devops – Speaking Mentors

16th October 202029th March 2021

Sander Stad

Location: The Netherlands (UTC+2)
Expertise: SQL Server, PowerShell, DevOps (I try my best), Automation
Contact: Twitter, LinkedIn, Blog

I’m a SQL Server DBA from The Netherlands.

After college I started working at a school group where I started as an application engineer. Maintaining the application but also the database. I got more and more interested in databases and even got to a point that I helped the developers of the software improve their software.

I then started to work for a secondment firm working for various companies in automotive, healthcare and financial industries.

Fast forward to 2014 I worked at a pension fund company. At that moment I was thinking of doing more in the data community but had no idea how to do that.
In that year Redgate organized a contest to describe your worst day as a DBA. You could win a cruise, called the SQL Cruise in that day, which was a small scale conference with some of the best speakers around.
I had my share of unfortunate events in the past and I wrote my story. A few months go by and I suddenly see an e-mail from Redgate that my story was chosen and that I won the contest.

I cannot emphasize this enough, but SQL Cruise (now Tech Outbound) has changed my live in many ways. It was at this event that I learned that

everybody has something to say
everybody is a genius in their own way
everybody is creative
you don’t have to think your ideas or not worth posting

Several people, including the speakers, convinced me to start speaking and so I did.

My first session was an online session. I was nervous, sometimes I had to think about some things to say, but overall the session was good and the demos worked. In the end Aaron Nelson, the user group leader, told me the number of people that joined my session, over 300!

I thought, if I inspired one person with my talk it was already good, but apparently my talk was something that people were interested in.

Fast forward to today.
I’m a regular speaker at smaller and bigger events. I’ve presented at PASS Summit, SQL Bits and various other events like SQL Saturday.
I’m a major contributor to the dbatools project and I’m a maintainer of several open-source projects.
Because of all those contributions I became a Microsoft MVP in 2019, to be exact a Cloud and Datacenter Management MVP.

I’m a believer that anybody has something interesting to say. That’s why I wanted to become a speaking mentor to help people get started. It’s that first hurdle that you will have to take, but believe me, it’s worth it.
I never had that mentor that helped me get started, but I had the community that nudged me in the right direction.

I’m here for you if you need help.

You can reach me through my LinkedIn or through Twitter and I can’t wait to hear what you have to say.

16th October 201816th October 2018

Greg Levenhagen

Location: Midwest US (UTC -6)
Expertise: Software Development, Community Building, Public Speaking, Strategy & Innovation, Career Development, Entrepreneurship
Contact: Twitter | LinkedIn

Greg Levenhagen is a Microsoft Regional Director, Microsoft MVP in Windows Development and Principal Software Engineer Consultant with Skyline Technologies. He has a great passion for giving back to the community and teaching. A true enthusiast of computer science, with passions and interests including mobile, UX, architecture, parallel, testing, agile, 3D/games, cloud, languages and much more. Greg speaks at conferences like ThatConference, CodeMash, Code PaLOUsa, TechBash, VSLive, KCDC and DevLink.

He is also a Volunteer Teacher for CS through TEALS, Microsoft Certified Trainer, board member of ThatConference, president of the Northeast WI Developers User Group / Northeast WI Code Camp / Milwaukee Code Camp, cofounder of the Northeast WI Agile User’s Group, INETA speaker, IEEE and ACM member and a PhD student.

Along with being a life-long geek, Greg enjoys golfing, football, woodworking, philosophy and stimulating conversation.

13th February 201813th February 2018

Chris O’Dell

Location: London, UK (UTC)
Expertise: CI/CD, AWS, DevOps, .Net
Contact: Twitter | Email

I knew I wanted to be a programmer since I was a child – computers were magical and I could make them do things simply by typing instructions into it. I remember the first time we got the internet at home and I discovered HTML. I decided I’d take computer classes at school despite being the only girl. I then got a degree in Computer Science before embarking out into the world.

It was in my third job and first job in London that I gave my first presentation. I had great encouragement from colleagues and I told a familiar story – our CI/CD development practices. It was 20 mins long and at a small meetup.

To my surprise, I was asked to give the talk again at other meetups and even a full 60 minute version at a big London conference. Suddenly I’m a speaker!

I’ve continued to speak at events and, despite mistakes, I’m enjoying sharing knowledge and I’d like to share these skills with others.

9th February 2018

Jessica DeVita

Hi I’m Jessica. I’ve spoken at many conferences and have coached almost 60 people through workshops and individual coaching. I’m @ubergeekgirl on twitter

Jessica DeVita

8th February 20186th March 2018

Jan Mulkens

Location: Belgium (UTC +1)
Expertise: Applied Machine Learning with SQL Server and Azure ML Services, Power BI, Database DevOps (SQL Server), Data Integration with SSIS, Data Warehousing, Storytelling.
Contact: Twitter | LinkedIn

Short version:

Active in IT since 2010 having covered a lot of the current Microsoft Data/BI/AI Stack
From nervous newbie speaker in 2014 to experienced international speaker in 2017
Grew from attendee to blogger to speaker to User Group founder
Willing to provide help on all topics but most comfortable in SQL Server, Power BI, Applied Machine Learning (Azure ML & SQL Server ML Services).
When not able to help you, I’ll find someone for you who can help you.
Contact me at any time with any question

Long version:

Back in July of 2010, I was working in a call center as a sales advisor. I didn’t have a college degree due to personal circumstances at the time, but i did have a healthy dose of curiousity. In response to an internal opening, I started working with the existing reports in excel that company had. Over the course of a couple of months, I slowly started automating them while learning and experimenting with the back-end, SQL Server 2005. Finally in April of 2011, I was asked to join the IT team full time. And when I say IT team, i mean the IT Manager and me.

