Prairie Dev Con Winnipeg

June 12-13 2023Winnipeg, MB
2
Days
40+
Sessions
20+
Speakers

About Prairie Dev Con

Prairie Dev Con started in 2010 with the goal of bringing a software conference experience to the Canadian prairies and we're continuing into 2023!

Why Attend?

  • Learn from thought leaders and industry experts
  • Discover new tools and practices
  • Connect with developers from Manitoba

Event Starts In:

Speakers

Adam Heuring
Online Business Systems
Winnipeg, MB

Adam is a seasoned Principal Consultant at Online Business Systems, where he has been honing his expertise for over 15 years. With a technical background as a software developer, Adam has recently shifted his focus to architecture and product development, fueling his passion for creating cutting-edg

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Adam Krieger
Online Business Systems
Winnipeg, MB

Adam Krieger is a Senior Security Consultant and Cloud Security Architect specializing in cloud security implementation. With a 15+ year background in security, solutions architecture, DevOps, development, and team leadership, he has implemented a wide variety of solutions across several domains. He

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Adil Touati
Microsoft
Canada

Azure and Google Cloud Certified Architect, and MCT. Passionate about DevOps, Cloud-Native (Kubernetes and Containers) Technologies and Security, I have solid experience in designing, implementing (hands-on | Infrastructure as Code) and securing Enterprise multi-cloud Technology Solutions I enjoy

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Alex Drenea
Microsoft
Toronto, ON

Well-rounded Solution Architect with over 10 years of hands-on experience in all areas of Software Development Lifecycle (Back-end, Cloud, Database, DevOps, Mobile, Desktop, Web) Passionate about building and leading technical teams to success, by cultivating a highly collaborative and efficient

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Ashleigh Lodge
Neovation Learning Solutions
Winnipeg

Ashleigh is the Leader of the Product Team at Neovation Learning Solutions in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. She manages a team of over 30 developers, UX designers and QA analysts who work to maintain and grow two separate products. Ashleigh is a vocal advocate for accessibility and inclusive design

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Cameron McKay
MNP Digital
Winnipeg, MB

Cameron McKay is a Microsoft certified Cloud Developer/Architect with a background in web technology and business analysis; he has blended his expertise in these areas to deliver a variety of enterprise web and cloud applications using the Microsoft technology stack. Cameron has proven experienc

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Chad Green
Glennis Solutions
Louisville, KY

Chad Green is a manager, software development, architect, community leader, Microsoft MVP, and most importantly a father and husband. Over his career spanning three decades, Chad has managed groups from 3 to 63 people, worked on projects in a wide range of markets including education, healthcare, m

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Chris Ayers
Microsoft
Tampa/St. Petersburg, Florida Area

Chris is a Senior Customer Engineer on the Fast Track for Azure team at Microsoft. He is a Co-Lead for the DevOps Category inside the Fast Track Team. Previously, Chris lead an Azure Practice and a DevOps Practice, and was a Consultant and Architect. He has a focus in modern applications, containers

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Christina Aldan
Arana Software
Las Vegas, Nevada Area

Christina Aldan is a brand strategy consultant, keynote speaker, trainer, and mentor. She offers businesses brand consulting and creative content for everyday media. With over 17 years of experience in the digital realm, Christina is highly regarded for her approach to business, partnering with clie

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Christopher Usick
NorthfieldIT
Manitoba

I'm a creator and technologist with 7 years experience in DevOps and software engineering. At 27, I've been incredibly blessed to have worked with incredibly experienced individuals in the industry and I've faced many challenges working with the NFL and Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. While I still

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Craig Tataryn
Grind Software Inc.
Winnipeg, MB

Winnipeger born and raised, Craig has been a software developer for over 20 years. His interests include functional programming, playing video games and hockey. Craig is the owner of Grind Software Inc., a boutique software development shop that services clients from across North America.

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Dave White
Western Devs
Calgary, AB

Dave White is an Accredited Kanban Consultant (AKC), Trainer (AKT), and in the first cohort of Kanban University Distinguished Fellows. Dave was the first Canadian AKT in 2012 and one of the first AKC (KCP)Â in Canada and globally. Dave was the director of the KCP Program from 2014 until 2020 when t

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David Wesst
U of M
Winnipeg, MB

David Wesst, otherwise known as "Wessty" or "DW", is a Web Platform developer working as an enterprise software architect, defining technology strateg …

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Doug Hennig
Stonefield Software Inc.
Winnipeg, MB

Doug Hennig is CTO of Stonefield Software Inc. He has more than 40 years experience in the IT industry. He is the author of the several award-winning products, including Stonefield's flagship product Stonefield Query. He has written several books and hundreds of articles in various software developm

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Eldert Grootenboer
Microsoft
Vancouver

Eldert is always enthusiastic about embarking on new journeys with the Cloud, and Azure in particular. He is very passionate about growing his dreams and teams, and goes above and beyond to help those with the same spark. Eldert comes from a background as a cloud solution architect and Technology Le

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Frode Aarebrot
Accenture
Saskatchewan, Canada

Frode is a Angular and .NET Core full-stack developer and has 15 years of development experience. He's built a wide range of software using a plethora of (mostly Microsoft) technologies including SharePoint, WPF, WCF, WinForms, MVC.Net, UWP, and even Windows Phone 8. He also has an avionics journeym

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Grishma Jena
IBM
San Francisco

Grishma Jena is a Data Scientist with the UX Research and Design team at IBM Data & AI in San Francisco. She works across portfolios in conjunction with user research and design teams and uses data to understand users' struggles and opportunities to enhance their experiences. She earned her Masters

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Jay Harris
Arana Software
Las Vegas, Nevada Area

Jay is a speaker, software consultant, and owner of Arana Software. He has been developing on the web since 1995, when the Blink tag lured him away from Visual Basic 3, and has been awarded as a Microsoft Regional Director, ASPInsider, and Microsoft MVP.

