Self care in a world of anxiety

Suffereing from panic attacks made attending meetups and conferences very painful for me.

A massive anxiety attack on day one of Techmorama NL in 2018 left me exhausted and wondering if I was going to make it to day 2.

But by finding something that I could use to override that memory I did manage to come back! And led to a sequence of events that led me to start public speaking.

But... Everyone's experiences, and coping mechanism, are different. In this open space we'll be sharing those experiences, those coping mechanisms with each other and at the same time start normalising this type of conversation for the future!

Real World Productivity Using AI

It's 2026 and I am so tired of the hype that AI is going to change the way we work. In the real world, how many of us manage to get the productivity improvements that are promised?

In this session we will look at why AI can promise more than it delivers - and look into some of my absolute failures when using it!

But it's not all doom and gloom! Whilst I get annoyed by that hype, my experiences have shown me, one of the biggest AI scpetics in my company - that when used in the correct way, AI can indeed provide so much value to us!

In this demo heavy talk, we will not be having a vibe coding session. Rather we will look at using AI to enhance how we work, how we think, and how to make sure that we are using both our time, and our keystrokes, effectively.

You'll walk away with practical use cases that improve your daily workflow, plus new ways to think about AI beyond just code generation.

Be Authentic with Blazor and Microsoft Entra External ID

Blazor developers love it for its fast web application building, and for building complicated applications in easily manageable modules.

Blazor is a little less loved when it comes to authentication though.

In this session we hope to change that! Being demo-heavy, we will first set up Microsoft Entra External ID, then we'll implement authentication in a Blazor Web Application using that External ID setup. Allowing external users - whether customers or collaborators - to access our application with RBAC security.

By the end of this session, you'll have a template that you can use with your own code - and will have learned some of the traps that I have fallen into!

Testing First - Getting The How

"But how can I test first when I dont't know what I am going to write?"

How many times have we heard this statement when we are trying to encourage individuals and teams to test first?

In this session Stacy is going to look at what can happen in these scenarios, and the problems that can happen when working this way using a couple of real world examples.

Rounding off the session she'll go through a project looking at how to add the testing from the start - and show the benefits it can bring when changes are requested of the code!

What Has Public Speaking Ever Done For Us?

Putting together a conference talk, even a 5 minute lightning talk, takes a lot of time and effort.

Hours, days, weeks can be poured into making sure that the talk goes as smoothly as possible. To make sure that as a presenter you know your stuff, but not that it’s an over practiced, robotic delivery.

And that’s before you factor in the time and effort in traveling.

So… Why do we do it? What has public speaking ever done for us. Let’s find out!

Azure Static Web Apps - From Zero to Deployed App In 60 Minutes

We're told that by using services such as Medium, dev.to etc. we are diluting our personal brand. That we should be posting to our own site and building ourselves up. You can, of course, use off-the-shelf applications to do that for you.

Or… You can use it as an exercise to try something new and learn new skills!

In this session, we will look at doing just that! Starting with an empty GitHub repository we are going to make a Blazor WebAssembly application to act as our website. We’ll connect that to an Azure Function that reads posts from a CosmosDB to pass to that site. Then we’ll deploy that to a production Azure Static Web App.

Of course, when developing an application, it’s useful to be able to run it locally. So, we’ll also look at how we can do that with Azure Static Web Apps.

Finally, in order to be able to write new blog posts, we need to be able to authenticate ourselves and provide proper authorization so that this functionality can be added later.

From Panic Attacks to Public Speaking - My Journey

Techorama came to the Netherlands for the first time in 2018. The biggest .Net conference in the Netherlands with a host of amazing speakers!

Suffering from severe anxiety it was going to be a tough couple of days, but still, I wanted to go!

This is a story about how a panic attack on day one of the conference, followed by a couple of chance meetings lead me to overcome my fear of flying, travelling and people to speak at my first conference.

Embrace the pitfalls (Our stop start journey to Change)

As developers, we want to work in a modern way, to get fast feedback on what we are building to make sure that we are building the right things in the right way.

However, many companies are still at the start of their journey. Things take longer than we would like to get moving, sometimes change can seem to happen at a glacial pace and whilst you are ready to try and run, others are finding their feet - or even digging in their heels!

