Media & Information

Esteemed specialists working in the fields of media education, digital media, multimedia and radio services

Fabrizio Sgura

Fabrizio Sgura

I started programming at 12, cutting my teeth on Basic and Assembler for Sinclair and Commodore machines back in the 80s, a foundation that's stuck with me ever since. Today I'm a Docker Captain, Golden Kubestronaut and CNCF Ambassador, AI dedicated and still an insatiable learner, drawn to scalability, flexibility, and the hard problems of transformation at scale. Innovation is my belief! My job is my favorite game, and there's no such thing as a break.

I started programming at 12, cutting my teeth on Basic and Assembler for Sinclair and Commodore machines back in the 80s, a foundation that's stuck with me ever since. Today I'm a Docker Captain, Golden Kubestronaut and CNCF Ambassador, AI dedicated ... Show more

Harshavardhan Bajoria

Harshavardhan Bajoria

Harshavardhan Bajoria is a Product Manager for AI & Innovation at Unstop, where he builds AI-driven products at the intersection of artificial intelligence and cloud computing. He is a GitHub Campus Expert Alumni, a LeetCode Knight, and holds 18 professional certifications — 7x Microsoft Certified, 5x Oracle Certified, 5x Google Certified, and GitHub Certified. A Top 5% Speaker on Sessionize, Harshavardhan is a regular voice at tech conferences and community meetups, sharing his experience building AI products and working with cloud platforms.

Harshavardhan Bajoria is a Product Manager for AI & Innovation at Unstop, where he builds AI-driven products at the intersection of artificial intelligence and cloud computing. He is a GitHub Campus Expert Alumni, a LeetCode Knight, and holds 18 prof... Show more

Courtney Yatteau

Courtney Yatteau

Courtney Yatteau is a Developer Advocate on Esri's Developer Experience Team, where she helps developers build better web applications with modern JavaScript tools, libraries, and mapping technology. Before Esri, she taught computer science and mathematics, which shaped her approach to making technical concepts clear, approachable, and visual.

Courtney Yatteau is a Developer Advocate on Esri's Developer Experience Team, where she helps developers build better web applications with modern JavaScript tools, libraries, and mapping technology. Before Esri, she taught computer science and mathe... Show more

Dean Schuster

Dean Schuster

Dean Schuster has been envisioning and creating human-centered digital products since the advent of the commercial web. He is founder and owner of the user experience strategy firm truematter, leading the team to help national and international organizations change the way they do business online. He travels all over the world to speak and teach, mentoring professionals and challenging teams to a higher standard for digital experiences.

Dean is also an avid ultra-marathoner and trail racer, often found in out-of-the-way places, including Antarctica.

Dean Schuster has been envisioning and creating human-centered digital products since the advent of the commercial web. He is founder and owner of the user experience strategy firm truematter, leading the team to help national and international organ... Show more

Aicha Laafia

Aicha Laafia

Aicha Laafia, a Java software engineer at SQLI with a love for coding, an interest in sustainability, and a commitment to empowering women in tech.

I am a Women Techmakers and Girls Code ambassador, an Oracle ACE Associate, a member of the Moroccan Association of Computing Science, and part of the JetBrains Community Contributor program.

I focus on creating software with minimal environmental impact while mentoring and supporting women in technology.

When I’m not coding, I enjoy exploring delicious food, phone photography, and watching Formula 1.

Aicha Laafia, a Java software engineer at SQLI with a love for coding, an interest in sustainability, and a commitment to empowering women in tech. I am a Women Techmakers and Girls Code ambassador, an Oracle ACE Associate, a member of the Morocca... Show more

Edward Pollack

Edward Pollack

Ed Pollack is a Microsoft Data Platform MVP with a passion for learning how Data Platforms work and sharing that knowledge with the community. His experiences in data architecture, database design, performance optimization, and security are motivation for public speaking, writing, coding, and other community activities.

Ed has spoken at Day of Data events, SQL Bits, PASS Summit, EightKB, and many other regional and international events. Ed is the organizer of the Capital Region Data Professionals and Day of Data Albany, as well as a co-organizer of SQL Saturday New York City. He has published a number of books, including "Dynamic SQL: Applications, Performance, and Security in Microsoft SQL Server", "Expert Performance Indexing in Azure SQL and SQL Server 2022", and "Analytics Optimization with Columnstore Indexes in Microsoft SQL Server: Optimizing OLAP Workloads". Ed is also an active contributor of content to SimpleTalk.

