AI Agents

The Agent Interface Layer: Protocols, Tools and Trust Boundaries

with Taroon Mandhana & Malte Ubl & David Soria Parra & Duan Lightfoot

Thursday 9 July 15:30 – 16:00 Mainstage

About This Session

For agents to be useful, they have to connect to tools, data and systems - and a new layer is forming to make that possible. The people building that layer come together to ask how agents should meet the real world, and where the boundaries belong. A look at what is taking shape and what is still wide open.

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Speakers

Taroon Mandhana

CTO AI and Teamwork · Atlassian

CTO AI and Teamwork of Atlassian

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Taroon Mandhana is CTO of AI and Teamwork at Atlassian, a leading provider of productivity and collaboration software. In his role, Taroon oversees engineering teams responsible for Atlassian’s flagship products, including Jira, Confluence, and Loom—which are bundled within the Teamwork Collection. He also leads the development of Rovo, Atlassian's AI, which includes Search, Chat, Agents, and Studio. Outside of Atlassian, Taroon holds nearly 15 years of AI experience. In his previous roles, he led the Search team at Microsoft Bing and later joined Meta to lead their Facebook Search and Marketplace teams. In his second stint at Microsoft, he led the company’s content teams and built the personalized recommendation feed, Microsoft Start. Taroon graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and received his Master’s from the University of Texas at Austin. In his free time, he enjoys going on hikes around the Pacific Northwest with his family.
Malte Ubl

CTO · Vercel

CTO of Vercel

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Malte Ubl is the CTO of Vercel, where he leads the development and delivery of the company’s suite of tools and features to enable developers to create at the moment of inspiration. Prior to joining Vercel, Malte was the Principal Engineer for Google Search Rendering and Engineering Director for Google’s Search on Laptops, Tablets, and Desktop. Malte has also created the frontend infrastructure for a number of Google Web Apps and the web at large. He is also the founder and curator of JSConf EU.
David Soria Parra

Co-creator of MCP, Member of Technical Staff · Anthropic

Co-creator of MCP, Member of Technical Staff at Anthropic

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David Soria Parra is a Member of Technical Staff at Anthropic based in London. He co-created the Model Context Protocol (MCP). He leads its technical direction, governance, and ecosystem development. Before joining Anthropic in 2024, David spent nearly a decade at Meta leading engineering organizations, and served as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Sutter Hill Ventures. He is a long-time open-source contributor with a track record spanning PHP, Git, and Mercurial.
Duan Lightfoot

Senior Developer Advocate · Akamai

Senior Developer Advocate at Akamai

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Du’An Lightfoot is a Sr. AI Engineer at Akamai, where he specializes in advancing agentic AI systems and helping organizations leverage AI to solve infrastructure challenges and increase developer productivity. Drawing from his diverse background as a USAF veteran and technical experience at Cisco and Cerner, Du’An brings a unique perspective on implementing AI solutions in enterprise environments. He has delivered presentations at major industry events including AWS Re:Invent, We Are Developers, Code With Claude, and the AI Engineer World Fair, focusing on practical AI applications that transform how technical teams work. Through his hands-on experience with Agentic AI technologies and dedication to mentoring professionals through AI transformation, Du’An provides actionable insights and concrete strategies for developers to embrace AI-powered workflows and become productivity champions within their organizations.