EVENT SPEAKERS
Randy dojutrek
Randy Dojutrek proves that a passion for people differentiates leaders from managers. As a transformational IT leader, Randy drives positive results by concentrating on the people that make it happen. Randy has extensive experience delivering technical solutions through building and leading best in class organizations across multiple IT disciplines. Whether the workforce is domestic or international, at the heart of any solution is setting a vision, getting the right people engaged, and providing them what they need to succeed. One of the key components of success is building strong relationships through effective communication. Earning his Master’s in Writing, and completing another in Organizational and Interpersonal Communications (2021), Randy champions the idea that communication is a key differentiator in building a successful technical career.
Josh Long
(@starbuxman): Josh is a Spring Developer Advocate at Pivotal. Josh is a Java Champion, author of 5 books (including O’Reilly’s “Cloud Native Java: Designing Resilient Systems with Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, and Cloud Foundry”) and 3 best-selling video trainings (including “Building Microservices with Spring Boot Livelessons” w/ Phil Webb), and an open-source contributor (Spring Boot, Spring Integration, Spring Cloud, Activiti and Vaadin).
David Giard
David Giard is a former accountant and a former biochemist, who has been developing solutions using Microsoft technologies for nearly 3 decades. Currently, David helps people build solutions in his role as a Microsoft Senior Software Engineer. David has been very active in the developer community, speaking at numerous major conferences, code camps, and user groups around the world; helping to lead user groups; and helping to organize conferences and other geek events. He is the host and producer of the mildly popular online TV shows Technology and Friends and GCast. He is the co-author of the Wrox book Real World .NET, C#, and Silverlight. You can read his latest thoughts at DavidGiard.com. His hobbies include video, photography, sports, and embarrassing his sons.
Derek Ashmore
Derek is a senior technology expert with over 30 years of experience in a wide variety of technologies and industries. Derek is currently a Principal Cloud Architect at Asperitas Consulting. Derek is focusing on microservice architectures, cloud computing, and migrating applications to the cloud. Derek’s approach allows companies to increase speed to market while also increasing application availability. Derek routinely speaks at JavaOne, DevNexus, the Chicago Coders Conference, and many others. Derek’s books include the “The Java EE Architect’s Handbook” and “Microservices for Java EE Architects”.
Erik Boyd
Eric D. Boyd is the Founder and CEO of responsiveX, a Microsoft Azure MVP, a Microsoft Regional Director, a regular conference speaker, and the co-author of Step-by-Step Azure SQL Database from Microsoft Press. He is so passionate about cloud, mobile and modern applications, that he founded responsiveX, a technology company that helps customers deliver great web, mobile and enterprise apps using the cloud and Azure. Eric launched his technology career almost two decades ago with a web development startup and has served in multiple roles since including developer, consultant, technology executive and business owner. You can find Eric blogging at http://www.EricDBoyd.com and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/EricDBoyd.
Jonathan "J" Tower
Jonathan “J.” Tower is a six-time Microsoft MVP, Lynda.com author, and business owner with over twenty years of experience in the software industry. He loves solving problems and the creative aspects of software development, as well as sharing what he’s learned and helping to build the technology community. His current technology interests include architecture, .NET Core, and the whole JavaScript ecosystem. J. lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan with his wife and children, where he exercises his passion for the tech community by running the Beer City Code software conference.
venkat subramaniam
Dr. Venkat Subramaniam is an award-winning author, founder of Agile Developer, Inc., creator of agilelearner.com, and an instructional professor at the University of Houston.
He has trained and mentored thousands of software developers in the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia, and is a regularly-invited speaker at several international conferences. Venkat helps his clients effectively apply and succeed with sustainable agile practices on their software projects.
Venkat is a (co)author of multiple technical books, including the 2007 Jolt Productivity award winning book Practices of an Agile Developer. You can find a list of his books at agiledeveloper.com. You can reach him by email at venkats@agiledeveloper.com or on twitter at @venkat_s.
