Speakers

With 10 years in the field, Amanda Perkins is a Quality Architect for Rocket Homes. She focuses on not only improving the quality of software but the quality of interactions between team members. By combining her background in customer service, retail sales, music, and leadership, she brings a creative and unique high-quality approach to QA. Amanda lives near Kansas City, MO with her husband, two kids, cat, and dog.

Becky Gandillon is the Practice Lead for Data & Analytics for Centric Consulting in St. Louis, and she specializes in data storytelling, data strategy and visualization. She is a big Disney nerd that spends some of her free time analyzing and predicting crowd patterns at Disney World. She and her husband love travelling with their two daughters, and are looking forward to being able to go on adventures again soon.

Brian Korzynski is a Principal Architect at Iron Mountain. He has had an extensive career in Microsoft technologies working for a variety of companies both large and small. Working in many industries such as logistics, manufacturing, compliance, and finance has given him a wide variety of knowledge and skills that he wants to share with the world. Currently he is working on a variety of machine learning and artificial intelligence applications to automate manual processes.

Bryce is a manager and PHP programmer who leads multiple software development teams at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He is passionate about improving code quality and building strong team relationships.

Chris DeMars is a Developer Advocate at Split. He has over 20 years of technical experience and speaks all over the world on web accessibility, and CSS. For his community contributions, he holds awards as a Microsoft MVP, Google Developer Expert, Cloudinary Media Developer Expert, Auth0 Ambassador, and Progress Ninja. Chris advocates, teaches, and speaks on web accessibility as well as modern CSS; building applications with both at the forefront. When he is not working on making the web great and accessible you can find him writing blog posts, rating Detroit Style pizza, and watching Horror movies.

Chris is a native of Central Arkansas and a graduate of the University of Arkansas. He holds degrees in Computer Engineering and Management Information Systems as well as CISSP and CEH certifications. He is a 12 year veteran of the US Air Force and has also worked for The MITRE Corporation and FIS. Currently, Chris is a founding partner with Sullivan Wright Technologies working to bring cybersecurity consulting and services to small and mid-sized businesses in the region.

I have over twenty five years experience in the tech industry. I've done everything from developer to CEO. Through it all I've honed my skillset, especially my problem solving skills. As a startup founder, I now get to now put my problem solving abilities to the test multiple times a day and I love it! I'm excited for each new problem and love to see what solutions my team and I can craft.

Duane is Co-Founder of Alien Arc Technologies, LLC where he focuses on creating apps targeting mobile devices, modern desktops, and the Internet of Things. As a Microsoft MVP and technology enthusiast with a passion for good software he strives to bring solutions that improve or eliminate costly duplication and repetitive processes so more important things can be done. He enjoys teaching others and speaking at conferences on topics ranging from DevOps to Xamarin. When not behind a computer screen he can be found sharing his love of SCUBA and all things underwater with new divers as a scuba instructor at https://drrscuba.com.

Geoffrey (“Geo”) has been breaking computers since he tinkered around on his family’s 286 in the 1980s. He’s developed software professionally in many languages over the years (PHP, Perl, Javascript, Ruby, Elixir) but Elixir is his favorite so far. By day, he’s a developer at Planning Center. By night, he likes to dabble in various hobbies including sim racing, modular synthesizers, embedded hardware, music, and hanging out with his family. If there’s something new to learn, he’s probably interested! On top of that he's the author of Phoenix in Action (published by Manning Publications) and speaker at many conferences. Twitter: @geolessel GitHub: geolessel

Hussain Abbasi is the Head of Technology at ChaiOne. He is a content-creator, blogger, speaker, streamer, and software engineer with over a decade of experience developing mobile, web, cloud, and desktop applications. Hussain is a well-known community leader in the mobile development space. He is a co-organizer of Houston Xamarin User Group and the organizer for Houston Flutter User Group in Houston area and authors and contributes to several OSS projects. You can find his shenanigans at hussainabbasi.com. Or his blog at intelliAbb.com. You can find him on twitter @HussainNAbbasi.

