devopsdays Minneapolis - Contact

Target

Many years ago, Samantha took a break from the science laboratory to check out the field of networking and never returned. 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 Program Manager at Microsoft Azure, focusing on the open source cloud native ecosystem. Her CS degree emphasis was in theory, but she now deals with the concrete (if ‘cloud’ can be considered tangible). After years on call for production (from enterprise to research to startups) and a couple of customer-facing adventures, she now herds cats and wrangles docs on the product side of engineering. In the wider tech community, she has done much conference speaking and organizing, and advises the global devopsdays organization after leading it for over five years. Living in Minneapolis, she enjoys snowshoeing in the winter and bicycling in the summer (with winter cycling as a stretch goal).

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 at SPS Commerce since 2005 and currently leads their System Operations, Reliability Engineering, and Continuous Improvement teams. SPS grows aggressively, creating a zany yet fun environment of persistent growth challenges. Andy spends many mental cycles collaborating to solve effective patterns for monitoring and operating complex changing systems.

Ace Oubaha will soon be a recent CS graduate of the University of Minnesota. They got into DevOps because they’re interested in systems of all kinds. When Ace is not busy thinking about processes, they’re either biking around or doing their best MacGyver impression.