Heather Downing
Heather is a passionate coder and entrepreneur. She has experience working with Fortune 500 companies building enterprise-level voice, mobile and C#/.Net applications. She focuses on external thought leadership, encouraging fellow programmers to present on topics outside of the office and in the community. She is an international technical speaker and co-host of the YouTube channel “The Hello World Show” — a weekly video series that interviews software masters and teaches the audience something valuable in less than 10 minutes.
Heather encourages those with nontraditional backgrounds to enter the world of software development, as she changed careers at 27 and does not have a degree – yet has built a reputation as an early adapter of new tech. She is an advocate of women in tech, and part of Kansas City Women in Technology. When not coding, Heather spends her time as a competitive equestrian and learning the art of mounted archery.
Ben Galewsky
Ben is a Sr. Research Programmer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), a role where he acts as an IT consultant to scientists who are struggling with the mountains of data new research tools produce. Prior to NCSA Ben helped set up STA Group’s Big Data Practice and served as the Chief Technical Architect at the global investment bank UBS Warburg.
Damian Brady
Damian is a Cloud Advocate specializing in DevOps and MLOps. After spending a year in Toronto, Canada, he returned to Australia – the land of the dangerous creatures and beautiful beaches – in 2018.
Formerly a dev at Octopus Deploy and a Microsoft MVP, he has a background in software development and consulting in a broad range of industries. In Australia, he co-organised the Brisbane .Net User Group, and launched the now annual DDD Brisbane conference. He regularly speaks at conferences, User Groups, and other events around the world.
Most of the time you’ll find him talking to software engineers, IT pros and managers to help them get the most out of their DevOps strategies.
Damian has his own Channel 9 show – The DevOps Lab. Check it out for real-world guidance on implementing DevOps in your organisation!
James Lamb
James is an engineer at Saturn Cloud, where he works on a managed Dask + Kubernetes offering and contributes to open source projects in the Dask ecosystem, such as Prefect. Before that, he spent 4 years as a data scientist working on industrial internet of things (IIoT) problems at AWS and Chicago-based Uptake. He is a maintainer on LightGBM, a popular machine learning project from Microsoft Research, and on 2 R packages on CRAN and 1 Python package on PyPi. James holds masters degrees in Applied Economics and in Data Science.
Simon Maple
Phil Japikse
An international speaker, Microsoft MVP, ASPInsider, MCSD, PSM II, PSD, and CSM, and a passionate member of the developer community, Phil Japikse has been working with .NET since the first betas, developing software for over 35 years, and heavily involved in the agile community since 2005 as well as a Professional Scrum Trainer. Phil is co-author of best-selling books “Pro C# 7” and “Pro C# 8”, the Lead Director for the Cincinnati .NET User’s Group and the Cincinnati Software Architect Group, co-hosted the Hallway Conversations podcast, founded the CincyDeliver conference, and volunteers for the National Ski Patrol. During the day, Phil works as the Director of Consulting and Chief Architect for a boutique consultancy in Cincinnati. Phil always enjoys learning new tech and is always striving to improve his craft. You can follow Phil on twitter via http://www.twitter.com/skimedic and read his blog at http://www.skimedic.com/blog.
Lisandra Maioli
Ian Hamilton
I’m a full stack progressive developer/architect focused on progressive-web, mobile, cloud software. I am driven philosophically as well as technologically, and committed to changing the way IT teams interact with business and ultimately the way software solutions are delivered.
For me, I live that commitment out through collaboration, and how to partner with business and the technology we can together deploy.
What makes the approach different is the symbiotic relationship that is built with the business counterparts. I want that relationship to harvest a mutual understanding so we can deliver on business market edge.
Mariano Gonzalez
Dean Wampler
Nolan Grace
Mark Heckler
Brad Vandermoon
Markus Eisele
Manuel Gonzalez
