Sessions

Rohan Kumar

Corporate Vice President, Azure Data, Microsoft

As the Corporate Vice President of Azure Data, Rohan is the engineering leader responsible for the product strategy, technical vision, long range planning, design, development/implementation, and engineering process involving the certification and release of SQL Server and all Azure Data Services, including SQL DB, Cosmos DB, Database for MySQL, Database for PostgreSQL, Database for Maria DB, SQL Data Warehouse, Azure Databricks, Azure Data Lake, HDInsight, Azure Stream Analytics, Azure Data Factory, Azure Data Catalog and Microsoft’s Analytics Platform System (APS).

Ida Bergum

Manager at Avanade Data & AI | Power BI and Data Platform evangelist

Ida is a Manager in Avanade Data & AI, and a Power BI and Data Platform enthusiast. Ida is always eager to share knowledge on many Power BI topics, with special focus on admin, adoption, governance, self-service, embedded. She is also active in PBIUG Norway, Power Platform UG Norway and MDPUG Norway.

Martijn Beenker

data engineer @ Avanade

Martijn Beenker is a data engineer, working at Avanade since 2018. He’s been involved in enabling cloud monitoring skills in DevOps teams for the last three years and involved with analytics platform monitoring for the last five years. He’s also an amateur rock climber – slightly scared of heights.

Menaka Baskerpillai

Associate Software Engineer Accenture Digital

Menaka Baskerpillai working as an Associate Software Engineer at Accenture Digital, she is a tech enthusiastic blogger and an international speaker who speaks about cloud and .Net core. Menaka spends her value time in learning and sharing her knowledge to the community. She is also a Former Microsoft Student Partner and Mozilla Firefox student Ambassador. She is a Microsoft certified Resource in Azure and programming in c#. Menaka recognised as a Most valuable professional by c# corner community.

Scott Hanselman

Coder, Blogger, Teacher, Speaker, Author

I'm a programmer, teacher, and speaker. I work out of my home office in Portland, Oregon for the Web Platform Team at Microsoft. I blog about technology, culture, gadgets, diversity, code, the web, where we're going and where we've been. I'm excited about community, social equity, media, entrepreneurship and above all, the open web: https://www.hanselman.com/ I have three podcasts and a YouTube channel. One podcast is a weekly talk show on tech, one an occasional one hour essay on developer's lives, and one a social media and tech culture show with my friend Luvvie.

Rory Preddy

Cloud Advocate @ Microsoft

Rory works in the Developer Relations team at Microsoft as a Senior Cloud Advocate. Cloud Advocates use their deep research skills to help professional cloud developers discover and successfully use Microsoft’s platforms. A seasoned speaker whose talks are both meaningful and humorous, Rory travels around the world empowering developers to achieve more.

Andre van den Berg

Windows Insider MVP

Andre works with Azure, Office 365, Intune and automating things with PowerShell as a consultant at The Sourcing Company. He worked as a system/network administrator at Meyra for 18 years and helped people with everything related to IT while innovating the IT infrastructure at the same time. He enjoys attending meetups and events to learn new technologies, talk with interesting people and exchange stickers. He turned his hobby into his job and loves to blog, work on IoT projects at home and read books to his daughter.

Esther Barthel

Solutions Architect @ Cognition IT

Esther Barthel has worked in different roles and functions as an IT consultant after she finished her Master’s degree in Computer Science in 1997. She soon discovered that Server-Based Computing combined servers, desktops, and user experience in one solution and specialized in virtualization solutions, like Microsoft Remote Desktop Services, Citrix Virtual Apps & Desktop, Microsoft App-V, Microsoft PowerShell and Citrix ADC. Esther works as a Solutions Architect at cognition IT, where she combines her passion for designing and implementing Citrix solutions with her newfound love for DevOps automation, using PowerShell, REST APIs and JSON payloads to automate both on-premises and Cloud Infrastructure as Code solutions. Ever since she hosted introduction days for technical female student candidates Esther has shared her passion and knowledge for IT. As well as her experience in the CUGC Women in Tech mentorship program, founded by her and the other female CTPs. In addition to her MVP award for Cloud and Datacenter management, Esther is also awarded as a Citrix Technology Professional (CTP).

