Speakers
Alan Turpin
I am a Senior Software Development Engineer at ESO. I have had 10 years’ experience within software development working on projects entirely software related and with mechanical components. Previously I worked for Randox Laboratories and CEM Systems. I have experience in C++, Classic ASP but mostly I develop in .NET. I graduated from University of Ulster Coleraine in 2008 with a degree in Computing. I completed a PhD at University of Ulster Coleraine in 2012 titled “Automated Identification of Retinal Cones In Vivo”.
Mental Health in the Workplace - Imposter Syndrome
Alexios Sofias
Alexios is a Consultant in the Data Analytics team at EY, Belfast. Alexios graduated from University of Strathclyde with a MSc in Financial Technology. Alexios comes from an electrical and electronic engineering background with a first-class degree from University of Strathclyde.
Driving the Data agenda in Healthcare
Angie McKeown
Angie is a Security Architect at Microsoft in one of the CTO teams. She is focused on identity security in Azure, taking care of delivery readiness for field employees and doing technical quality assurance on security deals and deliveries. She has a Masters in Applied Cyber Security, and is fascinated by Digital Forensics.
Her background is really varied; she’s been a teacher, made VR things, run a bookstore, owned an Artisan Tea company, and also worked as web/app developer. One of her first ever jobs was in an internet cafe run by the council (before people had it in their homes) teaching people what hyperlinks were and how to use Yahoo! She also founded the NI Game Dev Network, and is now on the steering committee for InfosecNI.
She is on Twitter constantly, enjoys learning Mandarin and watching c-dramas, kpop, games, and going to tech meetups. Her favourite thing in the world is brunch with friends, and her best life tip is Get More Sleep.
How to secure privileged accounts across your org without causing a riot (with bonus mechs)
Aoibheann Maye
Aoibheann Maye is a Associate Software Development Engineer in Test from Belfast. She has worked at ESO for a year and a half where she was offered a testing job in place of a development one and hasn’t looked back since. She is passionate about best practices and improving CI/CD with automation.
Brian W Craig
Brian has been with Liberty IT for 23 years, based in New Hampshire for 5 of them. As Senior Director of Architecture, Brian leads the architecture team, focused on the evolution of Liberty IT’s engineering practices. creating low friction experiences to enable teams to achieve max velocity over time; building for today while planning for the future. He joined as a Senior Engineer and has progressed through a number of Senior Technical and Leadership roles. Prior to taking on this post, he held the role of Consultant, focusing on Innovation within EBT. Brian and his wife Nora enjoyed a lockdown wedding in 2020 and recently held their wedding party and he has just finished building his first polytunnel.
Architecture & Engineering: Delivering continuous value
Chloe McAteer
Chloe McAteer is a Senior Software Engineer at Hamilton Robson, currently building an innovative recruitment platform. She has been involved in all aspects from working on service design, integrating machine learning and always ensuring performance at scale.
She is passionate about designing and creating new projects and working with a range of different technologies to solve real world problems.
Chloe has been an AWS Community Builder for the past two years and is an authority on a range of different services and tools. She is keen to build the community and share her experience and learnings with others.
ID verification - who can you trust?
Ciaran Conliffe
Ciaran spent twenty years working in application development, the last ten in the areas of secure development and security engineering, before finally moving across into information security last year. He’s proud to be a member of the steering committee for the NI Cybersecurity Cluster, an organisation bringing together Northern Ireland’s private, public, and education sectors to help grow the sector in Northern Ireland.
Ciaran is also a writer who has written numerous movie reviews and historical articles. He has found that studying history helps to give an understanding of human nature that changes how you look at IT. It was through this writing that he was persuaded to give a talk about the history of Phoenix Park, which eventually led to him speaking at technical conferences from Boston to London over the last several years. In his very occasional spare time he enjoys sleep and looking at pictures of cats.
A Pragmatic Approach to Software Supply Chain Security
Claire Burn
“Claire is currently a Security Data Engineer at Elastic, working remotely in Belfast. She’s really passionate about community, diversity and inclusion within the tech industry, believing that the arts can be an amazing way to spearhead change within tech. She recently completed an MSc in Cyber Security at QUB, passing with Distinction after completing her BEng Computer Science a year prior. She has spent 8 years in leadership roles in the Belfast branch of the global not-for-profit organization Women Who Code, which she recently stepped down from, and she received a UK-wide TechWomen50 award for her diversity & inclusion work during this time. She is the founder of the Google-sponsored Women Techmakers Belfast conference, and has spoken at many conferences and events, most notably AppSec EU and the international “Women In Leadership In a Changing World”. She has authored courses for LinkedIn Learning on Python coding, and in her (rare) moments of free time, she enjoys cooking, singing, drinking tea and playing “Dungeons & Dragons” with friends.”
Security Data Magic With Elastic Cloud & Python
Clare Dillon
Clare Dillon is the Executive Director of InnerSource Commons, the world’s largest community of InnerSource practitioners. Clare has been involved with InnerSource Commons since early 2019, when she helped set up NearForm’s InnerSource practice. Before that, Clare was a member of the Microsoft Ireland Leadership Team, heading up their Developer Evangelism and Experience Group. Clare also works with the OSPO++ Network to support the establishment of University and Government Open Source Program Offices globally, that can collaborate to implement public policy and trustworthy public services. Clare frequently speaks at international conferences and corporate events on topics relating to the open collaboration, future of work, innovation trends and digital ethics.
