mick and johnny

Author: jaydestro

client/src/pages/conf/agenda.json

@@ -13,6 +13,13 @@
       ],
       "url": ""
     },
+    {
+      "time": "9:48 AM",
+      "title": "Customer Testimonial: The ODP Corporation (Office Depot) | Mick Feller",
+      "description": "Mick Feller, Distinguished Software Engineer at The ODP Corporation (Office Depot), on powering an enterprise AI Personal Assistant with Azure Cosmos DB.",
+      "speakers": [{ "name": "Mick Feller", "slug": "mick-feller" }],
+      "url": "https://youtu.be/r8V5PAeD4ME"
+    },
     {
       "time": "9:50 AM",
       "title": "Cosmos DB Best Practices — A Lesson from Spacely Sprockets",
@@ -39,7 +46,7 @@
       "title": "MultiCloudDB: Write Once. Run Anywhere.",
       "description": "A sneak preview of a portable Java SDK that runs unchanged across Azure Cosmos DB, Amazon DynamoDB, and Google Cloud Spanner.",
       "speakers": [{ "name": "Theo van Kraay", "slug": "theo-van-kraay" }],
-      "url": ""
+      "url": "https://youtu.be/j6RgAfwwD30"
     },
     {
       "time": "11:30 AM",
@@ -55,6 +62,13 @@
       "speakers": [{ "name": "Khelan Modi", "slug": "khelan-modi" }],
       "url": ""
     },
+    {
+      "time": "12:23 PM",
+      "title": "Customer Testimonial: SOUTHWORKS | Johnny Halife",
+      "description": "Johnny Halife, Partner at SOUTHWORKS, on using Azure Cosmos DB as the operational backbone for cloud-native, event-driven customer builds.",
+      "speakers": [{ "name": "Johnny Halife", "slug": "johnny-halife" }],
+      "url": "https://youtu.be/Ay1q7mVOx-c"
+    },
     {
       "time": "12:25 PM",
       "title": "Querying and Indexing in Azure Cosmos DB: The Complete Guide",
@@ -124,19 +138,19 @@
       "title": "Designing Cost-Efficient, High-Scale Systems with Azure Cosmos DB: Lessons from Production",
       "description": "Repeatable data-modeling, TTL, Change Feed, and observability patterns that cut Cosmos DB costs without sacrificing performance or velocity.",
       "speakers": [{ "name": "Patrick Oguaju", "slug": "patrick-oguaju" }],
-      "url": ""
+      "url": "https://youtu.be/0jKYbTHTJ5A"
     },
     {
       "title": "Setting Up Your Azure Cosmos DB Development Environment (and Supercharging It with AI)",
       "description": "A complete Cosmos DB dev workflow — emulator, testing, CI/CD — supercharged with context files and prompting techniques for AI coding assistants.",
       "speakers": [{ "name": "Sajeetharan Sinnathurai", "slug": "sajeetharan-sinnathurai" }],
-      "url": ""
+      "url": "https://youtu.be/PrO_42ZC_1M"
     },
     {
       "title": "From JOINs to JSON: Migrating a Real-World ASP.NET App to Cosmos DB with GitHub Copilot",
       "description": "A prompt-by-prompt playbook for migrating AdventureWorks and an ASP.NET EF Core app to .NET 9 on Cosmos DB using GitHub Copilot and Agent Kit.",
       "speakers": [{ "name": "Sergiy Smyrnov", "slug": "sergiy-smyrnov" }],
-      "url": ""
+      "url": "https://youtu.be/zx9cBMB6rOg"
     },
     {
       "title": "Designing High-Scale Event-Driven Microservices with Azure Cosmos DB",