Freek Berson

Remoting Windows Enthusiast & Microsoft MVP

Freek Berson speaks at various conferences around the world including Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft Ignite | The Tour, Microsoft TechSummit, Microsoft TechDays, Azure Saturday, BriForum, E2EVC, and ExpertsLive. Freek is awarded Microsoft MVP since 2011. He co-authored the book "RDS - The Complete Guide" which is available on Amazon. He works as an Infrastructure Specialist at Wortell, a system integrator company based in the Netherlands, where he focuses on End User Computing and all related technologies mostly on the Microsoft platform. He is also a managing partner at rdsgurus.com. He maintains his personal blog at http://themicrosoftplatform.net where he writes articles and blog posts related to Windows Virtual Desktop, Remote Desktop Services, Azure, and other Microsoft technologies. He is also experienced in performing automated deployments using Azure Resource Manager and designing JSON templates.

Esther Barthel

Solutions Architect @ Cognition IT

Esther Barthel has worked in different roles and functions as an IT consultant after she finished her Master’s degree in Computer Science in 1997. She soon discovered that Server-Based Computing combined servers, desktops, and user experience in one solution and specialized in virtualization solutions, like Microsoft Remote Desktop Services, Citrix Virtual Apps & Desktop, Microsoft App-V, Microsoft PowerShell and Citrix ADC. Esther works as a Solutions Architect at cognition IT, where she combines her passion for designing and implementing Citrix solutions with her newfound love for DevOps automation, using PowerShell, REST APIs and JSON payloads to automate both on-premises and Cloud Infrastructure as Code solutions. Ever since she hosted introduction days for technical female student candidates Esther has shared her passion and knowledge for IT. As well as her experience in the CUGC Women in Tech mentorship program, founded by her and the other female CTPs. In addition to her MVP award for Cloud and Datacenter management, Esther is also awarded as a Citrix Technology Professional (CTP).

Henk Boelman

Cloud advocate @ Microsoft

Lars Klint

Azure Technical Instructor - A Cloud Guru

Lars is an author, trainer, Microsoft MVP, community leader, aspiring Microsoft Azure expert and part time classic car collector. He is heavily involved in the space of cloud computing services, especially Azure, loves HoloLens and mixed reality, and is a published author, solution architect and writer for numerous publications. He has been a part of the software development community for the past 20 years and co-organises the DDD Melbourne community conference, organises developer events with Microsoft, and also runs a part time car restoration business. He has spoken at numerous technical events around the world and is an expert in Australian Outback Internet.

Suzanne Daniels

Developer Relations Lead

Suzanne recently celebrated her 20th year working in IT. This in a variety of roles ranging from developer, Linux/Open Source consultant to architect. Now knowing this, you might not be surprised that her motto is “Do what you love”. She’s very passionate about her family, technology and diversity & inclusion.

Seth Juarez

Cloud Advocate @ Microsoft

I am a Cloud Developer Advocate and also the main host of Channel 9. I received my Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science at UNLV with a Minor in Mathematics and completed my Master's Degree at the University of Utah in the field of Computer Science. I currently am interested in Artificial Intelligence specifically in the realm of Machine Learning. These days am working on a .NET library meant to simplify the usage of the common machine learning algorithms.

Jonah Andersson

Software Developer / IT-Consultant at Forefront Consulting in Sweden

Jonah Andersson is a Filipina-Swedish Software Developer and IT-Consultant at Forefront Consulting, Sweden. Jonah studied Computer Science and Agile System Development. She enjoys solving challenging complex problems, coding backend and has great interest in developing applications full-stack in C#.NET/.NETCore using new technologies such as Microsoft Azure. She likes to connect with other developers and supports gender equality in tech being a mentor and inspiration to other young women in tech.

