Jonah Andersson - Software Engineer | Microsoft MVP - Azure | Azure Developer | MCT | Inclusive Community Leader

Jonah Andersson is a Filipina-Swedish full-stack Software Engineer, Azure Developer and Microsoft MVP for Azure in Sweden.
She works as an Enterprise Software Engineer Consultant at Forefront Consulting. She is also the founder and community leader of Azure User Group Sweden. Jonah studied Computer Science, Agile System Development in .NET and Java, which makes her very passionate about tech. She likes solving challenging problems, programming back-end and has great interest in developing in .NET with new cloud technologies in Azure. She believes in continuous learning and collaboration with developers. She shares technical knowledge at work and to tech communities through public speaking, blogging and by mentoring others. Jonah is also passionate about making a difference by advocating gender equality, diversity and inclusion in tech.

Session: Automating DevOps Releases using .NET and Azure Durable Functions

Deploying and releasing to higher environments twice a week can be a tedious routine or task in DevOps operations and release management. In this session, you will learn from Jonah how serverless technologies like the extension of Azure Functions, and Durable Functions, can be used to save her time in deployments.

Learn the fundamental vital concepts you need to know about Azure Durable Function, how to develop it in .NET, and most of all, a demo of how it can be used to integrate it with Azure DevOps Pipelines to automate the task for release notes management.

Stacy Cashmore - Tech Explorer DevOps

Speaker, author and software developer. Stacy has been developing solutions since the mid-1990s in various companies and industries ranging from facilitating contract jobbing to allowing consumers to close a mortgage without the help of a financial adviser – with lots in between.

She has a passion for sharing knowledge: using story telling for sharing her experiences to help teams grow in the ways that they develop software and work together, and performing live coding demonstrations to inspire others to try new technologies.

Stacy is currently in the closing stages of completing her first book, aimed at helping developers get started building dynamic applications using C#, Azure Functions and Azure Static Web Apps.

For her effort in the community Stacy has been awarded the Microsoft MVP for Developer Technologies since 2020.

Session: Azure Static Web Apps - From Zero to Deployed App In 60 Minutes

We're told that by using services such as Medium, dev.to etc. we are diluting our personal brand. That we should be posting to our own site and building ourselves up. You can, of course, use off-the-shelf applications to do that for you.

Or… You can use it as an exercise to try something new and learn new skills!

In this session, we will look at doing just that! Starting with an empty GitHub repository we are going to make a Blazor WebAssembly application to act as our website. We’ll connect that to an Azure Function that reads posts from a CosmosDB to pass to that site. Then we’ll deploy that to a production Azure Static Web App.

Of course, when developing an application, it’s useful to be able to run it locally. So, we’ll also look at how we can do that with Azure Static Web Apps.

Finally, in order to be able to write new blog posts, we need to be able to authenticate ourselves and provide proper authorization so that this functionality can be added later.

Morten Christensen - Head of Cloud Platform

Morten works at Umbraco HQ where he helps build Umbraco Cloud, which is Umbraco (the CMS) as a Service. Morten is also an Azure MVP, Azure Lover and community addict. In Copenhagen he helps organize the Copenhagen .NET Usergroup, Azure Usergroup and Community focused conferences like MicroCPH and Azure Saturday. When he is not working on Azure, doing Community events you can find him either learning about new things in Azure or building LEGO sets (there should probably have been a "LEGO addict" part somewhere in this profile as well - according to his bank account statements).

Session: A cloud migration story - running at 100% all while migrating and shipping new features

"A Cinderella story" or "A Ghost Story" if a cloud migration was a Hollywood movie either of these could be the title, but most of us would probably prefer "A Cinderella Story" to be the tale of our migration projects.

In this talk I'll share a non-fictional story of how we (Cloud teams at Umbraco) spent the past 1.5 years modernizing our Cloud Platform all while migrating 1000s of customers all while running at 100%, no down time and while shipping new features, fully equipped with the latest .NET, API- and Event Driven architecture as well as Terraform to rule all the infrastructure.

As with any fairy tale there is a happy ending - in this azure themed one we ended up with a modern platform, which enables our developers to launch new services in a day instead of a week. It enabled the expansion of supported regions to less than a week instead of months.

