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.NET Conf 2026

Community Edition South Africa

Durban, Cape Town & Bloemfontein

Three cities. One vision. Join the South African .NET community for an unforgettable conference experience.

Durban

Nov 21, 2026

Cape Town

Nov 28, 2026

Bloemfontein

Dec 5, 2026

Expected

400+ Attendees

Get your free tickets now!

Durban Cape Town Bloemfontein

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About .NET Conf 2026 Community Edition South Africa

.NET Conf is a free, community-driven event that celebrates .NET and showcases the latest innovations in the .NET ecosystem.

This year's South African Community Edition returns across three major cities, bringing you the latest in .NET 11 development, cloud-native applications, and the ever-evolving AI landscape.

The event has a dual nature: it combines .NET Conf and Season of AI in one community conference. Expect .NET sessions alongside AI sessions, with General topics in the mix, across multiple tracks in each city.

Whether you're a seasoned .NET developer or just starting your journey, .NET Conf 2026 Community Edition South Africa offers something for everyone—from deep technical sessions to hands-on workshops and networking opportunities with industry leaders.

Registration

Choose your city and join us for an amazing day of learning and networking.

Durban

Durban

November 21, 2026

  • Full-day conference
  • Multiple tracks: General, AI and .NET topics
  • Networking opportunities
  • Lunch & refreshments
Get Tickets
Cape Town

Cape Town

November 28, 2026

  • Full-day conference
  • Multiple tracks: General, AI and .NET topics
  • Networking opportunities
  • Lunch & refreshments
Get Tickets
Bloemfontein

Bloemfontein

December 5, 2026

  • Full-day conference
  • Multiple tracks: General, AI and .NET topics
  • Networking opportunities
  • Lunch & refreshments
Get Tickets

Schedule

DraftAgenda for Durban, Cape Town and Bloemfontein, subject to change.

Three rooms at Richfield Campus Umhlanga. The .NET Conf track runs in Lecture 1. Day runs 08:00 – 18:00.
Visit the Data & AI Community Day Durban: Encore event site

08:00 - 08:20

Registration (general area)

08:30 - 08:50

Welcome, Introduction & General Keynote

09:00 - 09:50

Keynote: Welcome to .NET 11

Allan Pead, Matthew Leibowitz, Niels Berglund

Auditorium

.NET Conf – Lecture 1

Lecture 5

10:00 - 10:50
Auditorium

Spec-Driven Development with GitHub Copilot, Coding without losing the Plot

Lawrance Reddy

Breakout · 50 min
10:00 - 10:50
.NET Conf – Lecture 1

Agents Building Agentic Apps: AI Goes Mobile with .NET MAUI

Matthew Leibowitz

Breakout · 50 min
10:00 - 10:50
Lecture 5

Jev—a deep dive into universal classification

Dean Martin

Breakout · 50 min
11:00 - 11:50
Auditorium

Rise of the Outliers: What to Build When You Can Build Anything

Jonathan Pillay

Breakout · 50 min
11:00 - 11:50
.NET Conf – Lecture 1

Arduino Meets Its Sharper Half: An Edge HMI on Two Brains

Allan Pead

Breakout · 50 min
11:00 - 11:50
Lecture 5

Don’t Store the River: Rethinking Analytics for Real-Time Data

James McGillivray

Breakout · 50 min
11:50 - 12:55

Lunch

Lecture 4

13:00 - 13:20
Auditorium

Bots Just Wanna Browse

Andrew Collier

Talk · 20 min
13:00 - 13:20
.NET Conf – Lecture 1

The privacy firewall: keeping pastoral notes away from the finance office with row-level security

Wesley Sing

Talk · 20 min
13:00 - 13:20
Lecture 5

The Power of the Network An introduction to knowledge graphs, Cypher and GraphRAG

Lihle Gumede

Talk · 20 min
13:30 - 13:50
Auditorium

Producing accurate AI workflows without trusting the model

Nkosikhona Mlaba

Talk · 20 min
13:30 - 13:50
.NET Conf – Lecture 1

Developing A .NET Sports Predictor

Uvaan Covenden

Talk · 20 min
13:30 - 13:50
Lecture 5

Wait, what does Optimization really entail?

