2019 Sessions
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[AI/ML] "Hello World" – How I got started in AI/ML and how can you too!!!
In this session, I'll share my experience about how I dipped my toes in AI/ML without getting overwhelmed. I’ll share resources, tips and tricks which I’ve found useful.
Using Azure ML Studio, we'll demo how easy it is for a beginner to jump-start his/her journey into AI/ML. We’ll work on a AI/ML solution and create a callable API endpoint for consumption.
Attendees will learn how to jump-start their AI/ML journey practically and see how they can build and implement their “Hello World” solution for AI/ML. -
[AI/ML] A Whirlwind Tour of Quantum Computing and Q#, Microsoft's Quantum Computing Language
Join Delbert on a fast-paced, demo-driven session on Quantum Computing and how to use Visual Studio/VS Code to write and debug Q# -- Microsoft's language developed specifically for quantum computation. Learn why there is so much excitement around quantum computing, where it is going, how to simulate a quantum computer on your laptop, and how use quantum inspired algorithms to improve the code you deliver today.
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[AI/ML] Democratizing Data Analysis: How and Why of Social Media Sentiment Scoring
The job of a data professional is evolving rapidly, driving many of us to platforms and technologies that were not on our radar screen a few months ago. Most of us aren't just monitoring backups and tuning queries - we are collaborating with teams throughout the company to provide them data and insights that drive decisions. Cloud providers are democratizing technologies and techniques that were complicated and proprietary just a few months ago. This presentation walks you through how a silly idea from a soccer podcast inspired me to build a sentiment analysis toolset using services supplied by major cloud providers. This data and the reports it feeds combine to provide potentially powerful insights to any company with a social media and sales presence. Join me as I walk you through building a solution that can impact your company's bottom line - and potentially yours too!
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[AI/ML] Goldilocks and Artificial Intelligence
As Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes more accessible, software engineers will be more apt to incorporate these algorithms into the systems they build. While many of these algorithms can make software systems safer and more efficient, there can also be a downside. Human error can increase with too much automation.
In this thought-provoking presentation, the positive and negative impacts of AI on human performance will be presented. You will be equipped with a working understanding of these impacts and leave with a framework for determining the right amount of AI to mix into your system that will truly help your users. The goal for practitioners is to find, identify, and implement the “just-right” amount of artificial intelligence - the Goldilocks AI. -
[AI/ML] Is Machine Learning the right tool?
To many people, machine learning is a black box of awesomeness that magically solves all of your problems. When you combine this with how much it is talked about in the news it can be very hard to understand what it truly is, what kind of problems it can solve, and where it fits in your developer tool belt. Starting with the basics and debunking the misconceptions we will more objectively be able analyze when and where using machine learning will fit within our projects.
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[AppDev] A Better Vue of Javascript
Vue.js has made it rounds in the industry and proven its worth. It’s becoming evermore apparent that this framework is a sellable attribute on any developer. I rely heavily on Javascript frameworks for my day to day operations, as I’m sure many of you do. Since it can be a struggle to keep up with new libraries and frameworks popping up every month, I’ve simplified the newest player in the game. As someone who’s had to repeatedly learn to use other frameworks on the job before, it’s a relief to have settled on one the more intuitive and clean JS frameworks to date.
This “crash course” will take us from new to Vue, and quickly. While previously taught as a 4 hour course, I’ve skimmed it down to a bite sized treat while keeping all the flavor. Come see how Vue could easily be what your next application or project is built with. -
[AppDev] A Brief Introduction to Concurrent Programming
Unless the systems you build are developed with concurrency in mind, they probably do not take full advantage of modern multi-core CPUs. Concurrent programming facilitates the use of multiple processors, but is difficult to implement using traditional approaches. Fortunately, new approaches taken by functional languages have begun to address these difficulties.
In this interactive session, volunteers from the audience will help present the classic problems with concurrent programming. Traditional solutions to these problems will be presented, as well as new approaches available from functional languages such as Erlang, Clojure, and Haskell. With this knowledge you will begin to think about software architecture differently, and may even decide to introduce concurrency into your next project. -
[AppDev] An Introduction to Web Components, and What the Future Might Hold
Over the past decade, MVVM JS frameworks like React (or similarly Vue, Angular, Ember, Knockout, etc) have revolutionized the way we approach front-end development. But in the back of our minds, we have always hoped for a native way to create reusable UI components. That is what Web Components aims to be: a browser standard. The intent here is to sift through the buzzwords and technical jargon and see if Web Components can further extend what the JS frameworks started.
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[AppDev] Automated ADA Testing with Pa11y and Ruby-Cucumber
ADA compliance is a necessity to that is often costly and time-consuming as part of the software development process. This talk covers the story of Huntington moving from manual ADA testing to Automated ADA testing utilizing Pa11y and Ruby-Cucumber.