In his free time, Ed enjoys video games, traveling, cooking exceptionally spicy foods, and hanging out with his amazing wife and sons.

Ed Pollack is a Microsoft Data Platform MVP with a passion for learning how Data Platforms work and sharing that knowledge with the community. His experiences in data architecture, database design, performance optimization, and security are motivati... Show more

Emiliano Pisu

Emiliano Pisu

Hi 👋 Folks!
I’m Emiliano Pisu, your friendly neighborhood Design Engineer.

Throughout my career, driven by my coding addiction, I’ve always stayed up to date with software development and related trends, focusing on UI, UX, Accessibility, Responsiveness, Compatibility, Scalability, and Maintainability.

My main goal is to build accessible and pixel-perfect user interfaces that enhance the user experience.

My core approach is to develop with zero dependencies, fostering creativity, learning, experimentation, and deep knowledge. This leads to solutions that not only follow trends but are also carefully tailored to the needs of clients and stakeholders.

I am deeply committed to knowledge sharing and mentorship: through my experience as Sensei @ Dev Dojo IT, I actively support those who want to grow in the frontend world and in designing accessible and scalable interfaces.

In conclusion, I’m the right person if you need a bridge between Design and Development. I live to simplify my colleagues' DevX, which is why I focus on advocating for the core technologies of the web, strictly vanilla.

Hi 👋 Folks! I’m Emiliano Pisu, your friendly neighborhood Design Engineer. Throughout my career, driven by my coding addiction, I’ve always stayed up to date with software development and related trends, focusing on UI, UX, Accessibility, Respon... Show more

Chris Klug

Chris Klug

Chris Klug has been building software professionally since sometime around 2000, back when .NET was new, CSS was a suggestion, and Roy Fielding’s REST paper had just been published. Since then he has written code for everything from model agencies to online sports betting to professional sail racing, because staying in one industry sounded far too boring.

He has been a Microsoft MVP for something like 15 years (depending on when he last updated this abstract), which either means he knows a thing or two or that he just talks a lot. Possibly both, but we all know the latter is a given. These days he works at Active Solution in Stockholm, helping clients solve problems and build better systems.

When he is not writing code, Chris is usually geeking out on some form of extreme sport like skydiving, kitesurfing, snowboarding, mountain biking, or wing foiling. He loves learning new things and spends way too much time thinking about weird stuff most people never even notice.

Chris Klug has been building software professionally since sometime around 2000, back when .NET was new, CSS was a suggestion, and Roy Fielding’s REST paper had just been published. Since then he has written code for everything from model agencies to... Show more

Cortney Nickerson

Cortney Nickerson

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

Mayra Badillo Villamizar

Mayra Badillo Villamizar

Microsoft MVP Business Applications and Microsoft MVP in Office 365. I had the honor of being the first Spanish-speaking woman in Latin America in the Business Applications category, and the first and to date the only person in Colombia. As a Microsoft consultant and contractor, she designed architectures and implemented productivity solutions in Power Platform and Microsoft 365 (Design Thinking), advising companies in the process of transforming their business processes until the delivery and execution of change management and adoption exercises; I diagnose its degree of adoption and usability, designing the business process transformation strategy using Microsoft 365, Project Online, Dynamics 365 (CRM) and Power Platform to end customers, business partners and accounts assigned by the manufacturer. +12 years Microsoft 365 | +10 years Dynamics 365 CRM | +9000 Consulting Hours | +500 hours Speaker | 22 Countries | +280 Conferences. Copilot Tech Subject Matter Expert. Lean Change Management Certified

Microsoft MVP Business Applications and Microsoft MVP in Office 365. I had the honor of being the first Spanish-speaking woman in Latin America in the Business Applications category, and the first and to date the only person in Colombia. As a Micros... Show more

