Our Speakers

Kevin A Cox United States, TEC Vector

Kevin A Cox

I currently work as a Manager of Web and Application Development for the American Thoracic Society. I have been a full stack-developer for most of my career, and even as management I am still very active in the code base. I primarily code in .NET, but am also currently using PHP and Java as we break away from our legacy projects.

I am Microsoft Certified, and working towards becoming a Microsoft Certified Trainer. Currently, I'm also teaching at DeltaV Code School in Hiawatha, IA using the CodeFellow's curriculum guides.

Nathan Adams Software Developer, United Fire Group

Nathan Adams

Nate has worked professionally in the IT industry for nearly 20 years developing software and mentoring and leading teams in a wide range of environments from small companies with dozens of employees to large global enterprises with over 20,000 employees. Nate brings this range of experiences with him to NewBoCo.

As a software developer, Nate has written code and developed architecture for all aspects of systems from the UI through the middleware and to the back-end. Nate has also given many talks for user groups in the midwest on a broad range of technology topics.

As an agile enthusiast and coach, Nate has developed and coached agile teams using a broad array of methodologies. Nate has taught the Intro to Agile course at the University of Iowa Tippie College of Business as well as an agile certificate through Kirkwood Community College.

Nate is especially passionate about helping teams continuously improve how they write software; both for themselves as well as their users. To this end, acts as an advocate for developers; trying to make their work less stressful by pushing for a sustainable development pace and enabling development methodologies that emphasize quality.

Kelly Andrews Senior Developer Advocate, Nexmo

Kelly Andrews

Kelly J Andrews is a developer advocate for Nexmo and has been tinkering with computers for over 30 years, using BASIC for the first time at the age of 5.

It wasn't until building his first webpage in 1997, and trying out JavaScript for the first time that he found a true calling. Kelly now fights for JavaScript, testable code, and fast delivery.

In his free time you can find him singing karaoke, performing magic, or cheering for the Fighting Irish.

Adam Barney Staff Software Engineer, Rocket Mortgage

Adam Barney

Adam is a nerd. That kept me humble and nearly friendless (sniff) through school, but he wears it as a badge of honor now. After buying a Commodore 64 with money from his paper route in the 4th grade, he’s never stopped learning about computers and how to make these stupid machines do cool things. When he's not slinging code for his 9-to-5 job, he's slinging code for himself to keep current on things, playing with electronics and IoT, 3D printing, and watching far too much TV.

Gregory Beamer Director of Cloud Architecture, Larsen & Toubro Infotech

Gregory Beamer

A bit of right brain and left brain in an ADHD package. A degree in film & video, with almost 25 in IT, balancing the creative with the techie, geeky stuff. Greg is a consummate geek who loves living on the bleeding edge. He currently works as a director of cloud architecture for LTI (Larsen & Toubro Infotech) where he focuses on helping enterprises move to the cloud.

Prior to moving to upper level management, Greg spent more than 10 years in architectural consulting, with offshoots in building distributed Agile development teams. His normal duties included architectural assessments, portfolio rationalization and pre-sale engineering. His areas of concentration include SOA, microservices, DevOps, integration, monitoring and Agile development practices.

For the past six years, Greg has focused on the common problems plaguing IT departments, focusing on solutions. Greg's primary method is to examine problems from a variety of perspective, find the common patterns and then build frameworks that can work in a wide variety of organizations. He brings this same method to speaking, using analogies, abstractions and stories to simplify intermediate and advanced concepts for beginning audiences. Greg has spoken at numerous conferences and user groups across the country and generally takes a contrarian view of the silver bullets that plague the field.

When Greg is not on the road, he is working from his home office, or spending time with his wife, four daughters and his derpy dog. When not working, he can often be found seeking out another new craft beer, playing pub trivia or seeking out a geek boardgame night.

Mike Benkovich

Mike Benkovich

A software architect, Azure expert, and former Microsoft evangelist, Mike Benkovich dedicates huge amounts of his time to helping his fellow developers and burgeoning programmers learn about new technologies and platforms. Mike’s website www.benkotips.com equips developers with tips and resources to help them get to grips with technologies including cloud, data and devices, and he produces online courses covering areas like Azure development, data architecture strategies and serverless computing. Follow Mike on Twitter @BenkoTips

Jason Bock Developer Advocate, Rocket Mortgage

Jason Bock

Jason Bock is a Developer Advocate for Rocket Mortgage and a Microsoft MVP (C#). He has over 25 years of experience working on a number of business applications using a diverse set of frameworks and languages. He is the author of ".NET Development Using the Compiler API", "Metaprogramming in .NET", and "Applied .NET Attributes". He has written numerous articles on software development issues and has presented at a number of conferences and user groups. He is a leader of the Twin Cities Code Camp. Jason holds a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from Marquette University. Visit his web site at http://www.jasonbock.net.

