Barret Blake
#MicrosoftMVP, speaker, husband, father, architect@NimblePros, developer, former manager, gamer, LEGO enthusiast, Buckeyes fan, model railroader
Columbus, Ohio, United States
Actions
Microsoft MVP, husband, father, speaker, mentor, writer, architect@NimblePros, developer, former manager, gamer, LEGO enthusiast, Buckeyes fan, model railroader. When I'm not doing all that other stuff I also occasionally develop applications. Find links to my previous speaking, podcasts and sessions at my website: https://barretblake.dev
Badges
Area of Expertise
Topics
Unlocking the Power of Data Movement with ETL: Simplify, Transform, and Scale
Data is everywhere. It’s scattered across different systems, platforms, and tools, creating an overwhelming web of disconnected information. For businesses to harness its true potential, they need to move that data seamlessly between systems. But how do you tackle the mess of mismatched formats, data silos, and complex integrations?
That’s where ETL comes in. ETL—Extract, Transform, Load—makes moving and transforming massive amounts of data a breeze. It's the secret sauce that connects your data, ensuring it’s where it needs to be, in the right format, and ready for use.
In this session, we’ll explore how ETL systems can simplify these complex data interactions and streamline the flow of information between systems. With real-world examples from Azure Data Factory, we’ll dive deep into how ETL processes can be leveraged to automate data movement, transform raw information, and load it into systems for actionable insights.
By the end of the session, you'll have a clear understanding of how to harness the full power of ETL to take your data integration to the next level—making your systems smarter, faster, and more connected than ever before!
A Hands-On Overview to Building AI Solutions with AI Builder
Whether it's generating automated interactive chat experiences or automating business processes, AI is the future of business software. AI Builder is a powerful tool for organizations looking to incorporate the power of AI into their business processes.
In this talk, we'll explore the key features and capabilities of Power Automate's AI Builder and demonstrate how it can be used to build and deploy AI models quickly and easily. From automating tedious tasks to enhancing customer experiences, we'll examine the various use cases for AI Builder and show how it can help organizations drive innovation and growth. Whether you're new to AI or looking to expand your knowledge, this talk will provide valuable insights and best practices for using AI Builder to unlock the full potential of artificial intelligence to automate your work processes.
Soft Skills for Developers: The Key to Success in Tech
Technical skills may get your foot in the door—but it’s soft skills that open the next one. In today’s fast-paced, collaborative, and remote-friendly work environments, developers who can communicate clearly, solve problems creatively, and work well with others have a distinct advantage.
In this session, we’ll dive into the core soft skills that elevate developers from good to great: communication, collaboration, adaptability, time management, and emotional intelligence. You’ll learn why these skills matter just as much as your technical stack—and how to start building them intentionally.
Whether you're early in your career or a seasoned pro looking to grow into leadership, you'll walk away with practical techniques to strengthen your interpersonal toolkit, improve team dynamics, and thrive in any organization.
Rediscovering Entity Framework Core: Speed, Flexibility, and Power for Modern Development
Are you tired of wrestling with data access layers and managing complex database interactions in your applications? It’s time to give Entity Framework Core (EF Core) another look. This session will show you how EF Core has evolved and why it’s now an even more powerful and flexible tool for modern application development.
Whether you’re building cloud-native apps, microservices, or just looking for a faster and more efficient way to interact with databases, EF Core has significantly improved in performance, scalability, and ease of use. We’ll dive into the latest features, optimizations, and best practices that make EF Core an indispensable tool for developers in today’s fast-paced world.
From raw performance gains to advanced querying capabilities, to the flexibility of working with various databases (SQL Server, SQLite, PostgreSQL, and more), EF Core has become a highly capable, cross-platform solution for all your data access needs.
In this session, we’ll explore the latest EF Core performance enhancements, how they can supercharge your apps, and how to leverage new features like improved raw SQL support, better LINQ performance, and advanced migrations. We'll also talk tips and tricks for making the most of EF Core in your projects, including best practices for working with complex models and optimizing queries.
