Talks

Speaker	Title	Track	Abstract
Alex Hinson	Rapid Cross-Platform AR Development with React Native	Emerging Technologies	AR's popularity is growing at an increasing rate, and it might seem as if native iOS and Android developers are the only ones who have the skills to keep up. We’ll look at how web & mobile developers can create native cross-platform AR/VR experiences through React Native and a platform called Viro.
Alexander Slotte	Real-Time Data Streaming with Azure Stream Analytics	Cloud and DevOps	Real-time data streaming is currently considering one of the hottest topics of 2019. Coupling real-time data streaming with machine learning allows organizations to make split second decision that can greatly affect a companies success. Join me in this session introducing Azure Stream Analytics!
Alexander Slotte	Machine Learning made Easy - An Introduction to ML.NET	Emerging Technologies	Machine Learning and AI is everywhere. While algorithms are improved in a rapid rate, performing ML tasks has not yet been made readily available for Software Developers. Join me in this session for a deep dive in ML.NET, a cross-platform open-source library that bring ML to the .NET ecosystem!
Allen Zaudtke	IoT in Azure - A Journey to Production	Emerging Technologies	Making the right choices out of all the options in Azure is difficult. This is the journey of how we accomplished that in order to allow our IOT solution to grow and succeed at a time where our home grown solution wasn't going to cut it anymore.
Andrew Malek	Cognitive Biases and the User Experience	UX	Learn more about biases such as confirmation bias, false consensus effect, framing bias, halo effect, and Parkinson's Law of triviality (the bicycle shed effect). These can affect usability testing, user research, presenting research findings, and UX design.
Andrew Malek	Is This a Button? A Question Your Users Should Never Ask.	UX	Learn about ideas you can test to possibly increase your app or website’s usage, guiding people to lead-generation or checkout activities. Topics include color theory, floating buttons, Fitts’s Law, microinteractions, and perceived performance.
Avdi Grimm	#NOCODE: Increased impact through strategic code avoidance	Process and Professional	For beginning programmers, coding is a superpower. But as we gain experience, code-centric thinking can become a trap. Prepare to have your conception of what it means to be a programmer challenged, as we explore how to increase your leverage by choosing NOT to write code.
Avindra Fernando	Service Workers: Transforming your App into a Progressive Web Application	Web and Mobile	What if we could build a web application which auto-magically works across various devices and platforms? Thanks to Progressive Web Applications (PWAs), this dream has now come true. Come join me in transforming your web application into a progressive web application.
Avindra Fernando	Apollo GraphQL: Integrating GraphQL in Your Web Apps!	Web and Mobile	Imagine having to make three separate api calls to get person demographics. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to make one call instead of three while specifying the exact data you need? With GraphQL and the Apollo Client, this dream has now come true.
Cameron Presley	How Functional Programming Made Me A Better Developer	Server-side	Keep hearing about Functional Programming (FP) but not sure if it's right for you? Do you feel that since you work with object-oriented, you don't need to learn functional? Then this talk is for you! In this talk, I'll discuss my experience learning FP and how I became a better developer.
Chad Green	Building an Ultra-Scalable API Using Azure Functions	Cloud and DevOps	The backend to most extensible applications are the APIs that provide the crux of the workload. We’ll identify what serverless computing is, why to consider having a serverless API backend, provide an example of how to develop a serverless architecture, and go over potential benefits and pitfalls.
Chad Green	From Zero to Serverless	Cloud and DevOps	Have you ever just needed to get a simple process that needs to be executed on a routine basis? Well serverless computing will help you do that quickly and without the mess and fuss of dealing with infrastructure.
Chadd Waddell	Back to Basics: Basic CIS Controls	Cybersecurity	The new Center for Internet Security (CIS) Controls Version 7 was released in 2018 and it is a great time to get back to basics or to learn them for the first time. These basic controls will help you build a firm foundation for your cybersecurity program. If you can implement these controls you will have a better security posture than the majority of companies out there.   Whether you are a seasoned veteran or a newbie everyone can learn something from this talk. Don’t get caught up in all the AI, machine-learning, quantum encryption, and blockchain hype, take a step back and make sure you have the basics down. Cybersecurity doesn’t have to be hard.   Come and hear Solutions Architect, Chad Waddell from InfoSystems share more about the first 6 CIS Controls which are well-known as the Basic CIS Controls.
Chris Gardner	A Journey through Creating and Consuming Custom NuGet Package	Server-side	In this talk, I'll guide you through my journey into creating and hosting custom NuGet packages. I'll start with the basics and progress to configuration transforms, source code transforms, and specifying development dependencies. We'll also discuss some of the advanced options that are available.