client/src/pages/conf/speakers2026.json

@@ -130,6 +130,22 @@
       "abstract": "As Azure Cosmos DB workloads scale, teams often experience rising RU costs, unpredictable latency, and uneven throughput caused by early design decisions that no longer meet production requirements.\n\nIn this session, I will walk through a realistic, high-volume data ingestion and querying workload that experienced rapid cost growth and performance degradation over time. Using Azure platform metrics, diagnostics, and query insights, we will examine how issues such as hot partitions, cross-partition queries, over-indexing, and inefficient throughput provisioning were identified.\n\nThe session will then demonstrate how targeted improvements in partition strategy, query design, indexing policies, and throughput management led to measurable reductions in RU consumption and improved system stability. Each optimization will be explained through the decision-making process behind it, supported by before-and-after comparisons of cost, latency, and throughput.\n\nAttendees will leave with a practical, repeatable framework for diagnosing and resolving common Cosmos DB performance and cost challenges."
     }
   },
+  {
+    "slug": "mick-feller",
+    "name": "Mick Feller",
+    "role": "Distinguished Software Engineer",
+    "company": "The ODP Corporation",
+    "img": "/img/speakers/mick-feller.jpg",
+    "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/mickfeller",
+    "x": "",
+    "blog": "",
+    "website": "",
+    "bio": "Passionate software engineering leader, with hands on skills in numerous technologies.",
+    "session": {
+      "title": "Customer Testimonial",
+      "abstract": "Mick Feller shares how The ODP Corporation (Office Depot) built a homegrown enterprise AI app — the Personal Assistant — on Azure Cosmos DB, combining time-series analytics with HR profile storage to give AI models richer context, while doubling usage year over year with hands-off scaling and fine-grained cost control."
+    }
+  },
   {
     "slug": "pamela-fox",
     "name": "Pamela Fox",
@@ -146,6 +162,22 @@
       "abstract": "Model Context Protocol (MCP) enables AI agents to securely access external data and services, but how can MCP servers store per-user data when multiple users share the same server?\n\nIn this session, we'll build a Python MCP server that authenticates users via Entra ID and stores their data in Azure Cosmos DB. I will walk through how to integrate OAuth with the FastMCP framework, use the Cosmos DB Python SDK, design partition keys for efficient per-user data isolation, and implement role-based access using Microsoft Graph group membership. I'll also share development tips when working with Cosmos DB: using the VS Code extension to explore data, chatting in GitHub Copilot with the data via the Cosmos MCP server, and empowering Copilot with agent skills to align the server code with Cosmos DB best practices.\n\nWalk away with a production-ready pattern for building authenticated MCP servers that keep each user's data private and secure."
     }
   },
+  {
+    "slug": "johnny-halife",
+    "name": "Johnny Halife",
+    "role": "Partner",
+    "company": "SOUTHWORKS",
+    "img": "/img/speakers/johnny.jpg",
+    "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnnyhalife-engineering",
+    "x": "",
+    "blog": "",
+    "website": "https://www.southworks.com/",
+    "bio": "Johnny Halife is a partner at SOUTHWORKS, a global software development scaleup that accelerates value for organisations and people. With over 17 years of experience in the IT software and services industry, he leads and delivers web applications and agile projects for clients across various sectors and regions, such as Microsoft, Warner Media, and Riot Games. He is also an official member of the Forbes Business Council, an invitation-only community for successful business leaders and entrepreneurs, where he shares his insights and expertise on innovation, technology, and growth.\n\nOutside of his leadership role at SOUTHWORKS, Johnny is the founder of MURAL, a San Francisco-based startup that enables teams to collaborate visually and creatively. He served as the chief technology officer of MURAL from 2012 to 2017, overseeing the product development and innovation. Johnny is passionate about design thinking, emerging technologies, and entrepreneurship, and has mentored and coached several startups and organisations, such as Startup Weekend, Microsoft Azure Accelerator, and IDEO U. He holds multiple certifications from IDEO U and AWS, and has studied computer science and software engineering at ORT Argentina and Universidad del CEMA.",
+    "session": {
+      "title": "Customer Testimonial: SOUTHWORKS",
+      "abstract": "Johnny Halife shares how SOUTHWORKS uses Azure Cosmos DB as the operational backbone for cloud-native applications they build for customers — real-time user context, event-driven systems, faster delivery, and consistent performance without reworking the data layer."
+    }
+  },
   {
     "slug": "kirill-gavrylyuk",
     "name": "Kirill Gavrylyuk",