Last Saturday on July 4, 2020 early morning at 5:00 AM CEST (Swedish time), I did my first tech lightning talk about one of my favorite Microsoft Azure cloud services, Azure Service Bus. The online Meetup tech event was hosted by Marilag Dimatulag of Azure User Group Manila and was also a featured speaker at the event. It was an inspirational collaborative online live event with other fellow Filipina Azure Developers working in the tech industry in different countries – Philippines, Sweden, Denmark and U.S.A.
Giving a technical lightning talk online is one of the things I least expect to do since I am kind of shy being the center of attention. When I was young, I didn’t want to be on stage and it scared me to imagine that the people would all focus on me. Through experience and social exposure meeting new and different types of people through the years, I became confident being myself talking and sharing in groups. Of course, I still get nervous, but somehow I just dare do it sometimes! 🙂 I experienced leading groups of students, taught programming and even did voluntary tech talks a few developer meetings with old developer colleagues. I guess my interest and passion in sharing my knowledge and making the difference are the main reasons why I conquered the barriers of being “shy” in the crowd. A special invitation to be a tech speaker came few weeks ago.
The line-up of Filipina Azure Developers speakers. Meet and learn more about their biographies below.
Jonah Carrio Andersson (myself), a Software Developer, Forefront Consulting in Sweden
Jonah is a Filipina-Swedish Software Developer, Cloud Developer and Tech Mentor.
She was also a programming coach educating kids and students about basic programming. Currently working as Full Stack Developer at Forefront Consulting in Sweden. She is interested in developing systems/apps in different programming languages using new technologies such as Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Self-education, continuous learning and working on a technical project with a purpose ignites more of her passion and interests in tech and programming. She likes to spend time analyzing and solving technical problems as well as connecting with other developers and mentoring other young women in tech.
Marilag Dimatulac, Co-Founder, Dewise
Marilag is a solution architect who puts the building blocks together to solve problems through software. She is the co-founder of Dewise, a development company based in Copenhagen and Manila, delivering web and mobile apps for the enterprise. To give back to the tech community, she has started Azure User Group Manila and speaks regularly at meetups and conferences. She lives two lives on each side of the planet, defying distance, abolishing cross-cultural barriers and scaling walls, to work, play and spend time with wonderfully diverse people.
Adrienne Tacke, Developer Advocate, MongoDB
Adrienne Braganza Tacke is a Filipina software engineer, international speaker, and published author of the book Coding for Kids: Python. She is also a LinkedIn Learning instructor who specializes in Azure and Cloud Development courses. Currently, she is a Senior Developer Advocate for MongoDB where she happily educates and empowers developers to become great ones (perhaps using MongoDB in the process 
). She takes great delight in solving complex problems, creating awesome things, and using the right tools for the problem at hand. Most of all, she relishes the opportunity to connect with developers from around the world.
Angelica Lei Quebec, IoT Support Coordinator, Thinxtra
Angelica is the IoT Support Coordinator for Thinxtra, The IoT Telco in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Macau. Prior to joining Thinxtra, she has worked with Azure IoT projects that enabled clients in France and Netherlands to speed up their time-to-market and to lower down their operational costs. Working on real world Industry 4.0 solutions and her excitement in pursuing to know more about the world of IoT led her to Thinxtra, where she is helping their clients to succeed in building sustainable IoT Solutions with the Sigfox 0G Global Network. She couldn’t be more thankful for the bliss of working with the world of IoT and she wants to share it with the world
Overall, the speakers did great in each tech talk.
Adrienne shared her technical knowledge and experience about using Azure DevOps in her development projects, Angelica talked about her skills working with her Azure IoT projects, Marilag talked about Azure Cosmos DB, and I talked about Azure Service Bus. We also shared and discussed our inspirational stories on how we got into tech, what our ambitions, and how we all want to make a difference!
I hope that the audience who watched us live learned a lot and got inspired.
It is also my hope that the event with our inspirational sharing and talks about being a woman/Filipina in tech became an eye-opener and have inspired other female programmers not just in the Philippines but also in Sweden and worldwide. To get out hiding, connect with us and be a role model to others!
Personally, I believe that it was a great initiative and looking forward to the next events organized by AZUGMNL – Azure User Group Manila.
If you missed watching us and if you have 3.5 hours to spare learning new interesting techy stuff about Azure from us, please watch the recorded YouTube broadcast Filipina Azure developers talk about their favorite Azure technology below.