Chris Gardner	Rethinking Architecture: A Look at Macroservices	Server-side	In this talk, we'll take a look at the pros and cons of both SOA and Microservices. From there, we can weigh these concerns and try to find a happy middle ground, which I refer to as Macroservices. By the end, we'll know the concerns we must weigh as we decide how to build our next application.
Chris Rimondi	Building Strong Cloud Security Foundations	Cybersecurity	What is the most important service to implement correctly for securing your cloud workloads? In this talk we cover principles of cloud security and where organizations should start making investments to protect their cloud workloads.
Daniel Oliver	Building, Deploying, and Monitoring Applications with Azure	Cloud and DevOps	Taking code to production in a consistent process makes software development easier for everyone. A problem at any step of the software development life-cycle affects everyone. Automating Azure, taking code to production becomes consistent, repeatable, observable, and accountable.
Don DenUyl	Finding the right developers	Process and Professional	In today's market the competition to recruit top talent is challenging. In this talk we will focus on strategies for finding, recruiting and interviewing developers. You will take away some ideas and strategies that will help you build your team.
Douglas Starnes	Deep Learning For Folks Without (or With!) a Ph.D.	Emerging Technologies	How does a computer identify pictures of cats? Or drive a car? These are jobs for deep learning. Deep learning is a specialization of machine learning for perceptual tasks. If this sounds hard, it’s because it is! The Python community has contributed two libraries TensorFlow and Keras to help.
Douglas Starnes	Kotlin: What’s in it For You	Server-side	At IO 2017, Google announced support is coming for Kotlin in Android 'O'. Kotlin addresses many of the complaints developers have against Java. But it can be a departure from Java. This session covers Kotlin for both beginners and those who already know Java.
Francis Solomon	Event-Driven Architecture for Microservices	Server-side	Learn how to decouple your microservices using an event bus. In this session, I'll demonstrate how to make your distributed systems more reliable and responsive through this technique using .NET Core and RabbitMQ.
Francis Solomon	Implementing a RESTful API in .NET Core	Server-side	Code samples don't do justice to the process of actually building an API from scratch. In this session, I'll show you how to get a practical API off the ground in .NET Core. You'll see how to design the API, how to set up data access and exception handling, and how to construct effective unit tests.
Geoff Mazeroff	Your Playbook	Process and Professional	We are builders, solvers, and thinkers. Yet we are opinionated, emotional, biased -- human. It's helpful to make a playbook with goals, values, and processes that resonate with us. Such concepts transcend any technology, domain, or job; our playbook helps us when we get lost, question, and doubt.
Gregory Beamer	DevOps in the Real World: Lessons from the Trenches	Cloud and DevOps	While DevOps is a silver bullet word familiar with most audiences, it is hard for many organizations to implement a true DevOps culture. This session focuses on the most important, core topic: automating delivery of software to allow developers and operators to focus on solving business problems.
Jameson McGhee	What Do Your Test Cases DO for You?	Process and Professional	I have you ever felt, as I have, that sometimes writing test cases is just a waste of your time? Lets talks about how that can happen and how we can avoid writing test case that are not beneficial in the future!
Janna Micole Curtis	The UX Stack: Exploring the Designer’s Toolbox	UX	User experience is the bread and butter of successful technology, but what are the ingredients? This session covers each layer of the UX stack, the designer’s various tools and methodologies.
Jeff McGehee	Concepts for Scalable Implementations of Digital Twins	Emerging Technologies	The most essential part of a successful digital twin implementation is a solid infrastructure that supports your models and data streams while retaining the ability to adapt as the needs of your stakeholders change. In this talk, you’ll learn how to make tradeoffs based on your project needs.
Jonathan Kemp	Get More Done with Vue.js	Web and Mobile	Vue.js is a framework for building user interfaces that's designed to be simple and flexible with a heavy focus on performance. In this session, you’ll learn what Vue.js is and how its simplicity and flexibility combined with its performance and developer experience can help you get more done.
Josh Carroll	Punch complexity in the face with RxJS	Web and Mobile	Modern front end programming is hard! You have state and data coming at you from all angles, and managing it all can be tricky. Luckily, RxJS makes wrangling the complexity easy, and even fun! Come learn about Observables from the ground up, and end by learning how to write RxJS like a pro.