Krishnarupa Sewsunker

Talk · 20 min
14:00 - 14:20
Auditorium

IDP in Corporate environment

Murali Veeraragoo

Talk · 20 min
14:00 - 14:20
.NET Conf – Lecture 1

A Practical Student Story: Solar Car Telemetry Dashboard

Jacqui Muller

Talk · 20 min
14:00 - 14:20
Lecture 5

Giving AI Agents Hands Without Giving Them the Keys

Sisanda Lisa Masango

Talk · 20 min
14:30 - 15:20
Auditorium

A Workspace is not an Architecture

Michael Johnson

Breakout · 50 min
14:30 - 15:20
.NET Conf – Lecture 1

Don't Ask, Watch: Real-Time Data and AI with .NET 11 and Foundry Local

Niels Berglund

Breakout · 50 min
14:30 - 15:20
Lecture 5

The ladder for productive agents

Sheldon Williams

Breakout · 50 min
15:30 - 16:20
Auditorium

The Hidden Cost of “Just Call the LLM”: Architecture Patterns for Cost-Efficient GenAI

Fanie Ndlovu

Breakout · 50 min
15:30 - 16:20
.NET Conf – Lecture 1

Security in .NET and the impact on user experience

Rendani Kruger

Breakout · 50 min
15:30 - 16:20
Lecture 5

Claude Code vs the Chaos Button - A practical Claude Code masterclass

Alisa Diya Thool, Kalreen Govender

Breakout · 50 min
16:30 - 17:20

Panel Discussion

17:30 - 18:00

Closing Remarks & Prize Giving

Two tracks with 10-minute breaks between sessions. Day runs 08:30 – 17:30.

08:30 - 09:30

Arrival & Registration

09:30 - 10:15

Keynote: Welcome to .NET 11

Allan Pead, Matthew Leibowitz, Neil Thompson

Track 1

Track 2

10:25 - 11:10
Track 1

Agents Building Agentic Apps: AI Goes Mobile with .NET MAUI

Matthew Leibowitz

Breakout · 45 min
10:25 - 11:10
Track 2

Human-approved AI agents in production: architecture lessons from a working CRM

Wesley Sing

Breakout · 45 min
11:20 - 12:05
Track 1

The Agent Is Just a Loop: Building AI Agents in C# With Microsoft Agent Framework

Niels Berglund

Breakout · 45 min
11:20 - 12:05
Track 2

When Your AI Agent Passes Every .NET Test but Builds the Wrong Feature

Shilpa Mitra

Breakout · 45 min
12:15 - 13:00
Track 1

RAG in the Real World: Guardrails, Semantic Caching and Security for Production AI

Abed Matini

Breakout · 45 min
12:15 - 13:00
Track 2

Lightning round

  • 12:15Your .NET Agent Found the Evidence. Should It Answer?
    Sromana Mukhopadhyay · 15 min
  • 12:30Second Brain, Sharper Agent: Feeding Your .NET Knowledge to GitHub Copilot CLI
    Malachi Mathins · 15 min
  • 12:45The privacy firewall: keeping pastoral notes away from the finance office with row-level security
    Wesley Sing · 15 min
13:00 - 14:00

Lunch

14:00 - 14:45
Track 1

We Removed the Agents from Our Agentic Workflow, and It Worked Better

Richard Basson

Breakout · 45 min
14:00 - 14:45
Track 2

Your AI Agent Has Database Access. Now What?

Racheline Mouyana

Breakout · 45 min
14:55 - 15:40
Track 1

Beyond the Prompt: Exploring AI-Assisted Game Development with .NET

Neil Thompson

Breakout · 45 min
14:55 - 15:40
Track 2

Building Observable, Governable AI Agents with .NET

Wayne Munro

Breakout · 45 min
15:50 - 16:35
Track 1

Bringing the Edge Into Focus

Allan Pead

Breakout · 45 min
15:50 - 16:35
Track 2

Lightning round

  • 15:50If AI Knows Everything, What Do I Know?
    Chiedza Kapfunde · 15 min
  • 16:05Boxing Without Buttons: Building a Motion-Controlled Browser Game
    Malachi Mathins, Hayden Sassman · 15 min
  • 16:20Great Prompts, Wrong Model: The Missing Half for Getting Value from AI
    Ethan Buckle · 15 min
16:45 - 17:30
Track 1

Build Apps Where Your Data Lives: Getting Started with Microsoft Fabric Apps

Huguette Mbuyu

Breakout · 45 min
16:45 - 17:30
Track 2

A Case Study in Sovereignty: The Illusion of Control

Nicolas Blank

Breakout · 45 min

Two tracks with 10-minute breaks between sessions. Day runs 08:30 – 16:35.

