There are many people behind the success of the Intel® Developer Zone. Join us in celebrating their contribution.

Intel® Black Belt Software Developers

Intel® Black Belt Software Developers are members of our communities known for their technical expertise, for sharing knowledge and for collaborating to make our communities stronger. This is our new title designed to recognize and reward these members for contributing their experience and expertise to the communities. This title also recognizes members for their time and effort to help make the Intel Developer Zone a valuable developer resource. Read more here...

	Raf Schietekat currently works in Brussels, Belgium. After doing some document processing using SGML (from which XML was derived), Raf got interested in CORBA and wrote and commercially used his own implementation. Generally, he enjoys exploring various programming technologies in different environments, including finance and now aviation. Raf contributed several proposals to Intel Threading Building Blocks, ranging from a new concurrent_hash_map version to enhanced atomics features and portability.
	Dmitriy V'jukov works as a C/C++ software development engineer, focused mainly on client/server systems and network servers. His fields of expertise are advanced C++, systems architecture, socket I/O, agent-oriented systems and everything related to multi-threading and multi-core. In his words he likes the software industry because it gives him the rare opportunity of unrestricted creation. Spare time if any is spent on synchronization of algorithms, programming models for multi-core and multi-threading verification tools, time with his wife and daughter or snowboarding and listening to Jamaican music. Check out Dmitriy's blog on the Intel Developer Zone.
	Jugoslav Dujic has been in the field of software for electric utilities (Distribution Management Systems) for 12 years, working mostly on one product line, DMS Software, That uses classic desktop technologies: Fortran for calculations, Delphi for GUI, C/C++ for services, Oracle and Sybase for the database. In his words he still develops software "for my soul", like the Xeffort Fortran GUI library, and miscellaneous Fortran bits and pieces, collected on his home page www.xeffort.com. When not busy at work, he like the bridge game, loves to travel when the time permits.
	Jim Dempsey began programming in college in 1968. Jim has an experience spanning stints with reputed companies such as Digital Equipment Corp, EDUCOMP (where he produced his first operating system ETOS). Jim started his first company (Network-Systems Design, Inc.) in 1978 as an OEM of Digital Equipment Corporation, where he wrote a new and improved operating system (8-way Virtualization system with networking). Subsequently he authored a PC version of the TECO editor and automated program optimization tools. In 1993 he formed a company TAPEDISK with one of his customers who wanted to incorporate some of his technology into a product that was under development. In 2003 he went back to a "dream" area of interest from 1968. That is in the feasibility of making a space elevator. He conceived and patented what will (hopefully) become a 2nd generation space elevator which consists of a system dynamic tethers (as opposed to the static design of the 1st generation space elevator as traditionally conceived).
	Igor M. Levicki is a software engineer from Belgrade, Serbia. He has an in- depth knowledge of C, C++, and assembler for IA-32 and EM64T platforms including MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, and SSE4.2 instruction set extensions. He is most proficient in code optimization, image, video, and audio processing as well as threading and GPGPU programming.
	Gastón Hillar is an independent IT consultant, and a freelance author. He has extensive experience in parallel programming and multi-core. Gaston has been a phenomenal contributor to the Intel Developer Zone enthusiastically sharing his experience and expertise in blogs, forums, videos and even on Intel Software TV! Packt Publishing has recently published his book C# 2008 and 2005 Threaded Programming: Beginner's Guide.
	Asaf Shelly is a hardware and software developer experienced with 8086, 8051, kernel programming, ASP.NET*, Windows* UI and Windows* Embedded. Asaf is a Microsoft* MVP - Digital Media since 2001 and is managing the parallel computing group in LinkedIn. Asaf has presented ".NET* Parallel Extensions" and "Parallel Programming for Embedded" at Microsoft TechEd events in 2008 and 2009. In 2007 Asaf accepted Wrox Publishing's challenge to write the book "Expert One on One Visual C++." Asaf has created the website AsyncOp.com, dealing with parallel computing, due to demand by people attending his classes. With over 20 days of unique presentation material in the area of parallel computing, Asaf is a prominent leader in Israel.
	Javier Caceres. A Project & Product Manager working on Colombian industry since 2002. He worked on many challenging projects like Windows Kernel Mode Drivers, Intel AMT SOL (Serial Over Lan) / IDER (IDE redirection), Yellow Pages Search Engines, Windows CE Asset Tracking Agents, Workflow designers, RFID capturing applications, DirectX game engines and so on. He also won development contests such as Microsoft Imagine Cup National Finals. He has been supporting the Intel community since 2008.
	Dr. Nagaraja Shamsundar He served 30 years in the US as a college professor (University of Houston) before retiring in 2005. Before coming to the US he worked for two years at Tata Consulting Engineers (Mumbai) and Engineers India (Delhi). Dr. Shamsundar continues to be interested in programming languages, numerical algorithms and applied mathematics. His other activities are bicycling, woodworking and Carnatic music (flute).
	Chris Skaggs Chris Skaggs is the Founder, CCO/CTO of Soma Games. Based in Newberg, OR, Skaggs is a 12-year veteran in the creation of B2B and B2C technology solutions including five years in the mobile technology space. The Soma Games development team, Code-Monkeys, builds a variety of custom apps for iOS*, Android*, BlackBerry® and the Intel AppUp® center, as well as the web-based backend software for a wide range of web and mobile apps. Chris has been an active Intel AppUp® developer and inspirational thought leader at industry events and online blogs. He has appeared as a technology consultant with Intel, Mobile Portland, The Software Association of Oregon plus several universities and business organizations. On the side Chris is a Speaker with Boot Camp Northwest (www.bootcampnw.com), and enjoys martial arts.
	You Jing (goes by Emi You) You Jing has had 10+ years of extensive hands-on working experience in building and maintaining the online community around mobile and handheld products, a well as an established figure within the community. During You Jing's spare time, she likes running, reading, travel, cooking, all geek gadgets and handheld devices.

