The Live Coders Conference 3

Johanna Koester, Director of Worldwide Developer Advocacy at IBM, leads a global team of developer advocacy with responsibility for unleashing the best of open technology to today’s developers through face to face events and digital content.

Over the past 10 years, she has had the honor of leading developer facing teams including IBM’s Developer Offering Management team and the project office responsible for founding and sponsoring many strategic open source communities including the OpenStack Foundation, Cloud Foundry Foundation, Node.js Foundation, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, ODPi and more.

In these roles, she has been an outspoken advocate for open technologies to foster development of the next generation of Cloud and AI Technology to drive interoperability and speed of innovation for industry developers.

Through her involvement in these communities, she always carves out time to advocate for diversity in open source communities including leadership roles in the Women of OpenStack committee and Cloud Foundry Ambassadors.

She holds a BS in Computer Science and Math from Tulane University and an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

You can find more background information as well her views on developer advocacy and open tech on Twitter @jokoester.

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

I am a Javascript engineer at Automattic and a full-time nerd who has been working in the software industry for over ten years, always excited to keep up on and speak about the latest trends of the fast-moving world of web development. I have a Masters Degree in Software Engineering from DePaul University and have worked with multiple Javascript stacks as well as cross-language into C#, Java, Kotlin, and PHP. During my off hours, I enjoy video gaming, livestreaming, snuggling my cat, and geeking out on Twitter, where you can reach me @blackjackkent.

Having been in IT industry for almost 12 years , and experienced the changing landscape of technology , I would love to share my learnings and knowledge. I personally feel that buzz words explained in simple terms can help a lot of people irrespective whether technical/non technical.

Alyssa is an Angular Developer Advocate for KUI and a Google Developer Expert for Angular. Her two degrees (Web Design & Development and Psychology) feed her speaking career. She has spoken at over 30 conferences Internationally. She is a weekly panelist on Adventures in Angular and Angular Air, which have a combined following of over 16,000 listeners. She enjoys gaming, scuba diving, and has a little one that fondly goes by "Mr. Milks". www.telerik.com/blogs/author/alyssa-nicoll @AlyssaNicol

Carey Payette is a Senior Software Engineer with Trillium Innovations (a Solliance partner), an ASPInsider, Progress Developer Expert and a Microsoft Azure MVP. Her primary focus is Cloud integration and deployment for the web, mobile, big data, AI, machine learning, and IoT spaces. Always eager to learn, you will find her tinkering regularly with various sensors, microcontrollers, programming languages, and frameworks. Carey is also a wife and Mom to three fabulous boys.

Accomplished technology executive with a unique combination of analytical and leadership expertise developed over 20 years both in industry and academia. A pioneering woman data scientist who has nurtured and mentored hundreds of budding analysts and scientists as a recognized leader and as an advisory board member.

Co-founded a technology startup providing a Big-data analytics and ML platform. Managed large multinational and multidisciplinary projects in automotive, aviation, healthcare, software and marketing. Established labs, worked on academic projects, authored over 30 publications on ML/AI implementation, analytics and neuroscience.

She recently joined GM as a senior member of Chief Data and Analytics Office. During her career she has designed complex machine learning models and implemented AI projects including natural language processing (NLP), linear and logistic regression, supervised and unsupervised learning, neural network, deep learning algorithms and hybrid approaches of computer vision. Her passion for cognitive and biological bases of data prompted her to have a career in academia where she received a post graduate degree in Complex Systems and Brain Sciences with a minor in cognitive and behavioral neuroscience. She implemented her knowledge of neuroscience and analytics while a professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Medical School.

A regular speaker and consultant for universities, including UT Austin, UT Dallas, MIT, and Stanford and data science and ethics conferences.

You can reach Dr. Ballan on her LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meltemballan/

Rachael Olasunkanmi is Student Affairs professional, specializing in financial aid, scholarship, and grant account management. I am humble in change, but bold in action when it comes to strategizing with my teams on exceeding departmental goals, project management, and coordinating resources to elevate the team and students to the next level.

Offering over seven years of experience in student affairs, I’ve perfected the art of educating, empowering, and motivating others to level up their careers and themselves. I’m excited to use these strategies to further develop my career and help schools transform the lives of their students.

Although it’s not all work and no play, I also coordinate employee and student engagement activities. Some activities include- recruitment events, presentations to local high schools, team-building, and outreach efforts to provide further resources to students outside of the office.

I am credentialed by The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators in the FAFSA Application Process, Student Eligibility, Needs Analysis, and Verification. I’m excited about the opportunity to utilize my expertise and cultivate relationships through strategic planning and collaboration in my field.

"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." - Benjamin Franklin

Nenne Adaora Nwodo (who fondly likes to be called Adora), is a Software Engineer based in Lagos, Nigeria. She currently works at Microsoft where she builds cloud services related to Artificial Intelligence and Mixed Reality.

In 2018, she created a blog called AdoraHack where she publishes articles on Software Engineering, Productivity & Career Growth. In June 2019, she created a YouTube channel for AdoraHack where she posts tech content that could be useful to Software Developers.

Adora is extremely passionate about the developer community and is trying to drive inclusion for women in technology. She co-organizes community events, contributes to open source and speaks at conferences/meetups whenever possible.

Kim-Adeline (she/her) is a software engineer at Microsoft working on the Python extension for VS Code.

Prior to that, she dabbled with parallel programming in Singapore and worked as a front-end engineer in Denmark and in Vancouver.

Other qualifications include propagating succulents 🌵, being able to hold crow pose for 3 breaths 🐦, knowing how to rollerskate forwards (backwards is still a work in progress) 🛹, and using emojis wherever possible 👩‍🎨.

Think you need a degree in computing science or software engineering or that you need to be young to work or transition into the tech industry?

Wrong!

There’s more than one way to get working in the tech industry and it doesn’t have to always centre on ‘technical’ roles. With the continuing merging of technology into every aspect of life there are more technology companies than ever. Those companies need people in product, design, operations, administration, recruitment and much more.

In this talk I go through my personal journey for the last 3 years. How, at the age of 36 and facing life as a new divorcee, I realised that whilst I loved my solid but comfortable job in a law firm that it wasn’t where my passions lie. I’ve always had a keen interest in tech and was determined to change the course of my career into the industry so I set a goal to change my career path by the time I was 40.

I did this by understanding my strengths, chasing opportunities and not being afraid of saying yes to new experiences whilst at the same time beating back imposter syndrome and the fear of failure; I got comfortable with being uncomfortable.