If you’ve written off EF Core in the past, this session will change your mind. Come see why it’s time to give EF Core a second chance and why it might just be the perfect fit for your next project!
From Setup to Running in Minutes: Distributed Apps with .NET Aspire
Distributed application development is complex by nature, often requiring significant time and effort just to wire together services, infrastructure, and dependencies. .NET Aspire, now generally available, provides a modern, cloud-ready approach that dramatically simplifies this process for .NET developers.
In this session, attendees will learn how .NET Aspire enables rapid development of distributed applications through built-in orchestration, opinionated components, and seamless service integration. We’ll cover the core concepts behind Aspire and demonstrate how to quickly scaffold, configure, and run a multi-service application—including web frontends, APIs, data stores, and supporting infrastructure—using minimal configuration.
By the end of the session, participants will understand where .NET Aspire fits into the .NET ecosystem, how it improves local development and deployment workflows, and how to apply it immediately to accelerate their own distributed application projects.
Tales From The Trenches: Leading A Dev Team Is Hard
Let's face it, being a leader is tough. Whether it's wrangling the complexities of projects large and small, keeping your team members on task and their skills sharp, ensuring your clients are happy, or balancing all that with keeping your own boss happy, there's a lot on your plate.
In this session, using real-world examples from my own 20+ years of leadership experience in and out of tech, we'll delve into common hurdles such as maintaining morale, managing conflicting priorities, dealing with HR issues, and more, all while making sure you're keeping in line with your organizational goals.
So join me as we discuss practical strategies for overcoming these challenges to ensure the growth and success of your own development team.
Mastering Code Reviews: Fundamentals for Better Collaboration and Quality
Code reviews are an essential part of the development process, but how often do we pause and think about how to make them truly effective? In this session, we’ll explore the core principles of good code reviews that lead to better collaboration, higher-quality code, and a more cohesive development team.
Whether you're new to code reviews or looking to refine your process, we’ll dive into the key elements that make a code review valuable—not just for the author of the code, but for the whole team. We’ll cover how to foster a positive and constructive review culture, create clear guidelines for reviewing, and identify the common pitfalls to avoid.
In this session we'll focus on developing the proper mindset for code reviews, best practices for reviewers and developers, tips on how to present feedback to promote teamwork and improvement, and leveraging tools to streamline the process and reduce friction.
Whether you’re a developer looking to improve your review skills or a team lead building a healthy review culture, this session will give you the practical strategies to make every code review more effective, efficient, and beneficial for your entire team. Let’s build better code together—one review at a time!
From Code to Community: A Developer's Journey into Speaking, Content, and Community Involvement
You’ve spent years honing your skills as a developer, but now you’re wondering how to take the next step and share your knowledge. Whether it’s writing blog posts, speaking at conferences and meetups, mentoring others, or building your brand online, becoming involved in the developer community can be both fulfilling and career-changing.
In this session, we’ll break down how any developer—regardless of experience level—can start contributing to the broader tech ecosystem. You’ll learn practical tips for:
--Finding your voice and creating technical content (blogs, videos, open source contributions)
--Preparing and submitting your first talk (and surviving the nerves!)
--Engaging with local and global developer communities
--Building credibility and growing your network without burning out
This talk isn’t about being famous or chasing followers—it’s about creating impact, forming connections, and giving back to the community that helped shape you. Whether you’re introverted, unsure where to start, or simply looking for a way to level up, you’ll walk away with actionable steps to start your journey. And maybe build up some confidence along the way.
You Get Nothing Without Data: Adding Database Functionality to .NET Aspire
From SQL Server and PostgreSQL to CosmosDB, most applications are meaningless without data. In this session, we’ll explore how to seamlessly bring database support into your .NET Aspire projects—whether you’re working with containerized services or cloud-hosted databases.