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[AppDev] Build-a-Bot: Using the Bot Framework to Create Interactive Applications
Microsoft's Bot Framework and Azure Bot Service have matured over the past year, providing developers an efficient and flexible framework and tooling to allow you to design, develop, and deploy interactive bots. These bots can take advantage of 3rd party services (like databases, RESTful API's, and so on) along with the many Cognitive Services (like LUIS, QnA Maker, Sentiment Analysis) to create powerful bots to enable awesome interactions for your users.
In this session, we'll walk through an overview of building some basic bots and then wire up a bot to take advantage of 3rd party services, LUIS, QnA Maker, and Sentiment Analysis to create a virtual assistant. You'll come away with knowledge you can use right away to build interactive bots in your own applications! -
[AppDev] Building A Highly Scalable Service that Survived A Super Bowl
Would you bet your career and your company's reputation on a technology you've never used in front of 110 million people tuned into a Super Bowl commercial? Well, I did. And I was a nervous wreck! We were launching a new product during a commercial at the Super Bowl 302 days away, and I was betting everything on a technology we had never used in production. I spent countless nights wavering back and forth thinking about the millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of person hours that were on the line. Everything was resting on the shoulders of this one web service that had to handle the excessive load placed upon it when our commercial aired. The technology chosen was Erlang, a mystical, functional, dynamically compiled language that was very foreign to this eight-time Microsoft MVP. This is a story about picking the right tool for the right job, exploring other possibilities, and the difference between playing with technology and putting it into production. As a noted storyteller, I'll take you on the journey of:
*how we stumbled upon Erlang during our dedicated innovation time
*what made it so special that we were willing to take such a risk
*what we learned along the way
*how it performed
*and would we do it again
If you love a great technology story, I hope you'll join me for this tale of how this web service, built in unproven technology to us, survived Super Bowl Sunday. -
[AppDev] Clean Architecture with ASP.NET Core
ASP.NET Core provides better support for clean, testable, maintainable architectures than any of its predecessors. Learn the underlying principles that apply to project/solution organization, how best to arrange your projects to support clean code, and how to refactor existing solutions toward this architecture. Examples will use ASP.NET Core but the principles covered apply to all languages and platforms.
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[AppDev] Example Mapping: The New Three Amigos
Example Mapping is a collaboration technique used by teams to help refine requirements. Every team should have a set of “ready” criteria that includes some kind of workshop between development team members to establish a shared understanding. In a time-boxed Example Mapping session, rules will summarize examples or constraints about a user story, and questions about outcomes or dependencies are documented for future refinement. The end result are requirements written as user behavior with a shared understanding among all roles on an Agile team. The audience will participate in a live Example Mapping session and learn how to implement the workshop within their own team.
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[AppDev] From C# to React and back again - lessons learned.
Today's software developers are responsible for a wide variety of technologies: Server Side code, Middleware business logic and Front End user interfaces ... to name a few. Often transitions between these stacks can be challenging. Wouldn't it be great if we could also have fun during these technology shifts?
This session will discuss some lessons learned while moving from full time C# ASP.Net development to full time React development and back again. We will discuss the differences between the two technology stacks and insights gained during these transitions. -
[AppDev] From Horror Story to Fairy Tale: Writing code people want to read
As developers we spend much more time reading code than we do writing it. It’s important that our code conveys its meaning clearly, not just to the computer but also to other developers. Everything we write tells a story, and our code is no different. From meaningless variable names to confusing comments, the code we write can be a horror story that leads to frustration, bugs, and delays.
In this session we'll discuss the importance of empathy when writing code, and the impact this can have on inclusivity. We'll look at concrete examples of poor naming, obfuscated logic, and other anti-patterns. And finally we'll cover specific tips for writing fairy tale code that future developers will want to read. We'll also cover processes for implementing these tips within your team so that you can all live happily ever after. -
[AppDev] From SMS to OTP to FIDO2 with WebAuthn: This is Modern 2FA
For many years SMS was the industry’s go-to method of implementing two-factor authentication. But in recent years several high profile attacks have occurred in which attackers have taken advantage of flaws in SMS. In this session I will show you why current 2FA implementations using SMS are inadequate and what other options exist. I’ll talk about common OTP (one-time password) implementations, how they work, as well as current attacks in the wild. I’ll also show off some modern hardware authenticators making use of the U2F/FIDO and FIDO2 standards, and how close we are to a future without passwords. Finally, you’ll see how WebAuthn fits into all of this and how you can use it to interact with these devices in your own applications.
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[AppDev] Get Started: Build Packages in R for Enterprise Code
A tutorial on how to build packages in R that can be deployed to the Enterprise or to the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) including continuous integration, testing, and code coverage analysis.
