Im Speaking at BITCON 2025 – Easiest Way to Run LLMs Locally: Meet Docker Model Runner

🎤 I’m excited to share that I’ll be returning to BITCON in a week! I will be speaking at BITCON 2025, a gathering focused on Black voices in technology, innovation, and community. You can check out the full speaker lineup here: BITCON 2025 Speakers. The conference this year is virtual and its free. You can check out the site here: https://bitcon.blacksintechnology.net

The conference has a ton of great speakers lined up from some of the largest tech companies such as Google, Microsoft, and more. And to top it off the keynote this year is Kelsey Hightower! You dont want to miss this one.

My Session: “The Easiest Way to Run LLMs Locally: Meet Docker Model Runner”
Docker Captain: Steve Buchanan DMR session

At BITCON, I’ll be presenting “The Easiest Way to Run LLMs Locally: Meet Docker Model Runner”. In this session, I’ll look at:

  • Why run LLMs locally? The benefits in terms of cost, privacy, latency, and control
  • How Docker Model Runner simplifies things — containerizing large models, managing dependencies, and lowering friction
  • Demo and walkthrough — showing you step by step how to get a model up and running on your own machine or server
  • Best practices, pitfalls, and tips — what I’ve learned building and deploying these systems
  • Q&A / hands-on help — to get you started with your own setup

My goal is that attendees leave with a concrete, reproducible process they can apply right away.

Why It Matters

Large language models (LLMs) are powerful, but running them locally has often felt out of reach for smaller teams, indie devs, or people in resource-constrained environments. With the right tooling (like Docker Model Runner), we can lower that barrier—unlocking more experimentation, more privacy, and more control over where and how inference happens.

I believe this aligns well with the mission of BITCON: elevating voices, demystifying advanced tech, and making it accessible. I hope this talk helps bridge a gap for folks who want to explore AI locally without getting lost in infrastructure.

I am excited to be speaking at BITCON again. To learn more about my session check it out here:

BITCon Session: The Easiest Way to Run LLMs Locally: Meet Docker Model Runner

BITCON is free! Be sure to register today: HERE

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BIT Talk: Destination Cloud – Pivoting Your Career in Tech

This month I will be a guest speaker at the free Blacks In Technology Twin Cities chapter happy hour event. We will be having a tech career discussion. The topic is: “Destination Cloud – Pivoting Your Career in Tech with Steve Buchanan“.

When: The happy hour event will be on Wed, May 25, 2022, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM.

Location: Modern Well, 2909 S Wayzata Blvd, Minneapolis, MN 55405.

Join us for an evening with me and moderator Brian Waters as we explore career pathways in the Digital Space. Here are topics we will explore:

  • Choosing an area of interest
  • Being Strategic & Intentional in Career Search & Growth
  • Transitioning into Different Tech Disciplines & Industries, and
  • Identifying tech trends on the horizon!

This event is both in-person and virtual. The in-person location is Modern Well, 2909 S Wayzata Blvd, Minneapolis, MN 55405 and the zoom link is below. I hope you can make it out to this event!

Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85049210370?pwd=M0ZQR0twNTlQbTJGOUtDZjloVFA2dz09 or here: https://www.linkedin.com/events/destinationcloud-pivotingyourca6927748171498475520

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Speaking on Azure DevOps at BITCon 2019

BITCon is back in Minnesota this year. The event is shaping up to be another great one! This year BIT locked in the mayor of Minneapolis to keynote one of the days!

The conference also has a new website. The new website is https://bitcon.tech. It will be held at multple locations again through Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

I have the honor to speak at the event again. I will be giving one session and will potentially sit on a panel.

Here is the information on my session:

When:
Friday, October 11 • 1:45pm – 3:00pm

Title:
Azure DevOps + VS Code + Teams = Perfect Match

Description:
For anyone getting started with or already working with Azure managing your cloud environments through Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with ARM Templates at some point is guaranteed.

There are many extensions available to optimize VS Code for an enhanced ARM Template authoring experience. Discover how to integrate your Azure DevOps CI/CD pipeline with Teams for enhanced collaboration across your DevOps team. Get updates directly in a Teams channel for commits, pull requests, and learn how to work with an Azure DevOps Kanban board directly from Teams.

Come to this session and see why Azure DevOps + VS Code + Teams = Perfect Match.

What you will learn:

  • About the various ARM Template related extensions in VS Code
  • How to integrate Microsoft Teams with Azure DevOps

A few months back I blogged about Azure DevOps and Teams intergration here. It was a popular blog so I decided to turn this into a presentation with demos!

Here is a direct link to my session:

https://bitcon2019.sched.com/event/TCh8/azure-dev-ops-vs-code-teams-perfect-match

If you are attending BITCon 2019 be sure to check out my session!

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