Josh Carroll	Not Your Father's JavaScript: Advanced JavaScript Features You Should be Using	Web and Mobile	Modern JavaScript came with a plethora of new features, but most people are still not taking advantage of all it has to offer. In this session we will cover some of JavaScript's newest features and how they can make your life easier, and drastically improve your code.
Katie Cleveland	This Just Isn’t Working (on my Machine): Navigating the Arranged Marriage of Dev and QA	Process and Professional	As a member of this dev and QA relationship, do you ever feel like you aren’t on the same page? Are there things you would change in your partner? Come join my session, where we will review the two perspectives from both sides of the code, and all of the emotions in-between- to benefit us both.
Keyaan Williams	Aligning Security Value with Business Needs	Cybersecurity	You cannot align security with the business until you understand how to describe the value of security in business terms. This presentation focuses on three key ideas related to this concern. First, we will explore the process of describing the value of security activities in business terms. Next, we will highlight the qualities of good performance metrics. Finally, we will use these ideas to demonstrate how to present the results to the organization to make a real impact.
Lauren Tremblay	Gender in Tech: Why Hiring “The Best for the Job” Isn’t That Simple	Process and Professional	When I have conversations on the topic of gender parity in tech, I often hear, “we hire the best person for the job.” In this talk, we’ll address the “paradox of meritocracy,” issues with hiring for “culture fit,” and how to implement more fair hiring practices in tech.
Matt Crowder	React hooks	Web and Mobile	Are you not sure if you should use react hooks? If you aren't then you'll learn why you should use hooks, if you are, then let's show how to migrate to them.
Matt Crowder	Testing React	Web and Mobile	If you had to rewrite your react tests when you changed your components to use hooks, then you're writing tests wrong.
Michael McNeill	10 important things to consider when selecting a container platform	Cloud and DevOps	Everybody’s talking containers. Everybody’s talking Kubernetes. So many options and so little time to evaluate them all. How do you select a container platform? What’s really important? In this session, we'll journey through the what, how, who, and why of selecting a container orchestration infrastructure. We'll start with the relationship between Linux and containers, then explore the different options available if you want to move to Kubernetes for container orchestration. Along the way, we'll debunk some myths and shine some light into the dark corners of container orchestration. You'll leave this session armed with the knowledge you need to make the right container orchestration infrastructure decision to dive into the world of cloud-native application development and accelerate innovation to better serve your customers.
Natasha Carlyon	Exploring the Amazon: Our DevOps Journey	Cloud and DevOps	Are deployments painful? Do you shudder every time you push code to production, praying that nothing bad happens? Is it taking longer to add new features? In this presentation, I will share DevOps practices we implemented to frequently push customer facing code.
Nick Sweet	Hiring Strategies for Today’s Security Leaders	Cybersecurity	At Avertium its important for us to recruit and retain the best talent possible so we are able to deliver world-class services for our customers. The security job market continues to be an extremely competitive environment and a new blueprint is needed to keep up. In this talk, we will discuss some strategies that Avertium leverages in its Security Operations Center to maintain the staff level to accommodate an ever-changing workforce.
Shayne Champion	Incident response with limited resources	Cybersecurity	Regardless of the size of your organization, you, your Help Desk and other areas of your organization, can be the entry point for a security incident.  What should you do and where should you start for organizations with little to no budget for your Incident Response program?  How do you provide your team with training on proper response procedures and common indicators of compromise?  This presentation will look at tools that you and your team can implement for little or no up-front cost to prepare your organization for a successful IR program.
Stacey Jenkins, M. Psych	THE ROLE OF THE MINORITY IN THE WORLD OF TECHNOLOGY	Process and Professional	Key Takeaways: •Understanding of why few qualified individuals of Diversity work in IT •Strategies that technology companies can use to recruit more qualified people of diversity in the IT world •Novel recruitment policies that will enable technology companies to employ more qualified Minorities
Stacey Jenkins, M. Psych	Empowering Soft Skills with Team Dynamics & Communication Skills (For Software Engineering Team Projects & Customer Service): Using Active listening Techniques	Process and Professional	Key Takeaways: •Creative Problem Solving •Customer Service & Support •Generational Gaps & Workplace Diversity •Goal Setting •Leadership and Influence •Employee Efficiency •Using Group Dynamics •The loss of translation in a text/email. •The value of how things are said •How someone hears a word
Stephen Haywood	Hidden Treasures	Cybersecurity	In a world where web applications are pushed to production through automated systems, we often unintentionally push sensitive information to the web server. We will discuss the types of sensitive information that gets pushed to production and how attackers find that information.