Carl Franklin is Executive Vice President of App vNext, a software development firm focused on the latest methodologies and technologies. Carl is a 20+ year veteran of the software industry, co-host and founder of .NET Rocks!, the first and most widely listened to podcast for .NET developers, a Microsoft MVP for Kinect for Windows, a Microsoft Regional Director, and Senior Executive of Pwop Studios, a full-service audio and video production/post production studio located in Southeastern Connecticut.

He was awarded the MVP for Kinect because of his work on gesture recognition. Namely, KinectTools and GesturePak. KinectTools is an abstraction over the Kinect 2.0 SDK that takes the detail work out of using the Kinect in a Windows application. GesturePak lets you record, edit, and recognize gestures in a Windows application. Both are free open source products.

Carl is also the creator of Music to Code By, a set of 25-minute long instrumental music pieces designed to get you into a state of flow and keep you there. Music to Code By has been praised widely by developers for keeping them focused and helping them solve difficult problems.

Carl has been a leader in the .NET community since 2002, and in the Visual Basic (VB) community before that.