You’ll learn practical techniques and proven best practices for configuring connections, managing secrets, and integrating data access layers using Entity Framework Core or Dapper. Through real-world examples, we’ll cover how to structure projects for maintainability, manage schema migrations, seed data, and architect for scalability in modern, distributed environments.
Whether you're building APIs, microservices, or cloud-native apps, this session will equip you with the tools to make your .NET Aspire applications truly data-driven.
When Logs Tell the Whole Story: OpenTelemetry for Beginners
Failures in production are a certainty. When something goes wrong, the difference between a quick fix and a prolonged outage often comes down to whether your logs tell a clear, connected story.
In this session, we’ll introduce OpenTelemetry as a language-agnostic, vendor-neutral approach to application observability. We'll start with the fundamentals—what logs, traces, and metrics are, why they matter, and how they work together—before focusing on how to use logging effectively rather than excessively.
Attendees will learn how to structure logs for clarity and correlation, how trace context connects logs across services, and how to choose log levels that provide insight without noise. We’ll also cover common logging anti-patterns, including over-logging and unstructured messages, and how to avoid them to keep both troubleshooting effort and observability costs under control.
Using practical, real-world examples, this session will show how OpenTelemetry logging improves debugging, incident response, and overall system understanding. Whether you’re new to observability or replacing a legacy logging approach, you’ll leave with a clear mental model and concrete best practices you can apply immediately.
Spec-Driven Development with GitHub Spec-Kit: From Intent to Implementation
Spec-driven development flips the traditional workflow on its head: instead of code being the source of truth, the specification becomes the backbone of design, collaboration, and delivery. In this session, we’ll explore how GitHub Spec-Kit enables teams to treat specifications as first-class artifacts—living documents that drive architecture, implementation, and verification.
You’ll learn how Spec-Kit helps teams clearly express intent using structured, version-controlled specs that live alongside code. We’ll walk through a practical workflow that starts with defining system behavior and constraints, then progressively refines those specs into testable, automatable outcomes. Along the way, we’ll show how specs can reduce ambiguity, improve cross-functional collaboration, and make design decisions explicit before a single line of production code is written.
This talk will cover:
--What spec-driven development is (and what it isn’t)
--How GitHub Spec-Kit fits into modern developer workflows
--Using specs to align product, engineering, and AI-assisted development
--Real-world examples of turning specs into implementations with confidence
Whether you’re building greenfield systems, integrating AI into your stack, or trying to reduce costly rework, spec-driven development offers a scalable way to move faster without sacrificing clarity. Attendees will leave with concrete patterns and a clear mental model for adopting GitHub Spec-Kit in their own projects.
Microsoft Zero To Hero Community - 2025 User group Sessionize Event Upcoming
TechBash 2025 Sessionize Event
Summit NA 2025
Agents & Copilot are defining the future of Dynamics, CRM, Power Platform, Azure, Fabric and more, explore and discover what this means to you at Community Summit, the largest Microsoft Business Applications User Conference on the planet
Cincy Deliver 2025
Building Distributed Apps in Minutes with .NET Aspire: Simplifying Complexity
Canadian Cloud Summit 2025 Sessionize Event
SciFiDevCon 2025 - May the Fourth Be With You (This is the May) Sessionize Event
Stir Trek 2025 Sessionize Event
Low Code/ No Code Power Platform Conference Sessionize Event
Azure Back to School 2024 Sessionize Event
KCDC 2024 Sessionize Event
SciFiDevCon - This is the May (May the Fourth Be With You) Sessionize Event
CodeMash 2024 Sessionize Event
Festive Tech Calendar 2023 Sessionize Event
SciFiDevConMayTheFourthEvent 2023 Sessionize Event
Festive Tech Calendar 2022 Sessionize Event
Azure Back to School 2022 Sessionize Event
CodeMash 2022 Sessionize Event
Please note that Sessionize is not responsible for the accuracy or validity of the data provided by speakers. If you suspect this profile to be fake or spam, please let us know.
Jump to top