Christian Buckley

Christian Buckley

Christian is an award-winning product marketer and technology evangelist, and both a Microsoft Regional Director (RD) and Most Valuable Professional (MVP). Christian's 30+ year tech career includes Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Evangelist for several leading SharePoint ISVs, and being part of the Microsoft team that launched SharePoint Online. He has worked with some of the world’s largest technology companies to build and deploy social, collaboration, and supply chain solutions, and sold his first software startup to Rational Software in 2001. Co-author of books on both SharePoint and software configuration management (SCM) and one science fiction novel, Christian is one of the most widely published names within the Microsoft ecosystem, and can be found online at www.buckleyplanet.com and @buckleyplanet

Christian is an award-winning product marketer and technology evangelist, and both a Microsoft Regional Director (RD) and Most Valuable Professional (MVP). Christian's 30+ year tech career includes Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Evangelist for sev... Show more

Shawn Wildermuth

Shawn Wildermuth

Shawn Wildermuth has been tinkering with computers and software since he got a Vic-20 back in the early ‘80s. As a Microsoft MVP since 2003. He’s the author of over twenty Pluralsight courses, written eight books, has a popular YouTube channel, and is one of the Wilder Minds. You can reach him at his blog at http://wildermuth.com.

As a filmmaker, he creates documentaries including a feature-length, documentary about software developers today called “Hello World: The Film”. You can see more about it at http://twainfilms.com.

Shawn Wildermuth has been tinkering with computers and software since he got a Vic-20 back in the early ‘80s. As a Microsoft MVP since 2003. He’s the author of over twenty Pluralsight courses, written eight books, has a popular YouTube channel, and i... Show more

Jeremy Meiss

Jeremy Meiss

Jeremy is an international speaker and is a Technical Solution Architect, AI Native, at WWT, previously leading Developer Advocacy at OneStream Software, CircleCI, Solace, and Auth0. He has spent over 30 years in Tech, covering just about every functional area, including support, system and database administration, application and web development, project management, program management, and systems analysis. Jeremy is active in the DevRel and DevOps communities, a co-creator of DevOpsPartyGames, and an organizer for DevOpsDays Kansas City and CommunityDays KC. A lover of all things coffee, community, open source, and tech, he’s also house-broken, and (generally) plays well with others.

Jeremy is an international speaker and is a Technical Solution Architect, AI Native, at WWT, previously leading Developer Advocacy at OneStream Software, CircleCI, Solace, and Auth0. He has spent over 30 years in Tech, covering just about every funct... Show more

Máté Tóth

Máté Tóth

Máté is passionate about technology and how it can enhance the way people work and collaborate. He began his Power Platform career as a citizen developer, and today works as an Intelligent Automation & AI Architect at Xebia, helping organizations get real value from Copilot Studio, M365 Copilot, and the wider Power Platform. He leads the Hungary Power Platform User Group and co-organizes community events, sharing his expertise at conferences on AI adoption, low-code development, and user experience.

Beyond technology, Máté advocates for the role of soft skills in tech - fostering collaborative groups, mentoring, and helping professionals identify and leverage their transferable skills. He believes that success in digital transformation is not just about tools but also about people and communication. He prioritizes work-life integration, balancing professional projects with hobbies such as hiking, SUP, cooking, and live music.

He's also a Microsoft MVP, Microsoft Certified Trainer, and volunteer photographer, continuously blending his love for technology with creativity.

Máté is passionate about technology and how it can enhance the way people work and collaborate. He began his Power Platform career as a citizen developer, and today works as an Intelligent Automation & AI Architect at Xebia, helping organizations get... Show more

Richard Harbridge

Richard Harbridge

Richard Harbridge is a Principal Industry Advisor on Microsoft 365 and ShareGate as well as a long-standing Microsoft MVP. Renowned for simplifying the complex, Richard equips IT, executives, and business leaders with three essentials: clarity about Microsoft 365’s evolving capabilities, confidence in responsibly implementing and governing new technologies, and the connections that amplify success across partners, customer communities and Microsoft itself.

Over the past decades he has:
• Advised 200+ enterprises on Microsoft 365 strategy, AI governance and employee experience.
• Delivered 450 + keynotes, workshops and conference sessions across five continents.
• Empowered millions of employees with simpler, more secure Microsoft 365 experiences, while helping partners unlock $300+ million in new revenue.
• Leads CIO think tanks and employee-experience forums while serving on research and community leadership councils shaping the future of work.

