Speakers

My passion is taking a metaphysical approach to software engineering: what is the nature of the collaborative game that we continuously play, and are there better, more contextually-aware ways to play that game?

By day I lead a team tasked with taking a first-principles-centric approach to intentionally enabling programming language usage at the largest bank in the United States.

By night I write and teach my way through a masterclass in software engineering and architecture targeting early-career software engineers working in large-scale enterprise technology organizations.

What is the primary goal?

To win the game. More seriously: to get 1% better every day at providing business value through software.

Who am I?

I'm a 22-year veteran of the enterprise software industry. I've played almost every role I can imagine:

• Software Engineer
• Software Architect
• Technical Lead
• Engineering Manager
• Consultant
• Product Manager
• Field CTO
• Developer Advocate
• Conference Speaker
• Author
• Technical Trainer
• Technical Marketer
• Site Reliability Engineer
• Desktop Support Specialist

I've worked at Fortune 500 companies, a tenacious teal cloud startup, and a not-for-profit children's hospital. I've written a book, and I've hosted a podcast. I've learned a lot along the way, including many things I wish I'd known when I first got started. And so now I want to pass those learnings on to you, especially if you've only just begun your career.

Brian Sletten is a liberal arts-educated software engineer with a focus on forward-leaning technologies. His experience has spanned many industries including retail, banking, online games, defense, finance, hospitality and health care. He has a B.S. in Computer Science from the College of William and Mary and lives in Auburn, CA. He focuses on web architecture, resource-oriented computing, social networking, the Semantic Web, AI/ML, data science, 3D graphics, visualization, scalable systems, security consulting and other technologies of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries. He is also a rabid reader, devoted foodie and has excellent taste in music. If pressed, he might tell you about his International Pop Recording career.

Douglas Hawkins has been passionately developing software for the past 20 years.
Throughout Doug's career, he has focused on creating performance intensive applications
in Java ranging from bioinformatics to financial exchanges.

After 10 years as a Java developer, Doug transitioned to working on Azul's Java Virtual Machine.
Today, Doug continues his interest in building performance tools for developers as the
Lead Developer of Datadog's Java Application Performance Monitoring.

While Doug's passion for developing software remains, his true passion is in sharing his
interest in low-level details and JVM performance with others.

Emad has spent the past 25 years in various software engineering positions involving software development of application platforms and distributed systems for various industries such as finance, health, IT, and heavy industry – in various international locations. Emad is currently the Sr. Director and Chief Technologist of Application Platforms with Office of the CTO at VMware, focusing on building hybrid cloud distributed runtimes that are application aware.

Dr. Venkat Subramaniam is an award-winning author, founder of Agile Developer, Inc., creator of agilelearner.com, and an instructional professor at the University of Houston.

He has trained and mentored thousands of software developers in the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia, and is a regularly-invited speaker at several international conferences. Venkat helps his clients effectively apply and succeed with sustainable agile practices on their software projects.

Venkat is a (co)author of multiple technical books, including the 2007 Jolt Productivity award winning book Practices of an Agile Developer. You can find a list of his books at agiledeveloper.com. You can reach him by email at venkats@agiledeveloper.com or on twitter at @venkat_s.

Mark Richards is an experienced, hands-on software architect involved in the architecture, design, and implementation of microservices architectures, service-oriented architectures, and distributed systems. He has been in the software industry since 1983 and has significant experience and expertise in application, integration, and enterprise architecture. Mark is the founder of DeveloperToArchitect.com, a website devoted to helping developers in the journey to software architect. He is the author of numerous technical books and videos, including the recently published Fundamentals of Software Architecture, Microservices AntiPatterns and Pitfalls, Microservices vs. SOA, the Software Architecture Fundamentals video series, The Enterprise Messaging video series, Java Message Service, 2nd Edition, and contributing author to 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know. Mark has a master’s degree in computer science and is a regular conference speaker at the No Fluff Just Stuff (NFJS) Symposium Series. He has spoken at hundreds of conferences and user groups around the world on a variety of enterprise-related technical topics.

