Speakers

Michael Carducci is a seasoned IT professional with over 25 years of experience, an author, and an internationally recognized speaker, blending expertise in software architecture with the artistry of magic and mentalism. His upcoming book, “Mastering Software Architecture,” reflects his deep understanding of the multifaceted challenges of building resilient, effective software systems and high-performing teams. Michael's career spans roles from individual contributor to CTO, with a particular focus on strategic enterprise architecture and digital transformation.

As a magician and mentalist, Michael has captivated audiences in dozens of countries, applying the same creativity and problem-solving skills that define his technology career. He excels in transforming complex technical concepts into engaging narratives, making him a sought-after speaker, trainer, and emcee for internal and tech events worldwide.

In his consulting work, Michael adopts a holistic approach to software architecture, ensuring alignment with business strategy and operational realities. He empowers teams, bridges tactical and strategic objectives, and guides organizations through transformative changes, always aiming to create sustainable, adaptable solutions.

Michael's unique blend of technical acumen and performative talent makes him an unparalleled force in both the tech and entertainment industries, driven by a passion for continuous learning and a commitment to excellence.

Raju is a software craftsman with almost 20 years of hands-on experience scoping, architecting, designing, implementing full stack applications.

He provides a 360 view of the development cycle, is proficient in a variety of programming languages and paradigms, experienced with software development methodologies, as well an expert in infrastructure and tooling.

He has long been in the pursuit of hermeticism across the development stack by championing immutability during development (with languages like Clojure), deployment (leveraging tools like Docker and Kubernetes), and provisioning and configuration via code (toolkits like Ansible, Terraform, Packer, everything-as-code).

Raju is a published author, internationally known public speaker and trainer.
Raju can be found on Twitter as @looselytyped.
In his spare time, you will find Raju reading, playing with technology, or spending time with his wonderful (and significantly better) other half.

Christina Kayastha is a Principal Software Engineer with nearly a decade of industry experience. Originally from Nepal, she is currently working in Boston, USA as a Domain Architect leading innovation initiatives at Vista. Christina is an inventor on 11 patents, has given 50+ conference talks, and won 13 hackathon competitions. In her free time, she loves nerding out about emerging tech, building interactive art installations, and is an active leader in her local cultural and tech communities.

Brian Sletten is a liberal arts-educated software engineer with a focus on forward-leaning technologies. His experience has spanned many industries including retail, banking, online games, defense, finance, hospitality and health care. He has a B.S. in Computer Science from the College of William and Mary and lives in Auburn, CA. He focuses on web architecture, resource-oriented computing, social networking, the Semantic Web, AI/ML, data science, 3D graphics, visualization, scalable systems, security consulting and other technologies of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries. He is also a rabid reader, devoted foodie and has excellent taste in music. If pressed, he might tell you about his International Pop Recording career.

Adi is an experienced Software Engineer and people manager. For most of her professional life, she has worked with data and machine learning for operations and analytics. As a data practitioner, she developed algorithms to solve real-world problems using machine learning techniques and leveraging expertise in Apache Spark, Kafka, HDFS, and distributed large-scale systems.

Adi has taught Spark to thousands of students and is the author of the successful book — Scaling Machine Learning with Spark. Earlier this year, she embarked on a new adventure with data streaming, specifically Flink, and she can't get enough of it.

Rohit Bhardwaj is a Director of Architecture working at Salesforce. Rohit has extensive experience architecting multi-tenant cloud-native solutions in Resilient Microservices Service-Oriented architectures using AWS Stack. In addition, Rohit has a proven ability in designing solutions and executing and delivering transformational programs that reduce costs and increase efficiencies.

As a trusted advisor, leader, and collaborator, Rohit applies problem resolution, analytical, and operational skills to all initiatives and develops strategic requirements and solution analysis through all stages of the project life cycle and product readiness to execution.
Rohit excels in designing scalable cloud microservice architectures using Spring Boot and Netflix OSS technologies using AWS and Google clouds. As a Security Ninja, Rohit looks for ways to resolve application security vulnerabilities using ethical hacking and threat modeling. Rohit is excited about architecting cloud technologies using Dockers, REDIS, NGINX, RightScale, RabbitMQ, Apigee, Azul Zing, Actuate BIRT reporting, Chef, Splunk, Rest-Assured, SoapUI, Dynatrace, and EnterpriseDB. In addition, Rohit has developed lambda architecture solutions using Apache Spark, Cassandra, and Camel for real-time analytics and integration projects.

Rohit has done MBA from Babson College in Corporate Entrepreneurship, Masters in Computer Science from Boston University and Harvard University. Rohit is a regular speaker at No Fluff Just Stuff, UberConf, RichWeb, GIDS, and other international conferences.

Rohit loves to connect on http://www.productivecloudinnovation.com.
http://linkedin.com/in/rohit-bhardwaj-cloud or using Twitter at rbhardwaj1.

Jeremy Deane is innovative technology leader, conference speaker, and technical author with diverse experience, in premier technical settings, with proven expertise in Enterprise Architecture, Software Architecture, and Software Process Improvement.