08:30 - 09:30

Arrival & Registration

09:30 - 10:15

Keynote: Welcome to .NET 11

Allan Pead, Matthew Leibowitz, Neil Thompson

Track 1

Track 2

10:25 - 11:10
Track 1

Agents Building Agentic Apps: AI Goes Mobile with .NET MAUI

Matthew Leibowitz

Breakout · 45 min
10:25 - 11:10
Track 2

When Your AI Agent Passes Every .NET Test but Builds the Wrong Feature

Shilpa Mitra

Breakout · 45 min
11:20 - 12:05
Track 1

The Agent Is Just a Loop: Building AI Agents in C# With Microsoft Agent Framework

Niels Berglund

Breakout · 45 min
11:20 - 12:05
Track 2

Stop Shipping Agents on Vibes: Continuous Quality Monitoring for .NET AI Agents with Amazon Bedrock

Adeline Makokha

Breakout · 45 min
12:15 - 13:00
Track 1

Bringing the Edge Into Focus

Allan Pead

Breakout · 45 min
12:15 - 13:00
Track 2

MCP is not a magic word: What it means for Software Architecture

Felicia Sephodi

Breakout · 45 min
13:00 - 14:00

Lunch

14:00 - 14:45
Track 1

Contributing to open source as a .NET developer

Veliswa Boya

Breakout · 45 min
14:00 - 14:45
Track 2

Human-approved AI agents in production: architecture lessons from a working CRM

Wesley Sing

Breakout · 45 min
14:55 - 15:40
Track 1

Beyond the Prompt: Exploring AI-Assisted Game Development with .NET

Neil Thompson

Breakout · 45 min
14:55 - 15:40
Track 2

Security in .NET and the impact on user experience

Rendani Kruger

Breakout · 45 min
15:50 - 16:35
Track 1

Session to be announced

Breakout · 45 min
15:50 - 16:35
Track 2

Lightning round

  • 15:50Your .NET Agent Found the Evidence. Should It Answer?
    Sromana Mukhopadhyay · 15 min
  • 16:05The privacy firewall: keeping pastoral notes away from the finance office with row-level security
    Wesley Sing · 15 min
  • 16:20Open Q&A with the lightning speakers

Speakers

DraftSpeaker lineup for Durban, Cape Town and Bloemfontein, subject to change.

Allan Pead

Allan Pead

CTO, developer, lecturer, Microsoft Internet of Things MVP, Microsoft Dev Technologies MVP, Microsoft Azure MVP

  • Keynote: Welcome to .NET 11
  • Arduino Meets Its Sharper Half: An Edge HMI on Two Brains
Matthew Leibowitz

Matthew Leibowitz

Principal Software Engineer at Microsoft building .NET MAUI

  • Keynote: Welcome to .NET 11
  • Agents Building Agentic Apps: AI Goes Mobile with .NET MAUI
Niels Berglund

Niels Berglund

Software/AI Architect Lead, Derivco | Microsoft AI MVP

  • Keynote: Welcome to .NET 11
  • Don't Ask, Watch: Real-Time Data and AI with .NET 11 and Foundry Local
Alisa Diya Thool

Alisa Diya Thool

A Junior Software developer exploring the skills of modern day science

  • Claude Code vs the Chaos Button - A practical Claude Code masterclass
Andrew Collier

Andrew Collier

Data Scientist / R & Open Source Enthusiast

  • Bots Just Wanna Browse
Dean Martin

Dean Martin

Your friendly neighborhood AI Architect, MagicOrange

  • Jev—a deep dive into universal classification
Fanie Ndlovu

Fanie Ndlovu

Tech Coach

  • The Hidden Cost of “Just Call the LLM”: Architecture Patterns for Cost-Efficient GenAI
Jacqui Muller

Jacqui Muller

UiPath MVP | Industry Coordinator @ Belgium Campus | Director @ JPanda & Tegnika | PhD Student @ NWU | Data Analysis & Visualisation Expert @ BRICS Skills Development | Freelance Consultant

  • A Practical Student Story: Solar Car Telemetry Dashboard
James McGillivray

James McGillivray

Director of Content Creation and Customer Delivery, Cobalt Analytics

  • Don’t Store the River: Rethinking Analytics for Real-Time Data
Jonathan Pillay

Jonathan Pillay

Senior Dev, Resident Outlier

  • Rise of the Outliers: What to Build When You Can Build Anything
Kalreen Govender

Kalreen Govender

Derivco - software Engineer

  • Claude Code vs the Chaos Button - A practical Claude Code masterclass
Krishnarupa Sewsunker

