Cortney Nickerson is a Principal Product Marketing Manager at Akamai Technologies. As a CNCF Ambassador, she leads the Kyverno Community and is highly active in the cloud native community co-organizing various Kubernetes Community Day events, serving on the State of OpenCon Advisory Board, and co-hosting the "Code to Culture Platform Engineering Podcast" and "Humans of Cloud Native" podcast.

A recognized speaker at international events, Cortney transitioned from a non-technical background to tech as an early employee (#7) at a startup later acquired by DataDog, where she wrote content for the Data on Kubernetes Community.

Beyond technology, she is a vocal advocate for DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) and openly shares her experiences with imposter syndrome. On a personal note, she's also a parent navigating the challenge of getting her kids to bed on time.

Cortney Nickerson is a Principal Product Marketing Manager at Akamai Technologies. As a CNCF Ambassador, she leads the Kyverno Community and is highly active in the cloud native community co-organizing various Kubernetes Community Day events, serving... Show more

Emmz is the CTO of Daemonic Ltd, on a mission to build the future of AI and mixed reality. She's been working with LLMs, tools, harnesses, skills, runtimes, fine-tuning and all that for nearly two years now. When it comes to software engineering she is obsessed with maximizing performance and minimizing complexity. When it comes to speaking, she combines 40 years experience in tech with skills acquired as a professional stand-up comic in the 90s to deliver entertaining and informative talks at conferences around the world. She recently learned to play bass so she could join tech parody band The LineBreakers and promptly became obsessed with that, too.

Emmz is the CTO of Daemonic Ltd, on a mission to build the future of AI and mixed reality. She's been working with LLMs, tools, harnesses, skills, runtimes, fine-tuning and all that for nearly two years now. When it comes to software engineering she ... Show more

Yannis Martin is an engineer and sociologist by training. With over twenty years of experience supporting digital transformations, he has worked for the past decade as a consultant in project management, cybersecurity governance, and interim management. In 2024, he began doctoral research on the interactions between artificial intelligence, complexity theory, and the humanities and social sciences. His research focuses on AI considered both as a mediating device for human cognition and as a constituent element of complex socio-technical systems. A lecturer at the University of Avignon since 2021, he joined emlyon business school and INSA Lyon in 2025. In 2026, he became a member of the CNRS research group "Internet, AI and Society."

Yannis Martin is an engineer and sociologist by training. With over twenty years of experience supporting digital transformations, he has worked for the past decade as a consultant in project management, cybersecurity governance, and interim manageme... Show more

Saiyam is working as Principal Developer Advocate at Loft Labs. He is the founder of Kubesimplify, focusing on simplifying cloud-native and Kubernetes technologies. Previously at Civo, Walmart Labs, Oracle, and HP, Saiyam has worked on many facets of Kubernetes, including machine learning platforms, scaling, multi-cloud, and managed Kubernetes services. He has implemented Kubernetes solutions in various organizations. When not coding, Saiyam contributes to the community by writing blogs and organizing local meetups for Kubernetes and CNCF. He is also a CNCF TAG sustainability lead, runs a YouTube channel, and can be reached on Twitter @saiyampathak

Saiyam is working as Principal Developer Advocate at Loft Labs. He is the founder of Kubesimplify, focusing on simplifying cloud-native and Kubernetes technologies. Previously at Civo, Walmart Labs, Oracle, and HP, Saiyam has worked on many facets of... Show more

I've been working as a .NET developer for over 16 years now in a variety of industries including government, retail and manufacturing. But I've been hacking around with computer code since I was old enough to read my Dad's copy of the ZX Spectrum BASIC coders manual.

I've been speaking about Functional C# at various user groups and conferences around the UK, USA, Europe and Australia and am particularly interested in seeing just how far we can push C# without breaking it.

In 2023 I released my first technical book: "Functional Programming with C#", published by O'Reilly Media.

When I'm not coding, or running after my two small children, I have been known to enjoy the classic series of Doctor Who, Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks, Cryptic Crosswords, and rather more coffee than is probably good for me.

I've been working as a .NET developer for over 16 years now in a variety of industries including government, retail and manufacturing. But I've been hacking around with computer code since I was old enough to read my Dad's copy of the ZX Spectrum BAS... Show more

Guy has a single mission in life: learn how everything works and share it. He's spent a lot of time learning how technology works—analog and digital, hardware and software—but Guy explores all sorts of interesting topics and he spread the knowledge he gains with communities worldwide.

