Meet a Speaker Michael Ridland
Not long now until DDD Sydney 2018 and in the lead up we wanted to make sure you get to know our speakers. Today we wanted to introduce you to Michael Ridland, who spoke at our first DDD Sydney and is making his return this year.
DDD: What excites you most about being a speaker at DDD Sydney?
Michael: DDD is a community led conference which is accessible to everyone. There’s other great conferences around Australia but many of them are during work hours, plus they’re expensive and not all companies can afford the costs for tickets and time off work, so many people miss out on these valuable networking and learning opportunities. It’s excites me that it’s accessible to people who might never get to attend the larger conferences. It’s also an opportunity for people to try their first time at speaking.
DDD: How did you get into speaking?
Michael: My first steps into speaking were due to Xamarin, back when I started doing Xamarin there wasn’t much of a community or people speaking on Xamarin topics. I had delved deep into Xamarin working with many real world projects, learning the hard way… so speaking was a way for me to help other people get a head start and be better at Xamarin.
DDD: What should people expect in your talk?
Michael: My talk is Machine Learning with CoreML and Azure Cognitive Services. I’ll show you how easy it is to add Vision based Machine Learning into your applications. Then I’ll show you how to download the models you’ve trained in the cloud and use them in offline scenarios leveraging CoreML.
DDD: What talks, other than your own, are you looking forward to seeing?
Michael: There’s plenty of interesting talks to choose from, but I’m looking forward to:
- Jason Taylor’s talk on Clean Architecture with ASP.NET Core 2.1
- Full Stack Rx - Using Redux Patterns on the Server Side with .Net Core, and SignalR by Brendan Richards
- Rob Crowley’s session on Service Meshes - Powering the next wave of microservice architectures
DDD: Anything else you want to say to people thinking of coming to DDD Sydney?
Michael: I remember when I was young in the tech industry I was always nervous about meeting people at meetups and technical conferences, afraid of being an imposter or caught out for ‘not knowing enough’ - please don’t let nerves stop you from being yourself, just come and have fun. DDD conferences have a great vibe and the people you meet are very welcoming.
Catch Michael’s talk, Machine Learning with CoreML & Azure Cognitive Services, at DDD Sydney 2018.