David Body President, Big Creek Software, LLC

David Body

David W. Body is a freelance software developer and data science consultant based in Des Moines, Iowa. He is available for consulting and contract work.

Kris Boedigheimer

Kris Boedigheimer

I am a computer programmer turned homeschool mom who loves learning, travel, exercise, reading, and spending time with family. I am a third degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do, Advanced Level Toastmaster Speaker, and group fitness instructor for Barre Above, Les Mills Bodyflow, and Les Mills BodyAttack. We travel constantly and make it a habit to try something different including blown glass, painting classes, surfing, trapeze class, axe throwing, and hang gliding off a cliff over the ocean.

Robert Boedigheimer Principal Systems Developer

Robert Boedigheimer

Robert Boedigheimer works for Schwan's Home Delivery providing business solutions with web technologies. He is a Microsoft MVP, a Progress Ninja (Fiddler), an ASPInsider, a Pluralsight author, and a 3rd degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. Robert regularly speaks at national and international events.

Mollie Cox Director of Product Design, DMSi

Mollie Cox

hello. i am a product designer happily creating experiences for over 15 years. i want to live in a world where collaboration is never an after thought, products and functionality are always created with a user-centered design, and great design is considered a moral imperative.

Austin Crim Software Engineer, Principal Financial Group

Austin Crim

Hello, I'm Austin!

I'm a fullstack software engineer and I love talking frontend web development. While I've routinely worked up and down the stack, developing for the web is what I'm really passionate about. I regularly work with tools like React, Next.js, TailwindCSS, and Svelte and I am always open for discussion around frontend web tooling.

Bill Dinger Managing Director of Technology, VMLY&R

Bill Dinger

Bill is a Managing Director of Technology for VMLY&R working on delivering digital solutions to our clients. Passionate about building great software, building great teams, and making life easier for everyone. When not working, Bill will probably be found at the dog run with his loveable mutts in his hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska.

Mike Douglas Director of Delivery Engineering, Lunavi

Mike Douglas

Mike Douglas is Director of Delivery Engineering at Lunavi specializing in architecting secure cloud native and hybrid modern applications. He works with organizations to continuously improve their application security and compliance controls, speed of delivery, and quality through DevOps practices. He is an active community member in leading the Omaha DevOps meetup and organizing events in Omaha like Global DevOps Bootcamp. He also speaks regularly at a number of regional and national events such as HDC, Infotec, VS Live, and Nebraska Code(). He is a Microsoft MVP in Developer Technologies with a focus in Azure DevOps and enjoys sharing his experiences in DevOps, Automated Testing, and Security at www.lunavi.com and on Twitter at @mikedouglasdev.

Mike Driscoll Software Engineer, Ag Leader Technology

Mike Driscoll

Mike Driscoll has been programming with the Python language for more than a decade. He has also been an active user and documenter of the wxPython GUI toolkit for almost as long as he's been using Python. When Mike isn't programming for work, he writes about Python on his blog. Mike is also a contributor to Real Python. He has worked with Packt Publishing and No Starch Press as a technical reviewer for their books. Finally, Mike is the author of several books on the Python programming language.

Adam Erickson Sr. Architect, DMSi

Adam Erickson

Adam is 20-year veteran of the software industry, working up and down the stack in Fortune 500 companies, and less fortunate 3-person startups. As a Software Architect neé Fullstack Developer, he mainly draws flow charts that--for better or worse (probably better)--other people end up turning into working code. He loves to ruminate and pontificate on the intersection of design, development, process, and psychology.

Brian Gorman Senior Training Architect, Opsgility

Brian Gorman

Brian is an experienced speaker, author, trainer, and .Net developer with MCSA: Web App Certification, MCSD: App Builder, AZ-900/104/204/220/400, DP-900/300, and MCT (3rd Year) certifications. Brian has a masters of science degree in computer information systems, and a bachelor of science degree in computer science. Additionally, Brian has over ten years of experience instructing college courses online in SQL databases, C#/VB .Net programming, Java programming, and Microsoft Office. Brian has created many online technical training courses that can be found on various platforms like Udemy, and MajorGuidanceSolutions. Brian also recently had his first APress book "Practical Entity Framework" published. Brian is currently employed as a full-time Cloud Training Architect with Opsgility.