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[AppDev] Git Merge, Resets and Branches
Two developers can work on the same files at the same time and it doesn't have to be scary. Git Merge makes it easy to ensure we can see what's changed, where conflicts occurred and give us an opportunity to resolve them peacefully. In general, Git provides tools for rolling files back, isolating R&D initiatives and much much more. This session will focus on some more advanced Git commands and how we can use them in our daily projects to ensure source control is never a burden but an ally in getting work done quickly, easily and without interrupting other fellow developers.
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[AppDev] Introducing Juvet: Building Bots in Elixir
There is another massive shift happening with how we interact with companies through software. Users feel comfortable naturally talking with their applications through chat bots. Chat is the next generation of the user interface.
Companies like Slack, Facebook, WhatsApp, and WeChat have some of the most popular apps in the world and they are all betting on a messaging interface.
Elixir is the perfect language and ecosystem for building bots and for conversational interfaces. In this session, we will see how we can build scalable, realtime web applications (or “bots”) using a new library Juvet and the Slack API. We will see what a good bot architecture looks like and how we can integrate with existing artificial intelligence services to make our bots smarter. -
[AppDev] Iterative Development: The Paper Airplanes Game
Iterative development helps teams to break off small chunks of work and turn them around quickly. The iterative nature of Scrum allows for flexibility in both product priorities and team practices. Let's put some of the Scrum principals into practice and experience iterative development by making paper airplanes. Join me for this fun, hands-on learning activity and take away lessons that can be applied in your work environment.
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[AppDev] JVM Application monitoring with Micrometer, Prometheus, and Grafana
Tired of waiting for reports from users to let you know your application is having performance issues? If you’re looking for a way to increase visibility into your application beyond plain text logs, this is the talk for you!
In this talk you will be introduced to a suite of open source tools that you can use monitor the performance of your JVM based applications.
Micrometer is a metrics library from Pivotal (and the default metrics library for Spring Boot) that allows you to instrument your library once and export to many popular monitoring systems.
Prometheus is a monitoring and alerting tool that allows you easily store and query your application metrics with minimal operational overhead
Grafana is a visualization tool that allows you to easily generate and manage beautiful graphs and dashboards from data stored in Prometheus (as well as many other backends) -
[AppDev] Making Use of New C# Features
Normally, sessions about language features only happen well before the release of the new language, leaving you with plenty of time to forget everything you've learned before you can even use the code! Not here!
In this fast-paced session, Brendan will show you the recent, practical improvements added to C# that you can take back with you and immediately start using to clean up and improve your own code. After those, he'll show you what's on the horizon for C# that you'll get when C# 8 is finally released. This is definitely a session you won't want to miss!
Some of the features you’ll learn about include:
- Pattern Matching
- Local Functions
- Discards
- Tuple Construction and Deconstruction
Some proposed features you’ll find out about:
- Non-Nullable & Nullable Reference Types
- Ranges and Indexing Improvements
- Switch Expressions
- Pattern Matching Improvements -
[AppDev] Migrating from Java 8 to Java 11
With the quick moving 6-month Java train releases, you like many Java developers and organizations may have remained on Java 8 waiting for the next Long-Term-Support (LTS) release. Well, Java 11 is here so it is time to begin the adoption and upgrading. Many things such as jLink, jShell, var keyword and better container awareness, have happened in Java since 8. This session will provide the knowledge and insights you need to be better prepared to migrate your applications from Java 8 to Java 11 successfully.
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[AppDev] Ruby on Rails for the Java Dev
Are you a Java expert staring down the barrel of a Ruby on Rails project, with little time to adjust? This developer has been there, and he’ll share some of the tips, tricks, and tidbits of knowledge he picked up along the way to making his project a roaring success. You'll walk away with an understanding of the fundamentals of RoR, and which concepts in Java map nicely onto Ruby development techniques. (This talk presumes more than passing knowledge of Java development; no Ruby or Rails experience is required.)
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[AppDev] Software Requirements: "To be, or not to be"
An introduction and overview of the best textual and visual forms for discovering and designing software requirements.
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[AppDev] Supercharge your API Testing using Postman
Join Umang where he will help demystify APIs based on his learnings and experience as a developer, tester, and mentor. This demo-intensive session will cover API fundamentals and testing APIs for anyone looking to get started.
Using POSTMAN, he’ll cover:
• Building API tests
• Utilizing built-in variables
• Chaining API tests to build scenarios
• Using the built-in runner feature to run your suite of tests
• Adding verification to validate API responses
• Tips and Tricks and more…
The session will provide attendees (testers and developers) to build the confidence/understanding and empower their ability to test APIs early leading to better software. -
[AppDev] Taking Ownership of Software Dependencies
The plethora of package managers out there makes using third-party code in an application or website extraordinarily easy. However, there is an often overlooked cost to this ease of use: maintainability and security. Since third-party code isn’t written by you or your team, what happens when it breaks? How can you be confident the author won’t insert malicious code into it down the road?