Black Belt Software Developers (Academic Community)

	Dr. Matthew Wolf is a member of the Center for Experimental Research in Computer Systems (CERCS) at Georgia Tech. His position is as a Research Scientist in the School of Computer Science of the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology, as well as being a joint appointment with Oak Ridge National Laboratory. His background in Mathematics and computational Physics as well as High Performance Computing shapes much of his research interest. His research targets high performance, scalable applications, particularly focused on I/O and adaptive event middlewares. His work has been sponsored by NSF, DoE, Oak Ridge, Intel, HP, and Cisco, among others.
	Thomas Murphy is a professor of Computer Science at Contra Costa College (CCC). He is chair of the CCC Computer Science program and is director of the CCC High Performance Computing Center. Thomas has worked with the National Computational Science Institute (NCSI) since 2002. He is one of four members of the NCSI Parallel and Distributed Working group, which presents several three to seven day workshops each year, helps coordinate the SC07-09 Education Program, and helps develop the Bootable Cluster CD software platform, the LittleFe hardware platform, and the CSERD (Computational Science Education Reference Desk) curricular platform. Current interests include exploration of the metaverse for teaching and training, developing cameraless classroom video podcasts, inexpensive electronic white boards, and carryon attaché clusters.
	Dr. Richard (Dick) Brown Dr. Brown has been an active member of the Intel Academic Community for 3 years. He was one of the first members to take advantage of the Intel® Manycore Testing Lab (MTL). He shared his experience with the whole community in A First Look at the Manycore Testing Lab His feedback was instrumental in helping to validate the MTL usage model. Professor Brown has been a regular participant in the Intel Academic Community booth at conferences such as SIGCSE.
	Professor Jose Villeta After joining the Intel Academic Community and reviewing the Multi-Core Courseware content, he started to investigate ways to integrate his knowledge of parallelism into his courses at University of Southern California. Now, he has several courses in both Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Departments that showcase the importance of Parallelism and Multi-Core threading. His EE/CSCI-452 Game Hardware Architectures course integrates content from the Introduction to Parallel Programming, Game Threading Methodologies and Parallel Architecture for Games [from the Intel Courseware Access Moodle] and Intel tools like the C/C++ Compiler, Intel® Threading Building Blocks, VTune™ Performance Analyzer and Intel® Thread Profiler. In addition, students have the opportunity to use Intel Smoke Demo as an example of a game engine architecture that takes advantage of parallelism. This course is offered to both Undergraduate and Graduate students from the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Departments at the Viterbi School of Engineering.
	Dr. Jianfeng Yang His leadership has been instrumental in helping Intel integrate parallel programming into universities in China. He is an associate professor of Electronic Information College of Wuhan University and the leader of the Multi-core Curriculum, embedded system design curriculum of Wuhan University and of the Wuhan University-Intel Multicore Technology joint lab. Dr. Yang led a webinar, The Multi-core Computer Science Curriculum in the People's Republic of China, for the Intel Academic Community's 2008 Webinar series, Sequential programming is no more - why are we still teaching it?