Hussein has worn many hats, starting as a full-stack developer and transitioning to a .NET based cloud development role later on. He's seen all ends, from back to front. His time in the community has enabled him to participate in and organize user groups and conferences offering participants a (he hopes) warm smile and opportunity to learn something new.

Jacob Foster Davis is a native of Little Rock, Arkansas and a certified Chief Information Security Officer. He is co-founder of BreachBits®, a cyber risk rating firm headquartered in the greater Washington, D.C. area. BreachBits serves BreachRisk™ Score cyber risk management powered by PTaaS and A.I. for large enterprises and SMBs worldwide. He’s a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy where he studied information technology and astronautical engineering and holds a Master of Science degree from the Naval Postgraduate School where he studied artificial intelligence. He served for 15 years as a U.S. Naval Officer conducting humanitarian, counter-piracy, and cyberspace training operations. At the National Security Agency, he led satellite intelligence operations and served on a task force for the Secretary of the Navy’s Cybersecurity Readiness Review. His personal decorations include the Meritorious Service Medal and the Joint Commendation Medal. In recent years, he’s worked with Wall Street risk management initiatives and as an Adjunct Professor at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Jana is an experienced privacy professional and licensed attorney born and raised in Atlanta, GA. Jana graduated from Wake Forest University in 2013, and from Atlanta's John Marshall Law School Cum Laude in 2019. In 2019 while leading the Privacy Program for Routematch Software (now Uber), Jana published legal research focusing on raising data privacy standards in the United States. For the past 5 years, she has worked as a Data Privacy Consultant for multiple financial institutions and technology companies where she was responsible for privacy-by-design implementation into lifecycle development and enterprise wide cloud migration projects. Currently, Jana is working as a Senior Privacy Program Manager at Microsoft in their Identity organization working closely with developers and engineers to drive data privacy initiatives across Microsoft authentication and token services.

Jason Frazell is an international Growth and Leadership Coach serving high-impact people and teams in the technology space and a personal brand strategist for CEOs, executives, entrepreneurs and side hustlers. Jason is the founder of Jason Frazell Coaching, where he offers one on one executive and leadership coaching, group programs, speaking and workshops. He is a Gallup Global Strengths Coach, specializing in using the CliftonStrengths assessment (formerly Strengthsfinder 2.0) and an Everything DiSC partner through Wiley and Sons. Jason is also a leader at Accomplishment Coaching, a premier International Coaching Federation coach training program and holds a coaching accreditation from the ICF. Prior to moving his own side hustle to full-time, Jason was an award-winning technology sales professional, working at a variety of technology firms, ranging from F10 to series A startups.

Jeff Bailey is a Security Engineer at Apptegy. He has more than 6 years of experience in working with IT and Cybersecurity within several industries including healthcare, banking, and ed tech.

I have been writing software in the .Net world professionally since 2011. I have worked on a wide range of products and applications ranging from eCommerce websites to phone system call routing trees to cross-platform mobile apps for real estate agents. I love C# and learn new things about it every day. Currently I am the Director of Engineering at Ryvit, a startup focused on integrating construction software applications. In my current role I work on a wide range of products, internal and external facing, using a vast array of different technologies and platforms. I love playing sports, working out, playing video games, and hanging out with my awesome wife and two kids.

Joe Hurdle is a Software Architect and Leader at Apptegy. He has over 20 years of experience designing and developing distributed systems, especially in C++. Recently, he’s worked extensively in Ruby, primarily with Rails.

John Kuefler has over 10 years of experience in application development and dev team management. He has worked in both the private sector and the public sector, and is currently the Director of Technology and a Partner at LimeLight Marketing. Additionally, he is a Pluralsight Author and university instructor. Some of his areas of focus include C#, ASP.Net Core, Xamarin.Forms, Software Architecture, and Testing.

I've been tricking people into paying me to make things for them for over twenty years.

Josh Baugh is a tech junkie, learning enthusiast, and fun haver. He loves all things related to security, DevOps, and automation. Josh runs with a gang of infosec hooligans.