Whether architecting AI rollouts, moderating executive roundtables, or writing practical frameworks, Richard’s focus is unwavering: turn technology potential into lasting business impact.

Richard Harbridge is a Principal Industry Advisor on Microsoft 365 and ShareGate as well as a long-standing Microsoft MVP. Renowned for simplifying the complex, Richard equips IT, executives, and business leaders with three essentials: clarity about ... Show more

Alex Merced

Alex Merced

Alex Merced is Head of Developer Relations at Dremio and an author, educator, and open-source developer focused on data lakehouses and AI. He is co-author of *Apache Iceberg: The Definitive Guide* and *Apache Polaris: The Definitive Guide* from O'Reilly Media, and author of *Architecting an Apache Iceberg Lakehouse* from Manning.

Alex speaks internationally about Apache Iceberg, Apache Polaris, open lakehouse architecture, semantic layers, and agentic AI. Through books, open-source projects, courses, podcasts, blogs, and technical videos, he works to make emerging data and AI technologies more accessible while advocating for open and interoperable technology ecosystems.

Alex Merced is Head of Developer Relations at Dremio and an author, educator, and open-source developer focused on data lakehouses and AI. He is co-author of *Apache Iceberg: The Definitive Guide* and *Apache Polaris: The Definitive Guide* from O'Rei... Show more

Tommy Puglia

Tommy Puglia

Tommy is Power BI Consultant focused on advisory for Adoption & Process, Training, and Development around Power BI at organizations. He is a former six-time Microsoft MVP for Power BI and Fabric (2019–2025). He leads the Chicago Power BI User Group & co-hosts the Explicit Measures Podcast, releasing new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Tommy is constantly focused on how any report, application, or solution can change and drive behavior.

Tommy has been working in Power BI since it was known as Power BI Designer, and responsible for the implementation, adoption, and enhancements of Power BI and the impact it should have. He leads his organization on how data should be integrated, automated, and analyzed in a way that drives business and culture.

Connect with Tommy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommypuglia/
Subscribe to the Explicit Measures Podcast: https://anchor.fm/explicitmeasures
Watch the Explicit Measures Podcast live: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn1m_aBmgsbHr83c1P6uqaWF5PLdFzOjj

Tommy is Power BI Consultant focused on advisory for Adoption & Process, Training, and Development around Power BI at organizations. He is a former six-time Microsoft MVP for Power BI and Fabric (2019–2025). He leads the Chicago Power BI User Group &... Show more

Mike Nelson

Mike Nelson

My career in information technology spans over many decades, involving a vast array of technologies and solutions. I am very passionate about cutting edge technology, solutions, and knowledge sharing. I have been awarded prestigious community contribution awards such as a dual category Microsoft MVP for Cloud and Datacenter Management and PowerShell, as well as a VMware vExpert and VMware User Group Leader. I am an international speaker at technical conferences, organizations, and user groups.

My career in information technology spans over many decades, involving a vast array of technologies and solutions. I am very passionate about cutting edge technology, solutions, and knowledge sharing. I have been awarded prestigious community contrib... Show more

Christian Woerz

Christian Woerz

Christian is a Microsoft MVP, Oracle ACE in Java and Fullstack engineer with over 15 years of experience as an engineer. He started with Java and since 9 years works also in the frontend with Angular, TypeScript and JavaScript. Besides his daily work he enjoys giving talks, creating YouTube videos for his over 8000 subscribers, works on his open source projects. If there is time left he gives workshops giving trainings regarding the successful usage of AI in software engineering and writes articles.

Christian is a Microsoft MVP, Oracle ACE in Java and Fullstack engineer with over 15 years of experience as an engineer. He started with Java and since 9 years works also in the frontend with Angular, TypeScript and JavaScript. Besides his daily work... Show more

Peter van Vliet

Peter van Vliet

Peter started his career as a full-stack software developer in 2002 and has since progressed to a lead architect role. Over the course of these 20+ years, he has fulfilled many roles in various industries and gained extensive experience with a wide range of technologies such as Java, C#, JavaScript, and others. Nowadays, he leverages his expertise to assist companies, write articles, and speak at conferences.