Dr. Venkat Subramaniam is an award-winning author, founder of Agile Developer, Inc., creator of agilelearner.com, and an instructional professor at the University of Houston.

He has trained and mentored thousands of software developers in the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia, and is a regularly-invited speaker at several international conferences. Venkat helps his clients effectively apply and succeed with sustainable agile practices on their software projects.

Venkat is a (co)author of multiple technical books, including the 2007 Jolt Productivity award winning book Practices of an Agile Developer. You can find a list of his books at agiledeveloper.com. You can reach him by email at venkats@agiledeveloper.com or on twitter at @venkat_s.

Daniel is a programmer, consultant, instructor, speaker, and recent author. With over 20 years of experience, he does work for private, educational, and government institutions. He is also currently a speaker for No Fluff Just Stuff tour. Daniel loves JVM languages like Java, Groovy, and Scala; but also dabbles with non JVM languages like Haskell, Ruby, Python, LISP, C, C++. He is an avid Pomodoro Technique Practitioner and makes every attempt to learn a new programming language every year. For downtime, he enjoys reading, swimming, Legos, football, and barbecuing.

I am a biotech engineer who transition from the lab to the world of software. During my university years, I excelled in both fields becoming a teaching assistant in the IT engineering program while also pursuing my love for biotechnology. Post-graduation, I realized that working in lab environments with outdated software was limiting my potential to apply cutting-edge technology in biotech. So, I decided to take on a challenging journey to become a developer and bridge this gap. As a proud woman in tech my background enriches the landscape of software development. I am also an enthusiastic supporter of DDD as it can help us to bind the code with the business.

Ken is a distributed application engineer. Ken has worked with Fortune 500 companies to small startups in the roles of developer, designer, application architect and enterprise architect. Ken's current focus is on containers, container orchestration, high scale micro-service design and continuous delivery systems.

Ken is an international speaker on the subject of software engineering speaking at conferences such as JavaOne, JavaZone, Great Indian Developer Summit (GIDS), and The Strange Loop. He is a regular speaker with NFJS where he is best known for his architecture and security hacking talks. In 2009, Ken was honored by being awarded the JavaOne Rockstar Award at JavaOne in SF, California and the JavaZone Rockstar Award at JavaZone in Oslo, Norway as the top ranked speaker.

Travis is a Distinguished Software Engineer at SPS Commerce, the world's largest retail network, where he leads innovation, drives meaningful change, and amplifies team productivity. With a passion for technology and a talent for simplifying complex architectures, Travis focuses on creating seamless Developer Experiences and fostering high-performing teams. A seasoned speaker, architect, and blogger, he thrives on sharing insights, exploring emerging technologies, and championing impactful development practices.

Ryan Shriver is the Chief Technology Officer of SingleStone, a tech consulting firm based in Richmond, Virginia that takes a human-centered approach to problem solving. At SingleStone, he leads the services team and focuses on architecture modernizations with clients ranging from start-ups to Fortune 100 companies. Shriver also teaches Human-Centered Design at VCU’s School of the Arts, where he helps students apply Design Thinking and Agile practices to solve real-world problems.

Mark is a Lead Software Engineer specializing in Developer Productivity Engineering at SPS Commerce. He's passionate about building tools and solutions that help developers work more efficiently. With over a decade of experience in both front-end and mid-tier development, Mark enjoys sharing his expertise through speaking at tech conferences and contributing to SPS Commerce's internal technology podcast.

Paul Preiss is the CEO and Founder of the Iasa, one of the largest Enterprise and IT architect associations in the world. Through his time at Iasa, Paul has taken the association from a single user group in Austin Tx to an international organization with chapters in over 25 countries. Paul's vision is a unified architecture profession with effective education, credentials and ethics which fully supports corporate strategy and delivery. He is a tireless advocate for the field and speaks on topics ranging form architecture ethics to best the best setup and structure for architecture teams. Paul has spoken at hundreds of events as well as held conferences and training for architects all over the world. He is an expert software and enterprise architect in practice and continues to work with companies on optimizing their technology strategy.

Prior to developing Iasa, Paul was the chief architect for Dell Pan Asia where he helped to integrate the technology strategy across 14 countries. He also served as the chief architect for the Sears point of sale replacement in North America consisting of 2000 stores and thousands of suppliers as well as the chief architect for a digital asset management firm, Ancept.

Dave is a senior architect for Thomson Reuters and has worked for Thomson Reuters for over 20 years where his focus is on architecting and delivering enterprise hybrid big data systems.

Dave has written two books with Addison-Wesley, and is currently working on a third:

• 12 Essential Skills for Software Architects – this book focuses on the soft skills needed by software architects, and has also been translated to Chinese.


• 12 More Essential Skills for Software Architects – this book focuses on the day to day technical skills needed by software architects.


• (In Progress) Enterprise Big Data – this book focuses on how to architect and build enterprise big data systems.




Dave is also the head coach for the Eagan High School FIRST Robotics program with over 150 students and over 60 mentors. Dave also likes to build things like trebuchets, go carts, and rain barrel watering systems.