In this session, we’ll go over some tips and technologies to take ownership of dependencies from the perspective of npm and JavaScript. We’ll discuss:
- Criteria to consider when choosing third-party dependencies
- Debugging node_modules
- Package security
- Alternatives to pulling in Yet Another Dependency (YAD)
- Tips for publishing your own dependencies or packages -
[AppDev] Typescript: Insane Developer Productivity
Typescript isn't just a way to build large projects with Javascript -- its rich, powerful type system helps you catch bugs earlier and write less code on client-side and server-side projects. This session will show resources and tricks to be insanely productive using Visual Studio Code, Node.js, Azure Functions, React and other frameworks.
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[AppDev] Usability Starts With Accessibility
For many web developers, accessibility is an afterthought, if they even think about it at all. What they fail to realize is that planning for accessibility from the beginning can actually enhance the design process rather than hindering it, with the end result will being more usable by everyone. This presentation will cover some common web accessibility techniques and show you how they can change the way you think about web design.
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[AppDev] Vue.js: bolting on the SPA parts
Vue.js is an amazing lightweight framework that can be easily bolted into any existing application. Out of the box though, you don’t get all of the bits needed for a fully functioning SPA. In this talk we’re going to take a 200-level deep dive into the core plugins needed for an actual Vue SPA app. Vue-router, Vuex, VeeValidate and Vuetify are just a few of the plugins we’ll cover. Using a real-world application, you’ll understand why SPAs are so hard and how these plugins can save your butts. A basic understanding of Vue is required since we’re jumping right into the advanced stuff.
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[AppDev] WebAssembly Live!
First things first: we'll lay the groundwork with what WebAssembly is and just as importantly, what it isn't. Then we will write and execute some WebAssembly, live. If you're tired of hearing about WebAssembly and not actually seeing it, let's fix that. You'll see every step of the process and every line of code along the way.
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[AppDev] Welcome to the world of cross platform mobile apps
Your Company is thinking to build mobile applications to win customers in the Digital Age and as a Technical Architect you are assigned with this huge task on getting the job done as quick as possible and reuse most portions of your application code.
As a Technical Leads or Architects, we are generally answerable to the following questions.
Which framework to select to develop your first mobile application as part of Digital Transformation initiatives?
How many developers to hire to build the mobile applications support teams?
What happens to my existing team, how do I use their domain expertise while building mobile applications?
What will be the learning curve involved for my team to complete this assignment?
Will I be able to reuse my existing application code and how I can maintain the code base with a smaller number of changes for each feature?
Will I be able to reuse my authentication providers?
That is a lot to digest for a Web Application Architect.
Welcome to the world of cross platform mobile applications. There are many cross-platform frameworks available today which helps developers to master mobile application development. Choosing the right framework depends on many factors and is a challenge to Architects. Even though if we choose the right framework, there are chances that we must redesign application components specific to mobile functionalities. Attendees will get complete information on the frameworks which are available as of today which allows code reuse and what factors which they need to consider which considering a framework.
A demo will be shown where we convert a web application developed using Vue to a mobile application using NativeScript Vue. -
[Azure/Cloud] Azure Basics for the IT Professional
It's not a question on whether or not the landscape for the common IT Professional is changing. Without a doubt, it is. Azure offers up a new world of possibilities and we should all strive to learn it. In this session we'll cover some basic knowledge and terminology of Azure as well as how easy it is to incorporate Azure into your environment. We will stand up a new Azure virtual machine as well as a setup SQL DB. You will see how easy it is to accomplish this. This new found knowledge will help propel your career into the new landscape.
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[Azure/Cloud] Azure SQL Managed Instance
• Understand the benefits of using Azure SQL DB Managed Instance, and how Azure SQL DB MI addresses your most common IT challenges around Performance, Compliance, and Governance.
• Explore networking and deployment options for Managed Instances, covering the technical architecture and walk-through of a network and managed instance deployment.
• Dive into various approaches for migration of your existing workloads to Managed Instance and considerations when working in Azure SQL DB Managed Instance. -
[Azure/Cloud] Azure Web Functions – Little Bites of Services
You’ve got an application that needs to have a queue in Azure. You need a microservice endpoint for a specific web call. You need to watch for an upload to bloc storage and when it happens, make an HTTP call to do something. Writing traditional .Net code to handle these sorts of things can be tricky. However, they are exactly the sort of thing that Azure Web Functions were made to handle.
Azure Web Functions are serverless function calls that you can create and attach to a variety of triggers. They are excellent options for queue management, timed jobs, and for developing a microservice or a fleet of microservices. Developing them is a little different to developing more traditional code. Let’s walk through how they work, how to build one, how to connect them to your application, and some of the gotchas that I learned in my year of working with Web Functions. -
[Azure/Cloud] Debug Kubernetes with DevSpaces
Azure DevSpaces is a whole new way to debug container-based microservices. Let's fire up DevSpaces and debug just the microservice we need in context with the rest of the swarm of services. How do we craft these applications? How do we rig DevSpaces to support debugging? Let's journey together throgh debugging microservices on Azure.