Dawuda Iddrisu

Dawoodiddris is a software developer, passionately creating products and changing lives with his soft and technical skills by training others in event, workshops and providing platforms for coders to think beyond the limit.

Kati Frantz

Kati Frantz is a software engineer and Auth0 Ambassador passionate about mentoring and training other developers. He’s published over 150 hours of training resources on Udemy with over 65 000 students. He’s worked with multiple teams and startups across the world to build powerful, modern, performant and scalable web applications. He is also a speaker and author of the Deploying Nodejs book. He is currently the core maintainer of the open-source headless CMS and API builder Tenseijs.

Robin Smorenburg

Azure Engineer @LINKITGroup

I'm a results-driven technology enthusiast with a passion for cloud, especially Azure.

Sarah Maston

Sarah Maston, Senior Solution Architect & Founder of Project 15 from Microsoft

Sarah works with our partner ecosystem to build global scalable IoT solutions on Azure. She specializes in process architecture and data solution architecture. She is the founder of Project 15 from Microsoft (aka.ms/Project15) and the inventor of Project Edison, a safety notification solution accelerator for safe schools and workplaces, for which she won the Microsoft Polaris Award. In her 20-year career, she has architected many data warehouses out in the world including those at Monster.com, CouchSurfing.com, and Boston Medical Center. Prior to joining Microsoft, she won an Excellence & Eminence Award at IBM for the invention of the Nutrition Graph and an Outstanding Innovation Award for the invention of Simple Data Pipe.

Sander van de Velde

IoT Platform Architect at Atos and Microsoft IoT MVP

I'm an IoT Platform Architect at Atos and specialized in Microsoft Azure IoT. I’ve been presented with the 2017 – 2021 Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award for my Azure IoT community work. On a daily basis, I'm involved with most aspects of the Azure IoT Platform and Azure in general. I work on IoT innovations and I implement my findings in my daily work with partners, clients, and the community.

Yusuf Yusuf

Software Engineer at Capgemini

Yusuf is a Software Engineer at Capgemini who has a passion for working with new tools and frameworks. One of his latest passion is building cloud native applications on Azure. He looks forward to travelling and big dinner parties.

Stefan Dingemanse

Consultant at Brainpulse IT

I am currently working as a consultant at Veerman ICT in the Netherlands. I mainly focus on application and desktop delivery in the cloud as well as On-Premises environmen. I work for about 14 years in the IT and most of my work and projects are focused on anything that is related to Azure, WVD, Citrix, DevOps and the Modern Workplace with tools like SCCM and MEM. Within the community I am also very active. I am the co-founder of the WVD Community and the Dutch WVD User Group.

Jordi van Drunen

Senior Consultant at Veerman ICT

I am currently working at Veerman ICT as an Senior engineer/Consultant. Currently I am developing multiple Azure DevOps Environments for different customers and also the internal managed services environment. Other focus points beside DevOps are 3th line support (internal and external), Automating, Azure, O365, MEM, WVD and infrastructure related topics (cloud and on premise). I have been with Veerman ICT for 13,5 years now.

Patrick van den Born

IT Architect, Citrix Technology Professional

Patrick van den Born is an independent senior consultant and IT architect. As a senior consultant, he is responsible for designing, leading and implementing End User Computing projects. With 19 years of experience, he is able to translate business needs to IT needs. Patrick has a primary focus on Citrix End User Computing, NVIDIA GRID Technology and cloud computing, but also has knowledge about VMware and Microsoft technologies. Due to this knowledge, Patrick is involved in advice, design and troubleshooting projects. Patrick is active in the community presenting at various events. Patrick is also a member of TeamRGE and GO-EUC. Citrix has rewarded Patrick with the Citrix Technology Professional status.