Breaking down silos with InnerSource
Connor Henry
Connor is an SDET on the Fire Team in ESO Belfast. He is passionate about test automation and CI/CD. In his short career, he has tried his hand at automated testing of many applications, from legacy mainframe systems to server-less function apps. Connor enjoys exploring new technologies to improve test automation coverage and efficiency.
Dan Callahan
Dan Callahan is the Director of Developer Experience at Suborbital, a startup pioneering the use of serverside WebAssembly to safely extend existing applications with arbitrary user-defined logic.
Previously, he was a Staff Developer Advocate in Emerging Technologies at Mozilla, working alongside the teams that invented Rust and WebAssembly.
Extending serverside applications with WebAssembly
Diana Hiebert
I am a Graduate UX Designer at Qarik Group, and a recent graduate of Ulster University’s UX and Service Design master’s course. Prior to this, I worked as an art gallery curator in galleries and museums across Canada.
Recruiting the Reluctant Stakeholder: What waking at 4am to clip sheep taught me about my segment
Eamonn Boyle
Eamonn Boyle has over 15 years working as a developer, architect and team lead. In the past he’s also worked as a full time trainer and coach, authoring and delivering courses on a range of tech topics. He’s now the Development Manager at Gearset’s Belfast office working on their core Salesforce DevOps solution using React, TypeScript and .NET Core.
It's never too late to start benefiting from TypeScript
Emma Gilmour
Emma Gilmour is a Frontend Software Engineer and Accessibility Advocate originally from Co. Monaghan.
Following secondary school in Co. Antrim, she studied Media and Fine Art in Liverpool. After several years running a photography business and art studio, she retrained in construction and spent several years as a furniture maker and decorator.
In 2018, she retrained again and has worked mainly in Frontend Development for companies such as AO, where she co-founded the Accessibility Guild.
After almost 20 years in Liverpool, she recently returned to live in the Glens of Antrim and currently works remotely for Scottish company, xDesign.
Championing Accessibility by Building a Community
Fin Maguire
DevOps Architect at ESO
DevOps: Dynamic branching strategy via IAC for serverless function development
Georgina Milne
I am a data scientist in EY, with a background in Epidemiology
Driving the Data agenda in Healthcare
Halley Nikolak
I design and deliver complex solutions using Workday Extend and additional technologies (e.g AWS) for large enterprises at Kainos. Previously I worked for large organisations that primarily on the financial sector, such as UN, Co-Operative Bank, HSBC and ExxonMobil/Esso. I’ve progressed through a variety of roles on different domains: Report developer, Application Support Analyst, BI team coordinator, BI technical leader, Mobile developer, Digital Solutions Architect, Solutions architect leading to my current role as a Workday Extend Solutions Architect
...never mind, I'll do it myself!
Herman Chan
Just a boy, trying to make it in this world. Herman has been working within academia and healthcare domain over the past decade plus and most recently switched to pursue solving challenges within Esports, a space which he has dabbled in from his youth. He is currently a Senior Software Engineer of the Evil Geniuses, an esports organisation which has a long and rich history of success across multiple gaming titles across the world.
Innovation in Esports - How do you build a backend that can win championships?
James Leech
James is a ML Engineer at Sonrai Analytics, a health-tech startup based in Belfast. Hugh Grant once threatened legal action against him.
Multiple Instance Learning: Cure cancer with Paul McCartney, Angela Lansbury and a threshing machine
Janine Crosbie
Leader with 20+ years’ experience in the IT Industry delivering enterprise solutions to achieve business outcomes through smart leveraging of digital tools. Extensive experience managing teams onsite and offshore, driving change and leading digital transformations.
From Engineer to Leader: My path to get there!
Protecting our culture as we grow our teams
Jarlath Warner
I am an MEng Computer Science Graduate from Queens University Belfast (QUB) and currently a Computer Science PhD student at QUB studying the use of AI in smart wearable devices (with a focus on medical devices) and finding new ways to reduce bias in these devices. I am also the founder and CEO of Axonnr, a robotics company based in Armagh working on combining the latest developments of AI and robotics to advance robotic prosthetic technology.
Machine Learning and AI for biosignal processing and medical applications
Jason Bell
Jason Bell, considered an elder statesperson in the world of data, machine learning, streaming data and BigData. He is founder of Synthetica Data which uses AI to fix, augment and create data for testing and ML model development.
Jason is also author of two Machine Learning books for Wiley and also the creator of the conceptual Twitter series, “Morning, morning (yes, I have tea)”.
He is also an Open UK Ambassador, a Confluent Kafka Community Champion advocating open source technologies and data.
For added complications he plays the Chapman Stick.
Data is Business, Business is Data
Joan Breen
Joan a has a diverse career spanning 17 years with experience in delivery of large scale financial enterprise systems, product development and integration software. Currently a senior software development manager for DailyPay and mother to 3 children. She is very passionate about developing people’s careers especially women in tech.
