Our Past Speakers
Scott Shaw
CTO Asia Pacific
Scott Shaw is a technologist and leader with over 20 years of experience in the software industry. He is currently the CTO for Thoughtworks' APAC region, where he is responsible for setting the technology strategy and driving innovation across the region. Scott is also a working consultant in Thoughtworks' Enterprise Modernisation, Platforms and Cloud service line, where he helps clients adopt new technologies and improve their software delivery capabilities.
Scott is a passionate advocate for continuous learning and technical excellence. He is a regular speaker at industry events and has authored numerous articles and blog posts on topics such as technology strategy, enterprise architecture, and software delivery. He is also a member of Thoughtworks' technology advisory board and has been one of the authors of the Thoughtworks Technology Radar for more than 10 years.
In his spare time, Scott enjoys spending time with his family, playing ice hockey badly, and trying to sound good on guitar and mandolin.
Peter Goodman
VP of Engineering
Peter Goodman spends most of his time thinking about and working with modern cloud architecture and infrastructure. He helps teams deliver scalable cloud architectures, CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure automation and blameless operational practices in modern cloud environments like AWS.Peter is passionate about building teams, blameless culture, cloud technologies, container orchestration, application development and pragmatic approaches to real world problems.
Chitra Kapoor
Solutions Architect
Chitra is a Solutions Architect at LaunchDarkly . She has 13 years of expertise covering all phases of SDLC. She has been heavily involved in the DevOps space last couple of years and advocates best practices for faster releases to the market.
James McLean
Head of Platforms
James is currently the Head of Platforms for media company Stuff Limited, leading the platform infrastructure capability. Prior to that he has worked in various other roles in the technical and project management spaces working in many different evolutions of the company from the early days of its online presence through to today's strong digital presence. He is interested in the intersection of ways of working with DevOps and is currently juggling a move to a platform engineering model with major tech platform consolidation.
Shikha Mishra
Senior DevOps Engineer at Jarden
I contribute to building and maintaining a reliable cloud platform and DevOps practices, enabling our feature teams to work quickly, securely, and efficiently.I practice Buddhist philosophy, and I believe in fostering a positive and harmonious work environment, emphasizing the importance of the right values and a healthy culture where everyone feels safe, can excel, and grow.I strongly believe in the importance of mental and physical well-being as integral components of our lives. To me, being mentally and physically strong is key to working smarter and with sharper focus. Beyond my technical endeavors, I am the founder of Life Force, a Strength and Conditioning Coaching Studio. Our aim is to help individuals feel more energetic, mentally and physically stronger, fitter, healthier, and more resilient.
Deb Costello
Domain Chapter Lead Release and Test Automation
Deb Costello
Spark NZ
Domain Chapter Lead – Release and Automation Testing
As ‘Domain Chapter Lead – Release and Automation Testing’ at Spark, Deb leads the teams that build and maintain the lower environments for testing, prepares and manages releases from development to production, and carries out end-to-end as well as performance testing. She is also key in leading out on Spark’s automation framework and strategy.
She has over 25 years testing experience, with 20 of those in the telecommunications industry including 16 years at Vodafone, and time spent at Telecom. She has also previously worked in testing at Orion Health.
Deb considers people to be the most important part of any team and believes that successful leaders allow their teams to grow beyond themselves.
Rosie Kelly
Agile Team Lead
With over 12 years of experience as a Scrum Master and Agile Coach, I am passionate about developing and inspiring agile leaders and a range of product teams. I currently lead a cross functional product team at BCITO Te Pukenga, the largest provider of construction trade apprenticeships in New Zealand.
As an agile team leader, I support and empower my team to deliver high-quality software and digital solutions that meet the needs of our customers and stakeholders. I also facilitate collaboration, learning, and continuous improvement across the organization, using agile principles and practices. I have two certifications in agile leadership, and I am always eager to learn from my mentors and peers. My goal is to help create a culture of trust, awareness, and excellence at BCITO and beyond.
Norie Ape
Enterprise Applications Lead
Talofa lava everyone, I’m Norie Ape a Samoan born, Auckland raised and now Wellington based Digital Product Manager at Te Pūkenga Digital where I focus on utilizing design thinking, data story-telling and cognitively diverse teams to enable positive outcomes for vocational education in Aotearoa (New Zealand) with priority groups including Māori, Pasifika & disabled learners. Outside of my Tech Explainerer role at Te Pukenga I’m a passionate advocate on diversifying the technology talent pipeline in Aotearoa and in particular increasing the number of Māori and Pasifika wahine in technology in Aotearoa where overall women make up 23% of the Tech Sector, overall only 4% are Māori & 2.8% Pasifika. With experience in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors I focus on ‘using tech for good’ but also on raising awareness on digital equity challenges in Aotearoa while connecting with other wahine in Tech across Aotearoa & in the Pacific to connect, celebrate and collaborate and key issues and challenges.
Dave Hall
Managing Director
Dave has over 20 years professional experience building, breaking and learning about things. He does a mix of software engineering, cloud, SRE, DevOps and training with a focus on automation, event driven architectures and serverless.
Justin Vos
Test Engineer
Justin is a Web Developer turned Test Engineer at Spark New Zealand. Having previous experience delivering websites used by millions and trying his hand at a start-up, he is now growing a development team in building out Spark’s automated testing.
Will Velida
Lead Software Engineer
I'm a software engineer and cloud architect based in Melbourne, Australia. I have experience as a software engineer in the financial, health and agricultural sectors. I've also worked at Microsoft as part of their Azure CXP team. My primary developer stack is .NET and Azure, and have enough knowledge on containers and serverless technologies to be somewhat useful. I'm also experienced with NoSQL technologies, such as MongoDB and Cosmos DB, and infrastructure-as-code, such as Bicep and Terraform. I'm a seasoned conference speaker 🎤I've been lucky to speak at great events, such as NDC Sydney, Techorama, DDD Perth, PASS Summit and more!
Kelvin Mun
Senior Systems Engineer, Kasten by Veeam – APJ
As an experienced Senior Sales Engineer, Kelvin focuses on helping customers protect, secure & manage data in a Kubernetes environment. He has 20+ years of experience as an IT consultant and helps to lead complex technical discussions and proof of concept while supporting partners and internal folks in pre-sales activities, support, education and public speaking.
Craig Dickson
Software Delivery & Operations Lead
Craig is a 20 year veteran of the software development and cloud industries. He has worked in companies from startups through to the Fortune 500, across Australia, the United States and Europe. Currently, he works closely with Google’s diverse clients across Asia-Pacific including financial services, entertainment, travel and manufacturing companies; knowledge management firms; and independent software vendors. Leveraging his career experience in leading engineering teams, and as a recovering Java developer himself, Craig is passionate about the developer experience in the cloud. He helps customers leverage cloud services to enable their teams to move fast, occasionally break things, and deliver software solutions based on cloud native architectures that ultimately help the business succeed.
James Bannan
Principal Consultant
As an accomplished IT professional with over 20 years industry experience, James brings a wealth of expertise and experience to the field. With extensive knowledge across various technologies, including cloud computing, automation, cybersecurity, and infrastructure management, he has worked with leading organizations across diverse industries, including state and federal government, retail, and finance. James is a sought-after speaker, published author, trainer and consultant, leveraging his expertise to drive growth, optimize performance, and solve complex business challenges, consistently delivering innovative solutions that empower businesses to achieve their goals. With a reputation for excellence and a deep commitment to delivering results, James is recognized as a trusted advisor and thought leader in the technology community. He is passionate about helping clients harness the power of technology to unlock their potential and achieve success in today's fast-paced digital world.
