Keynote Speakers

Abigail Mesrenyame Dogbe is an Open Source Researcher, Community Builder and Programs Manager from Ghana, who loves the power that Open Source can put in people’s hands and wants to help create more awareness, through community building, advocacy and research. She is currently in her third year of graduate school, conducting research as part of the University of Cincinnati's School of IT program.

She is a member and contributor within the African Python and Django software communities and has invested time and effort in encouraging collaboration and sustainability within Open Source communities, particularly engaging the youth in open source initiatives, through speaking and organizing events/workshops in both local and international communities. She envisions a world where young people are consistently empowered with open source skills to address challenges in their communities while building practical, real-world experience. Currently, she is actively involved with the Python Software Foundation’s Education and Outreach Workgroup and is developing a toolkit with resources to help Python community and conference organizers navigate their work more effectively.

As a result of Mesrenyame's tenacity and commitment to contributing to open source communities, she was nominated and is a fellow at the Python Software Foundation, an Individual Member at the Django Software Foundation, a recipient of a Python Software Foundation Community Service Award, a Google Open Source Peer Bonus Award, and a recipient of the inaugural Outstanding PyLady Award.

When she is not contributing to open source, she is inspiring the next generation of Women in STEM at Mesrenyame & FRIENDS a girls in STEM initiative, because she believes that women, technology, and education need to come together to shape a stronger future.

Jessica Garson is a Python programmer, educator, and artist. She currently works at Elastic as a Senior Developer Advocate. Previously, Jessica was at Twitter for four years, working in Developer Relations. She has spoken at conferences all over the globe, ranging from PyCon to Write the Docs.

In her spare time, she uses code and modular synthesizers to make music and audio-reactive video art.

In his sordid career, Leon Adato has worked as an actor, bug exterminator, wild-animal remover,
electrician, carpenter, stage-combat instructor, American Sign Language interpreter, and Sunday school
teacher.

Oh, and he works with computers, starting back in 1989 (when you could get a free copy of Windows 286 on twelve 5¼” floppies when you bought a copy of Excel 1.0). In IT, he’s had jobs as a classroom instructor, course ware designer, desktop support tech, sysadmin, and network engineer.

Then, about 25 years ago, he got involved with monitoring, working with a wide range of tools: Tivoli,
Nagios, Patrol, ZenOss, janky perl scripts, OpenView, SiteScope, SolarWinds, Grafana, Zabbix, New Relic, and Kentik. In the course of that work, he's designed solutions for companies that ranged in size from modest (~10 systems); to significant (1,000 - 5,000 systems); to ludicrous (250,000 systems in 5,000 locations).