28.05.-29.05.20
WeAreDevelopers World Congress

I'm Jeff Atwood. I live in Berkeley, CA with my wife, two cats, three children, and a whole lot of computers. I was weaned as a software developer on various implementations of Microsoft BASIC in the 80's, starting with my first microcomputer, the Texas Instruments TI-99/4a. I continued on the PC with Visual Basic 3.0 and Windows 3.1 in the early 90's, although I also spent significant time writing Pascal code in the first versions of Delphi. I am now quite comfortable in VB.NET or C#, despite the evils of case sensitivity. I'm currently learning Ruby.I consider myself a reasonably experienced web software developer with a particular interest in the human side of software development, as represented in my recommended developer reading list. Computers are fascinating machines, but they're mostly a reflection of the people using them. In the art of software development, studying code isn't enough; you have to study the people behind the software, too.

Scott Hanselman is a programmer, teacher, and speaker who works on Open Source at Microsoft. His blog at hanselman.com has been running for over 15 years. In addition to writing a number of books, Scott hosts a number of podcasts including Hanselminutes, which recently published its 700th episode. Scott talks about code, tech, culture, gadgets, diversity, code and the open web. An avid presenter, Scott has spoken in person about code and coding to over half a million developers worldwide.

Brenda is a major figure in the area of game design and is famous for her work on the role-playing series Wizardry, as well as Def Jam: Icon, Playboy: The Mansion, and Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes. She is the Course Director for the University of Limerick and Managing Director and Co-Founder of Romero Games Ltd., a game studio focused on fun.

John is an award-winning game designer, level designer, and programmer whose work portfolio includes 130 games, of which 107 have been published commercially. John Romero has co-founded 8 widely successful game companies, including id Software, Gazillion Entertainment, and Loot Drop. He co-owns Loot Drop and Romero Games. He is regarded as one of the world’s best game designers and his products have won over a hundred awards to prove it. Furthermore, John Romero is fully a self-taught designer and programmer, drawing inspiration from early Apple II programmers.

As the Chief Architect for Amazon Web Services, Glenn is responsible for creating architectural best practices and working with customers on how they use the cloud and innovation to transform their own businesses or disrupt new markets.Glenn has held previous roles in AWS, most recently as head of architecture for Asia Pacific and EMEA for Amazon Web Services where he managed regional teams working in the fastest-growing region. Glenn has experience in working in mature and emerging markets, helping customers use the latest advancements to give them a competitive edge. Glenn is a hands-on technologist with more than 20 years of experience in the technology industry. Prior to joining AWS, Glenn was the CTO of WebCentral where he worked on highly scalable web platforms and big-data systems for customers. He also held roles at OzEmail and UUNET the world’s largest network provider. Glenn has worked in engineering and technology leadership roles working with customers such as Facebook, Twitter, NASA and working on projects such as the Hadron super collider, interplanetary networking and large scale distributed systems. Glenn is passionate about his customers and about technology and how it is changing how we live and work.

Sumit Gupta is VP, AI, Machine Learning, and HPC in the IBM Cognitive Systems business. Sumit leads the business strategy and software and hardware products for machine learning, deep learning, analytics, & HPC, including Watson ML Accelerator and Spectrum Compute. Prior to IBM, Sumit was the general manager of the AI & GPU accelerated data center business at NVIDIA and was central in building that business from the ground-up to what is now a multi-billion dollar business for NVIDIA. Sumit has a Ph.D. in CS from UC, Irvine, and a BS in EE from IIT Delhi.

Jimmy Song is a Bitcoin developer, educator and entrepreneur. He's an open source contributor to many different Bitcoin projects and is the author of Programming Bitcoin from O'Reilly and The Little Bitcoin Book. Jimmy is a lecturer at the University of Texas in Austin and is a speaker at various Bitcoin conferences around the world.

Håkon came to Opera from W3C, where he was responsible for style sheets. In 1994 he invented a small language called Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). CSS describes how web pages are presented — on screens, in print, or read out loud. You can read about it in a book 'Cascading Style Sheets: Designing for the Web' he co-authored with Bert Bos. The book is written in HTML and CSS. Håkon is a graduate of the MIT Media Lab where he was part of Walter Bender's Electronic Publishing Group.

I am 18 years old and currently attend the final year at a higher technical college for chemical engineering.Since age 12, I am passionate about science, especially physics, programming and chemistry. In 2018 I finished the Viennese Physics' Olympiad best girl, this summer I worked with the department for material chemistry of TU Vienna and as a developer at AF-Institute Vienna (AI and data management for the medical sector).My passions generally evolve around the tiny things that matter - a beauty hidden almost invisible in everyday life whether it is now microbiology, genetic code or quantum computers. In autumn 2019 I helped with research at CERN Geneva and was invited to speak at the FifteenSeconds-Festival and introduced quantum computing at WeAreDevs Vienna.In chemistry, quantum mechanics have a long tradition - but how can we harness intriguing calculations and maybe change whole industries? Practical concepts of quantum computing still need lots of research and curiosity...I would therefore go with Schroedinger and say there is a 50% chance of me being a quantum computing expert. Your observation shall determine!