Josh Holmes is a passionate soul who gets his kicks solving problems with deep fried awesomeness. He is currently employed by Microsoft as the Director of Engineering for Media and Communications in the Americas. Prior to joining Microsoft in October 2006, Josh was a consultant working with a variety of clients ranging from large Fortune 500 firms to smaller sized companies. Josh is a frequent speaker and lead panelist at national and international software development conferences focusing on web technologies on the Microsoft stack such as ASP.NET, PHP, IronRuby, JavaScript and more. Community focused, Josh has founded and/or run many technology organizations from the Great Lakes Area .NET Users Group to the Ann Arbor Computer Society and was on the forming committee for CodeMash. You can contact Josh through his blog at https://joshholmes.com.

Keith S. Crawford is a Cybersecurity GRC specialist. For the past decade he has helped organizations build sustainable & practical security programs that auditors love. He is passionate about helping orgs thrive and transform through cybersecurity and compliance.

Mike Clement is a husband, father of four and currently a Senior Engineering Manager at SamCart. Mike believes we work best when we are working together and that there are no best practices—only better and worse ones depending on the context. Some leading practices Mike is passionate about are Test Driven Development, Pair and Mob Programming, User Story Mapping, Domain Driven Design and Open Space Technology. Passionate about raising the bar of technical excellence in the software development community, Mike is a founder and organizer of Software Crafters Atlanta, the Software Crafters Unconference, and the Lean+Agile Atlanta Unconference. Find out more about Mike on his blog (http://blog.softwareontheside.com/) and on Twitter at @mdclement.

Nills is a Cloud Solution Architect (or CSA) at Microsoft US. With a lot of experience in IaaS and networking, he is expanding his knowledge domain into the wonderful domain of Docker and Kubernetes. In his spare time, he enjoys the occasional beer; plays a lot a board games (never bored) and runs often (1114km in 2017).

Paul Irwin is Chief Technology Officer at feature[23] out of the Denver, Colorado area where he works with engineering teams to deliver business value for customers through custom software products. He has over 20 years of professional experience in software, including over 10 years at feature[23] alone, across varying industries and technology platforms. His passions include Kanban as an Agile software process, programming languages, databases, and web application engineering. In his personal time, Paul is an avid woodworker, amateur radio and electronics geek, RV traveler, and insatiable learner. Paul lives in the mountains of Evergreen, Colorado with his wife and colleague Katy, and they are the co-founders of the Code on the Beach software conference held in Atlantic Beach, Florida.

PJ is the founder of DevRelate.io and a board member of Open Sourcing Mental Illness (OSMIhelp.org). He is an organizer of DevOps Days Buffalo, CodeDaze, and ElixirDaze. PJ is a developer, writer, speaker, musician, and Community Advocate. He is known to travel the world speaking about programming and the way people think and interact. He is also known for wearing hats.

During the day, Ron Dagdag is a software artisan with 20+ years of experience working on a number of business applications using a diverse set of frameworks and languages. He currently support developers at Spacee with their IoT, Cloud and ML development. On the side, Ron Dagdag is active participant in the community as a Microsoft MVP, speaker, maker and blogger. He is passionate about Augmented Intelligence, studying the convergence of Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things. @rondagdag

Sam is a marketing expert turned self-taught product engineer. Sam has been devoted to startups, helping raise 80+ million in startup funds throughout his early career. Initially working as a tech lead in the marketing space, he turned to software development to be more closely involved in product growth. Audiences love this perspective of Sam's: a customer's confidence in a product resonates with the product team’s confidence in the technology. As an advocate for innovative technologies, he hopes his message encourages product managers to adopt new, cutting-edge technologies into their tech stacks to improve developer experience. To Sam, life is a balance. If his health permitted him to code all day, he would be tempted to do it. Alas, Sam finds a balance to coding with many activities including mountain biking, alpine ski racing, dancing, and sailing the ocean blues.

Sarah brings with her more than 18 years of experience in the software industry, primarily at Boston based ventures. In addition to her current role as a Sr. Product Manager at Scout, she is a featured speaker at Product School and a product strategy consultant for Tapple.io. Sarah holds a BS in Computer Science from Eckerd College, a Masters of Science in Innovation from Northeastern University, and an MBA also from Northeastern.