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[Azure/Cloud] Deploying at a Large Scale in Azure
Overview of lessons learned while deploying and securing large scale enterprise applications in Azure. What I did, what I would do, what blew up in my face.
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[Azure/Cloud] How to build and deliver an IoT Azure Data Services Solution
Come think like a geek and join us and learn about the power of a Raspberry Pi device combined with Azure. IoT devices can be pretty powerful but sometimes it’s hard to determine what IoT can do for your company and what business solutions you can solve. You probably already have capabilities to grab data through sensors, but what do you do with the data? How do you manipulate the data? How do you get actionable insights? And creating these applications takes a long time and a lot of code, right? Not necessarily.
Together, in this session, you will learn how to build out a real-life IoT scenario by capturing IoT data and ingesting it into the Cloud. We’ll explore the amazing visualizations and insights we can draw from that data by applying Azure services like Azure Functions, Logic Apps, CosmosDB, Azure Maps, and more. You will see how you can create an end-to-end IoT application in a day, you’ll see how easy it is to leverage Azure tools to innovate with IoT, and hopefully come away with some great ideas of your own. -
[Azure/Cloud] Seeing your future through the cloud
Businesses are shifting to the cloud to save money, work faster, improve security, and much more. If your company hasn’t made the switch already, it will soon. Are you ready?
If you want to keep your skillset up to date, you’ve probably been looking for a way to get involved with cloud computing. However, IT professionals are faced with a myriad of choices to make when entering the world of cloud computing. First, you need to decide to focus on application development, platform engineering, or infrastructure. Then, you need to choose from certification-providers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. Finally, when you have the knowledge, how can you get cloud experience to develop your skills?
Join ICC’s Mike Sandman to learn which cloud specialization is right for you, how to get the most value out of a certification, and how to get meaningful experience to prepare you for the switch to the cloud. -
[Azure/Cloud] Voice enabled chatbot with Azure Bot Service and Cognitive Services
We all have heard about Chatbots and how it is changing the way users interact with the products and services any business provides. We will go over the different components that goes into building a Chatbot using Azure Bot Service. Also, how to include intelligent interactions with natural language and recognizing user’s sentiment to make the customer engagement personalized and useful.
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[DevOps] DBAs working Smarter not Harder with PowerShell
Do you have extra time in your day to do extra things or to make things better? Feel overworked and wish you had time to actually do all of your job? This session is all about how you can manage your servers with tools that do not involve clicking. You have probably heard the phrase in the title, and that is just what this session is all about. Smarter means that you may make more use of tools rather than clicks. Smarter has the ability to scale with automation of those tools. Join me to find out how you can work smarter not harder using PowerShell and all the tools out there to support your desire. Join me in the quest to become a PowerShell DBA.
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[DevOps] Get Some UI In Your CI
User interface testing has always been a little weird. Such tests are not easy to pull off, but if ignored, the risk is a bad experience for the very people our apps are supposed to serve. As technical practices evolved, from source control, to scheduled builds, through suites of unit tests, the barriers to automation have been relatively low, a combination of fire-and-forget activities strung together in a series of background commands. UI tests, however, have rarely fit this pattern. As teams move away from manually pointing and clicking around, and introduce UI test automation, often there's still a person pressing the ultimate button. There are amazing technologies for bringing the browser to life, but how do you get them into your development cycle? In this session, you'll learn how to design and build maintainable UI tests that can be run as part of continuous integration, using Cucumber and Selenium, in tools such as Jenkins and Azure DevOps for .NET and Java.
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[DevOps] Install & Configure SQL Server with PowerShell DSC
Get on the cutting edge by implementing infrastructure as code for your SQL Server environment. Using PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) we'll look at how to take a newly built Windows Server and get it ready for prime time while discussing the benefits associated with infrastructure as code.
- Setup Pre-Requisites
- Install SQL Server
- Configure SQL Server
- Make SQL Server Application Ready -
[Front End/UX] Creative Technologist: Building Bridges Between Dev and UX
While development teams may debate on the value of dedicated Front-End Developers vs a Full-Stack team, an interesting role has started to emerge on User Experience teams for specialized Front-End Developers called Creative Technologists. During this talk I will go over what makes a great Creative Technologist, and how the UX Team will leverage them to build better products and stronger relationships with their development partners.
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[Human Skills] Health: The Most Important Tech Tool
Working in the tech industry often involves spending long hours sitting down, staring at a screen, consuming copious amounts of pizza and caffeine. The work is mentally demanding and can be stressful. In the rush to get everything done, it can be easy to neglect our health. But a healthy body and mind are necessary for effective performance. Based on HR training, research, and personal experience, this session provides realistic suggestions for managing your well-being at work. It covers the connection between physical and mental health, as well as how to discuss these topics with your employer. You’ll leave with a better idea of how to take care of yourself and be a happier, healthier, more productive person.