Teaching and community have long been a focus for Guy. He is president of his amateur radio club. He ran a local JavaScript meetup in Ohio for more than a decade. He has served on the selection committees of numerous conferences. He has even helped teach programming at a prison in Central Ohio.

In his personal life, Guy is a hard-boiled geek interested in role-playing games, science fiction, and technology. He has a slightly less geeky interest in history, linguistics, and geopolitics but these are really just more ways to understand how things work. He has an entire wall of role-playing games and science fiction books, speaks Spanish like a two-year old, and is a ham radio operator—callsign W8GUY.

Guy lives in Ohio with his wife. His three sons are adults now and are all moved out. He is immensely proud of the men they have become.

Guy has a single mission in life: learn how everything works and share it. He's spent a lot of time learning how technology works—analog and digital, hardware and software—but Guy explores all sorts of interesting topics and he spread the knowledge h... Show more

Empowering Organizations through Data, Analytics & AI

Tech Leader | Entrepreneur | Public Speaker | Technical Trainer | Consultant | Founder of Magna Data inc,
Microsoft Certified Professional in SQL Server, Azure, Fabric, Power BI & Excel. MCSA BI Reporting. MCP Data Scientist & Data Analyst, MCP Fabric. Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT). AWS Cloud, Snowflake DW, Databricks Fundamentals Certs.

Empowering Organizations through Data, Analytics & AI Tech Leader | Entrepreneur | Public Speaker | Technical Trainer | Consultant | Founder of Magna Data inc, Microsoft Certified Professional in SQL Server, Azure, Fabric, Power BI & Excel. MCSA ... Show more

Jimmy is the creator and maintainer of the popular OSS libraries AutoMapper and MediatR, and the originator of Vertical Slice Architecture. Jimmy is an independent software consultant based in Austin, TX. Jimmy has received the "Microsoft Most Valuable Professional" (MVP) award every year since 2009.

Jimmy is the creator and maintainer of the popular OSS libraries AutoMapper and MediatR, and the originator of Vertical Slice Architecture. Jimmy is an independent software consultant based in Austin, TX. Jimmy has received the "Microsoft Most Valuab... Show more

Antonio Liccardi is a seasoned speaker, book author, and trainer, currently serving as Chief Technology Officer at Blexin. His passion for knowledge sharing led him to co-found "DotNetCampania," an Italian .NET community where he helps others enhance their skills in DevOps, the .NET ecosystem, and software development in general. Antonio is a frequent speaker at both national and international conferences, including Microsoft Build, and has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP for Visual Studio Developer Technologies since 2015. He also hosts a live show called "DevOps Time" for UgiDotNet, Italy’s largest .NET community, and runs the podcast "Il corriere del DevOps."

Antonio Liccardi is a seasoned speaker, book author, and trainer, currently serving as Chief Technology Officer at Blexin. His passion for knowledge sharing led him to co-found "DotNetCampania," an Italian .NET community where he helps others enhance... Show more

Anna is a veteran software and data engineer, boasting over 19 years of experience. She has undertaken various projects, including real-time analytics with Scala and Kafka, constructing Data Lakes with Spark, and applying engineering to Data Science. Anna currently serves as a RSA (Resident Solution Architect) and consultant. With a genuine passion for data, she endeavors to bridge the gap between Software Development and Data Science. Anna's other areas of interest include DevOps (DataOps, MLOps, LLMOps), Agile methodologies, and organizing or participating in local Code Clubs.

Anna is a veteran software and data engineer, boasting over 19 years of experience. She has undertaken various projects, including real-time analytics with Scala and Kafka, constructing Data Lakes with Spark, and applying engineering to Data Science.... Show more

Thomas fell in love with Android in 2009. He has been constantly contributing to the community since then. Thomas loves writing books (four titles, 15 editions) and articles. He enjoys speaking at conferences and meetups. Thomas' first encounter with programming was in the era of home computers during the early 1980s. Later came C, Perl and a few more. During the 90s he wrote a bunch of programs for the Atari ST series. The first decade of Thomas' professional career centered around Java Enterprise. Today it’s all things Android and Kotlin.