In this talk, Stacy will go over some of the pitfalls that have happened to her, and the lessons that she has learned from them. Unfortunately, there are no magic solutions to make the problems go away, but hopefully, you can look at the mistakes she has made and go away to make your own new ones to learn from!

How to really work as a team - from sleepy to strong pair programming

So many people think that pair programming is a boring waste of time and effort. I'm here to explain how our team made it work, and what benefits we got out of it!

I love working in a team, bouncing ideas off each other and using our combined strengths to produce something that as individuals we wouldn't be able to come up with.

One way I like to do this is pair programming. But, when I talk to people about this, I often get told it's a waste of time. That it’s about one person working hard whilst the other looks on, superfluous to the process. And let's face it, most of us have experienced this when trying it out!

But I’m going to show you how we went from this sleepy type of pair programming to being super productive when working with multiple developers at one machine!

Not the one person working, one person staring into space type of pair programming, but actually providing value to each other, making the extra effort worthwhile, and bringing extra benefits to the team as a whole.

Developers and Testers: The Yin and Yang of Software Development

Before us, our heroes: Developer and Tester - locked in a gruesome battle for the ages.
Both desire the ultimate goal of high-quality, well-functioning software.
Why do they wage this war against one another?
Will one reign supreme??
Will they meet their release timeline???
Tune in as part of the audience to hear the epic conclusion!

This is a common story in software development. At least, that's what some people say. To that sentiment, we say it doesn't have to be like this.
There are opportunities for each role to shine, and capacity to consider the risks that concern both parties.

Through personal stories from both the good and the ugly, we will share small experiments with you that you can take back to your team.
With a little mindful communication, a sprinkle of grace, and a healthy helping of transparency, you can initiate the change you want to see on your team, to encourage more effective collaboration.

Together Karen (tester) and Stacy (developer) will tell stories where things went wrong, as well as examples where things went smothly
They'll talk about how to improve the collaboration between the 2 roles
And also give concrete ideas for attendees to implement when they return to their teams

Making Static Dynamic - Adding WebPubSub to Azure Static Web Apps

Azure Static Web Apps, with Azure Functions built in, already deliver powerful user interfaces, but running in the browser direcctly they lack native WebPubSub support for real-time updates.

In this session, we will show how to bridge this gap by cleverly wiring Azure Functions to an Azure Web Pub Sub hub, enabling instant notifications to users when data changes without browser refreshes.

We'll start with a simple messaging application allows users to talk to each other (bring your phones to join in the live demo!) before looking at a real world use case of how we can use this to make great applications!

Hands on, we start with a working synchronous application to manage our books. We'll about the shortcomings of the system (and the Static Web App it's built upon), before changing the Functions to set up connection to a SignalR hub and add some events to see the functions working!

This is a new talk for Autumn 2025 and is aimed at DotNet deveopers.

Not Just for Hobbies: Building Enterprise-Ready Azure Static Web Apps

A fellow speaker once told me that Azure Static Web Apps are "fun, but not really real-world useful." I went home and wrote this talk.

Turns out, with the standard tier and the right approach, they can hold their own in any enterprise architecture — and this session will show you exactly how.

We'll cover everything you need to hit the ground running — Bicep templates, the required command line tooling, and Azure DNS integration to get a production-ready foundation in place. From there we'll look at reworking the default pipeline to support testing and multi-environment deployments from a single build.

If time allows, we'll go further — custom authentication using Auth0 and role management via Azure Functions.

Target audience: Developers considering Azure Static Web Apps for the first time, architects evaluating their enterprise viability, and existing SWA developers looking to take their implementation further.
This is a demo-heavy session — 5 slides, the rest is live demonstration.
Preferred duration: 45-60 minutes. Can be delivered in 30 minutes at reduced detail, with the custom authentication section removed if necessary.

Beyond Chatbots: Bad AI Is Worse Than No AI

Adding AI isn't the answer if you haven't found the problem yet. And right now, we're adding a lot of AI without asking nearly enough questions.

We'll start somewhere unexpected — the humble date field — and use it to unpick why so many AI implementations frustrate rather than delight. Because the problem is rarely the AI itself. It's the thinking that happened before anyone wrote a line of code.

We'll go back to thinking about the problem itself — and build something that makes our users truly joyful, not something to make marketing smile.

This is not a development session with demos. The focus is on thinking through good AI use cases and how to make better decisions for your users — relevant to developers, architects, and product teams equally.