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[Human Skills] Imposter Syndrome: Why did they let me come up here and talk to you?
*What am I doing here? All these people are so much smarter than me. They’ll find out I have no idea what I’m talking about. Why did they even let me do this in the first place?*
Sound familiar? You might have Imposter Syndrome. Imposter Syndrome is a very, very common issue that a lot of us face. In the ever-growing world of tech, it sometimes seems difficult to both get and keep up to speed on what’s going on in your company. Especially for those of us that are career-changers, the task sometimes seems even more daunting.
You’ll leave this session armed with techniques for recognizing and squashing those imposter-y feelings before you let it take over your life and career. -
[Human Skills] Improv Your Interactions!
Improv is all about listening and reacting to your colleagues. We’re going to take that to the next level in this course by learning how to listen better and build off of whoever you’re talking to. This will help you build substantial relationships and provide meaningful input to the conversations you have, whether it be conversations with friends or clients.
By playing various low stakes and fun games, we’ll learn how to roll with the conversation punches, learn how to listen well, and build fantastic products together. -
[Human Skills] Liberating Structures - Including and Unleashing your Team with TRIZ
Learn how to clear space for innovation by letting go of what you know can limit your success by inviting creative destruction.
TRIZ is a liberating Structure, one of over 33 microstructures that can replace traditional structures like presentations and discussion. They help to involve and engage everyone,
This will be a hands on workshop. Everyone will be taking part in the presentation. The speaker will be show how to use TRIZ and facilitate the session. Come prepared to laugh and have fun! -
[Human Skills] Tech Interviews From Both Sides of the Table
Every job starts the same way - with the interview. You've walked into that room, sat down, and had to face the questions and show that you were the right person for the job. In a half hour, maybe an hour, you've had to try to show that you are the right person for the job and the company. Maybe you've been on the other side, trying to figure out which, if any, of the candidates you will talk to is the right person for the job. You have a half hour, maybe an hour, with each of them, hoping that you pick the right person.
I'd like to walk you through how to make the most of that little bit of time on either side of the table. I want to show you how to make sure that you present yourself in the best light to get the job, to make sure that you want the job, and to make sure that you're picking the right person for the job. I'll give you tips to highlight why you'll be best candidate. I'll also examine several of the more common interview techniques and what their strengths and weaknesses are. Tech interviews don't have to be terrible. Let me help you to find out how to use them to your best advantage, from either side of the table. -
[Human Skills] The Importance of Communication to a Successful Start-Up
Building a team requires not only leadership, but a variety of communication patterns. Individuals that share their knowledge and have a common vision of success lead to stronger better performing teams. I will share some of the communication techniques we are using as part of our Chief Data Office build-out.
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[Human Skills] The Power of Representation in Technology
Diversity and Inclusion has been a trending topic in the technology industry for quite some time now - especially in the last 3-5 years. But despite this emphasis and commitment, our numbers show that very little progress has been made and in some cases, we have actually regressed. Why is that?
This session will explore the implications and repercussions of continuing to treat diversity in technology as a trend instead of a real business problem. The session will also offer recommendations for effectively advancing D&I efforts at any level in an organization. -
[Human Skills] The Speed of Trust
Learn about the skill of building trust within your relationships, teams and organizations and the difference it can make. Based on "The Speed of Trust" by Stephen M. R. Covey
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[Human Skills] Tribal Knowledge in Agile Teams
Let's face it. We don't communicate well, and we document even less.
Is it possible to wield information well in an Agile software team?
Yes, it is!
With consideration, change, and commitment to doing your work differently, it is possible to have relevant and vibrant knowledge resources in an Agile environment.
Instead of being told, "You're doing it wrong," teams can move to a new model that builds on empathy and excellence.
Better on-boarding means more confident teammates, a more inclusive workflow, and a focus on continuous improvement.
No matter what methodology you use, you'll gain practical techniques to improve your team's handling of know-how and achieve better collaboration. -
[Infra/Security] Packet Analysis with Python
As wonderful as Wireshark is, sometimes it just doesn't cut it. Bespoke packet analysis scripts in Python can handle larger capture files, consume less memory, and access more advanced analysis tools. You just have to get past a few quirks.
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[Infrastructure/Security] DevelOP Your Kubernetes Cluster w/GitOps, Helm, Docker, Flux, Charts, Git!
Whether you're an expert kubectl-er or just dipping your toes into all things kubernetes (k8s) and docker, come check out an innovative approach we designed and implemented for a customer to configure and manage their kubernetes cluster!