Thomas fell in love with Android in 2009. He has been constantly contributing to the community since then. Thomas loves writing books (four titles, 15 editions) and articles. He enjoys speaking at conferences and meetups. Thomas' first encounter with... Show more

Silvano Coriani is a Program Manager in Azure Database for PostgreSQL team at Microsoft. He has over 25 years of experience in application development and database design, troubleshooting, and performance tuning. He is specialised in data access libraries, query optimisation, and distributed system design. He is also an author and speaker in many international industry conferences.

Silvano Coriani is a Program Manager in Azure Database for PostgreSQL team at Microsoft. He has over 25 years of experience in application development and database design, troubleshooting, and performance tuning. He is specialised in data access libr... Show more

Alexander is the Lead Data Transformation Architect at Advania in Sweden, where he spends his days helping clients of all shapes and sizes to take better care of - and make more sense of - their data.
He has spent the last 29 years poking around with data, databases, and related infrastructure services such as storage, networking, and virtualization, occasionally emerging from the technical darkness to attend a Star Wars convention somewhere in the world.
He is a long-time Data Platform MVP, frequent international speaker, podcaster, Pluralsight author, blogger, and a Microsoft Certified Trainer, focusing on the Microsoft data platform stack.

Alexander is the Lead Data Transformation Architect at Advania in Sweden, where he spends his days helping clients of all shapes and sizes to take better care of - and make more sense of - their data. He has spent the last 29 years poking around wit... Show more

An engineer and ex-intrapreneur with over 15 years' experience in Product, Hugues is an expert in Product Strategy for AI Products and software platforms.

He passes on his know-how to the teams and customers of Theodo, a 700-strong Tech & AI consulting & delivery agency.

Last year, Hugues spoke at the UXDX conference in Dublin, the Product Management Festival in Zurich and Agile conferences in Lyon, Nantes and Lausanne.

An engineer and ex-intrapreneur with over 15 years' experience in Product, Hugues is an expert in Product Strategy for AI Products and software platforms. He passes on his know-how to the teams and customers of Theodo, a 700-strong Tech & AI consu... Show more

Hafedh is a professional coach, agile coach, and trainer with over 12 years of experience in guiding individuals and organizations toward resilience, adaptability, and improved performance. With a strong foundation in neuroscience, agility, and human sciences, Hafedh integrates these disciplines to offer a comprehensive approach to personal and organizational development. His work focuses on helping teams and leaders navigate change and foster growth in dynamic environments. Throughout his career, Hafedh has been committed to empowering his clients with practical, science-based strategies for achieving long-term success.

Hafedh is a professional coach, agile coach, and trainer with over 12 years of experience in guiding individuals and organizations toward resilience, adaptability, and improved performance. With a strong foundation in neuroscience, agility, and human... Show more

Barbara Forbes is an Azure Architect & consultant at Zure in the Netherlands, a Microsoft Azure MVP, Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT), and a GitHub Star. She works at the intersection of technology, strategy, education, and development. Her focus is on the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework, Generative AI, Infrastructure as Code, PowerShell, and GitHub.
Barbara loves explaining things in an accessible manner; in person, as a teacher for LinkedIn Learning and as a frequent speaker at conferences and user groups. She is actively involved in the tech community, including being part of the organization of European events

Barbara Forbes is an Azure Architect & consultant at Zure in the Netherlands, a Microsoft Azure MVP, Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT), and a GitHub Star. She works at the intersection of technology, strategy, education, and development. Her focus is... Show more

Dave Stokes has worked for organizations ranging alphabetically from the American Heart Association to Xerox in areas ranging from anti-submarine warfare to webmaster. He lives in a small Texas town with the required hound dog and pickup truck. Dave is the Author of MySQL & JSON - A Practical Programming Guide, now in a second edition.

Dave Stokes has worked for organizations ranging alphabetically from the American Heart Association to Xerox in areas ranging from anti-submarine warfare to webmaster. He lives in a small Texas town with the required hound dog and pickup truck. Dave... Show more

James Eastham is a Serverless Developer Advocate at Datadog, AWS Community Builder and a Microsoft MVP. He answered phones in front-line support, administered databases and developed modern application backends with a range of technologies. He worked AWS working with some of the biggest companies on the planet, migrating workloads from data centers into the cloud and modernizing in the process.

James produces content on YouTube focused on architecting and building applications with serverless technologies using .NET and Rust. He also has a strong interest in and expertise in event-driven architecture and building more loosely coupled systems.

