Speaking Experience

This page -like so many other pages on this site- is a WIP.

Upcoming

August TBA

Coding Live Stream

September 12

Testing PDF Files @ PDF Days 2022

The PDF Detectives @ PDF Days 2022
Co-Host: Kevin Willems

2022 (4)

June 14

Mixologist at Work
@ iText Customer Event 2022

Live Coding in which I explain the concepts of PDF/A and PDF/UA in a very tiny nutshell.

YouTube Recording

April 13

A Billion Laughs
@ YouTube Live

Live Stream in which I show how to debug a PDF file containing a variant of the Billion Laughs exploitation.

YouTube Recording

March 16

How to Use our Layout API
@ YouTube Live

Live Stream in which I explain the basics of our Layout API and how to work with it.

YouTube Recording

January 27

PDF/UA: the inclusive document format
@ iText Live Webinar

Co-host of the PDF/UA webinar. In this webinar I showcase how to achieve conformance to the PDF/UA standard using iText technology.

YouTube Recording

2021 (9)

December 7

PDF Security: What It Is, and Why You Need It
@ Open Core Summit

Michaël begins by discussing the concept of securing PDFs to prevent unauthorized use or viewing, and to ensure content remains unchanged. He then talks about the ways to secure PDFs and guard the content they contain, such as with passwords, encryption, and certificates, how digital signatures work to authenticate users and detect unauthorized changes, and the concept of non-repudiation for proof of the origin, authenticity, and integrity of data.

Finally, he explores how the implementation of secure PDFs into workflows can be achieved, and what solutions are available to allow this.

-No Recording Available-

October 28

PDF/A: digital documents to withstand the sands of time
@ iText Live Webinar

Co-host of the PDF/A webinar. In this webinar I showcase how to create PDF/A documents using iText technology.

YouTube Recording

October 14

Future of Traversing PDF Files
@ PDF Days Online 2021

As we all know, PDF files are a structural marvel. There are many ways of constructing a file while still maintaining the same visual result. This is a blessing, but also a curse. This variety has to be accounted for if you want to traverse PDF files consistently and without inconveniencing your end users with error messages. This talk dives into two proposals to navigate PDF files safely and consistently.

YouTube Recording

August 25

Speaking in Different Tongues: Stabilizing and Synchronizing Our Java and .NET Codebase
@ Devoxx Poland 2021

Telling the story of how iText came to its current solution of maintaining two functionally equivalent code bases. Starting from the manual work done during the early days through all the process changes we’ve made, all the way to a somewhat automatic process of translating a Java code base into a C# code base.

-Recording Not Available-

August 18

Speaking in Different Tongues: Stabilizing and Synchronizing Our Java and .NET Codebase
@ Dev Innovation Summit 2021

Telling the story of how iText came to its current solution of maintaining two functionally equivalent code bases. Starting from the manual work done during the early days through all the process changes we’ve made, all the way to a somewhat automatic process of translating a Java code base into a C# code base.

YouTube Recording

May 12

Speaking in Different Tongues: Stabilizing and Synchronizing Our Java and .NET Codebase
@TEQNation 2021

Telling the story of how iText came to its current solution of maintaining two functionally equivalent code bases. Starting from the manual work done during the early days through all the process changes we’ve made, all the way to a somewhat automatic process of translating a Java code base into a C# code base.

YouTube Recording

February 18

Search and Extract: Optimized Document Processing with iText pdf2Data and pdfOCR
@ Developer Week 2021

Co-Host: Cal Reynolds

In this talk we will demo an optimized PDF workflow using pdfOCR to recognize data in PDF documents, and pdf2Data to extract selected data from your OCR search. The beauty of using pdf2Data in this way is it can pick up exactly where pdfOCR leaves off, allowing you to both recognize and extract all kinds of data from PDF documents that would otherwise be inaccessible.

-No Recording Available-

January 29

The Git Time Travellers
@ NDC London

Typically you don’t want to go back to edit the history of your Git repositories. But there are situations that call for such actions. In this talk I go over the reasons why we did alter the history and how we achieved our goals. Pains and gains are included!

-No Recording Available-

January 28

Web-Friendly PDFs with ngPDF
@ iText Live Webinar

Co-host: Boris Doubrov

The web has changed the way we look at documents. Increasingly, content is consumed on devices with wildly differing form factors. The need for content to adapt to diverging screen sizes will only increase as mobile devices displace traditional desktops and laptops. It is a common misconception that PDFs cannot be responsive. 

However, an algorithm recently developed by the PDF Association makes great strides for turning well-crafted PDFs into responsive documents. The algorithm, as implemented in ngPDF and powered by iText 7, takes the idea of text reflow in PDF one step further, by automatically turning them into first-class HTML documents without manual intervention. 

YouTube Recording

2020 (2)

October 22

Forget the PS5, I’ve got a PDF 2.0
@ OctoberPDFest

A more lighthearted talk in which I push the PDF specification to its limitations by implementing a handful of video games, yes video games, in PDF files.

YouTube Recording

May 28

PDF Security: Encryption and Digital Signatures
@ iText Live Webinar with the PDF Association

Knowing how to secure your documents and data is more important than ever. Are you looking for information on how to build security features into your application’s workflow? Join iText and the PDF Association for a webinar about PDF security options, focusing on encryption and digital signatures, and learn how you can get started in securing your workflows and user experience right away.

YouTube Recording

2018 (1)

June 16

The Git Time Travellers
@ Hong Kong Open Source

Typically you don’t want to go back to edit the history of your Git repositories. But there are situations that call for such actions. In this talk I go over the reasons why we did alter the history and how we achieved our goals. Pains and gains are included!

YouTube Recording

2017 (1)

November 9

The Impact of the GDPR
@ Devoxx Belgium 2017

Do you know what it means to be GDPR compliant? Do you know what the GDPR is? Developers answering “no” will have hard times ahead of them. The GDPR, General Data Protection Regulation, is one of the most important legislations introduced by the EU in the past decade. It describes what personal data is, what companies are allowed to do with that data and, more importantly, what citizens are allowed to do. A lot of software development and products involve the use of personal data and this falls under the GDPR. Developers and software companies not aware of what the GDPR stands for, may risk heavy fines if the software they write is non-compliant. This is not a scare session. In this session we will walk through what the GDPR is, what it affects and what not, and what steps people should take to be on the way to being compliant. I promise to keep the legal jargon to a minimum.

YouTube Recording

2016 (1)

November 11

Oops, I broke my API
@ Devoxx Belgium 2016

Co-host: Benoît Lagae

Breaking an API is a pain for many users, so you’d better have good arguments when you decide to do so. In this talk, we’ll weigh different arguments against and in favor of API changes.

YouTube Recording