Rick Stijnman

Solution Architect, Citrix, DevOps and Cloud Engineer

Rick Stijnman is Solution Engineer / Architect for a Dutch Bank. His focus is on Citrix, Azure DevOps and Cloud Engineering. Rick has a broad skillset with Citrix Microsoft Azure, GCP, AWS, Office 365, VDI and virtualization. Rick is currently helping teams to transform into agile DevOps teams.

Poornima Nayar

.Net developer

Poornima is a .Net developer with over 10 years of experience in .Net and Umbraco. She is passionate about learning new technologies and keeping herself up-to-date with the latest developments in technology. Outside her work, Poornima enjoys music and is undergoing training in Indian Classical music. Based in Langley, UK she mothers a little girl and spends her spare time reading, cooking and watching movies.

Stacy Cashmore

Tech Explorer DevOps, Omniplan, Netherlands

Stacy is Tech Explorer DevOps at Omniplan, and Microsoft MVP in Developer Technologies. She’s been developing software since the mid-1990s and has been speaking about improving the way we develop software at conferences and meetups since 2018 As well as sparing with the software architect about technical issues, she spends her time helping the development team, and the wider company, with continuous improvement in terms of technical work, process and, of course, working together as a team. Outside of work she enjoys spending time with her classic car, cooking, playing the piano badly and spending time with her family, doing amongst other things, building a Lego modular building city in their house.

Marcel de Vries

CTO Xpirit

The past years we have been involved in many so-called cloud transformation projects. Many of those projects had big issues, and we learned a ton of things how not to do the transition! Think about things that will cause problems like: A cloud Competence Center, A Cloud Platform team, Asking the operations team how to move to the cloud, etc. These are common mistakes made every day that prevent you from gaining traction and speed. You might succeed, but you will go through a lot of pain and suffering. In this session, I will share an approach that we build based on our mistakes and learnings that will help you move to the cloud at speed. I will share the organizational, human an cultural side of things, a strategy on how to onboard teams and how to avoid common mistakes that are even promoted as best practices by high paid cloud consultants! I will also cover some technical details like setting up subscriptions, permissions and tools in the right way, so it won’t hurt you after your 10th team is onboarding! This session is all about what we learned and how you can avoid these issues yourself.

Gianni Castaldi

Kusto King

I’m Gianni Castaldi and I’m from 1986 and got my first computer back in 1998 and I did a lot of reverse engineering, I broke the system and then had to restore it. I started in IT back in 2008. Like many of us, I started as a service desk engineer, then did some support- and system engineer jobs. One of the most fun projects I did in the IT part was in a manufacturing environment where we did the migration of XP to Windows 7 and Server 2003/2008 to 2012. Since 2017 I work in IT Security, where I spend most of my time securing companies with the Microsoft Security Stack, Palo Alto Networks, and Tenable products. I’ve also secured several ICS/SCADA related environments, and I have done several vulnerability assessments with the usual suspects like Burp and Kali. Nowadays I’m the technical conscience of team Secure at Wortell and I support our Tier 1 <> 3 engineers handling incidents, build threat intelligence and assist in incident response situations. And in the meantime, I like to contribute my knowledge and experiences to the community.

Jeroen Niesen

Lead Research and Development at Wortell

Jeroen is a professional and talented multi-year security expert. With his skill set Jeroen builds, automates and brings incident response and security operations to a next level. Aside from his regular job at Wortell, Jeroen also is a passionate speaker on various events. He also shares his real world knowledge on various platforms (blogs/YouTube). Jeroen has excellent experience in Azure Security, Software Development, DevSecOps, Incident detection and incident response.

Suzanne Daniels

Developer Relations Lead

Suzanne recently celebrated her 20th year working in IT. This in a variety of roles ranging from developer, Linux/Open Source consultant to architect. Now knowing this, you might not be surprised that her motto is “Do what you love”. She’s very passionate about her family, technology and diversity & inclusion.