Schell Gower is a well respected Marketing Consultant and personal brand strategist for multi-million dollar companies, non-profits, startup companies, and individual brands across the country. She is the founder of the ClearMark Marketing Agency and has helped hundreds of companies from beauty brands, real estate, tech and business services with their marketing and digital strategies for almost a decade. She is also a personal brand strategist with Brand Builders group, helping build personal brands for writers, employees, and business owners build their personal brand for impact.

I have been a software developer for 21 years now.  I have worked in various industries from advertising to voice recognition.  I love troubleshooting and problem solving.  As a mobile developer for Energy Worldnet, I do C# development for mobile using Xamarin.  My passion for mobile development has driven me to found the DFW Mobile .NET User Group, found the Dev Fest Weekend conference and helped me achieve my Xamarin MVP and Microsoft MVP awards.

Suzanne's passion is finding ways to help developers and engineers get the tools and skills to do what they do best: creating the software this world runs on while trying to innovate and make sense of buzzwords at the same time. She's organizer of events, host and a speaker on both technical topics and more in general on transformation & innovation.

Taylor graduated from the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina in 2011 and immediately jumped into the world of recruiting. He started his career at Vaco in 2011 where he has recruited for clients such as Disney, Pacific Gas & Electric, Yahoo!, and Sony. After achieving top producer for 2013 out of a team of six, Taylor was recognized by Vaco and was brought to Raleigh to be instrumental in the building of the Technology division. During his time in Raleigh Taylor helped to scale the team from three to seven and focused on recruiting in all things technology, where he ultimately found his niche within development and TriNug (Raleigh .NET User Group). In June 2014 Taylor was asked to return to the Nashville office to help build out the technology team. Since his return, Taylor has been elected VP of the .NET User Group in Nashville for the last two years. He focuses 100% of his time within the development vertical in technology. As of 2017 Taylor is the Recruiting Manager of Vaco’s Nashville Technology division that is responsible for grossing $6+ million a year in revenue and ranking in the top of over 30+ Vaco Technology offices. From his time at Vaco he has seen the team double in size from seven to seventeen and has spoken at multiple conferences ranging from Nashville's very own Music City Code, the Raleigh Code Conference, to Vaco’s National Engage the World Conference and continues to be heavily involved within both the local and national tech community.

Taylor serves as a Sr. Graph Architect on Amazon Neptune, the AWS managed graph database. His primary focus is to educate customers on the benefits of graph databases and computation, while also helping to improve Amazon Neptune's features and capabilities. Outside of work, Taylor dabbles in 3d printing, building/flying drones, sport rocketry, hobby electronics, and playing way too much disc golf. Taylor is a native to the Atlanta area and a graduate of Georgia Tech.

Tim Rayburn is a Vice President of Consulting with Improving Enterprises, a software and project management consulting company in Dallas, TX. He is a passionate advocate of apprenticeship and mentorship in corporate environments. He has been awarded the Microsoft MVP in recognition of his expertise and community leadership 11 times. He is also a conference organizer, an author, and can be found speaking across the nation on agile processes, software design, and career management. He lives in the North Dallas area with his amazing wife Kate and their loyal dog Gandalf.

Tommy Norman (CSM, A-CSM, CSPO, CSP, CTC, CEC, CAL, PSM, SAFe Agilist, Microsoft MVP) is the Chief Agility Officer at Acklen Avenue, a custom software development shop in Nashville, TN, USA. With an IT career spanning almost 30 years, he has been helping organizations of all sizes and shapes build great software with a practical approach in many roles. In addition, he has worked deeply with the Agile community as the coordinator of the Agile Nashville user group, founder of the Music City Agile conference, and a frequent local and international speaker. You can connect with him online at HTTP://twitter.tommynorman.com and HTTP://linkedin.tommynorman.com and view his Agile training videos/events on O’Reilly Learning Online at HTTP://oreilly.tommynorman.com.

Since writing his first line of code at age 9, Zac has been completely fascinated with computers. Now Zac spends his time helping engineers at a high growth healthcare startup grow. With experience in multiple areas of product development and delivery, Zac brings his years of learning and growing to multiple venues and events across the globe.