Rik Hepworth

Bio

I have been a Director of Black Marble, a leading software company in the north of England for over ten years. Throughout my career I’ve worked with a broad range of vendors and equipment, usually getting them to work well together. I now run Black Marble’s Consultancy business, where my team and I are responsible for helping our customers’ IT activities drive business value.

My key areas of focus are Cloud and DevOps, and I work with customers in areas such as application modernisation, integration, improving development and delivery processes, and cloud governance. One of the great joys of my current role is that I get to engage with customers at many levels, from C-suite executives to individual developers and IT pros, learning about their work and goals and helping them to achieve more through better use of technology.

I am a Chartered IT Professional and member of the British Computing Society. I care about the level of professionalism in our industry and how we engage with our customers as practitioners.

As a proud supporter of our great technology community, I am involved with the organisation of the DDD North and Reading community conferences, and a member of the Admin Team for the Global Azure worldwide community event. You will find me speaking at conferences and user groups throughout the year, both in person and online.

Since 2014, I have been a member of the Microsoft MVP Award programme for my community activities focused on the Azure public cloud.

I’ve been in the industry for a long time now and worked with a broad range of technologies and platforms. If you see me at an event please introduce yourself – I’ll happily engage in conversation on anything from coax cabling to cloud, but especially community and Lego!