His main focus is on making software development more cost-effective and future-proofing applications. Additionally, he has picked up making illustrations as a hobby because he is a strong believer in visual communication. There are no boring slides in any of his presentations.

Peter started his career as a full-stack software developer in 2002 and has since progressed to a lead architect role. Over the course of these 20+ years, he has fulfilled many roles in various industries and gained extensive experience with a wide r... Show more

Paul Swider

Paul Swider

30 years building tools that add hours back to a clinician's day
CEO at RealActivity | AI Pioneer | BOSHUG Founder | Microsoft Keynoter

I've spent my career at the intersection of healthcare and technology, not talking about AI transformation, but actually building it. In 2001, I designed a symbolic AI triage engine that eliminated pre-op anesthesia visits and accelerated same-day surgery pathways.

In 2023, my team shipped RealActivity Physician Activity Copilot, the world's first AI harness focused on hospital administration. And 2024, we shipped Wheelhouse, a model fine-tuned on PeopleSoft healthcare operations data and executive prompt workflows.

What happened in between? I trained 3,000+ engineers across GE, IDX, and Microsoft in enterprise software patterns. I migrated 50+ HIPAA workloads to Azure. I built the CMS compliance and activity reporting platforms that health systems still rely on. I earned Microsoft MVP recognition and was named Azure Most Influential, not for evangelism, but for implementation.

Today I'm CEO & Chief AI Officer at RealActivity, a boutique Microsoft partner delivering mission-critical AI for academic medical centers and health systems across the Northeast. Our focus? Tracking system wide clinical time (cFTE), CMS complaint AI, and improving operational efficiency, the problems that keep CMOs and CMIOs up at night. I'm also the founder of OCS Labs, an AI lab building industry-specific AI for government, and sectors where getting it wrong isn't an option.

I founded BOSHUG, the Boston Healthcare Cloud & AI Community, which has grown into a global network serving 40k. I'm a Cloud Wars healthcare AI analyst, a top 3% rated global speaker (Microsoft Ignite, Cloud Wars, and beyond).

Global citizen based in Greater Boston. When I'm not building healthcare AI, you'll find me at a Sicilian bakery arguing about lemon cake, sailing, snowboarding, diving, or planning the next adventure. 114 countries, and counting.

30 years building tools that add hours back to a clinician's day CEO at RealActivity | AI Pioneer | BOSHUG Founder | Microsoft Keynoter I've spent my career at the intersection of healthcare and technology, not talking about AI transformation, bu... Show more

Matias Armándola

Matias Armándola

I'm Mati Armándola, an Information Security leader with over 20 years of experience in technology and more than a decade dedicated exclusively to asset protection, regulatory compliance, and organizational culture.

I've led teams and projects in companies with a regional reach and have participated as an international speaker at conferences such as Ekoparty, DevOpsDays, Nerdearla, and DEF CON, addressing topics such as offensive security, awareness, applied AI, and governance. I'm also a member of the organizing team for DevOpsDays Buenos Aires.

In addition, I teach at various institutions and educational platforms, training the next generation of professionals in security, cloud computing, and leadership.

My motto is LEAD – TEACH – PROTECT

I'm Mati Armándola, an Information Security leader with over 20 years of experience in technology and more than a decade dedicated exclusively to asset protection, regulatory compliance, and organizational culture. I've led teams and projects in c... Show more

Ant(on) Weiss

Ant(on) Weiss

25 years in tech, marketing and leadership roles. All about software delivery optimization. 5 years in technical and executive training. Expert in Leadership, DevOps, Lean, Systems Thinking, Continuous Delivery, Cloud Native and Agentic Systems. Coder, speaker, writer. Fixated on improving the ways humans (and agents) collaborate by telling mind-provoking stories.

25 years in tech, marketing and leadership roles. All about software delivery optimization. 5 years in technical and executive training. Expert in Leadership, DevOps, Lean, Systems Thinking, Continuous Delivery, Cloud Native and Agentic Systems. Cod... Show more

Mihaela-Roxana Ghidersa

Mihaela-Roxana Ghidersa


Engineering leader with over a decade of experience in software development and a proven track record of leading teams through modernisation initiatives, high-pressure deliveries, and the kind of challenges where the easy answer doesn't exist. I stay close to architecture and strategy not to make every decision, but to protect my teams, challenge the right assumptions, and represent engineering credibly at every level.

