Carl Sargunar is an independent web and mobile application developer and technical consultant. Carl also enjoys working with the wider community, helping run the DDDSouthWest free conference and the .NET SouthWest monthly meetup.

Carl wasn't on the panel, but is an organiser of DDD South West and helped make this recording possible. He spoke on the podcast in the intro section about the DDD conference.

Chaithali Shashikanth Kundapur is an AI/ML Engineer who works on building and deploying production-grade AI and LLM systems. She is especially interested in making AI systems reliable, trustworthy, and usable in the real world, and enjoys sharing practical lessons from building AI beyond demos and hype. At DDD South West she gave a session titled "Building AI Systems You Can Actually Trust".

Rachel Breeze is Development Practice Lead at Nexer Digital, working in the Microsoft .NET stack. She is a 2x Microsoft MVP for .NET and Web Development, and a 6x Umbraco MVP. Rachel has been a developer for over 25 years and is passionate about accessibility and supporting and encouraging future developers (and drinks copious amounts of tea). Rachel was also on our first DDD South West panel back in 2024.

Richard Fennell is the Chief Technology Officer of Black Marble, a Microsoft Gold Partner based in the North of England that specialises in DevOps consultancy and bespoke development on Microsoft platforms. As CTO he is responsible for the delivery of systems and tools to allow Black Marble and their clients to deliver solutions efficiently - all underpinned by Azure DevOps tools and an agile process model. Richard is a Microsoft MVP for Developer Tools, an ALM Ranger, a Fellow of the British Computer Society and a Chartered Engineer.

Lotte Pitcher has been building websites with Microsoft technologies for longer than she cares to remember. She ran a web development agency in London but is now Head of the Developer Relations team at Umbraco, where she helps maintain a successful open-source project while engaging with its dedicated global community. Lotte is a Microsoft MVP and a long-time open-source contributor; she organises meetups, hackathons and conferences, speaks at events and releases software, and is a passionate advocate for active participation in tech communities. She also previously joined us on Episode 69 to talk about Umbraco and its community.

Kevlin Henney is an independent consultant, trainer, speaker and writer based in Bristol. His development interests and work with companies cover programming, practice and people. He is a contributor to the Modern Software Engineering YouTube channel and has written for many publications, including The Register and the O'Reilly Radar. Kevlin is co-author of two volumes in the Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture series, editor of 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know and co-editor of 97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know. He was also on our 2024 panel.

Stuart Caborn is a Distinguished Engineer at loveholidays, where he leads the Boost team helping engineering teams navigate complex technical and organisational decisions. He is fascinated by how company structures, ways of working, system designs, and AI shape each other, and has recently been collaborating with platform tech teams to explore what makes AI work at the team level and how those patterns scale across technology.