Black Belt Software Developers (Intel Employees)

These Intel employees are outstanding members of our communities. We appreciate the time and effort they spend supporting communities, solving issues, contributing content, authoring blogs and creating a vibrant environment to share knowledge and expertise.

	Noah Clemons is a Technical Consulting Engineer for the Embedded Compute, Debugger, and Performance Libraries Division at Intel Corporation. He received the Intel Black Belt Software Developer status in 2011 for excellence in teaching parallel programming models. His expertise lies in using performance libraries and parallel models to solve computational problems in image/signal processing, scientific computing, and three-dimensional visualization. He previously worked as a Solutions Architect for RapidMind which was acquired by Intel in 2009.
	Steve Lionel's life in an online community began on the PLATO IV system in 1974, continued on ARPANET in the late 1970s, CompuServe and then this newfangled Internet tube- thingy. He joined Intel in 2001 coming from DEC/Compaq where he was a Fortran compiler developer. Nowadays Steve's focus is more on the support and "evangelizing" side of things, including his "Doctor Fortran" column which he started in 1998. Outside of work, Steve likes to read science fiction, build web sites and travel.
	Dmitry Rizshkov started to work with Intel as ISV, he have submitted over 16 applications to the Intel AppUp Center. He was a winner of ‘People Choice’ and ‘Home & Lifestyle’ software contests with My Little Artist applications, which is still very popular application at Intel AppUp Center. He joined Intel in 2011 as Software Engineer in EMEA Small Form Factor team with primary focus on mobile platforms like smartphones, tablets and Ultrabooks running Android and Windows 8.
	David Stewart is a software engineering manager at Intel Corporation. David currently manages Team Open Solaris in the Software and Solutions Group. David's group charter is to ensure that Xeon is the best platform to run Open Solaris. Prior to this role, David held a variety of management positions in Intel's Desktop Boards and Systems division and Server Products group. Prior to joining Intel in 1997, David held management and engineering positions in consumer software products and server products. David holds a BS in Computer Science and MS in Computer Science from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, which he received in 1983. You can catch Dave's non-work thoughts in his personal blog, http://davestewart.wordpress.com/.
	Gael Holmes (a.k.a Atalanta Intel in Second Life) is a Manageability Engineer at Intel working in numerous areas associated with Intel® AMT. In her role as a moderator of the Manageability Developer Community Forum, she engages in supporting and enabling developers by contributing in-depth knowledge on latest Intel AMT SDK releases. Gael runs a successful Blog and strives to summarize the gained community knowledge in postings that serve the purpose of giving developers access to comprehensive information more quickly. Gael began working with Intel AMT after years of prior performance analysis and benchmarking. Her other passion in life is called "Ulf".
	A "blue-badge" software engineer at Intel Corporation since March 2007, Doug Holland is part of the Intel Mobility group and is presently working within an advanced tools and development team with an emphasis on graphics performance. Doug Holland holds a Master's Degree in Software Engineering from Oxford University. Outside of work, Doug enjoys spending time with his wife and four children; and is also an officer in the Civil Air Patrol / U.S. Air Force Auxiliary.
	Dr. Clay Breshears is currently a Course Architect for the Intel Academic Community, specializing in multi-core and multithreaded programming and training. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in 1996, and has been involved with parallel computation and programming for over twenty years; six of those years were spent in academia. Clay started his tenure at Intel as a Senior Parallel Application Engineer at the Intel Parallel Applications Center in Champaign, IL, implementing multithreaded and distributed solutions in customer applications.
	Vladimir Dudnik Starting from 1993, Vladimir's career has spanned multiple projects and technologies including testing and design of parallel computer systems, development of optimized software for signal and image processing, design and optimization of software for Intel processors beginning from Pentium to the latest AVX and Larrabee architectures today. Currently Vladimir manages a team of developers focused on design and development of tools which would simplify customer utilization of the computational power available in the modern Intel multi and many core systems. Specifically his team is working on IPP computer vision, image and speech codecs. Vladimir likes to spend free time if any with his wife and two daughters.
	James Reinders is an expert in the area of parallelism and Intel’s leading spokesperson on tools for parallelism. James is also author and co-author of several books in addition to being the author of the O’Reilly Nutshell book on the C++ extensions for parallelism provided by the popular Intel Threading Building Blocks. James has decades of experience with high degrees of parallelism having worked on groundbreaking compilers and architectures.
	Yanqing Wang Yanqing Wang got a master's degree majoring in communication and information systems at Shanghai Jiaotong University. He is an application engineer in the Developer Relations Division at Intel where he focuses on video, graphics and new Intel technologies. His daily activities are in combination with consulting, optimization and development in these fields. He has rich experiences in project management, embedded system, digital TV, graphics and images, as well as a good reputation at what was formerly known as ATI Technologies, Inc. and Samsung* before joining Intel.

