Sam Vanhoutte
Startup founder & investor, focus on Cloud & Innovation
Gent, Belgium
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Sam is a Microsoft Azure MVP. As a technical advisor and investor at several cloud start-ups, he is involved in cloud-native architectures and focuses on Serverless technologies, the Internet of Things, and Artificial Intelligence.
While he is currently as co-founder on a mission at libelo to make people rediscover nature again, he has been working as CTO at Codit, one of the leading European Microsoft cloud partners. In working together with Microsoft, Sam has extensive experience in building data-driven, integrated cloud-based solutions.
Sam has been involved in many enterprise cloud projects but now really likes to combine entrepreneurship and technology. He is a frequent speaker at international events and is active in the Belgian and European Microsoft communities.
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How on Earth? Mastering modern mapping and Spatial Data with Microsoft Azure
Adding a map to your app is easy-peasy, but most solutions never move beyond a standard view with a few scattered markers. If you want to build something truly interactive (like a custom exploration tool or a complex tracking system) you need to understand what's happening under the hood.
In this session, Sam will go deeper into the mechanics of modern mapping platforms. Using his experience building a nature exploration app, he’ll move past the marketing and show you how these technologies actually work in the wild (pun intended).
We will break down the core concepts you need to know:
- The Fundamentals: How map tiling, zoom levels, and data layers come together to create a seamless experience.
- Data & Sourcing: Where to find geo-information and which formats actually matter.
- The Backend: Choosing the right home for your data. We’ll compare the spatial capabilities of Azure Cosmos DB and Postgres with PostGIS to see which fits your use case.
- The Tech Stack: How to integrate your custom data sources to make maps interactive in your mobile or web frontends.
- Navigation is a complex topic on its own, with its own set of challenges. But this will also be discussed and demonstrated with code walkthroughs and real-world demos.
Stop flying blind. Monitor your applications with Azure Application Insights.
In this session, Sam will uncover the secrets of Azure Application Insights and show you can make your distributed apps observable. You’ll learn how to tap into real-time metrics, understand user's behaviour, and detect issues before they become business problems. Instead of guessing what’s going on under the hood, you’ll see how to use Azure Application insights to make your application really observable.
In this demo-rich session, Sam will discuss ways to visualize performance trends, analyse user flows, show application dependencies and feed these learnings back into your development process. Whether you’re an architect, a developer, or a product owner, this session will help you keep your applications stable, responsive, and ready to grow.
7 things I learned from coaching and investing in cloud startups
Not many companies are more exciting to work for than cloud startups. Employees at a startup are really making an impact with every decision that is taken. The difference with working in the enterprise world is huge.
In this session, Sam will share several things and insights he gained from working with several software (cloud) startups. Seven things that he believes can be applied to many projects and products. He will discuss architectural principles, technology choices, and quality decisions and their impact on the success of the startup. But the session will also cover some business aspects, such as pricing models and feature priorities.
Azure Assured: pragmatic Azure testing
Let's face it – writing tests often feels like a boring, thankless task. It's the spinach of software development: we know it's good for us, but it doesn't always taste great...
In this demo-oriented session, you will learn how pragmatic testing, especially within the versatile Azure ecosystem, can evolve from a cumbersome task into an efficiency-enhancing practice.
I will focus on the aspect of testing for end-to-end applications deployed on Microsoft Azure. The focus will be on dissecting and mastering three critical facets of application testing: Unit Tests, Integration Tests, and Front-End Tests.
I will leverage SpecFlow, Xunit, Playwright and Azure Load Testing and demonstrate their value and how they can be integrated in your software release pipelines.
Billions Served: high volume Time Series with ClickHouse on Azure
Time-series data is everywhere — from IoT sensors and smart meters to telemetry and user analytics. But handling billions of samples efficiently, at scale, and in real time is no small thing.
In this demo-packed session, we’ll explore how ClickHouse Cloud can serve as a lightning-fast, analytics engine for massive time-series workloads — and how it integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Azure to deliver both performance and flexibility.
We'll discuss architecture, ingestion patterns and best practices for data storage. Showing how to perform query optimizations that make sub-second analytics possible — even over billions of data records.
Topics we will discuss:
- Best practices for modeling and storing time-series data in ClickHouse
- Performance tuning tips, from compression codecs to materialized views
- Live demos of high-volume data processing and real-time aggregation queries
Techorama 2026 Belgium Sessionize Event
CloudBrew 2025 - A two-day Microsoft Azure event Sessionize Event
Nordic Integration Summit 2025 Sessionize Event
Azure Dev Summit 2025 Sessionize Event
Update Conference Krakow 2025 Sessionize Event
CloudBrew 2024 - A two-day Microsoft Azure event Sessionize Event
ESPC24 Sessionize Event
IglooConf 2024: Midsummer Sessionize Event
.NET Conf 2023 (Virtual) Sessionize Event
CloudBrew 2023 - A two-day Microsoft Azure event Sessionize Event
Festive Tech Calendar 2023 Sessionize Event
Techorama 2023 Belgium Sessionize Event
CloudBrew 2022 - A two-day Microsoft Azure event Sessionize Event
Update Conference Prague 2022 Sessionize Event
CloudBurst 2022 Sessionize Event
IglooConf 2022: Midsummer Sessionize Event
Techorama 2022 BE Sessionize Event
CodeMash 2022 Sessionize Event
NDC Oslo 2021 Sessionize Event
Update Conference Prague 2021 Sessionize Event
Build Stuff 2021 Lithuania Sessionize Event
Azure Community Conference 2021 Sessionize Event
KCDC 2021 Sessionize Event
Developer Week '21 Sessionize Event
AI and IoT Bulgaria Summit 2021 Sessionize Event
dataMinds Saturday Sessionize Event
Update Now 2020 Sessionize Event
Cloud DeveloperDays 2020 Sessionize Event
Azure Lowlands Sessionize Event
IglooConf 2020 Sessionize Event
Intelligent Cloud Conference 2019 Sessionize Event
Intelligent Cloud Conference 2018 Sessionize Event
Sam Vanhoutte
Startup founder & investor, focus on Cloud & Innovation
Gent, Belgium
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