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Jeff Kosciejew
Agile Magic
Toronto, Canada Area

Jeff is an Agile Coach who developed his skills consulting & working with both large and small organizations across a diverse range of industries. His experience includes technical, non-technical, and fully cross-functional teams. He is always looking for ways to disrupt & highlight inefficient proc

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Jeff Lefebvre
University of Winnipeg
Winnipeg, MB

With 20 years professional experience in software development, Jeff has lead teams in startups and billion dollar businesses, pioneering Scrum methodology with proven results, and is a champion of ASP.NET C# since 2010. Nowadays, he and his team are responsible for all integrations and interfaces in

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Joel Hebert
Microsoft
Ottawa, Canada Area

Joel Hebert is a Senior Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft for their Global Partner Services division. He enjoys foodie adventures and always tries to find the best places to eat in Winnipeg. Please help him!

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Joel Lord
MongoDB
Ottawa, Canada

Joel Lord (@joel__lord on Twitter) is passionate about the web and technology in general. He likes to learn new things, but most of all, he wants to share his discoveries. He does so by travelling at various conferences all across the globe. He graduated from college in computer programming in the

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Juan Larios
Cloudspark Labs
Victoria, BC

Juan Larios is a former SharePoint MVP and speaker. Passionate about technology, innovation, problem solving, learning and teaching. After a few years hiatus from the conference scene, Juan is back with a wealth of experience and a passion to teach lessons learned! Lately Juan has been busy buildin

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Matias Wengiel
Neo
Winnipeg, MB

I don't often introduce myself as such, but I am Dr. Matias Wengiel. I've lived an eventful life (I hear in some parts of the world, that's a curse) and after being disillusioned by the post-secondary education world, I opted to join the web development profession looking for job stability and a bet

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Mike Edwards
Leading for Change
Waterloo, ON

Mike works with people who are crazy enough to believe they can improve their world every day. They do this by taking responsibility for whatever happens without blame, excuses or shame. Through this, they inspire others to do the same. Mike taps into his experience as a facilitator, mentor, tea

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Nazar Viznytsya
Canada Life
Winnipeg, MB

I'm a dedicated software developer currently employed at The Canada Life Assurance Company. Although I'm only 17, I'm very grateful for the vast assortment of talented people I've been able to work with during my time at TheoryMesh and Canada Life. I'm also thankful for the many talented people I've been able to create passion projects with.

I enjoy exploring new and upcoming technologies including machine learning as well as blockchain, and am very eager to see what technologies the future has in store for me to play around with. In my free time, I enjoy biking, both mountain and road, as well as playing the occasional game of tennis.

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Philip Japikse
West Chester OH

An international keynote speaker, Microsoft MVP, ASPInsider, MCSD, PSM II, PSD, and PST, and a passionate member of the developer community, Phil Japikse has been working with .NET since the first betas, developing software for over 35 years, and heavily involved in the agile community since 2005 as

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Quinn Wilson
Winnipeg, MB

I'm an independent consultant who has been building data-driven web applications since the 1990s. From tiny standalone web apps to complex distributed systems I love building things.

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Sandy Liu
Ottawa, ON

Sandy Liu is a Certified Scrum Master with almost a decade of experience working with many Toronto startups. She is the author of "Confessions of a Scrum Master" and is currently a Senior Product Manager at one of Canada's largest media and entertainment companies.

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Simon MacDonald
Begin
Ottawa, ON

Simon has over twenty years of development experience and has worked on various projects, including object-oriented databases, police communication systems, speech recognition and unified messaging. His current focus is contributing to the open-source Architect project to enable developers to create

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Simon Timms
Calgary, AB

Simon is a polyglot developer who has worked on everything from serial port drivers on an Android tablet, to NServiceBus, to processing tens of thousands of messages a second using stream analytics, to building Angular web applications. All that in the last year. He is the author of a number of b

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Trish Rempel
Shopify
Mitchell, Manitoba

Trish is a senior developer at Shopify on the International team, where she works to improve the product and localization experience of international merchants and developers. She loves reading and watching sci-fi and fantasy, playing video games, and singing - mostly to her parrot, Rocco.

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Schedule


8:00 - 8:45

Breakfast and Registration

A1
Scrambled Eggs, Bacon, Sausage, Savoury Breakfast Potatoes, and Pastries with a Selection of Butter and Preserves.

8:45 - 9:40

Keynote: Keeping Up With New Technologies

A1
New software languages, libraries, and platforms are released at an exhausting pace. Many—perhaps most—are just fruitless distractions that we will never grasp, like developer puppies chasing technology squirrels. How do you know which ones to pursue? How do you know which ones will be beneficial? The truth is it doesn't matter. And I'll tell you why.

