Meet our Trainers

Debbie works as a Business Consultant and trainer, providing a wide range of consultancy services for promoting and improving the use of open standards for modelling, encoding and exchange of location based data using web services. Before joining Snowflake, Debbie was seconded to Defra to work on the UK Location Programme, assisting the conceptual design for the implementation of a UK Spatial Data Infrastructure to deliver the requirements of the INSPIRE Directive and UK Location Strategy. She has also been a key member on many JRC INSPIRE themed projects. Debbie is our INSPIRE guru. Debbie is also an INSPIRE Theme Editor and is responsible for the Area Management/Restriction/Regulation Zones and Reporting Units Theme.

Courses taught: INSPIRE Essentials, GO Publisher, XML Primer and GML Training.

Ballal is the lead trainer at Snowflake Software and works as a pre and post sales consultant. He brings with him, a huge amount of experience and theoretical background which makes him a great addition to our group of trainers.  Ballal gained his knowledge extensively in the GIS industry, working for both public and private sector organisations, in India and the UK.  An Oracle Certified Associate (OCA), Ballal is actively involved in our consultancy team, working on numerous projects based around data exchange and open standards from OGC. Ballal is a young star of the team.

Ballal also authored and voice overs our brand new GML Fundamentals online training.

Courses taught: XML Primer, GML Fundamentals, GML Hands-On, and GO Loader Training

Online courses: GML Fundamentals

Richard is a trainer and technical sales manager at Snowflake Software. Before joining the training team, Richard worked within Snowflake’s engineering, helping to test and develop our products. Before joining Snowflake, Richard worked in the Netherlands for the Dutch services company Grontmij. In his 10 years at Grontmij, Richard was responsible for providing training courses and on-site support for numerous geo-ICT software products, with customers ranging from first-time users to experienced professionals.  Richard believes successful training is not only about gaining knowledge, but also about how to convert that newly acquired knowledge into practical solutions. Richard speaks Dutch as well as English and understands the European point of view.

Courses taught: GO Loader Fundamentals & Advanced, GO Publisher, XML and GML Training.

Justine has been at the heart of the deployment of Snowflake’s software products for many years and was involved in the creation of the GO Loader and XML/GML training courses.  Justine is well practised at presenting and has run many successful courses for customers both at Snowflake HQ and onsite with the customer.  She also regularly creates and presents bespoke training course material tailored to customers’ needs as part of a consultancy and training package. Justine is a seasoned professional when it comes to converting customer requirements into training objectives.

Courses taught: XML Primer, GML Fundamentals, GML Hands-On and GO Loader Training.

Eddie Curtis has been the inspiration behind the Snowflake products and training material since 2001. Eddie has been active with OGC standards for over 10 years and took a leading role in the creation of Ordnance Surveys landmark GML product, OS MasterMap to those standards. As Chief Technical Officer at Snowflake Software he shares his legendary specialist knowledge and experience of OGC standards and Snowflake products by authoring today's industry courses. Eddie has helped numerous organisations to understand the power of data exchange and implement open standards based solutions both in the UK and internationally. Eddie is the industry expert for GML.

Courses taught: GO Publisher Training, GML Fundamentals & GML Hands-On