Cameos include Azure App Service, Azure Kubernetes Services, Azure API Management, Terraform and a surprise appearance of Cloudflare.

Marilag Dimatulac - Solutions Architect - Dewise | Microsoft Azure MVP | Founder

Marilag is a founder, cloud architect and a tech community leader who aims to bridge the skill gap through equal distribution of knowledge across borders, cultures & individuals. Her experience in Cloud and Software Engineering, combined with her passion for mentorship and developer wellness, drive her to tackle the tech upskilling challenge, through her advocacies. She’s the organizer of Azure User Group Manila and Azure User Group Denmark and an Azure MVP. She's also the co-founder of a not-for-profit group called Ulap.org, which helps training underserved youths within cloud, data and technology.

Session: Azure Well Architected Framework in Action

Cloud Architects make a lot of decisions. When designing solutions on top of such powerful platform like Azure, it's best to have a framework that serves as a compass to guide you which way to go. In this session, let's take a look at how the Azure Well Architected Framework can help us build great solutions on the cloud & get ready to put it in action.

Jakob Ehn - Doing cloudy DevOps things at Active Solution

Jakob Ehn works as a Cloud architecture and DevOps specialist at Active Solution. For more than 20 years, has has been building software solutions, educating developers and teams on Microsoft technologies through training, books, and conference talks.

Jakob is a Microsoft Azure MVP (former ALM/DevOps MVP). He is a regular speaker at various conferences and user groups around the world, such as NDC, Techorama, DevSum, CloudBrew, UpdateConf and SweTugg.

Session: Serverless microservices with Azure Container Apps

For some time now, Kubernetes has been to go-to option if you want to run microservice applications in the cloud. Learning Kubernetes is not a trivial task though, and even if you choose one of the managed Kubernetes services such as Azure Kubernetes Service, you still have to cover a lot of new knowledge.

With Azure Container Apps, you can now leverage the power of Kubernetes without knowing any of the details. Just build and deploy your containerized application and pay for the resources that you use.

Azure Container Apps natively support Dapr for developing microservice apps, and Keda for event-driven scaling.

Come to this session and learn how to take an existing microservice application and deploy it to Azure Container Apps

Erik Ejlskov Jensen - .NET Data and Entity Framework expert, Cloud developer

Erik Ejlskov Jensen is Principal Consultant at Delegate A/S. He manages a number of open source data access tools and libraries, including "SQLite Toolbox" and "EF Core Power Tools" for Visual Studio

Session: Look ma, no passwords - using Azure SQL with App Service and Azure Active Directory

Storing secrets (like passwords) is always complicated and risky. With Azure App Service, Managed Identity, Azure SQL Database and ARM templates, you can now use "AAD authentication only" when you deploy your databases. In this session we will perform a live deployment of the resources above and see it all in action.

Eldert Grootenboer - Senior Program Manager @Microsoft | #Azure Service Bus | Former #Azure MVP | Community Enthousiast

Eldert is always enthusiastic about embarking on new journeys with the Cloud, and Azure in particular. He is very passionate about growing his dreams and teams, and goes above and beyond to help those with the same spark. Eldert comes from a background as a cloud solution architect and Technology Lead, was an Azure MVP for 5 consecutive years, and is now working as a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft for Azure Service Bus. In these roles he has demonstrated experience in building and maintaining relationships at all levels.

Always having a smile on his face, Eldert can be found delivering noteworthy sessions at in-person conferences, meetups, and online platforms. He values sharing and spreading knowledge while building genuine connections regardless of background and expertise. His goal is to bring people closer and work together to influence the outcome and optimize the future of Cloud technologies.

Apart from public speaking, Eldert shows his passion for being involved with the community in other ways as well. As such, he can often be found doing mentoring, organizing conferences and meetups, blogging, writing, and more. He loves telling about his journey and hearing other people’s stories. When meeting people he always looks forward to getting to know about their passions and how he can help them.

Session: The latest and greatest from Azure Service Bus

As the program manager of Azure Service Bus, it is always amazing to share the latest developments of our service. It allows us get direct feedback from the community, and ensures that we are building the right product for your scenarios.