James Eastham is a Serverless Developer Advocate at Datadog, AWS Community Builder and a Microsoft MVP. He answered phones in front-line support, administered databases and developed modern application backends with a range of technologies. He worked... Show more

Kanwal Khipple is the CEO and Founder of 2toLead, a trailblazing consulting firm dedicated to innovative digital workplace transformations. Over the past decade, he has established himself as a trusted authority in creating engaging, award-winning employee experiences that seamlessly blend design, technology, and human-centric thinking. Recognized by the Nielsen Norman Group for designing two Top 10 Intranets, Kanwal continues to influence how modern organizations enhance collaboration, learning, and performance.

As AI reshapes how employees interact with information and one another, Kanwal focuses on leveraging cutting-edge tools—like personalization engines, intelligent chatbots, and workplace analytics—to drive meaningful, future-ready workplaces. A long-standing Microsoft 365 community contributor and Microsoft and Business Applications MVP since 2009, he frequently speaks on the value of embracing emerging technologies to amplify rather than replace human connection. His mission is to ensure that as we evolve our workplaces with AI, we do so ethically, responsibly, and with enduring human value at the core.

Kanwal Khipple is the CEO and Founder of 2toLead, a trailblazing consulting firm dedicated to innovative digital workplace transformations. Over the past decade, he has established himself as a trusted authority in creating engaging, award-winning em... Show more

Tori is a Principal AI Consultant at Advancing Analytics. Specialising in MLOps and LLMOps, Tori has worked on many ML and data science projects with Azure and Databricks at all stages of the ML Lifecycle. She is a co-presenter of the Data & AI podcast, Totally Skewed, founder of Girls Code Too UK and Trustee of Girls in Data.

Tori is a Principal AI Consultant at Advancing Analytics. Specialising in MLOps and LLMOps, Tori has worked on many ML and data science projects with Azure and Databricks at all stages of the ML Lifecycle. She is a co-presenter of the Data & AI podca... Show more

John is a Principal Consultant at ControlPlane, where he helps some of the world's most security-conscious organizations build and assure mission-critical platforms. He is a member of the in-toto Steering Committee and a maintainer of its Witness and Archivista sub-projects. He also serves as a co-chair of the CNCF's TAG Security. Within the OpenSSF, John is a member of the inaugural Ambassador cohort and contributes to several initiatives, including the SBOMit project.

John is a Principal Consultant at ControlPlane, where he helps some of the world's most security-conscious organizations build and assure mission-critical platforms. He is a member of the in-toto Steering Committee and a maintainer of its Witness and... Show more

Principal Cloud Solution Architect focused on Modern Work and M365 Copilot. Trusted advisor for delivering the value proposition of Copilot and leading architectural design sessions. Former Director of Modern Work Customer Success, Teams Technical Specialist, Microsoft MVP and Office 365 solution architect in the Twin Cities, MN. She has been delivering business collaboration solutions for years with her focus on Copilot, Teams, Viva, SharePoint, and Office 365. Michelle is the board President of the Minnesota Microsoft 365 User Group, community organizer of MN M365 Workshop Day and has been a member of the SharePoint community since 2009.

Principal Cloud Solution Architect focused on Modern Work and M365 Copilot. Trusted advisor for delivering the value proposition of Copilot and leading architectural design sessions. Former Director of Modern Work Customer Success, Teams Technical Sp... Show more

Google Developer Expert for Android, Organizer at GDG-Montreal, and writes articles about Android and Kotlin.

Outside of his day-to-day job, he spends his time learning new technologies/frameworks.

During his free time, he loves to read books.

Google Developer Expert for Android, Organizer at GDG-Montreal, and writes articles about Android and Kotlin. Outside of his day-to-day job, he spends his time learning new technologies/frameworks. During his free time, he loves to read books. Show more

Layla is a Microsoft MVP, Progress Champion, 3 times GitHub Star, and former director on the board at the .NET Foundation.
She is the co-founder of November North, a micro-game studio, developing and producing a first-person stealth game titled "The Third Tourist" - go and wishlist it on Steam!

Layla lives in the UK with her husband Jim and dogs, Cookie and Summer.