Black Belt

	Intel® Red Belt Software Developer: The title 'Intel Red Belt Software Developer' recognizes the leadership an Intel AppUp® developer brings to the community by actively contributing applications and components.
	Intel® Brown Belt Software Developer: This new title 'Intel Brown Belt Software Developer' recognizes the value a member brings to the Intel Developer Zone communities by actively contributing & sharing knowledge.
	Intel® Green Belt Software Developer: The title 'Intel Green Belt Software Developer' recognizes a member's regular contribution to the Intel Developer Zone communities.

How does the point system work?
What are the benefits of these titles?
What is the lifetime of the titles?
When are the prizes/rewards shipped to a member?
How do you know your status/title on the ranking system?
Who can become a Black Belt?
Which communities are considered while selecting members for this title?
What are the benefits of being a Black Belt Software Developer?
What are the criteria for selection of Black Belt Software Developers?
What is the process of selection?
Are Intel employees also selected for this title?
What is the lifetime of the Award?
How do I contact the team?
Who can be a Brown Belt or a Green Belt Software Developer?
How does the point system work?
Which communities are considered while selecting members for this title?
What are the benefits of these titles?
Can the points be redeemed for prizes?
What is the lifetime of the titles?
When are the prizes/ rewards shipped to a member?
How do you contact the team?
What else is new?
How do you know your status/ title on the ranking system?
Can you opt-out of the ranking system?

How does the point system work?
Points get added to a member's profile for every action on the Intel Developer Zone. Points will be accumulated for every type of submitted content (forum comments, posts, blog comments, articles, contest entries, applications, components etc) as shown below. The titles Red Belt, Brown Belt and Green Belt Software Developers are calculated automatically by software based on the points structure below:

• Complete your bio: 20 points
• Content comments: 5 points
• Forum post: 10 points
• Forum answer/ Contest entry: 20 points
• Video submission: 40 points
• Coding contest entry/ Article/ White Paper/ Code Sample submission/ Blog post: 80 points
• Applications
  • Free: 300 points
  • Paid: 500 points
• Components: 300 points
• Complete Intel AppUp On-Demand Training for Developers: 40 points
• Rate an application/ component: 5 points

In addition, points are accrued as follows:

• Discussion Forums: If you choose a best answer to a question posted by you, you will earn 5 points. If your answer is selected as the best answer by the member who posted the question you will earn 10 points.

Remember that all contributions should be in line with the Intel Developer Zone policies and terms of use. Points will be taken away from an account if members are found to spam just to get their contribution counts up. Members will need to login to Intel  Developer Zone to accumulate points.

What are the benefits of these titles?
These titles are mainly meant to indicate the reputation of members based on their level of contributions. Here is what the different levels mean:

• Green Belt = 50 points
• Brown Belt = 500 points
• Red Belt = 5000 points

When a member becomes a Green Belt Software Developer, this green belt icon will appear on the online profile.

