devopsdays Minneapolis - Contact

University of Minnesota

Samantha works as a network and systems administrator for the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota. Providing IT support for a variety of academic departments and supporting researchers from all over the world allows her to bring a unique multicultural perspective. Her volunteer efforts are focused on increasing interest in the STEM fields, especially among women and minorities.

SPS Commerce

Nate is currently an Application Engineer at SPS Commerce. Nate is passionate about helping teams build, monitor and deploy highly reliable and scalable systems in the cloud. When not at work, you can usually find him discussing new technology or the latest season of Game of Thrones. He also enjoys biking, photography, space and anything sci-fi.

Joe Laha works in event technology, which is a fancy way of saying he’s a professional flipchart jockey. He lives in Minneapolis’ North Loop neighborhood with his partner Bridget Kromhout, their cats Iria & Nimoy, and way too much cycling-themed art. Aside from cycling, Joe enjoys homebrew, heavy metal guitar, and arguing about sci-fi TV of the 1990s.

Accenture

Karen Odegaard is an IT Senior Manager at Accenture leading enterprise cloud application strategy, solution design and delivery. She possesses over 13 years of experience driving service transformation, solution design and delivery efforts. Karen is passionate about IT, innovation, inspiring and leading teams to deliver organizationally changing technology driven transformation.

Optum

Heather Mickman is VP Enterprise Services + Platforms at Optum. Throughout her career, she has built APIs to unlock enterprise data, created awesome platforms, led Ops organizations, and built supply chain software for Fortune 50 companies. Heather has a passion for technology, building high performing teams, driving a culture of innovation, and having fun along the way.

Carlson Wagonlit Travel

Leading DevOps Transformation. VP, IT Service Delivery at Carlson Wagonlit Travel. Data-driven, business-focused tech strategist & leader with a deep background in open source & research. Advised startups to Fortune 50 enterprises. Led >250 developers, among 15+ years of software experience. Cited for expertise in Wired, The Register, CIO.com & The New Stack.

Particle

Debbie Gillespie is a Site Reliability Engineer for Particle where she spends her time automating all the things. Previous to Particle, she spent 15 years at the University of MN developing software and cultivating communities of practice.

Microsoft

Bridget Kromhout is a Principal Cloud Developer Advocate at Microsoft. Her CS degree emphasis was in theory, but she now deals with the concrete (if ‘cloud’ can be considered tangible). After 15 years as an operations engineer, she traded being on call for being on a plane. A frequent speaker and program committee member for tech conferences, she leads the devopsdays organization globally and the devops community at home in Minneapolis. She podcasts with Arrested DevOps, blogs at bridgetkromhout.com, and is active in a Twitterverse near you.

SportsEngine

Andy Fleener is a Humanist, and a New View Safety Nerd who believes software is as much about the people building and running it as it is the people using it. He is a Platform Operations Manager at SportsEngine where he’s been doing a mix of development and operations since 2011. Andy enjoys music, football, sushi, oxford commas, and laughing at all the things millennials are ruining.

SPS Commerce

Andy has been in Technology Operations leadership with SPS Commerce for the past 12 years. SPS grows very aggressively creating an environment of persistent growth challenges. Andy spends many mental cycles collaborating to solve effective patterns for monitoring and operating complex changing systems.