Layla is a Microsoft MVP, Progress Champion, 3 times GitHub Star, and former director on the board at the .NET Foundation. She is the co-founder of November North, a micro-game studio, developing and producing a first-person stealth game titled "The... Show more

Hailing from the faraway land of Brentwood, NY and currently residing in the rolling hills of Connecticut, Matt Topol has always been passionate about software. Matt has worked in infrastructure and application development, has lead development teams, and architected large-scale distributed systems for processing analytics on financial data. Matt is a PMC member for the Apache Arrow project, frequently enhancing the Golang library among other enhancements and helping to grow the Arrow Community. He wrote the first book on Apache Arrow "In-Memory Analytics with Apache Arrow" and spent the last couple years working on the Apache Arrow libraries full time and growing the Arrow Golang community. Matt is now a member of the ASF and also a PMC member of Apache Iceberg. Most recently, Matt and two colleagues have started the company, Columnar, focusing on data connectivity using Arrow Database Connectivity (ADBC).

In his spare time, Matt likes to bash his head against a keyboard, develop/run delightfully demented games of fantasy for his victims--er--friends, and share his knowledge with anyone interested who'll listen to his rants.

Hailing from the faraway land of Brentwood, NY and currently residing in the rolling hills of Connecticut, Matt Topol has always been passionate about software. Matt has worked in infrastructure and application development, has lead development teams... Show more

I am a Senior Platform Engineer and AI Leader dedicated to evolving the way we build software.

With over a decade of experience in Kubernetes and CI/CD, I now focus on Context Engineering, forming the needed connections between raw infrastructure and agentic workflows.

Beyond engineering, I’m a keynote and public speaker at global conferences including Devoxx London, KubeCon North America, and DevOpsDays NYC—speaking about developer experience, AI, and Star Wars.
May the Force be with you.

I am a Senior Platform Engineer and AI Leader dedicated to evolving the way we build software. With over a decade of experience in Kubernetes and CI/CD, I now focus on Context Engineering, forming the needed connections between raw infrastructure... Show more

Freelance mobile lead based in Paris.
Loving building nice mobile applications using Android, iOS, or Kotlin Multiplatform!
Member of the Paris Android User Group.
Founder of Doppio-lab.com.
Organizer of Mobile Makers in Paris

Freelance mobile lead based in Paris. Loving building nice mobile applications using Android, iOS, or Kotlin Multiplatform! Member of the Paris Android User Group. Founder of Doppio-lab.com. Organizer of Mobile Makers in Paris Show more

International Speaker, JavaChampion, Cofounder of JBCNConf and DevBcn conferences in Barcelona, and AI4Devs conference in Amsterdam.

Working as a Principal AI Development Enabler at GK Software, taking care of the AI Adoption with best practices and tooling and helping the company as the Engineering Excellence Lead.

Formerly Senior Staff Developer Advocate in Java at Sonar (SonarQube), focused on Code Quality, Dev Productivity, AI & Security.

I have worked as a (paid) developer for more than 30 years ago using multiple languajes, but for the last 15 using Java. Although I started when I was 14 with my Amstrad CPC 6128 :)

I am very interested in simulated reality, psychology, philosophy, critical thinking, AI and Java.

International Speaker, JavaChampion, Cofounder of JBCNConf and DevBcn conferences in Barcelona, and AI4Devs conference in Amsterdam. Working as a Principal AI Development Enabler at GK Software, taking care of the AI Adoption with best practices a... Show more

Bob Walker is a Field CTO Octopus Deploy. Bob started as a developer in the early days of .NET when web forms were the hottest new thing, and manual deployments were the norm. After one too many five-hour 2 AM Saturday deployments, he searched for any automation to stop that pain. His original focus was on automating database deployments. Since then, his passion remains writing code but has expanded to creating full CI/CD pipelines, Continuous Delivery, DevOps, and Platform Engineering.

Bob Walker is a Field CTO Octopus Deploy. Bob started as a developer in the early days of .NET when web forms were the hottest new thing, and manual deployments were the norm. After one too many five-hour 2 AM Saturday deployments, he searched for ... Show more

Andrew Madson leads Developer Relations at Perplexity, where he builds global programs that help developers and data teams adopt modern data and AI tooling. He has built DevRel, education, and evangelism functions at Fivetran, Tobiko Data, and Dremio, delivering technical content, large-scale community programs, and keynotes across major industry conferences.

Andrew is a published author of the O’Reilly “Definitive Guide to Apache Polaris” and a graduate professor of data science and engineering. Andrew previously led AI and data teams at Arizona State University, J.P. Morgan Chase, and MassMutual among others.

Andrew Madson leads Developer Relations at Perplexity, where he builds global programs that help developers and data teams adopt modern data and AI tooling. He has built DevRel, education, and evangelism functions at Fivetran, Tobiko Data, and Dremio... Show more