Google Developer Group Cloud Southlake DFW

he future of AI isn’t just about building powerful models.
It’s about turning AI capability into real-world business outcomes.
That’s where the 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗗𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗼𝘆𝗲𝗱 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿 (𝗙𝗗𝗘) comes in.
Join us for a conversation about a rapidly evolving career path at the intersection of:
🔹 AI & Cloud Infrastructure
🔹 Production Engineering
🔹 Enterprise Architecture
🔹 Customer Transformation
🔹 Business Outcomes
We’ll explore what it takes to move beyond the traditional boundaries of engineering and become the person who connects technology, customers, and outcomes.
Whether you’re an engineer, architect, technologist, or technology leader exploring what’s next, this conversation is for you.
🌟 𝗡𝗘𝗪 𝗖𝗔𝗥𝗘𝗘𝗥 𝗛𝗢𝗥𝗜𝗭𝗢𝗡𝗙𝗼𝗿𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗗𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗼𝘆𝗲𝗱 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿
📅 Join us and explore the next frontier of technical careers.

​In classrooms 11.214 & 11.218

​We will have 6 spots for mock interviews. Sign up to o test out your self-introduction, guide a practice run on system design, or practice technical problem-solving: Open Google Form

Location

Naveen Jindal School of Management (JSOM)

800 W Campbell Rd, Richardson, TX 75080, USA

Agenda

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Speaker

Yujun Liang - Accenture (Associate Director)

Yujun is an Associate Director at Accenture. He started his Google Cloud journey in 2017 and had been on many challenging projects including leading roles on some of them. His expertise spans Cloud Infrastructure and Data analytics. Currently, Yujun works as the cloud architect on a Data Analytics Platform and helps the team remove roadblocks in networking and security.
He is also known…

Hosted By

James Anderson, FOUNDER

Senior Enterprise Architect and Cloud Leader with 25+ years IT (11+ Cloud) driving multi-cloud adoption, platform modernization, Generative AI initiatives, and $150M+ in cloud savings at Sabre Corporation. Bootstrapped enterprise-wide Architecture Guild (800+ members, 40+ sessions/year) and founded GDG Cloud Southlake (3,200+ members). Expert in Cloud Platforms, vendor governance, mainframe offload, and cross-functional leadership. Passionate educator teaching AWS, Azure, and Linux at Divergence Academy. Actively seeking next opportunity to lead transformative cloud, platform, and AI strategies.

Yujun Liang, Cloud Architect

Kenny Kon, Director Reliability Engineering

Technical leader in both retail and travel with a focus on Site Reliability Engineering. Experience in creating and leading global SRE teams.

Ramji Balasubramanian, Sr Director - Data Analytics & Engineering

Mike Shirk, GDG Cloud Southlake Organizer

Mike Shirk has carved out an illustrious 26-year career in cybersecurity sales, distinguished by his strategic approach to fostering relationships with key stakeholders and driving revenue growth. His deep commitment to customer advocacy sets him apart, with a philosophy that customer success naturally leads to achieving sales targets. Mike's belief in going beyond the call of duty for his clients has been a cornerstone of his success.

Throughout his career, Mike has made significant contributions to the cybersecurity industry, having worked with several leading firms where he established and nurtured executive relationships within Fortune 1-500 companies. His dedication to building his network and offering support to peers and business partners is a testament to his collaborative approach and leadership qualities.

Mike's professional journey is a testament to the power of customer-centric sales strategies and the importance of building lasting relationships in the business world. His achievements and methods serve as a model for excellence in cybersecurity sales, demonstrating that a focus on customer success is integral to personal and organizational success.

Complete your event RSVP here: https://gdg.community.dev/events/details/google-gdg-cloud-southlake-presents-external-yujun-liang-speaking-at-new-career-horizon-forward-deployed-engineer/.

DevOpsDays Dallas 2026
September 28–29, 2026
Southwest Airlines Wings Building, Dallas, TX

DevOpsDays is coming to Dallas! Join practitioners, leaders, and enthusiasts for two days of talks, open spaces, and community connection focused on DevOps culture, practices, and technology.

Agenda

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Hosted By

James Anderson, FOUNDER

Senior Enterprise Architect and Cloud Leader with 25+ years IT (11+ Cloud) driving multi-cloud adoption, platform modernization, Generative AI initiatives, and $150M+ in cloud savings at Sabre Corporation. Bootstrapped enterprise-wide Architecture Guild (800+ members, 40+ sessions/year) and founded GDG Cloud Southlake (3,200+ members). Expert in Cloud Platforms, vendor governance, mainframe offload, and cross-functional leadership. Passionate educator teaching AWS, Azure, and Linux at Divergence Academy. Actively seeking next opportunity to lead transformative cloud, platform, and AI strategies.

Yujun Liang, Cloud Architect

Kenny Kon, Director Reliability Engineering

Technical leader in both retail and travel with a focus on Site Reliability Engineering. Experience in creating and leading global SRE teams.

