Meet the 2019 DDD Perth team
Jaimee Nobbs
Contributor
DDD Perth 2018 was record breaking and we’re back again this year for more!
Our 2018 conference had the largest attendance to date, more speaker submissions than we’ve ever received and our biggest number of tracks.
2019 is going to be an even more exciting and jam-packed year for us and you! The team is taking in feedback from last year and opening up even more speaking opportunities and bringing in a whole new range of topics and events leading into the 2019 conference.
Let’s meet the team that’s going to make this happen:
Rebecca Waters
Rebecca Waters (opens in a new tab)
Rebecca is a software engineer and project manager who feeds off the enthusiasm of others and contributes to the Perth software industry. She is a mentor in and outside of her company to junior developers and other professionals and chair of the Australian Computer Society — Diversity & Inclusion chapter. Rebecca’s vision for DDD WA is to be the place you want to be at, and DDD Perth the conference you can’t afford to miss.
Matt Ward
Matt Ward (opens in a new tab)
Matt Ward likes long walks on the beach and drinking pina colada. By day you can find him at Bankwest (opens in a new tab) where he is attempting to move a bank to the cloud. By night you can find him building things with his daughters, solving puzzles, and making our conference as inclusive for underrepresented folks as can be.
Ian Hughes
Ian Hughes (opens in a new tab)
Ian Hughes likes code, science, travel, beer, and footy. He’s a Principal Consultant with Readify (opens in a new tab) during the week, primarily in Agile, DevOps and Mobile; he does other stuff on the weekend, like trying to bring the amazing developer community in WA together to talk about and share their experiences at DDD Perth and the Agile Perth Meetup.
Robert Moore
Rob Moore (opens in a new tab)
Rob is a Principal Consultant for Readify (opens in a new tab). He’s Passionate about leading software teams to deliver business value. Rob wants an inclusive and accessible conference for the Perth software industry, and will work hard to make DDD Perth that conference!
Aidan Morgan
Aidan Morgan (opens in a new tab)
Aidan is passionate about delivering software that people love using, solving interesting problems, and doing strange things with machine learning. He is currently a Principal Consultant for Readify (opens in a new tab). He hates talking about himself in the third person.
Ashley Aitken
Ashley Aitken (opens in a new tab)
Ashley is an entrepreneur, software engineer, IT trainer and academic, and family man. He’s trained software developers and IT professionals for companies like IBM, Apple, and HP, and organised and presented at IT conferences around the world. He’s also a big fan of Lean Startup with Customer Development and runs the Lean Startup Perth meetup. Ashley’s vision for DDD Perth is for it to encourage and support WA software developers to lead the world in software development practices. He believes we don’t have to follow, we can set the pace and direction and DDD Perth will play a big part in that.
David Schokker
David Schokker (opens in a new tab)
David is a software tester and team leader at Cash Converters (opens in a new tab). With a keen interest in AV, David is the reason DDD events are available on YouTube! David is a photographer for BlizzCon, a proud father, avid retro gamer and suffers serious imposters syndrome.
Kristy Sachse
Kristy Sachse (opens in a new tab)
Kristy is the Lead Experience Designer at Readify (opens in a new tab). She’s a Lover of all things design, technology, brooch, whimsy and icy pole. Over the last 20 years she has honed her skills, so that they are methodical, collaborative and fun. Her current speciality in dual track delivery and designOps. Kristy is part of the DDD marketing team — if there’s a DDD Perth logo on it, you’ve probably seen her work.
Melissa Houghton
Melissa Houghton (opens in a new tab)
Melissa Houghton is a full stack software engineer at Bankwest (opens in a new tab), working on Online Banking and the Mobile App. She has a passion for technology, learning and giving back. In addition to DDD Perth, Melissa has been an organiser for CoderDojo, Toastmasters and Rotary Youth Leadership Camps. Originally from California, she loves to travel and learn new things.
Derek Bingham
Derek Bingham (opens in a new tab)
Derek is a journeyman developer, building software applications over the past 20 years in many stacks you can and can’t imagine. Witnessing the inclusivity and diversity that DDD has brought to the Perth community has been inspirational and he hopes to make a contribution to that continuing. Currently plying his trade at Amazon Web Services (opens in a new tab).