In this session we will have a look at recently delivered features, and what we are currently working on.You will get a chance to hear all about these latest developments, how we are building them, and why we made certain choices.

And who knows, we might even have a look at what is coming up on the roadmap! This will be your chance to see what is coming in the next months, and give your feedback which will help us give shape to these features.

Alex Mang - Microsoft Regional Director and Most Valuable Professional

Alex Mang is a Microsoft Regional Director, Azure Most Valuable Professional, working as a cloud architect, consultant, trainer, software developer but also regularly seen at conferences and user groups speaking mostly on cloud-computing topics. His main goal is to help developers better understand the implications of cloud-computing as a whole, from as many perspectives as possible. Alex was invited three times in a row as a featured speaker at Microsoft Ignite, the company’s largest and most important technical conference gathering nearly 35,000 attendees.
Since 2011, Alex runs KeyTicket Solutions, a company focused on democratizing access control, ticketing and management solutions for every single vertical in the world.
For his experience on cloud-driven solutions, his Microsoft Certified Trainer, Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD), Microsoft Certified Solution Associate (MCSA) and Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE) stand as proof and so do the many happy customers he had the pleasure to work with for the past many years.

Session: A Match Made in The Cloud: Container Apps + Dapr

It couldn't be a more suitable time to be in the cloud business! Using today's bleeding edge innovations and tech, writing, and running distributed applications which truly scale and handle high load should no longer difficult.
Yet despite the ease of development, running distributed apps must be just as easy if we want to make a real software revolution. Introducing: Azure Container Apps.

Throughout this session, we will talk about the future of app development and deployment. Specifically, I will showcase Dapr as well as Container Apps. Dapr is an event-driven, portable runtime for microservices development on cloud and edge which aims to solve all the challenges above and make the development of worry-free microservices-based applications a breeze. Azure Container Apps is a serverless platform that enables developers to run their containerized workloads. Container Apps are ideal for developers who want to run their applications as if they were running them on Kubernetes, but don't want to manage the operations of the cluster. This simplifies the process of developing and deploying our containers to Azure.

Join me for a pragmatic take on cloud native application development and deployment!

Magnus Mårtensson - Azure MVP / Regional Director

Magnus Mårtensson is a Microsoft Azure Most Valuable Professional since the start of Azure, and a Microsoft Regional Director. He is a consultant, architect, and product development lead. As an international speaker he travels the world to passionately teach, network, learn, and experience. His passions include connecting with audiences and organizing conferences such as CloudBurst and GlobalAzure. He is of course also very passionate about good food, wine, and great company. Topping it all is mind-sharing, so when you see him at a conference, come over and say hi!

Session: Five best Azure Access Control practices

It is a serious challenge to master Access Control and Identity in the Cloud. With experience from over ten years as an Azure MVP, and in my role as Chief Product Officer at Cloudeon by Devoteam, I know most companies fail this challenge completely. Focus on Zero-Trust with the quintessential principles of just-in-time access and least-privilege! You can master the challenges of...

• Granting Users Access the better way via AAD Security Groups.
• Non-permanent PIM access for humans.
• Granting machines access via Managed Identities.
• Setting up automated Continuous Deployment.
• Self-rotating secrets.

Mike Martin - Dad, Husband, Geek, NumberGirl, msft technical evangelist, #Azure Lover and ex MVP, wall crawler, #Batman fan, Caring Community Member

As a Microsoft Technical Evangelist, Mike is an Azure goto for ISV’s (independent software vendors). He’s been active in the IT industry for more than 20 years and has performed almost all types of job profiles, going from coaching and leading a team to architecting and systems design and training. Today he’s primarily into the Microsoft Cloud Platform and Application Lifecycle Management. He’s not a stranger to both dev and IT Pro topics, they even call him the perfect hybrid solution.

In January 2012 he became a crew member of AZUG, the Belgian Microsoft Azure User Group. As an active member he’s both involved in giving presentations and organizing events (like ITProceed, Techorama and Global Azure Bootcamp aka GAB). Mike was also a Microsoft Azure MVP (awarded 5 times since 2013, received his Fifth in July 2017! ) and Microsoft Azure Advisor.