Ramji Balasubramanian, Sr Director - Data Analytics & Engineering

Mike Shirk, GDG Cloud Southlake Organizer

Mike Shirk has carved out an illustrious 26-year career in cybersecurity sales, distinguished by his strategic approach to fostering relationships with key stakeholders and driving revenue growth. His deep commitment to customer advocacy sets him apart, with a philosophy that customer success naturally leads to achieving sales targets. Mike's belief in going beyond the call of duty for his clients has been a cornerstone of his success.

Throughout his career, Mike has made significant contributions to the cybersecurity industry, having worked with several leading firms where he established and nurtured executive relationships within Fortune 1-500 companies. His dedication to building his network and offering support to peers and business partners is a testament to his collaborative approach and leadership qualities.

Mike's professional journey is a testament to the power of customer-centric sales strategies and the importance of building lasting relationships in the business world. His achievements and methods serve as a model for excellence in cybersecurity sales, demonstrating that a focus on customer success is integral to personal and organizational success.

Complete your event RSVP here: https://gdg.community.dev/events/details/google-gdg-cloud-southlake-presents-externalin-person-devopsdays-dallas/.

GDG Cloud Southlake #56: Alex Snihovyi: Getting Into DevOps in the AI Era

Alex is going to share his experience of how DevOps requirements evolved and what companies will be looking for in 2027. He's also going to share an actionable plan on how to get started, what actually matters for interviews, the job itself and how to not waste time doing random courses.

Alex is a DevOps Expert with 12+ years of experience in the industry. He's founded LastDevOps - a company that helps people break into DevOps. His Last DevOps Academy is a Number 2 DevOps community of Skool platform with over 200+ active members with multiple success stories of people who just got into DevOps and got promoted. His LastDevOps Applicant - a proprietary AI-native interview preparation platform that helps both, engineers, who want to prepare for a job search, and companies who want to find candidates fast.

Agenda

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Speaker

Oleksandr (Alex) Snihovyi - LastDevOps (Founder & CEO)

Alex has been in the IT industry for over 10 years working with companies from healthcare, travel & hospitality, finance and retail industries. He has a Software Engineering background and extensive DevOps & Cloud expertise. Alex has been fond of sharing knowledge with customers, students, fellow colleagues and strangers. This led Alex to creating "challenges" and co-founding

GDG Cloud Southlake #57: Kanchana Patlolla: 20 Questions for the Agentic Enterprise From Prototype to Production

As artificial intelligence transitions from conversational chatbots to autonomous, goal-driven reasoning systems, engineering teams must overcome complex hurdles in architecture, orchestration, and governance to deploy agents successfully in production. Drawing from Google Cloud's foundational framework, this talk breaks down the 20 essential questions every developer, architect, and tech lead must answer across the entire agent lifecycle. Attendees will learn how to evaluate development frameworks from low-code builders to code-first SDKs, connect multi-agent systems via open standards like the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol, optimize token budgets and context memory, and implement robust security guardrails for enterprise environments—providing a practical roadmap to move AI agents from experimental prototypes to secure, scalable enterprise implementations.

Kanchana Patlolla spearheads Technical Solution Management for AI Agents and data engineering solutions powered by Generative AI. Her responsibilities include shaping portfolio strategy, pinpointing enterprise challenges, and devising strategies for seamless integration of these solutions.

Previously, Kanchana served as an AI/ML Specialist within Google Cloud Platform. In this capacity, she designed architectures for New England-based clients, guiding them through their cloud adoption, particularly in their machine learning endeavors.

Outside of her professional life, Kanchana enjoys exploring various cuisines and spending quality time with her children.

Agenda

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Speaker

Kanchana Patlolla - Google (Data and AI/ML Specialist Customer Engineer)

Kanch is an AI/ML Specialist in Google Cloud Platform. She has architected solutions with major public cloud providers in Financial services industries on their quest to cloud particularly in their Big Data and machine learning journey. She is excited to be in a field where she constantly learns about the latest technologies which help drive innovation in many sectors
In her spare time, …

Host

James Anderson - GDG Cloud Southlake (Founder)

Senior Enterprise Architect and Cloud Leader with 25+ years IT (11+ Cloud) driving multi-cloud adoption, platform modernization, Generative AI initiatives, and $150M+ in cloud savings at Sabre Corporation. Bootstrapped enterprise-wide Architecture Guild (800+ members, 40+ sessions/year) and founded GDG Cloud Southlake (3,200+ members). Expert in Cloud Platforms, vendor governance, mainframe of…

Complete your event RSVP here: https://gdg.community.dev/events/details/google-gdg-cloud-southlake-presents-gdg-cloud-southlake-57-kanchana-patlolla-20-questions-for-the-agentic-enterprise-from-prototype-to-production/.