Performance, Promotions and Pay
Jon Glass
Having worked for many years on trading systems for investment banks in London, Jon left with a colleague to form a data analytics startup in 2011 before moving to Northern Ireland in 2018 to spend more time with family and outdoors, cycling, rowing and hiking. Working now for ESO Solutions, Jon enjoys finding creative solutions to tough engineering challenges, as well as running and growing a team of talented people in support of ESO’s mission.
Luke McNeice
Luke is a technical leader with over 15 years experience working with a broad range of digital, electronic and mechanical technologies for enterprise and creative solutions including mobile, cloud, robotics, theme park and AI technologies. Previously: Kainos Group and Nortel Networks, Luke is Head of Engineering at Hamilton Robson, where he leads design and engineering teams to deliver digital and hardware solutions for global customers.
Cracking the Furby code: The path to evolve an icon
Mark Allan
Mark is a software engineer and Microsoft MVP and has learnt his trade from 35 years of mistakes. He’s an expat Mancunian (red half) but has lived in his adopted home of Northern Ireland for nearly half his life.
He’s been a professional developer since the 1980s, mostly freelance, and has worked on a myriad of projects for everything from local startups and councils to multinational corporations and federal government departments. In search of a quieter life, he now works full time for Gearset in their Belfast office.
While something of a technology omnivore, particularly if it’s new and shiny, he currently tends towards React front-ends sitting on top of scalable cloud-first services, using a functional, event-driven and reactive approach. He’s also a big advocate of the DevOps mindset.
In his spare time he’s a STEM Ambassador, CoderDojo mentor, Barefoot volunteer and organiser of the Northern Ireland Developer Conference.
Thinking thunks: adopting React and Redux
Matthew Wilson
Full stack developer at Instil and AWS Community Builder. Enjoys talking about serverless, cars and coffee. Husband to Rebekah, father to Joy Tabitha, both of which think I copy paste for a living.
Zero To Serverless Car Insurance
Maurice Kelly
Maurice Kelly, or Mo to his friends (psssst, that includes you!), is a Director of Engineering at Magnite, the world’s largest independent sell-side ad platform. He likes to hang out as @mo on the NI Tech Slack, where he is willing to give his opinion about nearly every subject under the sun and moon. Despite having more of a focus on people responsibility he still loves to mess around with (non-volatile) code and is prone to buying music equipment that he promises to use any day now.
Programmatic Advertising - It's cooler than you think
Michael Drury
A backend focused career, generally around data processing, analytics and performance management of large scale deployments.
CouchDB - when, where and why?
Neil McCallion
Neil McCallion is a development manager at Lightspeed, a long-tenured browser-based developer, and occasional community speaker. Neil likes to promote the more creative and experimental side of the Web, from audio-visual art and learning aids to game dev and beyond, while also pushing for better performance, accessibility and inclusion on the platform. Will ‘do things’ for cake.
Building for VR in the Browser
Niall Haslam
Niall is a seasoned software developer, researcher and leader with experience building tools and platforms from scratch, rebuilding existing tech platforms. His work has focused on helping people gain insights into their data whether that be 3D protein structures, 3D anatomical models or fintech and trading solutions. Currently Niall is an engineering manager in Apex Fintech Solutions.
Paul Baccas
Paul O Baccas is a 25 year veteran of the security industry for companies including Sophos and Proofpoint. Paul has: published several papers, presented at several Virus Bulletins and was a technical editor for “AVIEN Malware Defense Guide”.
Expectations vs Reality: Parsing files given vague definitions and an adversarial environment
Paul Barrett
Multimedia developer based in Belfast. Mainly frontend development & web design but also 3D modelling, animation, game development.
Building 3D Scenes for the Web with React Fiber
Paul Topley
10+ years on a meandering journey up that software stack. From writing embedded C for microcontrollers, high performance C++ network emulation, and now Python/do everything except frontend in the esports space.
Innovation in Esports - How do you build a backend that can win championships?
Peter McConnell
Peter leads the Developer Experience team at Firebolt with the focus on increasing engineering velocity through tools, libraries and standards.
Giving your colleagues superpowers with autonomy and automation
Phil Wilkinson
Based in Craigavon, Phil Wilkinson is a technology executive with a strong focus on data-centric companies. He has formed, led and transformed technology teams from China to California and believes passionately in strong human relationships as the foundation for team and business success. Phil is married to Diane and together they have two children, Elliot and Aliana. All four are Disney addicts.
Snakes and Ladders: Navigating the tech career ladder
Rebecca Martin
(they/them) Parrot who somehow learnt how to program. In all seriousness I’ve been programming for 5 years (!) at this point, mainly in Go, Python and a little bit of Rust. I really like parrots, if you can’t tell.
Fighting Bots with Python and Machine Learning
Speakers
Stephan Williams
Designer, turned Software Engineer, turned Game Developer, turned UX Designer, turned Product Manager. I’ve worked in games dev, 3D Visualisation, VR & AR, market research and now Esports.
Innovation in Esports - How do you build a backend that can win championships?