I care deeply about psychological safety and technical rigour — because I believe the best work happens when people feel ownership, trust each other, and know their manager is fully in it with them.

I actively experiment with emerging technologies — including AI tools — to understand their real value before adopting them at scale. Less hype, more signal.
Microsoft MVP in Developer Technologies, author of "Software Architecture for Web Developers" book, and international speaker with 50+ conference appearances — because sharing what we learn is part of the job.

You can see my work in here:

https://medium.com/@ghidersa-mihaela
https://www.amazon.com/Software-Architecture-Web-Developers-professionals/dp/1803237910
https://sessionize.com/mihaela-roxana-ghidersa

Engineering leader with over a decade of experience in software development and a proven track record of leading teams through modernisation initiatives, high-pressure deliveries, and the kind of challenges where the easy answer doesn't exist. I st... Show more

Thorsten Pickhan

Thorsten Pickhan

Thorsten Pickhan works at Microsoft and has been focused on Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, Teams Phone, and Copilot for many years. As a speaker, blogger, YouTuber, and community advocate, he regularly shares his knowledge at conferences, user groups, and through his blog and YouTube channel.

From 2021 to 2025, he was honored as a Microsoft MVP in recognition of his contributions to the Microsoft community, particularly in the areas of Microsoft Teams and Copilot. After joining Microsoft, he retired the MVP title in accordance with the program requirements.

His areas of expertise include modern collaboration, communication solutions, and the productive use of AI within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.

Thorsten Pickhan works at Microsoft and has been focused on Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, Teams Phone, and Copilot for many years. As a speaker, blogger, YouTuber, and community advocate, he regularly shares his knowledge at conferences, user group... Show more

Shawn Dorward

Shawn Dorward

Shawn Dorward is the Chief Operating Office at Innovia Consulting and a seasoned business and technology leader with over 25 years of experience in ERP and CRM implementations. His expertise spans a wide range of industries and organizations—from small family-owned businesses to complex global deployments—driving digital transformation and delivering measurable business value.

Recognized as a 10-time Microsoft MVP for Business Applications, Shawn is deeply passionate about helping businesses maximize efficiency and ROI through strategic use of technology. His dedication to the Microsoft Dynamics community is evident in his frequent speaking engagements at user groups, conferences, and online events across the U.S.

Shawn shares practical insights and productivity tips through his popular blog www.LifeHacks365.com, covering Dynamics 365 (including Dynamics GP and Business Central) and Office 365 tools like Excel and Outlook.

Embracing the next wave of innovation, Shawn is currently exploring the power of AI and Microsoft Copilot. Through his platform www.TheWorldsOkayestShawn.com, he documents his journey with podcasts, blog posts, and life hacks—all designed to help others save time, increase efficiency, and navigate their own Copilot adventures.

Shawn Dorward is the Chief Operating Office at Innovia Consulting and a seasoned business and technology leader with over 25 years of experience in ERP and CRM implementations. His expertise spans a wide range of industries and organizations—from sm... Show more

David Kjerrumgaard

David Kjerrumgaard

David Kjerrumgaard is a Developer Advocate at StreamNative and a committer on the Apache Pulsar project, where he focuses on the intersection of real-time data streaming and agentic AI. With over a decade of experience building distributed systems at scale, he helps organizations connect AI agents to the live data and tools they need to operate in production.
David's current work sits at the foundation of an emerging discipline he calls context engineering — the practice of designing data infrastructure for AI agents. He explores how streaming platforms like Apache Pulsar and Apache Kafka serve as the event-driven backbone for multi-agent systems, how the Model Context Protocol (MCP) extends to streaming primitives, and how lakehouse-native architectures make real-time agent infrastructure both reliable and cost-efficient.
He is the author of Pulsar in Action (Manning) and co-author of Practical Hive (Apress), and an active committer on Apache Pulsar with contributions to Apache NiFi. As an internationally recognized speaker, David has presented at conferences worldwide — including NDC London, ApacheCon, Community Over Code, Devoxx, and Data Streaming Summit — and was named a Sessionize Most Active Speaker for 2024.