9:45 - 10:45

Intro to Natural Language Processing

A2
How can computers interpret something so human like language? Can they actually understand what we are saying or are they hiding behind a façade of rules and algorithms? This talk introduces Natural Language Processing and sheds light on how computers interpret our language. We will start off with foundational concepts including tokenization, stemming, and part-of-speech tagging. We will then see how data is distilled into different linguistic features that power Machine Learning applications like text classifier, sentiment analysis and topic modeling. Familiarity with Python is not required but helpful.

If Your Applications are Unreliable and/or Slow, You Probably Aren't Using Event-Sourcing and CQRS

A3
Many applications were not designed for the cloud. They were not designed for the scale that cloud workloads encounter. And many of the developers and architects on our teams have no experience with cloud deployments or cloud-scale workloads. In this talk, we'll discuss why event-sourcing and CQRS are the patterns that you should add to your toolbox when building applications that need to be resilient, reliable, and performant. We'll have a sample application demonstrating this in C#/.NET Core

Moving Towards a Decentralized Identity

A4
Are you ever awake at night thinking about all the different accounts and data you maintain across a plethora of different services? It's enough to make you break out in a cold sweat. A decentralized identity can flip the script and put you in control of your data. Decentralized identity has started to make waves recently and for good reason. In a world where our data is out in the wild all over the place the concept of decentralized identity starts to turn things back in favor of the user. Things sounds good on paper so lets take a closer look and really drill into what it means. We're going to start with a high-level conceptual overview and answer some of the pivotal questions about why this is important and why you might want to understand it at a high level. We'll quickly move into a technical deep dive showing up an example showing off what a simple implementation looks like and what a user journey looks like when they interact with a decentralized identity.

CosmosDB - More Than Just A Database

K
In this demo filled session, you will discover how to make the most of CosmosDB. We'll use a fictional coffee shop chain as an example to demonstrate how you can use CosmosDB's various features and integrations to create a central hub for all your data. We'll show you how to ingest data using Azure Functions, utilize the Change Feed, enable searching with Azure Search, and perform near real-time analytics with Azure Synapse and Power BI. All of this is achievable with just a few lines of code, regardless of your experience as a database administrator.

Hack the IT Governance Matrix: How Solution Architects Can Drive Change Without the Red Pill

E
Neo had to take the red pill to hack the Matrix. But as solution architects, you don't need any pills to hack IT governance! In this presentation, we'll explore how you can drive change in IT governance as a solution architect, even without direct authority. We'll show you how to leverage your ninja solution architecture skills to build consensus, foster collaboration, and achieve meaningful change across the organization. So, put down the pills, and join us for a fun and informative session!

11:00 - 12:00

Beyond Hello World: Getting Deeper into Azure Functions

A2
By now, you surely have seen the HTTP trigger within Azure Functions. Just about every presentation uses that trigger to show how awesome Azure Functions can be. But there is a bunch more you can do with Azure Functions using the other triggers and bindings, which make Azure Functions a fantastic tool in your tool chest for solving all sorts of needs. So come and hear about these triggers and bindings and see real-world examples of how they have been employed in different solutions to solve real customer needs.

Going decoupled: Why do we Need Messaging?

A3

Have you ever wondered why you should implement a messaging strategy in your solutions, or when you should introduce this? As a Program Manager for Service Bus, this is a question I get asked frequently by our customers. It is true that implementing a messaging strategy can bring its own challenges. However, if implemented correctly, it will help you solve a myriad of architectural challenges.

In this session we will dive into the reasons of when and why we should use a messaging strategy, as well as the different types of messaging we can distinguish. You will learn about different patterns which will help solve various architectural challenges, and how to implement these using Azure.

This session will empower you, by giving a better understanding when to implement messaging in your solutions, and how to can identify patterns where this will help. The concepts from this session are not product specific and can be applied to most messaging services, although we will use the Azure services to explain most of them.

Achieving More by Doing Less - How Burnout Prevention Can Improve Productivity in the Long Term

A4
Developer burnout is rampant in the tech industry, especially among startups and companies that attract top talent. While it can't always be prevented, learning about and even planning for burnout can have benefits for our productivity at work, our companies and, most importantly, ourselves! There are things that we can do as individuals, as well as things we can ask from our employers, to make our workplaces healthier, less conductive to burnout, and more productive in the long run.

Easy Accessibility Wins: Better Accessibility in Five Minutes or Less

K
Accessibility is a huge topic, and it can be hard to know where to start. And it's even more difficult if you don't know a lot about accessibility, and/or your boss or organization isn't willing to prioritize and dedicate time to exploring and implementing accessibility properly. What if I told you there are many fixes and small changes you can make in five minutes or less that will greatly improve the accessibility of your website or application? You're in luck and there are many such updates that can be made quickly, easily, and without having to justify how you spend your task time.

DUO - The Road to MFA, a Technical Perspective

E

One day you're asked to "sit in" a DUO MFA project started months ago, and there's more questions than answers. 2 weeks later you're one of the 3 key members of a new task force aiming to roll out MFA as quickly as possible to over 40,000 staff and students at the University of Winnipeg.

The goal of this talk is to prepare companies for expected and unexpected hurdles throughout a large-scale (40,000+ users) DUO MFA implementation on M365. From the perspective of a technical leader brought in late to help the project, To help serve as a roadmap, a high-level tasklist is presented and discussed, as well as the roles in the project.

