A host of globally renowned experts is set to speak at this year’s ScotSoft event, including Jon Skeet, known as the ‘Chuck Norris of programming’.
A programming expert and software engineer at Google, Jon is also celebrated for helping millions of programmers excel by providing detailed solutions to their software challenges via StackOverflow.
The conference organised by technology membership and cluster management organisation, ScotlandIS will kick off at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre on the 3rd October 2019 with a full-day developer conference and a half-day leadership forum.
Jon Skeet, Senior Software Engineer at Google, said: “I’m thrilled to be giving the keynote at ScotSoft2019. It’s an opportunity to help set a tone of excitement, enthusiasm and curiosity for what looks to be a wonderful day. With such a breadth of topics being represented, I’m looking forward to the hallway conversations between people with very different experiences of the software industry. The more we can learn from our diverse perspectives, the stronger we will be as an industry.”
The Leadership Forum will cover topics from skills, and building personal resilience to ‘selling the future’. Speakers include Ross Tuffee, who founded Dogfish Mobile, selling mobile apps before smartphones were commonplace, and Peter Proud, previously a Director at Microsoft and now founder of Cortex Worldwide, the company disrupting website management systems.
In the evening, the Young Software Engineer of the Year awards will showcase the stars of the future. The YSE Awards have, championed Scotland’s top, emerging talent for 30 years, and are judged by a panel of industry experts including Gerry Docherty, Chair of Smarter Grid Solutions, Sean Gordon, Chief Software Engineer at Chevron, Sharon Lindsay, Tech Program Manager at AWS and Angus Foreman, Technical Director, Worldwide CTO Office, Data & AI at Microsoft Services. The awards recognise the country’s top undergraduate talent in computer science and software engineering.
Polly Purvis, chief executive of ScotlandIS, said: “We’re thrilled to continue to attract international experts to Scotland, building on ScotSoft’s strong track record. Jon Skeet reflects the high calibre of talent secured for this year’s event. Scotland has a thriving digital technology sector and the insights that speakers like Jon bring to tech businesses of all sizes are invaluable.
“Helping industry leaders across all sizes of business to strengthen their skills, and learn from the experiences of their peers will enable them to deliver on their ambitions and drive the growth of their businesses in this creative and fascinating industry. It’s also important to equip younger people with the opportunity to learn from industry leaders, and ScotSoft is an incredibly important platform in supporting both objectives.”
Alongside Jon, Ross and Peter, some of the other speakers set to take the stage at ScotSoft this year include:
- Angus Foreman, Chief Architect, Microsoft
- Valerie McLean, Lean Agile Glasgow and Sopra Steria
- Glenn Henrickson, CTO and Co-founder, Justify
- Layla Porter, Developer Evangelist, Twilio
- Yevgeniy Brikman, Co-Founder, Gruntwork
- Mark Fealey, ATOS
- Jig Gosal, BBC
- R. Michael Anderson, The Technology Leadership insider
- Layla Porter, Developer Evangelist, Twilio
- Harry McLaren, Managing Consultant, ECS Security
- Stu Hirst, Co-Founder, Cyber Scotland Connect
- Stephen McAinsh, Co-Founder, Calba
Over 1300 delegates are expected to attend ScotSoft2019 throughout the day and night.
