Rory’s focus for the last 7 years has been research and development (R&D) with a focus on cloud research, consulting and training. Working in research has allowed him unparalleled insights into industry movements, trends, and news. In the role of Azure Developer Product Marketing Manager, Rory uses his deep research expertise skills to bring Microsoft’s marketing and technical teams together to help professional cloud developers discover and successfully use Microsoft’s Azure platform, both through in-person 1:many engagements and at digital scale. The Azure Developer PMMs team help drive broad awareness, skilling and adoption of Azure services to promote a self-sustaining ecosystem of skilled cloud developers. Rory is extremely passionate about the programming community and has been critical helping them create a South African flavoured digital disruption strategy. Rory is an organiser of the Kotlin and Java developer user groups and lead the Johannesburg AWS user group for 2 years. When not captivating the crowd with his presentations as a technical speaker, he can be found in the front row with a distinguished laugh, infectious enough to break the awkward silence in any audience. His expertise includes PaaS and Java, and he holds an honours degree in Computer Science. Married with two children, Rory tries to spend most of his free time with his family and two hyperactive Schnauzers.