Topics include the expected: Test Environments, User Onboarding, Hardware Tokens, Duo Policy Management

And the Unexpected: Identifying "Active" Users, Constant DUO Advisories, Hardware Token Logistics, Shared mailbox migrations, User Accomodations, User Groups, Automatic New User Enforcement, Account Recovery, Duo "Strict" Enforcement, and more.

12:00 - 1:00

Lunch

A1
Roast Beef with Pan Gravy, Vegetarian .Cabbage Rolls, Mixed Garden Greens, Oriental Noodle Salad, Red Skin Garlic Mashed Potatoes

1:00 - 2:00

Securely Deploying Infrastructure as Code

A2

We routinely scan our code for vulnerabilities, but what about our infrastructure? Our infrastructure as code can have as many secrets as our codebase. Many organizations are using Terraform with automated pipelines like GitHub Actions. How do we automatically scan our Terraform modules for misconfiguration or secrets? How can we configure Terraform to store state securely in the cloud for each environment? During this session we will examine how to leverage open source tools to:

  • Scan for security and configuration issues using tools like tfsec, terrascan, and checkov
  • Securely configure Terraform backends like AzureRM
  • Securely pass variables and input into Terraform
  • Securely deploy Terraform to clouds like Azure

After this session you will have the tools and examples to securely deploy terraform to the cloud.

Better MicroServices Using Event Sourcing and CQRS

A3
Event Sourcing and CQRS concepts are used in some of the most secure Systems on the planet! Ever asked yourself why? and if this model better fits your use cases? Maybe you just want a new tool under your tool belt for when such occasion arises. In this session you will get a better understanding as to why it is used in the Cloudspark Labs EXP product. Why it was chosen and how that enabled us to build Micro Services that better fit an ever growing eco-system of applications. With simple easy to use frameworks like NodeJs, NestJs, Cosmos, and Typescript you will be able to see how this system can be built, and expanded on. Word of caution, all frameworks come with pros and cons, and this is no different. Over the course of building the eco-system we faced challenges and picked up valuable insights and lessons learned. Avoiding our mistakes will help you avoid them and build something even better!

Flawless Team Building

A4
Are you investing in team-building activities and not seeing an improvement? With the thousands of workshops, books, and tools available, it can be hard to know what will work and what won't. The science of teamwork tells us what is needed to make any group of people a great team. The good news is it's not rocket science, and you can learn the five steps to building high-performing teams. Join me for this session and learn the five steps for building great teams. You will leave with a practical understanding and be able to start applying it the next day.

How we use Cypress with Azure Pipelines

K
Want to take your Cypress E2E testing to the next level? This session will explore configuring Cypress in your web project, how to run against multiple environments (local/test/UAT), how to create Azure Pipelines that will run your Cypress tests, and how to publish the test results to Azure DevOps.

Dev Containers - Docker for Your Development Environment: Using VS Code, Docker, and WSL for Fullstack Development

E

In this talk, I will explore the advantages of using Visual Studio Code (VSCode) with Docker containers for development. I will begin by discussing the challenges of setting up a consistent development environment across teams and projects, and introduce the concept of dev containers as a solution to these issues. Then, I will demonstrate how easy and effective it is to set up and use dev containers in VSCode, including configuring a dev container with Dockerfile and devcontainer.json files, and installing extensions and tools within the container.

I will also highlight the benefits of using dev containers for development, such as reproducibility, scalability, and ease of collaboration. I'll discuss how dev containers can simplify the process of onboarding new team members and reduce the risk of conflicts between development environments. Additionally, I will provide tips and best practices for using dev containers effectively, such as organizing container configurations with Git submodules and leveraging the power of VSCode's Remote-Containers extension.

Finally, as a bonus, I'll show you how to run, edit, test, and debug projects directly from Github.com without even installing VSCode and Docker on your machine. Overall, my talk will show you how Dev Containers can offer a Fullstack developer a toolkit to streamline their development workflows and improve collaboration.

2:15 - 3:15

AKS and Container Security + Defender for Containers and Defender for DevOps Demo

A2
A comprehensive look at the end to end best practices to increase the security posture of Kubernetes/containerized apps from the developement stages throughout workload runtime - laying down a solid foundation for secure AKS environments! Bonus: Defender for Containers and Defender for DevOps Demo

How Do I Do Agile?

A3
Believe it or not, you don't need to change anything to embrace agile approaches to development. At least, nothing to change right away. Teams often feel they need to have a Scrum Master or Product Owner, but this just isn't the case. We'll look at how we can adopt some agile-backed approaches that we can start with right away, with an understanding of what we then can look for to guide improvements. It doesn't matter if it's a new team, or a team that has been working together for years. The approaches and reminders in this talk can apply to any team, at any point.

Moving From Relational to Documents: Changing Your Mindset

A4
Document databases are amazing! They are webscale and can solve all of your problems. If you're a software developer used to relational databases, moving to NoSQL can initially seem overwhelming. While it is true that a document database can make you more productive, it can also have a steep learning curve before you can be efficient with it. In this talk, you will learn to take those concepts you've applied in relational databases for years and port them into the document database world. The speaker will also debunk some myths by showing you how duplicated data is not always bad, how you can enforce data schemas, and how you can join data across collections.

Internationalization is for everyone: How to make your code speak the language of your users

K

Internationalizing your product and making it accessible in multiple languages is not only important for expanding globally; in Manitoba, 13 percent of people speak a language other than English and French at home.

