the end of hunger and the furthering of Man Kind) is the best use of his time! Through Chris's work at Avanade, a joint venture between Microsoft and Accenture based in Seattle, Washington, he has contributed too many fundamental changes in the way students learn and absorb technology-based course materials and expanded his depth of knowledge on advanced programming topics like ACA.NET (a .NET SOA Implementation) and Code Generation techniques.

With educating others as a goal, Chris co-founded Architecting Connected Systems and through this company, he has devoted all his time and energy to building high-end courseware and delivering it to small and large corporations (IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Dell, and many more) around the world! The first technology that ACS has focused on is Microsoft's SharePoint. ACS has several advanced top selling SharePoint titles available for training companies to deliver around the world!

Chris continues to expand his knowledge of the world and its many cultures and looks forward to meeting new and exciting people that are changing the way the world and humans work!