In association with
Tech 2020 is the inaugural conference of the BarTech CTO Network, and its first public and open event.
Tech2020 brings together the foremost technology leaders from startups to multinational companies to look forward five years. What technology should we be looking out for? Where are the opportunities, where are the risks? And as the world becomes more connected with the tools that we build, what are our responsibilities towards our users, their data and their privacy?
Our speakers are working on the next great thing, looking to the future and doing research that will make today's impossible tomorrow's everyday. Join us for a day of talks and networking, rounded off with a drinks reception for all delegates and speakers.
If you would like to support Tech2020, a not-for-profit community event, please contact us for sponsorship opportunities.
Bill Thompson is a well-known technology journalist and advisor to arts and cultural organisations on matters related to digital technologies. He appears weekly on Click on BBC World Service radio and writes a monthly column for Focus magazine. He is Head of Partnership Development for the BBC Archive, a member of the boards of Writers’ Centre Norwich and Britten Sinfonia, a Visiting Professor at the Royal College of Art and a Visitor at Southampton University
Zoe is an award-winning technology professional and currently Managing Director of Softwire Technology, one of the Sunday Times 'Best Places to Work'. In 2013 she was named as one of the 100 most influential people in Tech City, selected by the BBC as the Brightest Woman in Britain and she accompanied Prime Minister David Cameron on his trade delegation to China. As a passionate advocate of networking, Zoe has also founded Tech Talkfest to help connect influential people in the technology world and now runs the private members' network Exponential.
Guy Podjarny is a cofounder at Snyk.io, building developer focused security tools. Guy was previously CTO at Akamai and founder of Blaze.io, having built Web App Firewalls and scanners in the decade before that. Guy is a frequent conference speaker, the author of Responsive & Fast (O’Reilly Media), and the creator of Mobitest. He also writes on guypo.com and Medium.
Jacky Pallas is the Director of UCL Research Platforms, developing funding and sustainability strategies for major research equipment and facilities. This includes working with IT colleagues to ensure the underpinning compute, data storage and networking is available to support projects. She is the programme manager for the eMedLab Medical Bioinformatics project and is a member of the eInfrastructure working group for the Farr Institute of Health Informatics Research. As co-Chair of the National eInfrastructure Project Directors Group she plays a role in developing roadmaps for major UK investments in compute, storage and networking infrastructure. Jacky has a PhD in biochemistry and worked in a major biotech company before returning to academia at UCL to establish the Bloomsbury Centre for Bioinformatics and subsequently the Centre for Computational Statistics and Machine Learning.
Phil Harvey learns something new every day. He likes to keep his disruptive streak well tuned and avoid thinking in straight lines. The more he learns about the challenges real humans have in real business the more he sees that they need help! That is his mission.
Dave Farley is a thought-leader in the field of Continuous Delivery, DevOps and Software Development in general.
Dave has been having fun with computers for over 30 years. During that period he has worked on most types of software, from firmware, through tinkering with operating systems and device drivers, to writing games, and commercial applications of all shapes and sizes. He started working in large scale distributed systems about 25 years ago, doing research into the development of loose-coupled, message-based systems - a forerunner of MicroService architectures.
Dave is the former Head of Software development at LMAX Ltd, home of the OSS Disruptor, a company that are well known for the excellence of their code and the exemplary nature of their development process.
Dave is now an independent software developer and consultant, and founder and director of Continuous Delivery Ltd.
Joshua is a Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at SuperAwesome who are developing the infrastructure that powers much of the world's kids digital ecosystem. Having built both AwesomeAds (the world's only ad platform specifically built for kids) and Kids Web Services (dealing with compliance issues around data collection from children), Joshua will go over the various legislations that have been or will be adopted in the US and Europe and how they impact our day-to-day digital product development.
Simon Riggs is the CTO of 2nd Quadrant and a leading developer of the open source version of PostgreSQL database. As a Database Architect, he has 30 years experience on a wide variety of challenging database projects across many industries across US and EU. Solving real world problems through both solutions design and engineering, he has been built multiple database systems as well as worked at the leading edge with Oracle and Teradata technology.
Paul Galwas is Security Architect at The Connected Digital Economy Catapult. He has 15+ years experience in security R&D. At nCipher, Secerno and Cellcrypt, he worked on security protocols, secure identity, digital asset protection and secure payment systems, and with UK and US Governments on classified mobile security. He was an early member of Open Group Jericho Forum, and the Trusted Computer Group. At Computervision, Telxon and Prime, Paul developed early Wi-Fi technologies and mobile handheld systems, after spearheading 3D modeling and realistic imaging. He has a PhD and MA in science from Cambridge University.