This icon signifies an Intel Brown Belt Software Developer. All Brown Belts get 'Intel Brown Belt Software Developer' icon displayed on their profile and also get a book of their choice from an available selection of books.

All Red Belt Software Developers get this icon on their profile, a book of their choice from an available selection of books along with one year annual membership to the Intel Developer Zone.

What is the lifetime of the titles?
All titles - the Red Belt, Brown Belt and Green Belt titles are valid for 12 months from the date of qualification.

When are the prizes/ rewards shipped to a member?
Notification e-mails are sent once every month to all developers who achieve the Intel Red Belt Software Developer and Intel Brown Belt Software Developer titles during the previous month. The prizes, in this case the books that are a part of the titles will be sent to you within six (6) weeks from the date of the notification email or confirmation of your physical address, whichever is later.

How do you know your status/ title on the ranking system?
Your current title will be visible under 'My Profile' on your user profile page.

BLACK BELT

Who can become a Black Belt?
This is a title for community members who demonstrate outstanding expertise on Intel technologies and enrich our communities by regularly sharing their knowledge and expertise, providing help & support in the discussion forums, submitting content such as articles and participating in the communities. It is recognition of the community leadership and contribution by these members.

Which communities are considered while selecting members for this title?
All Intel Developer Zone communities are included in this program. Find a complete list of our communities here.

What are the benefits of being a Black Belt Software Developer?
This is the highest level of recognition on the IntelDeveloper Zone communities and is associated with the following benefits:

• Welcome gift: jacket OR laptop bag with Intel logo
• An award honoring their status as a Black Belt on Intel Developer Zone communities
• One laptop with a high-end Intel® microprocessor available at that time (awarded the first time a developer qualifies as Black Belt developer, not awarded everytime a developer qualifies)
• Licenses to select Intel® Software Development Products
• Personal profile featured on our 'Hall of fame' recognition page
• Personal profile covered in our newsletter along with an interview/video interview published on the communities
• Pass to IDF & Opportunity to meet Intel engineers at 'meet & greet' Intel events & seminars
• Opportunity to host a blog on Intel Developer Zone.

What are the criteria for selection of Black Belt Software Developers?
Community members at Intel Developer Zone are selected for the Black Belt title based on quality and quantity of contribution i.e. the technical expertise; community leadership and support members bring to Intel Developer Zone communities. Specific criteria considered while selecting members include:

• Technical expertise
• Regular discussion forum activity
• Guidance and support provided to other community members
• Submission of content/ white papers
• Overall community participation

Typically Black Belt Software Developers will be nominated from amongst members with Brown Belt Software Developer status, however this is not mandatory. Members can also be nominated directly to a Black Belt level based on exceptional community leadership.

What is the process of selection?
To ensure a rigorous and robust selection process for the Intel Black Belt Software Developer title, we have instituted a selection committee consisting of our community managers, tools experts, and application engineers. This committee meets once every month to nominate new members and review, validate the level of contributions of these members for the past one year. Black Belt Software Developers are selected by this committee based on the criteria listed above.

Are Intel employees also selected for this title?
Although Intel employees who are members of Intel Developer Zone communities can be awarded the title, employees are not eligible for any of the benefits associated with the title.

What is the lifetime of the Award?
The Intel Black Belt Software Developer Award lasts for the duration of one year.

How do I contact the team?
For any further clarifications/ questions, drop a note here or you can leave a comment on my blog here. I would love to hear from you on this recognition, the criteria, benefits and more. What do you think we can do better? What would you like to see as part of recognition?

BROWN / GREEN BELT

Intel® Developer Zone communities provide a forum where you can interact with peers and with Intel engineers to learn, share, and explore topics such as threading and parallel programming, MID and Intel® Atom™ software development, Visual Computing, and Manageability.

The Intel Brown Belt Software Developer and Intel Green Belt Software Developer are titles that introduce a new ranking system on Intel Developer Zone communities. These titles follow the Intel® Black Belt Software Developer title and indicate levels of contributions by members on Intel Developer Zone.