Fast forward to July 2014, where I joined one of the largest consultancy firms in Belgium as a Microsoft Business Intelligence Consultant. Since then, I’ve learned a lot, from working with customers to teaching and coaching new starters. But also technical skills like optimising queries for performance, setting up a data warehouse end to end, working with relevant Azure offerings and automating everything possible.

What was perhaps the largest change for me, came when I started diving into Data Science and the related offerings by Microsoft, which at the time was only Azure Machine Learning Studio. I quickly learned the basics through online courses, including Microsoft’s Professional Program for Data Science, and was able to apply these principles when SQL Server 2016 came out with R Services. Throughout this all I had unknowingly positioned myself in such a way that in january of 2017 I was asked to pick up the secondary role of Competence Center Lead for Microsoft Advanced Analytics. Basically meaning I need to ensure everyone in our business unit has access to the necessary knowledge to serve current and future customers for offerings in this space.

Throughout this crazy personal journey I’ve been giving presentations since the end of 2014. Sharing what i’ve learned at user groups and conferences, has so far been an absolute joy. The feeling you get when someone comes up to you afterwards and talks about the new insights they got through your talk is almost addictive. It also enabled me to get new insights myself by talking with a very diverse audience, each with different use cases. And it helped me to learn more about the international community around SQL Server and what other people are doing at their employers and customers. Being quickly integrated into the speaker community where you can learn even more and help even more people is one of the surprising side effects of speaking.

However, as an employee for a consultancy firm and not being my own boss, this doesn’t come easy or cheaply. I’ve been paying for my own travel expenses to speak at 15 events in 2017 and as of february 2018 I’m already accepted at 10 events for 2018 with 11 more currently pending a decision.

So one of my goals, apart from helping you out, is ensuring that you’re in a position to someday offer others help with writing an abstract or creating a presentation. Or perhaps you might one day help a user group or even start your own user group!

7th February 201810th February 2018

Wouter de Kort

Location: Netherlands (UTC +1)
Expertise: Software development on the Microsoft stack, DevOps, Azure.
Contact: Twitter | LinkedIn

We’ve got our first computer when I was 6 years old. After discovering Solitaire I started playing with Quick Basic when I was 7. I’ve been programming ever since. Currently, I work as a lead architect and consultant where I try to help organizations stay on the cutting edge of software development.

My main focus is around Microsoft and DevOps. I wrote a couple of books on C#, Azure and DevOps and of course I like to speak! I try to present as often as possible at local user groups and national and international conferences. I’ve given talks to small groups to rooms filled with hundreds of people. Something that really helped me with all this is my experience as a part time minister. In that capacity I gave a lot of talks, received all kinds of speaking training and coached people of all levels to present their ideas.

Because of all this Microsoft awarded me the Microsoft MVP Visual Studio and Development Technologies award. I’m also a part of the Microsoft ALM Rangers.

I like helping others so feel free to reach out. We can work on anything you want ranging from choosing a topic, finding a conference to speak at to reviewing your slides and practicing your presentation.

7th February 201811th February 2018

John Morehouse

Location: Kentucky (UTC -5)
Expertise: SQL Server and DevOps (well, I like to think so).
Contact: Twitter | LinkedIn

I’m a SQL Server DBA living in Kentucky. I started off as an accidental DBA as most of us do. Started working with SQL Server full time in 2007. Anywho, several years ago I recognized that to grow career wise within the field, speaking would really help.

So I signed up to co-present with a lead developer on 10 Things Your DBA Wished You Knew at the Heartland Developers Conference (HDC) in Omaha, Nebraska.

Fast forward a couple of months and it was time. My first ever public speaking session was give to 130 people. To 130 really smart people. To 130 Developer oriented people who probably didn’t like their DBA to begin with. Yikes!! Talk about nerve wrecking.

But I got through it. I didn’t die. I didn’t faint.

Actually, I loved it. I had people asking me questions for over an hour after the presentation. I was hooked and never looked back.

Public speaking is hard no question about it. However, even with how hard it may seem, YOU have a story to tell so let’s tell it. Like me, you’ll make it through just fine.

You can reach me via LinkedIn or Twitter

7th February 20186th November 2019

Gavin Campbell

Location: UK (UTC+0)
Expertise: Data, Databases, Continuous Delivery, Azure, AWS
Contact: website

I’m a freelance database developer interested in applying the lessons of Continuous Delivery and Agile to database and PaaS application development.

I’ve been speaking at meetups and conferences off and on for several years, mostly in short bursts of manic activity with long gaps in between. Some years ago, I did benefit from some semi-formal training in public speaking through the ASC.

I’ve also been an organiser and volunteer at a number of conferences and meetups, meaning that I have a good understanding of the logistical side of public speaking.