Chad Green Director of IT Architecture, Glennis Solutions

Chad Green

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, military, government, workforce management, financial services, chemical research, and electronic commerce. Being a big believer in giving back and wanting to ensure that there are cool events for others, Chad founded and chairs the annual Code PaLOUsa conference, organizers the Louisville .NET Meetup user group and the Monthly Tech Leader Coffee and Discussion, and has helped other groups like the Louisville Tech Ladies and events like Cincy Deliver.

Kevin Grossnicklaus President, ArchitectNow

Kevin Grossnicklaus

At one point in his career Kevin was the youngster on most development teams. He got his start developing with Visual Studio and managed .NET code during the early beta cycles in 2001. As a technical author, his first writing experience was for the Visual Basic.NET Bible released in 2002. He has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP since 2009 and is a member of the ASPInsiders program. He is also very active in the local St. Louis development community.

In 2009, Kevin Grossnicklaus started his own software product development firm called ArchitectNow (www.architectnow.net). At ArchitectNow, Kevin and his team specialize in a wide variety of tools and technologies and take pride in helping their customers deliver great solutions on a variety of platforms. As expected (and necessary) today, they are always on the lookout for the “next big thing” in the software or technology space while guiding customers through the waves of new technology.

Born in rural Nebraska, he has spent the last 20 years in St. Louis, Missouri where he lives with his wife Lynda and their three daughters: Alexis, Emily, and Hanna. He is an avid guitar player, home brewer, and gamer including everything from retro arcade games, to board games, to role playing games. When not spending time on any of those hobby’s he waits patiently for a second season of Firefly.

Mary Grygleski Senior Developer Advocate, DataStax

Mary Grygleski

Mary is a Java Champion and a passionate Streaming Developer Advocate at DataStax, a leading data management company that champions Open Source software and specializes in Big Data, DB-as-a-service, Streaming, and Cloud-Native systems. She spent 3.5 years previously as a very effective advocate at IBM, focusing on Java, Jakarta EE, OpenJ9, Open Source, Cloud, and Distributed Systems. She transitioned from Unix/C to Java around 2000 and has never looked back since then. She considers herself a polyglot and loves to continue learning new and better ways to solve real-life problems. She is an active tech community builder outside of her day job, and currently the President of the Chicago Java Users Group (CJUG), as well as a co-organizer for several IBM-sponsored meetup groups in the Greater Chicago area.

Robert Hedgpeth Director, Developer Relations, MariaDB

Robert Hedgpeth

Rob Hedgpeth has been slinging code since the early 2000’s. Like many others, he started his journey by building pretty horrendous looking websites. Fortunately, for the world, he has since evolved and has branched out to a variety of projects across web, desktop, mobile, and IoT. Now as a developer evangelist for MariaDB, Rob gets to combine his love for technology with his mission to fuel developers’ curiosity and passion. In his free time Rob just tries to keep up with his wife, infant son, and two crazy dogs!

Courtney Heitman Technical Accessibility Specialist, Gallup

Courtney  Heitman

Courtney is a Technical Accessibility Specialist for Gallup, a company that provides analytics and advice for everything that matters, in Omaha, Nebraska. Courtney's passion for the web all started with teaching her 11-year-old self how to write CSS on a dial-up internet connection on a farm in rural Iowa. Since then she has been in a myriad of positions including a Flash developer, a brief stint as a server admin, a designer, a full stack developer, and a project manager. Her passion is making a web that is usable and accessible to all. When she's not playing with new technology, you can find her creating new recipes in her kitchen or working on her farm.

Evan Hennis Software Engineer

Evan Hennis

Evan is a Google Developer Expert in Machine learning. He has a computer science degree from Iowa State and a master's degree from Georgia Tech with a specialization in machine learning. He has been writing .NET code for the last 17 years.

Devin Kelly-Collins Senior Software Engineer, Artisan Technology Group

Devin Kelly-Collins

Technology enthusiast who actually enjoys keeping up with all of the new Javascript frameworks coming out. Started working with AngularJS at Artisan Technology Group almost 6 years ago. Many new frameworks later, I'm helping to mentor new associates as Artisan grows. Outside of work, I assist with organizing AngularKC and attend as many meetups as possible. When I have some downtime I try to play some sort of Nintendo game, but I often up back at my keyboard working on one of the numerous side projects that will never be quite finished. At the end of the day, I like to code.