Frank Buters

Data Scientist @ Schuberg Philis

Anna-Maria Wykes

Senior software & data engineer | Data Platform MVP

Anna is a veteran software & data engineer and a Microsoft Data Platform MVP, with over 15 years of experience. Anna has tackled projects from real-time analytics with Scala & Kafka, building out Data Lakes with spark and applying engineering to Data Science. She is a senior consultant with Advancing Analytics, helping shape & evolve their data engineering practice. Anna has a real passion for data and strives to bring the worlds of Software Development and Data Science closer together. Other areas of interest include UX, Agile methodologies, and helping to organize/run local Code Clubs

Esther Barthel

Solutions Architect @ Cognition IT

Esther Barthel has worked in different roles and functions as an IT consultant after she finished her Master’s degree in Computer Science in 1997. She soon discovered that Server-Based Computing combined servers, desktops, and user experience in one solution and specialized in virtualization solutions, like Microsoft Remote Desktop Services, Citrix Virtual Apps & Desktop, Microsoft App-V, Microsoft PowerShell and Citrix ADC. Esther works as a Solutions Architect at cognition IT, where she combines her passion for designing and implementing Citrix solutions with her newfound love for DevOps automation, using PowerShell, REST APIs and JSON payloads to automate both on-premises and Cloud Infrastructure as Code solutions. Ever since she hosted introduction days for technical female student candidates Esther has shared her passion and knowledge for IT. As well as her experience in the CUGC Women in Tech mentorship program, founded by her and the other female CTPs. In addition to her MVP award for Cloud and Datacenter management, Esther is also awarded as a Citrix Technology Professional (CTP).

Barbara Forbes

Barbara is the Azure technical lead at OGD in the Netherlands. Her focus is on Azure and automation. Think Serverless, Azure DevOps, PowerShell, GitHub and Infrastructure as Code. She loves teaching in an approachable way and has found multiple ways to reach people. She regularly writes posts for her blog https://4bes.nl and speaks at conferences and user groups. She helps grow the community as co-founder of the Dutch DevOps & GitHub community (DDOG), as well as co-hosting the Dutch PowerShell User Group (DUPSUG).

Sarah Lean

Community Speaker - Lifelong Learner - Founder of the Glasgow Azure User Group

Sarah's Bio: I've worked in IT for over 14 years including service provider, manufacturing, Scotch Whisky and local authority industries. I've served my time resetting passwords and triaging support calls, maintaining platforms, building infrastructure, migrating end of life systems and migrating data centres. I've been a subject matter expert in various solutions through my career including Microsoft Exchange, System Centre Conifguration Manager and Patch Management, to name a few. I am a STEM Ambassador and am hopeful that by sharing my story with the next generation it can help to inspire them into a STEM career. I am also the founder of the Glasgow Azure User Group, which is a community group that meets every two months and aims to bring together people who are looking to learn and network with their peers. My passion is technology, and I love to help people understand what it can do to help them. I consider myself a life long learner and love to share my passion for learning with others.

Kendall Roden

Senior Program Manager- Azure Container Apps

Kendall's Bio: Kendall began her journey at Microsoft in July 2016 after graduating from the University of Alabama where she witnessed 2 National Championship wins (Roll Tide) while studying Management Information Systems and Italian. In her first 2.5 years at Microsoft, Kendall worked in Microsoft Consulting Services, focused primarily on C# development and app modernization. Kendall then transitioned onto the Premier Developer team, where she focused on learning and leveraging a variety of cloud native technologies to empower customers in their digital transformation journey. In her current role as a Cloud Native Global Black Belt, Kendall works with customers to architect cloud native solutions. Her specialties include: - Microservices development, design and architecture - Azure Kubernetes Service & OSS related to the k8s ecosystem - Dapr - Event-driven architecture - Azure API Management Kendall is a graduate of the Microsoft Academy of College Hires and and a co-host on The Azure Podcast. She is passionate about community building, continuous learning and public speaking. When she’s not online, she’s most likely taking on a new adventure whether that be traveling solo to New Zealand, making a documentary or performing stand up comedy. Her hobbies include exercising, watching “The Office” with her cat, attending concerts, playing golf and spending time with her family and friends.