MORE speakers from some of the region’s leading tech companies have been unveiled in advance of the north east’s first conference for ‘IT do-ers.’
The inaugural Built IT Right (BITR) conference will be held this Thursday (April 4) at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Newcastle.
The conference is aimed at anyone building software in the north east, and will feature inspirational speakers and an exhibition. Confirmed speakers already included Dave Farley, author and founder of Continuous Delivery Ltd, and Simon Brown, author of Software Architecture for Developers.
The event will be hosted by presenter, writer and comedian Timandra Harkness, who will also be one of the conference speakers.
Now organisers have revealed further speakers from the north east’s tech sector, including:
- Jesse Cary, Head of Application Architecture at Bede Gaming, who will talk about his company’s journey and the influence of ‘Domain Driven Design;
- Chris Price, Software Engineer at Scott Logic, will talk about Machine Learning in the finance sector;
- Jon McNestrie, Coach and Trainer at Northern Shore Consulting, will give a tongue-in-cheek introduction to a fictitious Agile Framework;
- Juan Antonio Rodriguez Pozo, a Senior Consultant at Opencast Software, will talk about why estimations might be a waste of time.
Other speakers will include Jason Bell, a researcher; Nate Sterling from Grid Smarter Cities; Robert Rees from We Got POP and Bartosz Jedrzejewski, from Scott Logic.
A series of four lightning talks will be followed by a panel discussion led by Sarah Stokes (Difrent Group), Laura Berry (Bede Gaming) and Fiona Hobbs and Nicole Avison (both from Opencast Software). Panellists will tackle questions about their tech journey and about the future of the sector.
Another round of speakers will be followed by the closing keynote address from Simon Brown.
Fiona Hobbs from Opencast Software, who has led the organising committee, said: “We’re thrilled that so many key personnel from some of the north east’s best IT companies have agreed to speak at the inaugural BITR conference.
“It’s aimed at those who are passionate about software development and are at the coal-face of technology – the programmers and coders, the developers, testers and solution architects.
“It’s a great opportunity for delegates to get away from their screens and expand their knowledge and be inspired by emerging trends. There will also be great opportunities to network.
“And I’m sure that with such a great line-up of speakers, it’s going to be very lively day.”
The conference will have four strands: Development Process; Development Technologies ; Architecture and User experience/Research. It will start with a keynote speech from Dave Farley at 9.15am and end at about 6pm.
It is hoped the conference will attract up to 300 delegates and it is planned to become an annual event in the region’s IT calendar.
The event has been organised by a team from BeaconHouse Events, Opencast Software and DevCycle.
Sponsors for the inaugural event include Accenture, Bede Gaming, Dynamo, Sage, W@terstons, Grid and Balsamiq.
For ticket information and more details, log on to www.bitrconf.org, for latest updates follow @BITRConf on Twitter.