In this hands-on talk, we'll localize a React application with open-source libraries like react-i18next. Regardless of your primary tech stack, you'll walk away with best practices and practical tips to avoid common pitfalls that single-language developers may encounter.

Some of the topics we'll cover:

  • Extracting strings from code to translation files
  • Text expansion
  • Variable interpolation
  • Dos and don'ts of composing strings
  • Why you should avoid the DRY rule for translation strings
  • Pluralization
  • Number and currency formatting
  • Date and time formatting
  • Useful i18n open-source libraries

3:30 - 4:30

5 Tips for Cultivating Emotional Intelligence

A2
Learning to manage our state of mind in the workplace is an acquired skill. While stress in the workplace in unavoidable, it is possible to cultivate Emotional Intelligence (EQ) to manage our state of mind. Practicing EQ helps us identify and eliminate stressors in our lives. Awareness of self and awareness of others strengthens personal and professional relationships. When we understand the motivations of ourselves and the perspectives of others we form deeper connections. In this presentation, we will cover several of the 26 facets of EQ and offer 5 tips people can use immediately to cultivate emotional intelligence in business.

Azure API Management and the Curious Case of Securing API's

A3
Oversight and real world experience is securing API's in Azure via the Azure Api Management SAAS. A series of techniques involving IP Filtering, API Keys, Shared Secrets, x509 Certificates, OAuth Client Credentials Grant,HttpFingerprinting Mitigations, Mutual TLS Authentication (front and back end), and more will be demonstrated.

Agile Transformation

A4
Introducing agile to a business or team can be a challenging task, whether you are a manager or a team member advocating for it. It's crucial to understand the benefits that agile can bring to your organization or team, and the concerns and needs of those who are new to agile. This talk aims to provide attendees with valuable insights such as what is at the foundation of agile, the potential points of resistance and fears that team members may have when transitioning to agile, how to adapt to the new agile context and the importance of creating an environment that encourages learning, experimentation, and iteration. By covering these key points, this talk aims to provide a comprehensive overview of introducing and embracing agile practices successfully.

Adventures in Rendering Off the Main Thread

K

When building out the frontend for an application with strong real-time requirements, there are many considerations to make. How do we get initial data? How do we get subsequent updates? What happens if they lose connectivity? Web components provide an excellent model for progressively enhancing initial markup. Workers allow us to move, rendering off the main thread. In this talk, we'll demonstrate an architecture that scales down to any device with a spotty internet connection while scaling up to a fully realized real-time application.

This talk hangs on the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle metaphor.

  • Reduce the amount of JS
  • Reuse features from the platform
  • Recycle old technologies in a new way

PostgresSQL - The Only Data Storage You'll Ever Need

E

In this talk we'll introduce Postgres as a standard SQL database and talk about its feature parity with other database solutions like SQL Server. We'll then delve into some of the other, more advanced, things postgres can do to simply your stack. Using a messaging solution? Postgres can do that. Doing complex GIS operations? Postgres can do that. Need event storage? Postgres can do that. Full text indexing? Postgres can do that. Document database? Postgres can do that. Need your dog de-wormed? Okay, that Postgres can't do.

Coming out of this talk you should be excited to get into Postgres as an alternative to whatever database you're using right now.

8:00 - 8:45

Breakfast and Registration

A1
Scrambled Eggs, Bacon, Sausage, Savoury Breakfast Potatoes, and Pastries with a Selection of Butter and Preserves.

8:30 - 9:30

OWASP ASVS, The Top 10's Way More Specific Big Brother

A2

If you're a web app developer, you've hopefully heard of the OWASP Top 10: the consensus of the most critical risks facing web applications every year. Did you know there's a whole standard written by the same organization? The ASVS can be an incredible tool for identifying weak points not just in the web interface itself, but also in the procedures and practices that surround the product.

This session will help you determine why and how you can apply the standard, point out how the results get used to improve broader security posture, and deep dive on a few controls that seem to constantly trip users up.

Systems Thinking with the Ball Point Game

A3

In this interactive session, we'll look at the differences in improvements that can be made by those on a team, and the environment in which those people have to work! You'll be moving around in this interactive & participatory activity as we expose the impacts & start a conversation!

Systems Thinking requires us to look holistically to understand the linkages and interactions between the elements and components that make up a defined system. The Ball Point Game is an interactive & participatory activity, which will expose the impacts & start the conversation! If you've heard the terms "common cause", "special cause", "theory of constraints", "local optimization", or "system optimization", but always wondered exactly what those are, and how they impact your work, this is the session for you! Once we start looking at ways to deliver value to our customers through the Systems Thinking lens, an entirely new world of possibilities will be exposed, giving us the opportunity to make a meaningful impact in what we deliver, and more importantly, how we deliver!

Building Web Applications Without a Framework

A4

Building web apps is often characterized as painful, complex, and time consuming. There are many tools, libraries, frontend frameworks, and opinions about how to fix that problem… but they come with a catch. The frontend ecosystem is fractured into incompatible niches. They are incompatible with the web standards until they’ve been compiled. They are incompatible with each other, and often even incompatible themselves in between versions. This is especially frustrating as web browsers automatically update while remaining backwards compatible. The web is a medium where compatibility is a feature. By adopting non standard dialects we trade off the web’s most powerful feature.

