Microsoft’s Ignite NZ 2016 conference is shaping up to be a special selection of technical delights for developers with the announcement of two new speakers to its keynote event line-up, and the first online release of the conference session schedule this week.
Joining previously announced lead speaker Dona Sarkar on stage at the keynote will be Donovan Brown, Senior DevOps Program Manager on Microsoft’s US Developer Division team, and Jennifer Marsman, Principal Software Development Engineer at Microsoft US – who will both be running separate sessions in a schedule laden with goodies for hungry developers.
Before joining Microsoft, Donovan Brown spent seven years as a Process Consultant travelling the globe helping companies in the USA, Canada, India, Germany, and the UK develop solutions using agile practices, Visual Studio, and Team Foundation Server. He has worked in industries as broad as Communications, Health Care, Energy, and Financial Services. After running one of the most popular sessions at last year’s conference, he will take to the main stage this year to “Rub a little DevOps” on a scenario common to many developers – mobile app development.
Following this, Jennifer Marsman – who was recognised as one of the “top 100 most influential individuals in artificial intelligence and machine learning” – will be sharing some of the crazy futuristic ideas she works on every day, such as lie detectors, which utilise the predictive capabilities of Microsoft Azure Machine Learning. With two patents for her work in search and machine learning algorithms, as well as a “Best in Role” award for Technical Evangelism she will be inspiring all developers to do what they love and “build cool things.”
Nigel Parker, DX Director for Microsoft New Zealand says that this year’s sessions were sourced following feedback from delegates that they enjoyed the technical depth of the sessions last year and wanted deep content to sink their teeth into.
“This year’s Microsoft Ignite NZ keynote is returning to its technical roots, going back to what delegates have loved in the past; high energy, plenty of demos and great coverage of the deeper technical content that will be covered throughout the sessions during the event,” says Parker.
“We are on the verge of the fourth industrial revolution driven by the automation and augmentation of knowledge-based work. As technology evolves, it starts to disappear. Bots are the new apps; insight is the new currency; and natural language is the new interface. Microsoft Ignite NZ is the place to go deep in all these ground-breaking new areas.”