Mathias Döpfner, 56, has served as a director since May 1, 2014. Mr. Döpfner is Chairman and CEO of German media group Axel Springer SE in Berlin. Holding a stake of about 3%, Mr. Döpfner is also one of the company’s largest shareholders. Axel Springer is the leading digital publisher in Europe and is active in more than 40 countries. Publishing brands include BILD, WELT and BUSINESS INSIDER. Since Mr. Döpfner became CEO in 2002, Axel Springer revenues from digital activities increased from €117 million to €2.3 billion with adjusted EBITDA from digital increasing from €-12 million to €620 million. Worldwide digital audience expanded to more than 300 million users. Mr. Döpfner is also a member of the Board of Directors of Netflix Inc.

Mithun Dhar is a senior executive with nearly 20 years of experience in the technology industry and developer relations. His diverse background includes overseeing the growth of developer platforms, managing partner ecosystems and building support for new technology.At HERE, Mithun is responsible for increasing the developer community’s ability to harness the power of location intelligence and engagement with the HERE Open Location Platform (OLP). His focus is on the strategy and vision for the Open Location Platform and working closely with key partners, such as AWS, Microsoft, SAP and Bosch, to ensure that developers around the world can leverage location intelligence solutions in their products and services. Before joining HERE, Mithun was Director of Developer Relations and Strategic Communications for SAP Concur, where he led a team that helped developers design, buildand market applications that tap into the $1 trillion business travel industry. Prior to that, he was a Principal Strategist for Technology and Communications at Citrix, Director of Product Marketing at Edifecs, and held numerous positions at Microsoft within Microsoft Research, product management, product marketing and developer evangelism. Mithun speaks five languages and is known for his enthusiasm around developer communities and his ability to merge his technical background and business savvy. He has computer science and engineering degrees from Bangalore University and the National Institute of Information Technology in India.

Eric Steinberger's research focuses on Deep Reinforcement Learning. Since his first research appointment at age 18, he worked with MIT, TU Wien, and the University of Luxembourg to apply Deep Learning to complex real-world problems. His most recent project at MIT investigates how micro-lending in Africa could be improved by carefully designing game-theoretic incentives while keeping methods practical. Eric always loved science, but he never appreciated overcomplicated papers and reports. Therefore, he started giving talks introducing the technical sides of Deep Learning to a wider audience. His second area of interest is climate science, where he is also part of a team creating educational content for children.

Frank Riemensperger has been Chairman of Accenture in Germany, Austria and Switzerland since November 2009. In this role, Frank is responsible for strategy development and execution as well as Accenture’s market development in the German-speaking countries. Currently, Accenture has more than 8,000 employees in this region.The trained computer scientist and expert for digitization holds a seat in the acatech Senate, the German Academy for Engineering Sciences, and is a member of the supervisory board of the DFKI (German Institute for Artificial Intelligence). Frank is part of the executive committee of the German IT association BITKOM and a member of the steering committees of the Plattform Industrie 4.0 and of the Plattform Lernende Systeme. Furthermore, he is the Vice President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Germany, a member of the Baden-Badener Unternehmer-Gespräche (BBUG), of the Feldafinger Kreis and is a jury member of several awards including the Top 500 German Growth Champions, the German Innovation Prize and the German CIO of the year.Together with Prof. Dr. Henning Kagermann, President of acatech, Frank headed the German research project 'Smart Service Welt - Digital Transformation of the German Industry'. The project developed recommendations for German industry leaders and policymakers to lead the digital transformation of Germany’s key industries.Frank Riemensperger studied Computer Science in Germany and the United States, graduating in 1987.

Boyan is the founder of experimental quantum data visualisation company, SHYN. The company aims to define a visual toolset built for quantum from the ground up. SHYN's mission is to move discussion around QC beyond academia and theory and into the mainstream. Formerly, Boyan was CMO at the big data analytics and enterprise data warehousing company, MammothDB, acquired by MariaDB in 2018.Additionally, as a partner at Farstar, Boyan works on complex international development projects aiming to help engineers and researchers realise their business potential. Working with the Royal Academy of Engineering, the team support the design and delivery of the Leaders in Innovation Fellowships programme, working with academics in emerging economies on four continents to commercialise their research.Boyan is the co-author of the Carnegie-Mellon course ‘Digital Ecosystems’ delivered in the Sofia University Faculty of Mathematics & Informatics. He was on the presidential council for the John Atanasoff awards for scientific excellence, recognising top PhD talent in young researchers from around the world.He has close to twenty years experience in education and development, having worked with organisations including The Prince’s Trust, Shell Livewire and The Venture. In 2013 Boyan created and hosted the first talk-show dedicated to entrepreneurship and innovation for the Bulgarian National Television. The award-winning format featured more than two hundred and fifty guests over more than forty hours of live television.