Rachel Breeze
Back End Development Team Lead, Umbraco and .NET Developer at Nexer Digital
Manchester, United Kingdom
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Rachel is a Microsoft MVP for .NET and Web Development; she is also a 5x Umbraco MVP. Rachel has been a developer for over 25 years, working in the Microsoft .Net stack. She is passionate about accessibility, supporting and encouraging future developers, and in her spare time, she enjoys scuba diving. She also drinks copious amounts of tea.
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Escaping the developer rut
It's all too easy to feel like you're stuck in a rut as a developrm and as Ellen Glasgow once said "The only difference between a rut and a grave are the dimensions".
In this talk we will explore how to escape the feeling you're stuck in a development rut without changing jobs or roles; and have fun doing so.
Note: The speaker is not a trained therapist or career adviser and the talk is based on the speaker's experience,
Debugging: More than breakpoints and log analysis
Debugging is a cornerstone of software development, and understanding its role is pivotal for building robust applications.
In this talk, we explore strategies to help debug our applications. Our journey takes us through the debugging tools offered by C#, SQL Server Management Studio, and the Azure Portal.
Accessibility: Building and Deploying Accessible sites
Accessibility and inclusive design benefits all users; building accessible products and services isn't just a checkbox exercise or a legal requirement, it makes them inclusive.
This talk will explore an approach to building websites that helps ensure that they are accessible from the start. From design and build to deployment.
The talk will focus on the development and build approach, looking at the functionality available in Visual Code and Visual Studio to provide automated accessibility testing.
There will also be a demo of tools available in Azure DevOps to help test accessibility as part of the process. We will also understand why automated testing only forms part of building accessible sites.
From meetup attendee to MVP
This is the story of how, attending meetups and being involved in the Manchester Tech community helped the speakers gain confidence. We explore what motivated them to join a meetup, and see how they went from shy meetup attendees to Umbraco MVPs (most valued person).
We see how encouraging employees to attend, and if they wish talk at meetups. This allows them to:
- Learn new skills
- Validate existing approaches to development
- Gain confidence
We show how this benefits the wider development team, the companies attendees work for and the tech community.
We will also share our stories of how attending meetups helped encouraged us to give back to the development community. We will show what happens at our meetups, how we encourage new speakers.
In addition, we will discuss ways we have been helping encourage more younger people to enter the field of STEM.
Rethinking Website Carbon Calculators: Alternative Ways to Measure Digital Emissions
Website carbon calculators are widely used for estimating the environmental impact of websites. While they’re a helpful starting point, they often rely on general assumptions and incomplete data, which can lead to oversimplified or inaccurate results. Are they really telling the full story?
In this talk, we’ll take a closer look at the limitations of these tools—such as their reliance on averages for energy usage, lack of context about server efficiency, and ignoring how users actually interact with sites. We’ll explore practical alternatives and ways of reducing your website's carbon footprint.
The Forgotten Users Of A CMS
You’ve come up with an idea for a website or app. Validated the idea, done your user research and defined the functionality required.
But have you thought about all the users of your website/ app and of the users of the CMS.
In this talk we explore users and stakeholders who may have been missed when writing the requirements and also how to include them in the design and build process.
Accessibility - A .NET Developers perspective
In this talk I will explore and demonstrate why accessibility is important for consumers and users; why the whole development team should consider accessibility and inclusion. I will also share some tips and also demo tools that will aid in accessibility testing.
Umbraco Backoffice Accessibility Update
Discussion on the progress the community is making with the Umbraco Backoffice
Adding accessibility to the development process
As developers, we recognise that accessibility and inclusion should be at the heart of what we develop. We also know that we need to create and test that our solutions are accessible as soon as we can. As with everything in development detecting issues nearer to the development process saves time, and therefore budget, than detecting them at go live.
In this session, we explore how Visual Studio can be used for accessibility checking, and I will share my journey with adding accessibility checking into the Azure DevOps Pipeline.
DF22 Talkshow - Accessibility and a trip down memory lane
Join us for the DF22 talk where our speakers go into discussion about the topics they are excited about hosted by Rayta.
In this show we have 2 topic accessibility and a trip down memory lane with some long time Umbraco users.
DDD South West 2025 - 20th Anniversary Sessionize Event
Umbraco UK Festival 2023 Sessionize Event
Manchester Tech Festival Sessionize Event
DDD East Midlands Conference 2023 Sessionize Event
DF23 - The Dutch Umbraco Conference Sessionize Event
Global Azure London 2023 Sessionize Event
DDD North 2022 Sessionize Event
DF22 - The Dutch Umbraco Conference Sessionize Event
Umbraco Codegarden 2021 Sessionize Event
DDD 2020 Sessionize Event
DF 2020 Sessionize Event
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