Representatives of Amazon, Google, eBay, and Photobox are among speakers at ScotSoft in September. The theme of this year’s conference is ‘from good to great’ and will feature experts who have “faced challenges, pivoted and grown to create brilliantly successful businesses,” said organisers ScotlandIS.
The event, now in its 21st year, will take place on 27 September at the EICC in Edinburgh and will again see a full day Developer Conference running alongside the half day Leadership Forum. The Young Software Engineer of the Year awards dinner will take place that evening.
Forum speakers include Dave McCann, vice-president for Marketplace, Service Catalog & Migration Services at Amazon Web Services, who will focus on business growth and harnessing data, and Eric McAfee, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, who will share insights into venture capital investment. Delegates will also hear from David Farquhar, who will deliver a “warts and all’ look at how a management team transformed Workplace Systems in 18 months, before exiting to a New York private equity house.
Following on from last year’s Developer Conference, this year we will once again delve into cybersecurity, data, fintech and blockchain technologies, and look at future trends in software. Adi Mazor Kario, a product design expert at Google, will look at the future of voice technology. Stu Hirst, head of security engineering for Photobox Group, will share his experiences.
For the first time, the Developer Conference will have a stream dedicated to the testing community. Speakers include Dan Ashby, head of software testing at eBay in London. Dan also runs the ‘Testing in the Pub’ podcast and the Software Testing Clinic, a free software testing course that runs monthly sessions in five cities across the UK to provide a safe environment to teach people about testing and allow more experienced people to get into mentoring.
Alongside Dan will be Maria Kedemo, of Black Koi Consulting, a teacher, a coach and consultant in software development with a focus on testing. She is also executive-at-large on the board for Association for Software Testing (AST), a non-profit organisation which focuses on testing as a skill. Sue Atkins, from Sopra Steria and chair of the Scottish Testing Group, is also speaking.
Double Olympic Champion Lizzy Yarnold OBE is the guest speaker at the evening’s dinner, and will announce the winners of The Young Software Engineer of the Year Awards.
“ScotSoft has long brought international speakers to Scotland and I am proud that once again we have secured experts from Silicon Valley,” said Polly Purvis, chief executive of ScotlandIS, “who will look at how to turn a business round, ‘pivoting’ to meet real market need and creating a business that gains real customer engagement.
“It’s one thing to start a business, but quite another to grow it into something really successful. Scotland has a strong track record of doing just this, and we want to inspire and help others to do the same.
“Scotland has a thriving community of developers, technology leaders and CEO’s and ScotSoft offers a unique opportunity for them to meet, share knowledge and inspire each other to think differently.”
ScotSoft2018 is on Thursday 27 September 2018 at the EICC in Edinburgh. To find out more or book tickets, visit https://scotsoft.scot