To ensure the high quality of the Topconf conference program in the long term, all presentations will be tested scientifically and thematically. The evaluation is done by our independent conference program committee with members from various ICT companies.

Members of the Program Committee for Topconf Tallinn 2016 are:

• Juergen Hoeller

  Principal Engineer
  Pivotal

  Juergen Hoeller is co-founder of the Spring Framework open source project and has been serving as the project lead and release manager for the core framework since 2003. Juergen is an experienced software architect and consultant with outstanding expertise in code organization, transaction management and enterprise messaging.
• Simona Bonghez

  Owner
  Colors in Projects

  Simona Bonghez, Ph.D.- Author and speaker, Owner of Colors in Projects. Although she has an IT background, Simona’s professional path moved slowly towards training and consultancy. She has over 20 years’ experience in delivering training and consulting services in Romania and worldwide. Even though professional experience is a defining aspect in her activity she thinks that she would not have come this far without a good sense of humor. She really believes that games and metaphors are powerful tools for having interactive and enjoyable presentations, workshops and training sessions, thus enforcing the learning process.
• Priit Liivak

  Head of Engineering
  Nortal

  Most of his career Priit has been in software developer role in various sized projects and teams. Most recent years he is setting the Java development compass for Nortal, helping teams to build seamless society. Always searching for innovative ideas and new technologies to research. He is also frequent guest lecturer in University of Tartu.
• Andreas Hutter

  Head of Web & Mobile Solutions
  Best Gaming Technology

  Andreas has been working in the gaming and sportsbetting industry for ten years now and has been doing various software projects in all different kinds of technology. He holds a Master's degree in IT Security and Information Management. Currently he is leading the online sportsbook development at Best Gaming Technology.
• Joseph Carson

  Product and Marketing
  Thycotic

  Joseph has more than 20 years’ experience in customer service, information technology, enterprise technical support, infrastructure and enterprise management solutions and product management. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and Certified Scrum Product Owner® (CSPO). A very hands on product manager who likes to see the product in the eyes of the user, understand how the products helps the user do their job, focus on the high level business problems and solving them. Joseph serves as Product and Marketing at Thycotic and COO Cyber Security at ESC Global Security, previously Joseph held Senior roles where he spent more than 10 years at Symantec and HP in ASIA.
• Stefan Baumgartner

  Web Developer
  Ruxit

  Stefan created his first website back in 1997, and has since been working on different projects for clients like Nintendo, Square Enix, Swarovski and adidas. Currently he works at Ruxit, making the web a faster place. His passions are the web, web standards and process automation. He writes for Manning, hosts the workingdraft.de podcast, teaches in Hagenberg and contributes to several Open Source projects.
• Helin Toom

  Development Manager
  Telia Estonia

  Helin is working as a development manager in one of the leading telecom compnies in Estonia, Telia. She has been working for Telia (formerly Elion) since 2006 and has had various roles in the company. As a development manager she is responsible for leading product development projects and managing the scope of the development of a new product.
• Mark Smalley

  The IT Paradigmologist
  ASL BiSL Foundation

  Mark Smalley is an IT Management Consultant at Smalley. IT and is specialized in application management and business information management. He is affiliated with the non-profit ASL BiSL Foundation, APMG International, GamingWorks and Pink Elephant. Mark is an inaugural member of the industry initiatives SM Congress and Taking Service Forward. Mark has spoken to thousands of IT professionals at more than 100 events on 4 continents. He was born in London but has lived in the Netherlands for 40 years, currently on the southern outskirts of Amsterdam. Mark is married, with 3½ children. Regular speaker at international events. Keynotes at smaller events, regular presentations, workshops. My smallest audience was 5 (including the moderator!) and the largest about 500, but typically 50-150. Recordings of some conferences and most webinars at https://sites.google.com/a/smalley.nl/smalley-it-on-demand/. I work for several companies but would speak on behalf of the non-profit ASL BiSL Foundation. We own two IT frameworks and share knowledge with our members and with other IT communities. My role is to reach out to these communities, for instance by speaking at conferences.
• Aivars Kalvāns

  Lead Software Architect
  SIA Tieto Latvia

  Aivars Kalvans holds the position of Lead Software Architect at Tieto Latvia and is working on Card Suite payment card system. During his more than 12-year career Aivars has been involved in a number of projects related to credit card issuing, acquiring and utility payments through mobile phones, ATMs and POS-terminals. He enjoys solving both design and technical problems and likes to work on personal and Open Source projects using C++ and Python in his free time.
• Ergo Jõepere

  IMS Site Manager
  Playtech Estonia

  Ergo has more than 15 years of management experience in IT-domain, from a small development team of five people to a geographically distributed department of 100+ employees. Today he is working for Playtech, the largest online gaming and sports betting software supplier in the world. He is responsible for the delivery processes of Playtech's core product named IMS. This covers everything from gathering requirements to product deployment and support in production sites. During the few past years IMS has been in a heavy transformation process - from a monolithic system to a service-based architecture, from a conventional virtualized infrastructure to a cloud-based platform, and from an expensive database solution to a cheaper SQL and NoSQL based services. Experience gained here is invaluable and worth sharing. Moreover, people in IMS have even set a motto for themselves: "In IMS we share our knowledge".