Imagine if we could write code that just worked, and ran forever? Imagine not chasing npm updates? Imagine not hunting the forums for an elusive combination of configuration values to fix a broken build?

Good news: we can. HTML, it turns out, is a pretty good choice for web development. Specifically rendering custom elements, styling them with modern CSS, and treating the element upgrade as a progressive enhancement step with JavaScript.

Transitioning from Pro to Low Code with Azure Logic Apps

K

The development world is changing and there is an increased focus on low code. How does a traditional pro code developer fit into this world? This talk explores how to leverage the knowledge, skills, and patterns of a pro code developer in the low code environment of Azure Logic Apps.

Within this talk we will explore the following areas:

  • Why is the world of technology changing?
  • How do pro code developers fit into this new landscape?
  • What is Azure Logic Apps and how does it facilitate low code development?
  • How do pro code developer skills translate into low code environments?
  • What are the software development patterns that we sue in pro code that translate into low code?

We will have discussions and demos that show parallels between source code that pro code developers would write and how that translates into a low code environment. Some specific examples are

  • Application Lifecycle Management
  • Try, Catch, Finally for Error Handling
  • Code Organization & Naming Conventions
  • Commenting
  • Input Validation

9:45 - 10:45

The Not-So-Subtle Art of Alignment

A2

How often have you seen this happen: A group talks about a problem and reaches a consensus. Then you start to see what you thought was alignment fall apart or not happen as you would have expected. The problem is that most people don't know how to align others behind an idea and give it momentum. But what if you could easily do so, in any context, at any time?

In this session, you will learn:

  • The power of alignment and why it's essential in business
  • The core principles required for building alignment
  • The four steps in building alignment
  • How to facilitate alignment meetings

Building alignment is an art and science that will have you consistently getting people behind an idea and giving it life.

The Latest and Greatest from Azure Service Bus

A3
As the program manager of Azure Service Bus, it is always amazing to share the latest developments of our service. It allows us get direct feedback from the community, and ensures that we are building the right product for your scenarios. In this session we will have a look at recently delivered features, and what we are currently working on. You will get a chance to hear all about these latest developments, how we are building them, and why we made certain choices. And who knows, we might even have a look at what is coming up on the roadmap! This will be your chance to see what is coming in the next months, and give your feedback which will help us give shape to these features.

File New: Build a Fully-Managed and Documented API

A4
Azure API Management is a way to create consistent modern API gateways for existing backend services. It provides an interface for your backend services and APIs while ensuring they are secured, monitored, maintained, well-documented, and published to the cloud. In this session, we will focus on the how by creating a new Azure API Management instance, configuring API endpoints to be served by the API Management instance, setting up rate-limiting, transforming data coming in and out of the endpoints, providing a portal for developers to intact with the API, and add security and performance. You will see firsthand how to get the most out of Azure API Management to make your APIs accessible to your internal and external customers.

Edge Computing Environments and How to Solve Problems with Them

K
Edge Computing is the next epoch of serverless, cloud native architectures. Gain an understanding of the technology and how it can be applied the technical problems you are solving. There's no better way to learn that by example, so we'll look at 4 different use cases where edge computing is employed to solve real-world problems. We'll look at different examples of edge computing in Cloudflare Workers, Fastly Compute@Edge, Envoy/Istio extensions (via WebAssembly) and Deno. The limit of possibilities is not even known in the novel world of Edge Computing. What could you create?

Let's Talk About Public Speaking

E
Does your boss keep telling you to contribute to the team by presenting on a topic? Have you thought about speaking at events but you're a bit nervous and not sure where to start? Come join Frode in this session where he talks about all the things he's learned about speaking over the past 15 years.

11:00 - 12:00

AI for Developers

A2
By now we've all heard all the new buzzwords in the AI world: ChatGPT, OpenAI, Dall-E, Codex, etc.. But what do they actually mean for you as a developer or for your organization? In this session I will try to demystify the tech behind buzzwords and explain what each of them mean and how to use them

Building RESTful Services with ASP.NET Core

A3
In this session, Phil will show you the power of building RESTful services with ASP.NET Core. I start with covering building and configuring the web host, dependency injection and the options pattern, environmental awareness and configuration, controllers and routing, implicit model binding and validation, followed by detailing functionality added when using the ApiController attribute, including binding source parameter inference and how to customize the provided behavior.

Understanding the Type System Of Typescript

A4

Do you often see type definitions in Typescript codebases and wonder what they do? Discriminated Unions, Map types, Type Guards, Conditional Types, Inferred Types!

Types are cool! Stop using Typescript like JavaScript and learn how to effectively and confidently use the powerful features that are available to you.

In this session Craig will take you through various type system features of Typescript while giving practical examples of how to apply them in your Typescript applications.

Windows PowerShell: Batch Files on Steroids

K
Windows PowerShell has been included with the operating system since Windows 7. What is PowerShell? It's Microsoft's task automation scripting framework. PowerShell isn't just a replacement for batch files; it can do a lot more than batch files ever could. This session looks at PowerShell, including why you should start using it and how to create PowerShell scripts.

12:00 - 1:00

Lunch

A1
Chicken Parmigiana, Cheese Manicotti w/ Tomato Sauce, Caesar Salad, Mixed Garden Greens, Herb Seasoned Oven Roasted Potatoes.