Vedusha Chooramun
Vedusha Chooramun (opens in a new tab)
Vedusha is an Application Security Consultant at Commonwealth Bank of Australia (opens in a new tab) (but currently providing services to Bankwest). Prior to stepping into the world of security, she has been a software engineer at Bankwest where she would also be actively engaged in volunteerism in trying to bring our developers together to share and learn from one another. Her main objective is to encourage best software development (coding) practices by raising security awareness amongst the developer community. Her love for volunteering and passion for coding has led her to be a part of DDD Perth, once again, where she hopes to be able to continue promoting diversity and inclusion in the tech industry as well.
Mohamed Zaatar
Mo Zaatar (opens in a new tab)
Mohamed (Mo) is a software engineer who is enthusiastic about technology with 13 years of experience in the software industry. He currently works as Senior Consultant in Readify (opens in a new tab). He is a “Logician” who likes continuous improvement and to see the big picture first. He is passionate about sharing knowledge and giving back the community that’s why he joined DDD WA Inc. On his free time, he enjoys learning new tech and maintaining his car. He is a half mechanic, a lucky fisher and an untalented cooker.
Allen Azemia
Allen Azemia (opens in a new tab)
Allen is a software developer and consultant at Readify (opens in a new tab) with broad experiences in .NET development. His career started back in the Seychelles Islands over 10 years ago as a Junior Dev which brought him to Perth 2 years ago. He’s passionate about enabling software development teams to deliver awesome products that provide value to their users. Allen fell in love with the melting pot of cultures, inclusion and diversity of DDD Perth. Thus, he brings his passion to help organize the event, so it continues to grow and benefit all lovers of tech.
Cairo Malet
Cairo Malet (opens in a new tab)
Cairo is a cyber security risk advisor with experience across numerous industries, including mining and resources, government, finance and health services. By day, she provides advice on how to securely implement new technical solutions and build processes that safeguard security and privacy. By night, you can usually find her on Twitter having opinions. She is currently the Perth Chapter Lead for the Australian Women in Security Network and an organiser of WACTF, WA’s largest cyber security capture the flag event. Cairo is passionate about bringing security to the rest of the IT industry and showcasing the diversity of Perth’s tech scene, and hopes to further this through working with DDD Perth.
Matt Clark
Matt Clark (opens in a new tab)
Matt has been a leader in agile technology and digital transformation for 15 years. He currently heads up the Bankwest (opens in a new tab) Cloud Native Platform, enabling Bankwest developers to build and run apps on public and private clouds with integrated devops tooling, security and technology compliance. He joined Bankwest 2 years ago, and previously led Pivotal’s Cloud Native consulting practice in Asia Pacific. Matt is passionate about the happiness modern software development and devops practices can bring for customers, business leaders and developers.
Inaie Ignacio
Inaie Ignacio (opens in a new tab)
Inaie is a Senior Developer at Readify who is passionate about Junior Devs and Women in Technology. She is involved in the juniordev.io, volunteer for node girls and WITWA mini mentor as well as DDD Perth.
Amy Kapernick
Amy Kapernick (opens in a new tab)
Amy is a freelance developer who has forged her own path by starting her own business at only 20 years of age. She regularly shares her knowledge with peers and the next generation of developers by mentoring, coaching, teaching and feeding into the tech community in a variety of ways including public speaking and writing blog posts. Amy can be found volunteering her time with Fenders (opens in a new tab), Node Girls, YOW! Conference (opens in a new tab) and ACS. Last year Amy started submitting to and then speaking at a variety of local, interstate and international conferences and events and has been accepted around the world.
Priyaj Sham Chukoury
Sham Chukoury (opens in a new tab)
Sham is a developer with a particular passion for languages, leadership and story telling. He doesn’t quite know what he wants to be when he grows up, so he’s tried everything from contributing to open source, multiple tech stacks, digital marketing, building agile teams, to evangelising DevOps culture, having a crack at big data analytics and learning about governance. He’s also facilitated the Developer Community at Bankwest and is an ambassador for Flow Perth, enabling skilled volunteers to amplify the impact of non-profit community organisations.
Sham believes in promoting better understanding of software and how it enables people to connect, interact and learn from each other. His vision for DDD is to help developers develop themselves, so they can better develop software for the greater good.
Call for presentations open on April the 30th. Follow us on Facebook (opens in a new tab) and Twitter (opens in a new tab) for the latest DDD Perth 2019 information.