In the past few years, I have presented multiple sessions all around the world, although mostly virtual. Presenting for a live crowd was something I only did inside The Netherlands before COVID-19 struck the world.
With restrictions being lifted during the year of 2022, new opportunities presented themselves and I was able to be in front of a live audience again and on some occasions, even outside the country!
dotNed meeting February
This was not my first time doing a dotNed user group session. The session was still only online. It was interesting for me, because it was the first time, I would give my Azure cost management related session.
In Dutch it was called "Ons bint zuunig", setting the theme with Zeeuws meisje.
AzureLive
Still in a hybrid setup, the audience of AzureLive could watch the streams from home. However, half of the presenters joined physically at the same location where the recordings took place. It was nice to meet new people after doing everything virtually.
This was also my first time meeting Henk Boelman and Suzanne Daniels (my MCs), Stacy Cashmore, and Barbara Forbes as fellow speakers, which I would join again at later conferences.
dotNed Saturday
dotNed Saturday is an event where I have had the honor of speaking for multiple years now. I already did a talk about Azure Key Vault at the 2018 edition, but for this year the content was updated to reflect the current state of the service.
I was joined by (amongst others) Sander Molenkamp, Roland Guijt, Marcel de Vries, and Dennis Doomen as fellow speakers.
IglooConf: Midsummer
The first time I had to travel by plane to get to my speaking gig!
Not only was IglooConf a very nice 2-day conference in Helsinki 🇫🇮, it also meant multiple days being highly involved with the other speakers. My session was about Dapr, and how it can let you postpone architectural choices to a later moment in time.
I really had a blast together with Magnus Mårtensson, Glenn Colpaert, Alan Smith, Karl Ots, Mark Brown, Roberto Freato, Sakari Nahi, Rik Hepworth, Andres Erben, Pieter Vandenheede, and Stacy. Many of whom I will join at later conferences again.
Developer Week
This time I could take the train to the conference. Joined by my colleagues Hanno Embregts and Peter Wessels we traveled to Developer Week in Nürnberg 🇩🇪.
Originally, I would only do my session on Dapr. Due to many speaker cancellations, I also presented my sessions about Azure cost management and Using your source code to generate documentation.
During the conference I was able to join up with Dennis and Roland again and have the privilege to spend some time with Rob Richardson, Matteo Emili, Salvatore Merone, Scott Guymer, and Niek Palm. Specially meeting Niek was fun as we went to school together over 25 years ago.
Azure Fest
For this one I did not have to travel far as Azure Fest was hosted at the Info Support office. My session was about Azure cost management again, apparently a hot topic these days.
This was the first time meeting Sam Vanhoutte as speaker, but also joining up again with Sander, Henk and Barbara for a second time.
K!K live
K!K live is a smaller meet-up in the Netherlands. Still, I had some nice interaction with the audience during and after my session about Azure cost management.
CloudBrew
This was my last session of 2022 (I had to cancel the Dev-Cloud and .NET Developer conferences in Köln 🇩🇪 due to personal circumstances). I travelled, by car this time, to the nice city of Mechelen 🇧🇪.
Besides my session about Azure cost management, CloudBrew felt like a nice reunion meeting Rik, Barbara, Roberto, Sam, and Pieter again.
2023
Will I be speaking as often in 2023? I do not know; it is up to the people judging CFPs and hoping my talks fit in with their programs. But in January I am certain to hit the stage again.
NDC London
After being a speaker at the NDC London 2021 online edition, this time I will be travelling by train to London 🇬🇧, together with my colleague Sander.
I am looking forward to meeting Andreas, Magnus, Marcel, Pieter, Rob, Sander, Stacy, and Suzanne again on stage!
