Since joining Xamarin in 2013, I have been lucky enough to speak to hundreds of thousands of people all around the world. I love the ability to help developers by sharing my passion for C# and mobile & desktop development for iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows with Xamarin/.NET MAUI. In addition to Xamarin/.NET MAUI, you may often find me presenting on developer topics such as .NET, ASP.NET, C#, DevOps, and more.
Where Is James Speaking next?
Look out for me at these upcoming conferences:
- November 2022 - Visual Studio Live - Orlando
- November 2022 - .NET Conf - Virtual
- March 2023 - Visual Studio Live - Las Vegas
James At Your Conference or Event
Want to see me at your conference or event? Feel free to contact me at any time.
I prefer to attend and speak at conferences that are actively working on improving diversity throughout all aspects of the conference. From attendees, to speakers, to marketing of the conference, it must be inclusive to everyone. Ashe Dryden has a great article on how to increase diversity at your conference.
I have a set of guidelines for conferences before I start discussing presenting or attending. I want to thank Karolina Szczur for her awesome set of guidelines which I was inspired by and for which some I have taken word for word.
Enforced Code of Conduct
This is an absolute must have and be prominently displayed in both web and print. This means that it is visible and not buried deep down on some random page. As a bonus, important contact information such as police, medical, etc. should be listed. There are a lot of great examples such as Pycon and VS Live
Diverse Lineup of Speakers
I mentioned this at the start, but to me this means at least 40% of speakers should be women or people of color speaking on the subject of their expertise. A conference should try to be inclusive to everyone and I’d like to see as many gender identities, ethnic backgrounds, ages, and races as possible.
No Bad Actors
It is important that organizers do their due diligence to ensure that any speaker, announcer, or sponsor has not previously broken any Code of Conduct. If this is brought to my attention I will not participate in the event.
Diversity Scholarship
On the attendee side, it is important that conferences find a way to offer some sort of scholarship program that offer reduced or free tickets to individuals from underrepresented groups, who couldn't attend otherwise.