Billy Korando Java Developer Advocate, Oracle

Billy Korando

Billy is a Java Developer Advocate with the Java Platform Group at Oracle. With over a decade of experience in Java, Billy brings a passion for helping developers find ways to reduce tedious work; such as project initiation, deployment, testing and validation, through automation and adopting the latest features and tools in the Java ecosystem. Outside of work Billy enjoys traveling, playing kickball, and cheering on the Kansas City Chiefs. Billy also co-organizes the Kansas City Java users group.

Aaron Ladage Architect, DEG

Aaron Ladage

Aaron Ladage is an Architect at DEG . He's spoken about front-end development at a number of prominent tech conferences, including SXSW Interactive and Future of Web Design NYC. He's also the creator of inputtypes.com, a popular form-testing utility. Outside of work and freelance, Aaron is a cliché Kansas City BBQ snob with a questionably large Lego collection.

David Lindner CISO, Contrast Security

David Lindner

David is an experienced application security professional with over 20 years in cybersecurity. In addition to serving as the chief information security officer, David leads the Contrast Labs team that is focused on analyzing threat intelligence to help enterprise clients develop more proactive approaches to their application security programs. Throughout his career, David has worked within multiple disciplines in the security field—from application development, to network architecture design and support, to IT security and consulting, to security training, to application security. Over the past decade, David has specialized in all things related to mobile applications and securing them. He has worked with many clients across industry sectors, including financial, government, automobile, healthcare, and retail. David is an active participant in numerous bug bounty programs.

Joel Lord Developer Advocate, Red Hat

Joel Lord

Joel Lord is passionate about web and technology in general. He likes to learn new things but most of all, he likes 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 last millennium. Apart for a little break to get his BSc in computational astrophysics, he was always in the industry. As a Developer Advocate at Red Hat OpenShift, he meets with developers to help them make the web a better place. During his free time, he is usually found stargazing in a camping site somewhere.

James McKee Global Developer Security Program Manager, Trimble

James McKee

James is a developer (MCPDEA) and security advocate (CISSP) whose biggest responsibility is leading developer security practices. He sets the standards and procedures for how the practice operates, and leads all client engagement efforts with regard to security. He also takes the lead in making sure that company staff (developers specifically) are properly trained and following best practices with regard to application security. In his current position he is responsible for the training and providing product guidence for developers across the world.

James also acts as a system and application architect, and oftentimes he evaluates application design as part of the security audits he performs. In a past life James was responsible for Architecting and developing solutions on multimillion implementation efforts. Key clients included the Eight Fortune 500 companies (Seven in the Fortune 100), as well as several well known non-profits and leaders in their industries. Vertices served included healthcare, transportation, financial services, retail, insurance, and energy.

In his free time James is involved with running BSidesBoulder and DC720 (Local DEFCON Group).

Website: Punkcoder.com
Twitter: @punkcoder

Brian McKeiver Co-Owner, BizStream

Brian McKeiver

Brian McKeiver is Co-Owner & Solutions Architect at BizStream, a software development company in Allendale, MI. He has over 19 years of experience leading his agency of more than 30+ employees, about a hundred clients spread out across North America, and one heck of an interesting story of how it all started from a two-person team. In addition to his expertise in web development, integration, and digital marketing, Brian is active with the tech community via his blog at Mcbeev.com.

Duane Newman Co-Founder, Alien Arc Technologies, LLC

Duane Newman

Duane is Co-Founder of Alien Arc Technologies, LLC where he focuses on creating apps targeting mobile devices, modern desktops, and the Internet of Things. As a Microsoft MVP and technology enthusiast with a passion for good software he strives to bring solutions that improve or eliminate costly duplication and repetitive processes so more important things can be done. He enjoys teaching others through his random blog posts and by speaking at conferences on topics ranging from DevOps to Xamarin. When not behind a computer screen he can be found sharing his love of SCUBA and all things underwater with new divers at the pool or through his underwater videos and photos.

Jim O`Neil Senior Architect, Insight

Jim O`Neil

Jim is a Senior Architect at Insight's Digital Innovation division where he focuses on designing and building cloud-native applcations on Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. He has designed and implemented IoT solutions for a variety on industries including healthcare, food services, and aquaculture. Jim has been a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for the past four years and has presented and organized code camps and workshops throughout the Boston and New England for over a decade. Jim's geekery has most recently expanded into genealogy and DNA where he's recently discovered his birth family and helped a few others in their quests as well.