The title 'Intel Green Belt Software Developer' recognizes a member's regular contribution while 'Intel Brown Belt Software Developer' recognizes the value a member brings to the Intel Developer Zone communities by actively contributing & sharing knowledge.

Who can be a Brown Belt or a Green Belt Software Developer?
Any member of Intel Developer Zone who contributes actively can become a Green Belt or Brown Belt Software Developer.

A member acquires the Intel Green Belt Software Developer title when they accumulate at least 50 points within 12 months from the date of enrollment into the Intel Black Belt Software Developer program or membership with Intel Developer Zone.

The Brown Belt Software Developer title is awarded upon accumulation of 500 points within 12 months from the date of qualification as an Intel Green Belt Software Developer.

How does the point system work?
With the introduction of the new ranking system, we are also starting a point system. Points will be accumulated for every type of submitted content (forum comments, posts, blog comments, articles and contest entries) as shown below. The titles Brown Belt and Green Belt Software Developers are calculated automatically by software based on the points structure below:

• Content or Blog comments: 5 points
• Forum post: 10 points
• Forum answer/ Contest entry: 20 points
• Video submission: 40 points
• Coding contest entry/ Article/ White Paper/ Code Sample Submission/ Blog post: 80 points

In addition, points are accrued as follows:

• Discussion Forums: If you choose a best answer to a question posted by you, you will earn 5 points. If your answer is selected as the best answer by the member who posted the question you will earn 10 points.
• If other members rate your submission for a contest entry/article/video/or code with 5 out 5, you will earn 2 points for every 5 star rating, up to a maximum of 20 points.

Remember that all contributions should be in line with the Intel Developer Zone community policies and terms of use. Points will be taken away from an account if members are found to spam just to get their contribution counts up. Members will need to login to Intel Developer Zone to accumulate points.

Which communities are considered while selecting members for this title?
All Intel Developer Zone communities are included in this program. Find a complete list of our communities here.

What are the benefits of these titles?
The new titles are mainly meant to recognize many members for active participation, sharing knowledge and pioneering collaboration. The title 'Intel Green Belt Software Developer' recognizes a member's regular contribution to the Intel Developer Zone communities by having the 'Intel Green Belt Software Developer' icon displayed on their user profile.

The title 'Intel Brown Belt Software Developer' recognizes the value a member brings to the Intel Developer Zone communities by actively sharing their knowledge. These members get 'Intel Brown Belt Software Developer' icon displayed on their profile and also get a book of their choice from an available selection of books.

Can the points be redeemed for prizes?
The prizes associated with the Intel Brown Belt Software Developer title are attached to the title and not to the points. Points cannot be redeemed for any rewards or prizes.

What is the lifetime of the titles?
Both the Brown Belt and Green Belt titles are valid for 12 months from the date of qualification. A member will re-qualify as a Green Belt Software developer on accumulating at least 50 points within 12 months from the date of first qualification as an Intel Green Belt Software Developer. Similarly, the Brown Belt Software Developer title is renewed upon accumulating at least 500 points within 12 months from the date of first qualification as an Intel Brown Belt Software Developer.

When are the prizes/rewards shipped to a member?
The physical prizes, in this case the book that is a part of the Intel Brown Belt Software Developer title will be sent to you within six (6) weeks from the date of the notification email or confirmation of your physical address, whichever is later. Within 7 days of receiving your Brown Belt e-mail, expect another e-mail from us outlining the available selection of books. At this point, you will also need to provide your shipping address and the book will be on its way!

How do you contact the team?
For any further clarifications/questions, drop a note here or you can leave a comment on Gunjan's blog here. We would love to hear from you on this ranking system, benefits and more. What do you think we can do better? What would you like to see as part of recognition?

What else is new?
With the introduction of the points based ranking system, you will notice that your IntelDeveloper Zone profile is now very detailed. It will show a history of all the contributions made by you; the points accumulated and also status such as Green Belt Software Developer or Brown Belt Software Developer along with a cool icon denoting the status.

How do you know your status/title on the ranking system?
Your current title will be visible under 'My Profile' on your user profile page.

Can you opt-out of the ranking system?
Yes you can opt-out of the Intel Black Belt Software Developer Program and the ranking system by clicking on the 'Opt-out' link in your profile.

Terms and Conditions