Helping out in the community and introducing new & young people into the world of Microsoft and technology is also one of his passions.

Session: The Fifth Element : Azure Secure Devops

In the 21st Century the Cyber Universe is threatened by Evil Source Code and Evil entities. The only hope for many developers is the Fifth Element : the Sec in Devops, which must be implemented side by side with the Four elementals : Code, Build, Test , Deploy. A Microsoft Service is bringing the Four Elements but can the Fifth be included, and will it save us from disaster?

Let us see how we can leverage Microsoft products in combination with industry standards and protocols and 3rd party tools all over the full flow of your DevOps and ALM structure.

Alan Smith - Azure MVP

Alan Smith is a Microsoft Azure developer, trainer, mentor and evangelist at Active Solution in Stockholm. He has a strong hands-on philosophy and focusses on embracing the power and flexibility of cloud computing to deliver engaging and exciting demos and training courses.

Alan has held the MVP title for 13 years, and is currently an MVP for Microsoft Azure. He is in the organization team for the CloudBurst conference.

Session: 5 Levels of AI in Microsoft Azure (Applications, Services, Models, Frameworks & Algorithms)

Microsoft Azure offers a number of services that can be leveraged in applications to add intelligence and analysis of text, images, video and documents. These services can be divided into five levels based on the knowledge a team has around AI and ML, and the complexity of the problems being solved. At the application level, the services can be used with a web-based console. AI services can be leveraged with an API call. More complex implementations may require managing training data sets, selecting or designing neural networks, and even implementing the next generation of AI algorithms.
In this demo intensive session Alan will start at the application layer, and progress through AI services, models, frameworks and algorithms and show how Azure AI services Azure can be utilized. He will show how Azure Video Indexer can be used to create transcripts, translations and recognize people and celebrities. Cognitive Services and Custom Vision will be used for image analysis, and Auto ML will be used to train price prediction and object detection algorithms. He will round off the session explaining how reinforcement learning in Azure ML is being used by the gaming industry.

Sam Vanhoutte - Startup Advisor & investor, focus on Cloud & Innovation

Sam is a Microsoft Azure MVP. As a technical advisor and investor at several cloud start-ups, he is involved in cloud-native architectures and focuses on Serverless technologies, the Internet of Things, and Artificial Intelligence.
For seventeen years, he has been working as CTO at Codit, one of the leading European Microsoft cloud partners. In working together with Microsoft, Sam has extensive experience in building data-driven, integrated cloud-based solutions.
Sam has been involved in several industrial IoT projects and has been contributing to the open-source Arcus project, focusing on the Machine Learning aspects.

Sam is a frequent speaker at international events and is active in the Belgian and European Microsoft communities.

Session: 7 things I learned from coaching and investing in cloud startups

Not many companies are more exciting to work for than cloud startups. Employees at a startup are really making an impact with every decision that is taken. The difference with working in the enterprise world is huge.

In this session, Sam will share several things and insights he gained from working with several software (cloud) startups. Seven things that he believes can be applied to many projects and products. He will discuss architectural principles, technology choices, and quality decisions and their impact on the success of the startup. But the session will also cover some business aspects, such as pricing models and feature priorities.

Joonas Westlin - Azure Architect/Developer and Azure MVP at Zure Ltd

Joonas has been working with Microsoft technologies as a hobby since the first version of .NET framework. Currently he works as a software developer at Zure, a company specializing in developing software on Microsoft Azure using its PaaS offerings. He is one of the 7 Azure MVPs in Finland. Joonas is currently the global #1 for Azure AD answers on Stack Overflow (and #9 for Azure overall).

Session: Deep dive into Azure Durable Functions

The Durable Functions extension to Azure Functions allows developers to build workflows using higher level abstractions. But what is really going on under the hood? It can be useful to know how all the pieces connect in case you are every trying to solve a trickier issue.

In this presentation, we will take a deep dive into the internals of the Durable Functions extension and the Durable Task framework. In addition to the default Azure Storage durability provider, we will look at the other officially supported providers and how they differ in their implementations.