David's career spans hands-on engineering and technical leadership at companies that have shaped modern data infrastructure. He served as Principal Software Engineer on Splunk's messaging team, focused on real-time data analytics at scale. Prior to Splunk, he led solutions architecture at Streamlio and served as Global Practice Director at Hortonworks, where he architected enterprise-scale streaming and big data platforms for Fortune 500 organizations across financial services, telecommunications, and manufacturing.

His talks combine deep technical content with the practical lessons learned from years of production deployments. Whether explaining how to govern AI agents at the data layer, designing event-driven multi-agent orchestration patterns, or wiring live data streams into LLM context windows, David's sessions are grounded in working code and real-world architectural tradeoffs.
David is passionate about open source as the foundation for the agentic AI era. He believes the same open standards, durable infrastructure, and community-driven evolution that powered the rise of modern data streaming will define how the next generation of AI agents reaches production. Through his writing, speaking, and code contributions, he works to bridge the streaming data community and the emerging agent ecosystem.

David Kjerrumgaard is a Developer Advocate at StreamNative and a committer on the Apache Pulsar project, where he focuses on the intersection of real-time data streaming and agentic AI. With over a decade of experience building distributed systems at... Show more

Hanna Engel

Hanna Engel

Indiana Jones of cloud technologies, Hanna Engel takes customers on exciting expeditions through the world of Azure, helping them navigate complex architectures, decode networking challenges, tame wild acronyms, and uncover the hidden treasures of modern cloud and AI solutions.

As a Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft, Hanna helps organizations realize their cloud and AI ambitions through strategic guidance, technical expertise, and hands-on implementation experience. She is a former Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT), quantum computing evangelist, and representative of the Belgian Quantum Circle.

A frequent conference speaker and podcast guest, Hanna is passionate about making complex technology accessible to everyone. Through public speaking, community engagement, and social media, she focuses on democratizing access to IT knowledge and empowering professionals to embrace cloud and AI with confidence.
Combining experience from both the customer side and the Microsoft ecosystem, Hanna brings a pragmatic, real-world perspective to every challenge. Her approach is simple: focus on business outcomes, keep technology approachable, and ensure customer success remains at the heart of every journey.

Hanna is based in Brussels, Belgium. Personally, fan of Dungeons&Dragons, couchsurfing and foreign languages.

Indiana Jones of cloud technologies, Hanna Engel takes customers on exciting expeditions through the world of Azure, helping them navigate complex architectures, decode networking challenges, tame wild acronyms, and uncover the hidden treasures of mo... Show more

Michael Plettner

Michael Plettner

With more than 2 decades of customer experience, a long history in Microsoft products, Michael is a Cloud Architect who enjoys sharing his experience with the community and help the community grow.
During the last years, Michael was working with customers in Microsoft Teams topics, Microsoft 365 implementations overall and since 2022 he's also working with his customers in different Microsoft Viva projects.
Since more than seven years Michael has its own company, working with the focus on Microsoft topics, Change-Management and Project-Management. He's also a Microsoft MVP for Microsoft 365 Apps and Services since 2021.

With more than 2 decades of customer experience, a long history in Microsoft products, Michael is a Cloud Architect who enjoys sharing his experience with the community and help the community grow. During the last years, Michael was working with cus... Show more

Joseph Katsioloudes

Joseph Katsioloudes

Joseph is a leading voice in AI and cyber, developing software and content that shape how millions of developers build. His open source game gh.io/scg has helped 10K+ developers gain AI and security skills. His videos, with 4.3M+ views, simplify complex technical topics and deliver actionable tips to a global audience. As a speaker, Joseph has delivered 80 technical sessions in 25 countries in 5 years, averaging 300 engineers per session, captivating audiences with his insights and energetic stage presence.

Joseph is a leading voice in AI and cyber, developing software and content that shape how millions of developers build. His open source game gh.io/scg has helped 10K+ developers gain AI and security skills. His videos, with 4.3M+ views, simplify comp... Show more

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