Join us for a tour of the roles and responsibilities of each technology in the pipeline as well as a hands-on demonstration. During the demonstration, we will spin up a kubernetes cluster, push container images to docker hub, and configure kubernetes deployments and services. Come and marvel at all these technologies coming together to enable quick deployments to a cluster, right before your eyes. -
[Infrastructure/Security] From Caesar Cipher To Quantum Cryptography
Humans of all times have used codes and ciphers. Some of the greatest wars in history have been won thanks to good encryption, or lost due to great cryptographers. Even if we don’t think about it, encryption and cryptography are a big part of our lives, now that https is the defacto standard for the web. While most modern developers want to ensure that their data is secured, most of them don’t understand how the data is encrypted or how cryptography works. During this talk, the attendees will understand where ciphers come from by going through a journey in the history of cryptography. With examples from the Caesar cipher all the way to quantum cryptography, the speaker will explain in simple terms how cryptography evolved into what it is today and how it should be used to secure user data.
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[Infrastructure/Security] Improve Security by Going Password-less
Understanding Microsoft approach regarding passwords in the future. What does mean for you users, and how to enable it.
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[Infrastructure/Security] Infrastructure for the Data Professional: An Introduction
It doesn’t matter if you are a DBA, application developer, database developer, or BI pro the infrastructure your SQL Server environment runs on is important. If you didn’t “grow-up” on the system administration side of IT or, perhaps, you have been out of the operations world long enough to have fallen out of the loop with what is happening. This session is intended to provide a full stack infrastructure overview so that you can talk shop with your cohorts in operations to resolve issues and maybe even be proactive. We will discuss, in an introductory fashion, hardware, network, storage, virtualization, and operating system layers. Additionally, some suggestions as to where to find more information will be provided.
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[Infrastructure] UNIX Philosophy - Why it still matters for solid system, software, solution design
We'll review this seminal 1995 book’s description of arguably the nine most important design principles in the last half-century. We’ll briefly revisit a bit of computing history and each of the principles that have been instrumental to *nix’s tremendous success. We’ll discuss how they apply to the latest paradigms and languages and see how you can incorporate The UNIX Philosophy into your daily work.
This session is genuinely for everyone in IT, especially software developers, architects, sysadmins and technical team managers. Come join us! -
[ML] Building a Machine Learning Regression Model with Zero Code in PowerBI
PowerBI recently added support for AutoML (Supervised Automated machine Learning). This session demonstrates the new ML capabilities with an end to end example using Power BI Dataflows. In this session, we will use AutoML to create and apply a regression model. Regression is a machine learning technique used for understanding the relationship between input and output variables. Regression techniques provide additional insight into data, making it easier to see relationships between dependent and independent variables.
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[Modern Workplace] Microsoft Flow Use Case Walkthru - Doc Mmgnt with Flow, Box, OneDrive, Teams
Join Ricardo Wilkins, Microsoft Customer Success Manager, as he walks step-by-step through the creation of a Microsoft Flow that interacts with multiple connectors (Box, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams) in the process of scanning, storing and managing a document.
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[Office 365] Establishing the Baseline Security for Microsoft 365
For companies thinking of or recently having made the decision to adopt Microsoft 365, understanding the security impacts can be confusing. In this session, we will cover the minimum security practices you should be deploying when adopting Microsoft's cloud productivity platform as well as get a look into how to improve your overall cloud security posture.
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[Office 365] Getting Up to Speed with Microsoft Graph Development
"I hear that I need to use Microsoft Graph for developing against Office 365 but I have no clue where to start." "I want to grant access to company data without throwing in the entire kitchen sink." Fear not fellow developers and admins. This session we will ramp you up to a 200 level knowledge on the pertinent parts of Microsoft Graph including endpoints available, syntax, authentication flows, and more. We will also cover useful examples of what can be accomplished using these APIs. Prior experience with Microsoft Graph is not required but can be helpful.
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[Office 365] Leveraging AOP in SharePoint Custom Development
Despite having been around for the better part of two decades, most developers building solutions on the .NET Framework (including full-trust SharePoint solutions) aren’t familiar with Aspect-Oriented Programming, or AOP. The goal of this session is to introduce developers to AOP, what it is, how it works, and the tools that enable the use of AOP in .NET solution development. We’ll also be working through a number of code samples that illustrate how AOP greatly simplifies the process of addressing cross-cutting development concerns like logging, security, exception handling, and more. If you’re looking for ways to streamline development and reduce boilerplate code in your solutions, you won’t want to miss this session.
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[Office 365] SharePoint Sites: What to Use & When to Use Them
Microsoft has done a great job at providing numerous types of sites for organizations to get up and running quickly and productive in a very short period of time. This is being accomplished by the number of site options that they are providing right out of the box. However, as with all technology new options for sites are being introduced all the time and with the weekly updates to features and functionality it can all be a little overwhelming and confusing to say the least.
