OUR
SPEAKER
Andrew Newton
Principal Consultant
Andrew is a senior software engineer with experience over 20 years of experience across a diverse range of programming languages and platforms. His expertise in solution architecture and comprehensive system development approach encompasses everything from initial problem identification to deployment and ongoing support.
With a proven leadership track record, Andrew has adeptly managed multiple technical teams and held executive positions such as Director and CTO. His expansive knowledge of agile methodologies and product management underscores his adaptable and forward-thinking management style.
TALKS
Applied AI: The Strategy Playbook (45 mins)
This interactive session is for teams across all disciplines and requires no prior AI experience. We cut through the hype to build a clear, shared understanding of what modern AI actually is, and just as importantly, what it is not.
Using plain language and targeted demonstrations, we can examine practical applications—such as retrieval-augmented answers, coding assist, and safe automation—selecting only what's most relevant to your audience. We'll also address limits and risks—hallucinations, security and privacy, prompt injection, cost control, and model drift—so you can judge fitness for purpose with a simple decision framework.
Tailored to your industry and team, the session maps candidate use cases to value, risk, and effort. You'll leave with a pragmatic playbook: where AI helps, where it doesn't, how to pilot safely with guardrails and evaluation, how to measure impact, and what to do next.
Blazor Introduction: What, why, where, when (45 mins)
This session is suitable for management and technical teams alike who have minimal or no knowledge of what Blazor is and want to learn more about how it fits into the User Interface (UI) technology landscape.
Like all innovative technologies, people will try and sell them to you. This talk is not trying to sell Blazor. Instead, this talk will give you a kickstart to determine whether you should invest any time in it by giving you the foundational knowledge around why it exists and where it is going, as well as comparing it to competing technologies.
Some questions addressed in this session are:
• What are current UI trends in web, mobile, desktop and IOT technologies and how do those affect architectural and hiring decisions?
• Why might you want to (or not want to) invest in skilling up your team in Blazor?
Blazor Deep Dive – State, Rendering, Testing and more (55 mins)
This session is suitable for technical teams that have a foundational knowledge of Blazor and are considering using it or are already using it.
Like most development frameworks, Blazor has multiple ways to architect your solution to achieve your desired outcomes. Being a relatively new framework there is not a lot of detailed guidance in the community.
This session goes through some of the common decision points you may come across while building your application and how you might go about choosing the best path to take based on your requirements.
Some questions addressed in this session are:
• How does Blazor perform from a performance and SEO point of view with different ways I can choose to render?
• Does it require frequent data updates that affect multiple areas in the app?
• How can you make a maintainable, well tested app for complex domains?
