Tom Laird-mcconnell is a seasoned software engineer with 12 years of experience and a long career at Microsoft, now describing himself as retired but still actively contributing to open-source projects. Based in Bellevue, Washington, he excels in back-end systems and DevOps, with notable performance optimizations and DLL caching work on dotnet-script that enabled faster restores and direct .csx execution on Windows. His contributions span the Bot Framework ecosystem—improving enums, SSO/GDPR APIs, conversation and state controllers, and adaptive dialogs—demonstrating deep familiarity with both .NET and JavaScript bot platforms. He also crosses into front-end polish, adding speech and UI refinements to AdaptiveCards, showing an unusual blend of low-level runtime improvements and developer experience enhancements. Dependable and detail-oriented, Tom pairs code refactors with documentation and API clarity, helping make complex frameworks easier for other developers to adopt.
Welcome to the Bot Framework SDK for .NET repository, which is the home for the libraries and packages that enable developers to build sophisticated bot applications using .NET.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Contributions:6 releases, 131 reviews, 2302 commits in 3 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Tom primarily contributed to the Microsoft Bot Framework SDK for .NET repository, focusing on the implementation and maintenance of the adaptive dialog system. Their contributions involved modifying the `OAuthInput.cs` file, and they made further changes to the `BaseInvokeDialog.cs`, `BeginDialog.cs`, and `ReplaceDialog.cs` files. These changes included adding data binding features for the options used within the dialogs and ensuring the system could handle the activityProcessed turn.
A new way for developers to exchange card content in a common and consistent way.
Role in this project:
Front-end Developer
Contributions:9 reviews, 551 commits, 18 PRs in 6 years
Contributions summary:Tom's commits focused on adding and modifying the visualizer application's user interface. Their work included adding speaking properties with SSML, and implementing the speech target. Further work was done to refactor the code so that there is a "speak" button on every card page.
exchangeadaptiveioswpfadaptivecards
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