Brent Laster
Senior Manager, R&D, SAS

Website | @BrentCLaster

Brent Laster is a senior manager of software development in the Research and Development Division at SAS, based in Cary, North Carolina, where he manages several groups involved with release engineering processes and internal tooling. He’s a global trainer, presenter, and author. He also serves as a resource for the use of open source technologies and conducts internal training classes in technologies such as Git, Gerrit, Gradle, and Jenkins, both in the US and abroad. In addition to corporate training, Brent creates and presents workshops for a wide variety of technical conferences. His workshops and informational sessions on open source technologies (and how to apply them) have been presented at such conferences as the Rich Web Experience/Continuous Delivery Experience, UberConf, OSCON, and others. Brent is the author of Professional Git from WROX and Jenkins 2: Up and Running and is a contributor to publications such as the No Fluff Just Stuff magazine and Opensource.com. Brent also conducts live web training courses from time to time. Brent’s passion is teaching in a way that makes difficult concepts relatable to all. He’s been involved in technical training for over 25 years and continues to seek out ways to show others how technology can be used to simplify and automate workflows.