Neal is Director, Software Architect, and Meme Wrangler at ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy with an exclusive focus on end-to-end software development and delivery.
Before joining ThoughtWorks, Neal was the Chief Technology Officer at The DSW Group, Ltd., a nationally recognized training and development firm. Neal has a degree in Computer Science from Georgia State University specializing in languages and compilers and a minor in mathematics specializing in statistical analysis.
He is also the designer and developer of applications, instructional materials, magazine articles, video presentations, and author of 6 books, including the most recent The Productive Programmer. His language proficiencies include Java, C#/.NET, Ruby, Groovy, functional languages, Scheme, Object Pascal, C++, and C. His primary consulting focus is the design and construction of large-scale enterprise applications. Neal has taught on-site classes nationally and internationally to all phases of the military and to many Fortune 500 companies. He is also an internationally acclaimed speaker, having spoken at over 100 developer conferences worldwide, delivering more than 600 talks. If you have an insatiable curiosity about Neal, visit his web site at http://www.nealford.com. He welcomes feedback and can be reached at nford@thoughtworks.com.

Kirk is software developer with a passion for building great software. He takes a keen interest in design, architecture, application development platforms, agile development, and the IT industry in general, especially as it relates to software development. His recent book, Java Application Architecture was published in 2012, and presents 18 patterns that help you design modular software.

Tudor Gîrba (tudorgirba.com) is a software environmentalist and co-founder of feenk.com where he works with an amazing team on the Glamorous Toolkit, a novel IDE that reshapes the Development eXperience (gtoolkit.com).

He built all sorts of projects like the Moose platform for software and data analysis (moosetechnology.org), and he authored a couple of methods like humane assessment (humane-assessment.com). In 2014, he also won the prestigious Dahl-Nygaard Junior Prize for his research (aito.org). This was a surprising prize as he is the only recipient that was not a university professor, even if he does hold a PhD from the University of Bern from a previous life.

These days he likes to talk about moldable development. If you want to see how much he likes that, just ask him if moldable development can fundamentally change how we approach software development.

Nathaniel T. Schutta is a software architect and Java Champion focused on cloud computing, developer happiness and building usable applications. A proponent of polyglot programming, Nate has written multiple books, appeared in countless videos and many podcasts. He’s also a seasoned speaker who regularly presents at worldwide conferences, No Fluff Just Stuff symposia, meetups, universities, and user groups. In addition to his day job, Nate is an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches students to embrace (and evaluate) technical change. Driven to rid the world of bad presentations, he coauthored the book Presentation Patterns with Neal Ford and Matthew McCullough, and he also published Thinking Architecturally and Responsible Microservices available from O’Reilly. His latest book, Fundamentals of Software Engineering, is currently available in early release.

Dave is a senior architect for Thomson Reuters and has worked for Thomson Reuters for over 20 years where his focus is on architecting and delivering enterprise hybrid big data systems.

Dave has written two books with Addison-Wesley, and is currently working on a third:

• 12 Essential Skills for Software Architects – this book focuses on the soft skills needed by software architects, and has also been translated to Chinese.


• 12 More Essential Skills for Software Architects – this book focuses on the day to day technical skills needed by software architects.


• (In Progress) Enterprise Big Data – this book focuses on how to architect and build enterprise big data systems.




Dave is also the head coach for the Eagan High School FIRST Robotics program with over 150 students and over 60 mentors. Dave also likes to build things like trebuchets, go carts, and rain barrel watering systems.

Peter is the CTO of Censinet, based in Boston, MA.

Before joining Censinet, Peter was the Chief Software Architect at Embue Technologies, an Apartment Building Intelligence platform provider based in Boston, MA. Before joining Embue, Peter was the Principal Architect for EnerNOC Labs, a dedicated R&D group within EnerNOC, a Global provider of Demand Response and Energy Inteligence software located in Boston, MA. Prior to EnerNOC, Peter was a Principal Cloud Engineer with Kronos Incorporated, a global provider of on-premise and cloud-based workforce management solutions. Before Kronos, Peter held the position of Technical Director with Brokat Technologies, a global provider of mobile payment solutions. Prior to that, Peter was a Sr. Architect with GemStone Systems, providing distributed, enterprise-ready data grid and object persistence solutions and J2EE application server technologies.