1:00 - 2:00

Kubernetes Resiliency

A2

Kubernetes is a platform many organizations choose for running scalable, reliable applications. However, configuring and running applications on Kubernetes can be complex and filled with pitfalls. This session will focus on Kubernetes resiliency, from the Infrastructure to Components to the Applications themselves. We will talk about Kubernetes in general as well as AKS on Azure.

We will talk about:

  • Infrastructure
    • Single points of failure
    • Availability zones
    • Node pools
  • Components
    • etcd
    • API Server
    • kube-scheduler
  • Applications
    • Pod disruption budgets
    • Resource requests and limits
    • liveness and readiness probes
After this session, you will know the things to look for in a cluster, and how to ensure your cluster and applications are more resilient.

Is AI Ready to Take Over the World? Let's Discuss!

A3
Are you ready for the AI revolution? This presentation will explore the current state of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and whether it's truly ready for the mainstream. We'll cover everything from the basics of AI to its potential impact on industries, job roles, and society as a whole. Whether you're an AI skeptic or enthusiast, this is your chance to join the conversation and share your thoughts on the future of AI in the world. Come ready to learn, debate, and have some fun!

Updating Legacy ASP.NET Apps

A4

For many years ASP.NET MVC was a popular and well used framework for building applications both in enterprise settings and outside. However these applications are now getting old and difficult to maintain. It would be great to benefit from the work which has been done to modernize .NET into one of the most efficient frameworks out there. In this talk we'll examine the good and bad news about modernizing these applications and provide an approach that we've found to be very effective.

Bicep vs Terraform: Which One Is Best For You?

K
Choosing the right infrastructure as Code tool is critical for your Team and Organisation. While some have already adopted a tool across the entire Organisation or within their own Teams, some are still assessing which one to use and invest time and effort for the future.This session will objectively compare both tools and provide an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of each, in the light of field experience.

2:15 - 3:15

Learn to Say "No!" Without Being a Jerk

A2
Tired of feeling overwhelmed because you overcommit? A recovering People Pleaser, I know the harm and unrest that can come with saying yes too often. Learn to recognize your resistance to saying no. Get examples of strategies you can begin to implement immediately to get better results in your life.

Turbocharge Your CSV Files With MongoDB And Redis

A3
Sure, nobody likes CSV files. But the truth is, you'll still have to deal with them from time to time. So how can you make it less painful? MongoDB Data Federation lets you query data stored in S3 buckets or even from external APIs as if they were part of your database, using the same query language you would for your regular data. You can even perform intensive calculations on your historical data without overwhelming your database with stale data. Add that to the blazing-fast caching capabilities of a Redis, and you can get nanosecond query results from your old CSV files stored on a cheap server with minimal effort. In this talk, you will learn how to leverage those two technologies to efficiently process older data without needing expensive and tedious data transformations.

Versioning ASP.NET Core APIS

A4
Building an API with ASP.NET MVC in .NET Core is only half the job. If you're API is going to live more than one release cycle, you’re going to need to version it. During this session, you'll see how easy it is now to version APIs using functionality built into ASP.NET Core.

Create a Machine Learning Winnipeg Mosquito Population Predicting Website

K

Graduating from high school a year early, I was also taking dual-enrollment classes at the Manitoba Institute of Trades and Technology. When I finished high school I had enough dual credits to receive a diploma from the Manitoba Institute of Trades and Technology in Software Development. Being 16 and wanting to get right into the tech industry I knew I had to have some killer projects on my resume. In my talk, I'll show you how you can make your very own version of my favourite project - a full-stack machine-learning prediction service that generates mosquito population predictions for each of Winnipeg's neighbourhoods.

My presentation will cover from start to finish how to create your very own machine-learning prediction website, and will be loosely split into the following four parts:

  • Aggregating the Data
  • Creating and Storing the Model
  • Creating a Custom Machine Learning API
  • Developing the Website

In the Aggregating the Data section I'll explain how to interact with the abundance of open data provided by the City of Winnipeg, and I'll show the ways in which we use Python to get the data reading for our model. In the Creating and Storing the Model section I'll go over the basics of machine learning and random forest algorithms, then show you how to create your own machine learning models and how to pickle your model for future use. In the Creating a Custom Machine Learning API section I will show you how we can use a Digital Ocean Droplet to create an efficient python API that automatically updates every day generating fresh mosquito predictions for the next two weeks. Finally, in the Developing the Website section I'll show you how to use OpenStreetMaps and Leaflet to create stunning visualizations of our predictions. By the end of the talk, you should have enough knowledge to be able to create your own machine-learning website that can predict mosquito populations in Winnipeg, and I'll even sprinkle in some other great project ideas you can make with the City of Winnipeg's Open Data.

3:30 - 4:30

So Your Agile Transformation Has Stalled Again. Now What?

A2
This talk will discuss the principles and guidance of the Kanban Method as an alternative approach to inspiring an evolutionary change and a continuous improvement culture in your organization.

A Pain in the UI

A3
We see the JavaScript, CSS, and HTML, but we forget to see the human. Beyond the ridiculous password requirements, copy-paste overrides, and spam-preventing Turing tests, it is story time for the made mistakes and lessons learned from the pain in the UI.

Pragmatics of effective RESTFul API Design

A4
This talk will illustrate techniques to oversee API Design. Consideration into the base layer architectures, the validation of the design, flows in your topology, API First Design methodologies and more. The takeaway will be real world API Design scenarios that you can to integrate into your existing workloads.