Alex is the CTO of SaaS start-up Qinec, developing pathway management software for healthcare, and prior to that was CTO at e-commerce outfit mydeco.com. He is author of "Smashing Coffeescript" (Wiley) and infrequent contributor to a variety of open-source and free software projects, such as the Fedora project and Sparkleshare. Having spent significant time in consultancy to public sector organisations, and often previously found speaking at conferences on licensing and intellectual property issues, Alex is recovering well and is currently passionate about forecasting most things aside from the weather.
Alex tweets as @ealexhudson
David Wood was one of the pioneers of the smartphone industry, and is now an independent futurist.
As co-founder of Symbian, the creator of the world's first successful smartphone operating system, David spent 25 years envisioning, designing, implementing, and avidly using smart mobile devices. He is also former Technology Planning Lead (CTO) of Accenture Mobility, where he was co-lead of Accenture's Mobility Health business initiative.
As chair of London Futurists, David has organized regular meetings in London since 2008 on futurist and technoprogressive topics. As Principal of the consultancy Delta Wisdom, David provides advice to businesses, organizations, and governments around the world on anticipating and shaping future scenarios.
David was editor of the volume "Anticipating 2025: A guide to the radical changes that may lie ahead, whether or not we're ready". His own book "Smartphones and beyond" has been described as "One of the most candid and revealing books a technology executive has ever written".
David has a triple first class mathematics degree from Cambridge, and undertook doctoral research in the Philosophy of Science. In 2009 he was included in T3's list of "100 most influential people in technology". He has been a Director of Humanity+ since 2013 and a Fellow of the IEET since January 2015.
David tweets as @dw2.
As Chief Technology Officer, Matthew Postgate is responsible for the corporation's Technology & Systems.
Prior to his current role within the organisation Matthew was Controller, Research & Development. He was part of the management team that launched BBC iPlayer and was in charge of BBC mobile where he was responsible for building the corporation's world leading mobile services.
Before joining the BBC, Matthew worked as a telecommunication consultant, was the director of an internet infrastructure start-up and worked at a digital strategy agency for clients including the Royal Mail, BT, Lloyds TSB, Visa and Qinetiq.
Meri Williams is currently Head of Technology at M&S Digital and also runs her own micro-consultancy ChromeRose, which helps digital and technical teams be brilliant. She's led teams ranging in size from 30 to 300, mostly with people spread across the world, in a range of organisations from Procter & Gamble, to startups, to the Government Digital Service.
Meri tweets as @Geek_Manager.
Matthew Pontefract
Matthew founded the Bartech CTO Network in 2010 to provide a forum in which CTOs and technology leaders could meet and discuss openly the challenges they faced daily in their roles as well as share experiences and knowledge. It has grown organically by invitation into a much valued resource for its members.
At the time, Matthew was CTO at on-line retailer Glasses Direct. His career has spanned astrophysics, banking technology from trading systems to mortgages, visual effects, consultancy and cloud-based telecoms. The latter are represented by his current businesses, ReThought and ReComm. He also holds non-executive director and advisory roles.
Matthew continues to explore new technologies and, thanks to Andy, has recently lost much time experimenting with Elixir. Outside of work Matthew can be found sailing, cycling, running and skiing (badly) when not chasing after his children. He seeks to add other James Bond skills to the portfolio when some 'spare time' becomes available.
Andy Mendelsohn
Andy is an early member of Bartech having joined whilst CTO at the great British "Unicorn" startup Funding Circle where he built the technology and the team into a delivery powerhouse.
As an iconoclastic, entrepreneurial technologist and startup veteran, Andy's previous roles are many and varied. They span the experience of working with punch-cards - discovering Perl4 - text-based WWW - through to working in software development and management in Silicon Valley at the end of the dotcom boom years, where he lived "under the bubble as it burst."
Now CTO of Findmypast, Andy continues to be both CTO and, mostly in his spare time, a keen developer and adopter of shiny new tech! His latest shiny toy is Elixir (http://elixir-lang.org/).
When not working, Andy is cooking, writing, coding or travelling somewhere in Africa in pursuit of the perfect Leopard photo. Like Matthew, Andy cycles, although, unlike Matthew, Andy is not lean or fit as his bike has electric assistance...