Peter has a Honors degree in pure mathematics from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He is a technology addict and evangelist and has led many grass-roots efforts to introduce leading edge, advanced technologies and development processes.

A lifetime learner, Peter thrives on digesting new technologies and sharing his discoveries with others. He has authored and delivered numerous technical seminars on a variety of topics including React, VueJS, Angular, Ruby on Rails, Grails, Git, Meteor, Flex, GWT and AOP.

To find out more about Peter, check out his LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterpavlovich

Husain's main focus is in the area of engineering science and it's application to create profitable products that serve 10's or 100's of thousands of users. Husain's work at MIT focused on extracting faint signals from super-computer scale gas simulations close to equilibrium. He later built on this background to start a user-facing email analytics company that serviced thousands of paying customers in near-real time. Husain has extensive software engineering experience both as a developer, maintainer and architect in the areas of enterprise software, high performance computing, as well as the “Big Data” domain. Husain is also an accomplished mechanical engineer, with many years of hands-on experience in the oil and power industries.

Michael Carducci is a seasoned IT professional with over 25 years of experience, an author, and an internationally recognized speaker, blending expertise in software architecture with the artistry of magic and mentalism. His upcoming book, “Mastering Software Architecture,” reflects his deep understanding of the multifaceted challenges of building resilient, effective software systems and high-performing teams. Michael's career spans roles from individual contributor to CTO, with a particular focus on strategic enterprise architecture and digital transformation.

As a magician and mentalist, Michael has captivated audiences in dozens of countries, applying the same creativity and problem-solving skills that define his technology career. He excels in transforming complex technical concepts into engaging narratives, making him a sought-after speaker, trainer, and emcee for internal and tech events worldwide.

In his consulting work, Michael adopts a holistic approach to software architecture, ensuring alignment with business strategy and operational realities. He empowers teams, bridges tactical and strategic objectives, and guides organizations through transformative changes, always aiming to create sustainable, adaptable solutions.

Michael's unique blend of technical acumen and performative talent makes him an unparalleled force in both the tech and entertainment industries, driven by a passion for continuous learning and a commitment to excellence.

Arty Starr is a recognized Flow Experience expert, researcher, speaker and thought leader, and author of Idea Flow, how to measure the friction in software development. Arty's PhD research is developing a theory of momentum in software development, and she is creator of the FLOWS platform designed to help developers thrive and find joy through more time in the flow state. The company she founded, FlowInsight, is on a mission to bring back joy to our everyday work.

Arty is also a 2D/3D animator and artist, and has spent the last couple years building 3D apps in AR. She loves to share about her experiences with these technologies.

Ksenia Dmitrieva-Peguero is a Principal Consultant at Cigital with over six years of experience in securing web applications and five years of development experience. She performs penetration testing and code review for clients in financial services, entertainment, telecommunications, energy, and enterprise security industries. Her current concentration is on researching HTML5 technologies and new JavaScript frameworks, their security implications, vulnerability discovery and remediation. Ms. Dmitrieva-Peguero has delivered presentations and training sessions at conferences around the world, including BSides Security in London, Nullcon in India, AppSec California in the USA, RSA Asia Pacific & Japan in Singapore, AppSec Europe in Italy, and several NFJS shows.

Dillon is a principal member of EnerNOC’s data science team. In this position, he focuses on using the growing set of energy time series data to design innovative experiments, architect machine learning algorithms, and extract new-found business insights. He has worked on projects ranging from understanding how buildings apparent power and real power usage differs to architecting techniques for obtaining real-time electricity baseline estimations. Prior to joining EnerNOC, Dillon completed his Physics PhD at MIT, where he performed neutron and x-ray scattering experiments on novel electronic and magnetic materials. This worked launched his career in developing models based on massive sets of data.