Krishnarupa Sewsunker

Data Science Teacher (Online), BSc. Mathematics & Computer Science (USA)

  • Wait, what does Optimization really entail?
Lawrance Reddy

Lawrance Reddy

Cloud CTO @Vaxowave

  • Spec-Driven Development with GitHub Copilot, Coding without losing the Plot
Lihle Gumede

Lihle Gumede

Neo4j, Community Lead | Data Scientist | Biomedical Technologist

  • The Power of the Network An introduction to knowledge graphs, Cypher and GraphRAG
Michael Johnson

Michael Johnson

SQL User group lead and Microsoft data platform MVP

  • A Workspace is not an Architecture
Murali Veeraragoo

Murali Veeraragoo

Standard Bank, Lead AI specialist

  • IDP in Corporate environment
Nkosikhona Mlaba

Nkosikhona Mlaba

Module Demonstrator @ University of KwaZulu-Natal | IT Consultant @ Enactus UKZN | System Administrator @ Tech Horizons | DevOps intern @ Future Foundation

  • Producing accurate AI workflows without trusting the model
Rendani Kruger

Rendani Kruger

Director

  • Security in .NET and the impact on user experience
Sheldon Williams

Sheldon Williams

SGW Systems Engineers - Lead Software Engineer | Applied AI

  • The ladder for productive agents
Sisanda Lisa Masango

Sisanda Lisa Masango

Cybersecurity innovator| AI Security Explorer | Helping Developers & Small Businesses Build Safer Systems

  • Giving AI Agents Hands Without Giving Them the Keys
Uvaan Covenden

Uvaan Covenden

Aspiring iGaming , Software Engineer , Pixi JS currently a junior PHP laravel , mysql developer

  • Developing A .NET Sports Predictor
Wesley Sing

Wesley Sing

Founder of Appetite Technology. Builds human-approved AI agents in production.

  • The privacy firewall: keeping pastoral notes away from the finance office with row-level security
Allan Pead

Allan Pead

CTO, developer, lecturer, Microsoft Internet of Things MVP, Microsoft Dev Technologies MVP, Microsoft Azure MVP

  • Keynote: Welcome to .NET 11
  • Bringing the Edge Into Focus
Matthew Leibowitz

Matthew Leibowitz

Principal Software Engineer at Microsoft building .NET MAUI

  • Keynote: Welcome to .NET 11
  • Agents Building Agentic Apps: AI Goes Mobile with .NET MAUI
Neil Thompson

Neil Thompson

Principal at Accso

  • Keynote: Welcome to .NET 11
  • Beyond the Prompt: Exploring AI-Assisted Game Development with .NET
Wesley Sing

Wesley Sing

Founder, Appetite Technology. Builds Naya CRM.

  • Human-approved AI agents in production: architecture lessons from a working CRM
  • The privacy firewall: keeping pastoral notes away from the finance office with row-level security
Niels Berglund

Niels Berglund

Software/AI Architect Lead, Derivco | Microsoft AI MVP

  • The Agent Is Just a Loop: Building AI Agents in C# With Microsoft Agent Framework
Shilpa Mitra

Shilpa Mitra

Co-founder & CEO, FlowStacks | Building infrastructure and developer tools for AI agents

  • When Your AI Agent Passes Every .NET Test but Builds the Wrong Feature
Abed Matini

Abed Matini

Senior Backend Developer at Ogilvy

  • RAG in the Real World: Guardrails, Semantic Caching and Security for Production AI
Sromana Mukhopadhyay

Sromana Mukhopadhyay

Co-founder & Principal Researcher, BlockQuest Labs Inc. | AI Evaluation & Agent Reliability

  • Your .NET Agent Found the Evidence. Should It Answer?
Malachi Mathins

Malachi Mathins

Full Stack .NET Developer building civic tech for Cape Town

  • Second Brain, Sharper Agent: Feeding Your .NET Knowledge to GitHub Copilot CLI
  • Boxing Without Buttons: Building a Motion-Controlled Browser Game
Richard Basson

Richard Basson

Practice Lead: Software Engineering - DVT

  • We Removed the Agents from Our Agentic Workflow, and It Worked Better
Racheline Mouyana

Racheline Mouyana

Data & Analytiics Engineer

  • Your AI Agent Has Database Access. Now What?
Wayne Munro

Wayne Munro

Enterprise AI Architect · Microsoft Certified Trainer · Building Trustable AI Economies

  • Building Observable, Governable AI Agents with .NET
Chiedza Kapfunde

Chiedza Kapfunde

Python Tutor & Junior Software Developer

  • If AI Knows Everything, What Do I Know?
Hayden Sassman

Hayden Sassman

Web Developer and Instructional Designer, building ambitious interactive experiences.