Key thing to remember is, just because it exists does not mean you have to use it. Microsoft is providing a number of different options so that organizations can determine what is the best fit for them and their user base. In this session, we will explore the different site options along with some of the functionality that comes with them. We will identify which types of sites are the best fit for your organization, will help boost user adoption, and can be maintained with the staff you have available. Not to mention it will allow for refinement and the ability to adhere to your organizations established governance. -
[Office 365] Top Ten Tips for Teams
Did you know that Microsoft Teams won the top award at this year’s Best of Enterprise Connect Award competition - for the 2nd consecutive year??? Millions of business users are using Teams, so it’s worth diving into what it is, but more importantly how to use it effectively.
Join Ricardo Wilkins, Microsoft Customer Success Manager for Modern Workplace solutions, as he talks thru 10 power user tips you should consider in your daily use of Teams. This session assumes you're already familiar with Teams and are probably using it today. -
[Office 365] Understanding and Customizing the Modern SharePoint Experience
The SharePoint Online modern experience is immediately responsive, incredibly easy to use, and imminently adoptable by power and casual users alike. In this session, we will review the capabilities of modern sites and pages and discuss the architecture of associating sites with a hub. As amazing as this new experience is, the desire to customize is always there. We'll discuss what to avoid, what's possible, what's advisable, and what's supported. Our review will primarily focus on the use of site designs and themes and how a custom developed web part or extension may help fill much of the empty space that the missing Script editor left behind.
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[Office365/Cloud] Security in 60 with Microsoft 365
Join us for this accelerated 60-minute overview of our hands-on workshop, Security in a Day, to explore the core security features of Microsoft 365 and Azure. We will showcase each product and how it delivers multi-layer protection, as well as identify where each solution stands in the licensing spectrum and the overall business impact.
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[Security] Conditional Access Session Control with MCAS
Conditional Access in Azure Active Directory can now interoperate with Microsoft Cloud App Security to control user behaviors while using cloud apps and storage.
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[Security] Leveraging the Microsoft Cloud for Security and Compliance
In this session we will cover how Microsoft gathers threat metadata, the Intelligent Security Graph, how organizations can monitor and manage threats, and tools to protect data, and protect the organization from threats and compromises.
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[SQL/BI] Demystifying NoSQL: The SQL developer's guide
We've been using relational databases like SQL Server, Postgres, MySQL, and Oracle for a long time. Tables are practically ingrained into our thought processes. But many organizations and businesses are turning to NoSQL options to solve problems of scale, performance, and flexibility. What is a long-time relational database-using developer supposed to do? Do I just forget about all that SQL that I learned? (Spoiler alert: NO). Come to this session with all your burning questions about data modeling, transactions, schema, migration, how to get started, and more. Let's find out if a NoSQL tool like Couchbase, CosmosDb, Mongo, etc, is the right fit for your next project.
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[SQL/BI] Graphing Your Way Through the Cosmos: Common Data Problems Solved with Graphs
Data as it appears in the real world is naturally connected, but traditional data modeling focuses on entities which can cause for complicated joins of these naturally connected data. That is where graph databases come in as they store data more like what happens naturally in the real world. Sure, there a lot of talk about using graph databases for social networks, recommendation engines, and Internet of Things; but using graph databases can also make a lot of sense when working with common business data problems.
In this presentation, you will get a better understanding of what graph databases are, how to use the Gremlin API within Azure Cosmos DB to traverse such data structures, and see practical examples to common data problems. -
[SQL/BI] Inside the DBAtools PowerShell Module
There has been a movement towards PowerShell in the SQL Server Community lately. With so much out there, how do you get ahead. I will take you through this massive module that has grown very quickly to over 300 functions for use in your daily DBA job. This module can single handedly migrate an entire server with one command, or you can choose the parts you want to do and just do those. Join me to find out how you can quickly leverage the power of this module. This is one tool you want in your PowerShell toolbox.
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[SQL/BI] Performance Tuning, Getting the Biggest Bang for Your Buck
Everyone wants to know if there are magic buttons you can push to make SQL Server run faster, better and more efficiently. In this session we will go over some of my go-to performance tricks that you can implement to get the biggest improvement with the least amount of change. When it comes to performance tuning, every second counts. We will cover memory optimization, isolation levels, trace flags, statistics, configuration changes and more. I’ll go over real life scenarios we come across as consultants and the changes we made to fix them.
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Banks are not Banks!
Banks and financial services companies have increased their technology investment year over year, with a focus on digital transformation. In an era where customers want both the security of a physical presence (branch) and the convenience of an all-digital experience (no branch), technology is no longer an enabler, but a requirement and a core driver of business.
At Huntington, we are delivering on our promise to look out for people by creating services and experiences tailored to individuals with technology at the core. This talk will provide insight into how banks are no longer "banks" but are transforming into digital companies leveraging cutting-edge technologies to deliver ever more sophisticated services to customers.