Demystifying Data Science

K

Today's world generates different kinds of data at unbelievably rapid rates. This has resulted in a shift away from traditional software development towards Data Science. This talk gives an overview of Data Science and delves deep into the pipeline data scientists use - right from fetching the data, the Python tools and frameworks used to creating models, gaining insights and telling a story. The session is aimed towards aspiring data scientists - hobbyists and professionals alike. Data-curious folks interested in knowing what the field of Data Science entails are welcome to attend too.

  • Need for data science
  • Explaining the jargon
  • Capabilities and applications of data science
  • Overview of the data science pipeline
  • What questions can data science answer?
  • Different sources of data
  • Data wrangling and cleaning
  • Data exploration
  • Building models and using algorithms
  • Demo using real-world applications (Tentative examples: detecting breast cancer, predicting housing prices, clustering Wikipedia articles)
  • Data visualization and storytelling
  • Ethics in Data Science
  • Additional resources

By the end of this session, audience members will have a better grasp of the capabilities and processes of Data Science. They will be familiar with the general structure of a Data Science pipeline and will develop a strong foundation to continue learning and experimenting in Data Science using Python frameworks and packages like Jupyter, numpy, scipy, pandas, sklearn, matplotlib and seaborn.

Winnipeg Floor Plan

Sponsors

Accenture
NorthfieldIT
Johnston Group

Johnston Group
Glitchsecure
Eric Legault Consulting

Lambert Nemec Group
Lotlinx

Become a Sponsor

We love our sponsors and provide numerous benefits for sponsoring organizations!

Cost: $3000 + GST

What's provided for sponsors?

  • Logo Recognition (Signage and Online)
  • A Booth at the Conference
  • 3 Free Registrations
  • Sponsor Discount on Registrations

Tickets

Early Bird

$725*

  • Groups of 3+ get an extra $50 off each registration

Because of amazing sponsorship support, we can offer the Early Bird pricing as the regular price for the conference!

*Plus GST. Tickets are not refundable but are transferrable.
Sending 20 or more people? Contact us about our large group rate!

We use Ti.to as our ticketing service, clicking the button above will redict you to their website.

If you'd prefer to receive an invoice, click the button below to contact us to arrange one!

Venue

Canad Inns Destination Centre Polo Park

1405 St. Matthews Ave., Winnipeg, MB R3G 0K5
Phone: 1-204-775-8791

Attendee Info

Below are answers to the most commonly asked questions about attending the conference. If you have a question not covered, please send us an email by clicking the "Email a Question" button below!

What are the start and end times?

On both days of the conference breakfast and the registration table open at 8AM and conference sessions end at 4:30 PM. Note on Tuesday the first sessions start at 8:30 AM. Please refer to the schedule for more details.

Where are the conference rooms and registration?

Registration is outside the Ambassador ballroom on the main floor of CanadInns Polo Park. Please refer to the map posted at the bottom of the schedule section on our website.

Do I have to pre-register for specific sessions?

We take a "Vote with your feet" approach to the sessions. Attend whatever sessions you like, no pre-registration is required. Finding a session isn't what you thought it was? No problem, feel free to go to a different session!

Will sessions be recorded?

Prairie Dev Con is meant to be a live, in person event. As such we don't record sessions for later viewing, but check with our speakers to see if their talks have been recorded elsewhere.

Will food be served at the conference?

Yes! Both days will feature hot breakfast & lunch buffets and two coffee breaks.

Breakfasts: Scrambled Eggs, Bacon, Sausage, Savoury Breakfast Potatoes, and Pastries with a Selection of Butter and Preserves

Lunch Monday: Roast Beef with Pan Gravy, Vegetarian Cabbage Rolls, Mixed Garden Greens, Oriental Noodle Salad, Red Skin Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Lunch Tuesday: Chicken Parmigiana, Cheese Manicotti w/ Tomato Sauce, Caesar Salad, Mixed Garden Greens, Herb Seasoned Oven Roasted Potatoes

I have a food allergy, preference, or restriction.

Please ensure that you've filled out our supplemental registration form found here where you can specify any food requirements. We'll ensure there are acceptable food options for you at the conference.

I have accessibility needs.

Please ensure that you've filled out our supplemental registration form found here where you can specify any accessibility needs. We'll ensure to accomodate as best as possible.

Is there parking available?

CanadInns Polo Park has free parking on their lot.

What is the dress code for the conference?

There is no set dress code for the conference, wear what you're comfortable in keeping in mind our Code of Conduct.

If I have a concern or issue during the conference what do I do?

The conference organizer, D'Arcy Lussier, will be available throughout the conference. His contact information while at the conference will be provided on Day 1 and you're free to contact him regarding any concern you have.

Prairie Dev Con Code of Conduct

All conference participants (attendees, speakers, sponsors and volunteers) at our conference are required to agree with the following code of conduct. Organizers will enforce this code throughout the event. We expect cooperation from all participants to help ensure a safe environment for everybody.

Prairie Dev Con is dedicated to providing a harassment-free conference experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), or technology choices. We do not tolerate harassment of conference participants in any form.

Additionally sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue, including talks, workshops, vendor areas, social events, and social media/online ineractions.

Conference participants violating these rules may be sanctioned or expelled from the conference without a refund at the discretion of the conference organizers.