  • Boxing Without Buttons: Building a Motion-Controlled Browser Game
Ethan Buckle

Ethan Buckle

AI developer, robotics world champion, UCT engineering student

  • Great Prompts, Wrong Model: The Missing Half for Getting Value from AI
Huguette Mbuyu

Huguette Mbuyu

Cloud South Architect (Microsoft)

  • Build Apps Where Your Data Lives: Getting Started with Microsoft Fabric Apps
Nicolas Blank

Nicolas Blank

NBConsult, Group CEO, M365 Apps & Services, Microsoft Azure

  • A Case Study in Sovereignty: The Illusion of Control
Allan Pead

Allan Pead

CTO, developer, lecturer, Microsoft Internet of Things MVP, Microsoft Dev Technologies MVP, Microsoft Azure MVP

  • Keynote: Welcome to .NET 11
  • Bringing the Edge Into Focus
Matthew Leibowitz

Matthew Leibowitz

Principal Software Engineer at Microsoft building .NET MAUI

  • Keynote: Welcome to .NET 11
  • Agents Building Agentic Apps: AI Goes Mobile with .NET MAUI
Neil Thompson

Neil Thompson

Principal at Accso

  • Keynote: Welcome to .NET 11
  • Beyond the Prompt: Exploring AI-Assisted Game Development with .NET
Shilpa Mitra

Shilpa Mitra

Co-founder & CEO, FlowStacks | Building infrastructure and developer tools for AI agents

  • When Your AI Agent Passes Every .NET Test but Builds the Wrong Feature
Niels Berglund

Niels Berglund

Software/AI Architect Lead, Derivco | Microsoft AI MVP

  • The Agent Is Just a Loop: Building AI Agents in C# With Microsoft Agent Framework
Adeline Makokha

Adeline Makokha

AWS UserGroup Kenya Leader, AWS Community Builder, Software Quality Engineer at Safaricom PLC

  • Stop Shipping Agents on Vibes: Continuous Quality Monitoring for .NET AI Agents with Amazon Bedrock
Felicia Sephodi

Felicia Sephodi

Software Engineer

  • MCP is not a magic word: What it means for Software Architecture
Veliswa Boya

Veliswa Boya

Developer Advocate at AWS

  • Contributing to open source as a .NET developer
Wesley Sing

Wesley Sing

Founder, Appetite Technology. Builds Naya CRM.

  • Human-approved AI agents in production: architecture lessons from a working CRM
  • The privacy firewall: keeping pastoral notes away from the finance office with row-level security
Rendani Kruger

Rendani Kruger

Director

  • Security in .NET and the impact on user experience
Sromana Mukhopadhyay

Sromana Mukhopadhyay

Co-founder & Principal Researcher, BlockQuest Labs Inc. | AI Evaluation & Agent Reliability

  • Your .NET Agent Found the Evidence. Should It Answer?

SPONSORS

This event would not be possible without the help of our sponsors.

More Sponsors Coming Soon

Interested in sponsoring .NET Conf 2026 Community Edition South Africa? Get in touch.

Venues

Richfield Campus Umhlanga

Durban - November 21, 2026

Richfield Campus Umhlanga

Centenary Boulevard, Park Square, 5-9 Park Avenue, Umhlanga

View Map
BBD Cape Town

Cape Town - November 28, 2026

BBD Cape Town

3rd Floor, Northbank Building, No. 1 N Bank Ln, Century City, Cape Town, 7441

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Central University of Technology, Bloemfontein Campus

Bloemfontein - December 5, 2026

Central University of Technology (CUT)

20 President Brand Street, Westdene, Bloemfontein, 9300

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Meet the Team

We are so excited to be your organizing team with the support of our amazing volunteers.

Neil Thompson

Neil Thompson

Principal at Accso Cape Town | Speaker | Developer Community Organizer | Blogs

Allan Pead

Allan Pead

CTO, developer, lecturer, Microsoft Internet of Things MVP, Microsoft Dev Technologies MVP, Microsoft Azure MVP

Matthew Leibowitz

Matthew Leibowitz

Principal Software Engineer at Microsoft building .NET MAUI

Lou van der Bijl

Lou van der Bijl

Community Organizer

Niels Berglund

Niels Berglund

Software/AI Architect Lead, Derivco | Microsoft AI MVP

Code of Conduct