Andy Pryor Sr. Engineering Director, Hudl

Andy Pryor

I lead the Platform and Competitive Engineering teams at Hudl.

Hudl's Platform Team accelerates product development by building reliable extensible software platforms on the cloud at scale. On the web we make deploys easy, so they can happen daily. We build the Terraform modules to do everything our product squads need to do on our micro services stack. On mobile we make iOS and Android feature parity easy with React Native. Our Uniform design system provides ready to use React components that means building world class highly accessible web front ends is easy as ever.

The Competitive Engineering team focuses on building Hudl's products for our North America markets. The core Hudl experience, connecting video and data together so coaches and athletes can get better and win more.

Scott Sauber Director of Engineering, Lean TECHniques

Scott Sauber

Scott is the Director of Engineering at Lean TECHniques Inc. where he's a full stack developer primarily focused on web apps and helping other developers reach their goals. Scott's second dev passion behind web development is building DevOps pipelines and automating everything automatable. Scott also has a passion for the community and co-organizes the Iowa .NET User Group (iadnug.org) and is a Friend of Redgate. You can find Scott on Twitter @scottsauber or on his blog at scottsauber.com.

Micah Silverman Lead Developer Advocate, Split

Micah Silverman

Micah Silverman is a Lead Developer Advocate for Split. With 26 years of Java Experience (yup, that's from the beginning), he's authored numerous articles, co-authored a Java EE book and spoken at many conferences. He's a maker, who's built full size MAME arcade cabinets and repaired old electronic games. He brings his love of all things Java and Developer Evangelism to a conference near you!

Nathan Smith Software Engineer, Elastic

Nathan Smith

Nathan Smith works on the Observability UI at Elastic and lives in South Amana, IA.

Dennis Stepp Software Engineer, Lirio, LLC.

Dennis Stepp

I am a Software Engineer at Lirio in Knoxville, TN. I'm also a game/web developer with Unibear Studio, and stage manager/web developer with the Earl Park Fall Festival Foundation. My interests include: process and workflow optimization, automation, JAMstack technologies, software architecture, object oriented languages, and game development. I also collect retro PC/console video games, dabble in gardening and woodworking. I have a passion for craft beer.

Brent Stewart Co-Founder, Alien Arc Technologies

Brent Stewart

As a professional software developer with over two decades of experience, I have seen many development trends come and go and learned that there is not a shortcut to being a great developer. I enjoy teaching others what I have learned and try to mentor others whenever I can. I am a co-organizer of the Kansas City .NET User Group and love speaking at conferences.

I am a creator at heart and have started multiple businesses over the years in a variety of industries. My latest venture is Alien Arc Technologies which allows me to take my ideas and give them form. I love quality in all things and I always try to provide the best quality in everything I do. If it is worth doing, then it is worth doing right.

Nien Sui Solution Architect, Sui Dynasty

Nien Sui

Nien Sui is a published author and an invited international speaker. He brings in two decades of technical expertise, research experience and multiple advanced degrees in computer engineering and computer science. He has worked with diverse teams across various disciplines and countries.

Besides technology, Nien is interested in positive psychology, community building, and career guidance.

Joel Tosi Co-Founder, Hands-On Coach, Dojo & Co

Joel Tosi

Just a dude trying to help out people and teams that are trying to learn and create interesting products. With experience in dev, architecture, management, and product - I try to help teams communicate more effectively and build their products in a maintainable way that allows room for product discovery.

Alex Will United States, ArchitectNow

Alex Will

Alex started out as a mechanical engineer student until his Sophomore year when Alex took his first computer science class. After the first project of making a terminal chutes and ladders game Alex immediately switched majors. Since switching majors, Alex has never looked back. Alex's favorite part of computer science is the problem solving and the creativeness he gets to apply in algorithms. Alex is now the CTO at ArchitectNow. Alex loves to be active in playing basketball and baseball.

Diana Williams Director Agile Coaching, Project Brilliant

Diana Williams

Diana Williams is an experienced Agile Coach and Trainer with Project Brilliant. She has worked in both the public and private sectors, providing enterprise level Agile coaching. She is a passionate learner and teacher. Diana oversaw systems that had several billions of dollars’ flow through them. Her teams have recognized significant productivity gains, improved quality, and better predictability. She is empathic with her teams and stakeholders, helping them achieve things they did not realize were possible. She has received numerous praise from her clients and teams. When Diana is not coaching teams or leading projects, she is very family focused. She especially loves spending time with her grandchildren. As a mother and grandmother, she is an advocate for women working in technology.