Softecon 2023

SOFTECON 2023 - May, 31st | National Football Stadium

Watch the record from the 20th year of the professional conference on current trends and visions in the field of information technologies and their impacts on business and society – SOFTECON 2023.

The main theme of this year's edition was Democratization of data and loss of control. Data is a source of information thanks to which business can push its boundaries. Today, it requires a quick and flexible response to changes, and we must also have this ability when working with data. So it seems natural to follow the same path as in the case of IT applications and move data closer to the business and decentralize it. However, this brings us back to the already known questions... Doesn't decentralization mean loss of control?

#softec #softecon #innovation #datademocracy #datamesh

Conference Program

12:00 - Lunch

13:00 – Miro Vladár (SOFTEC): Opening of the conference with the topic of Data Democratization in Business

13:05 - Peter Polák (Bloomreach): Data that reveals stories

13:35 - Tomáš Revaj (Simloop): There is no free lunch

14:00 - Break

14:15 - Adrián Slavkovský (Orange): Data democracy in a corporation: opportunity or myth?

14:40 - Lukáš Hlavička (IstroSec): Data at risk

15:05 - Break

15:25 - Honza Zubíček (ČSOB): Data - fuel for the virtual assistant

15:50 - ChatGPT – Miracle or bubble? (Panel discussion) Marián Šimko (KInIT) Martin Takáč (FMFI UK) Peter Polák (Bloomreach)

16:30 - A glass of wine

Presenters: Miro Vladár and Andrej Žlnka (SOFTEC)

Registration is closed. We look forward to seeing you!

Who will speak at the conference?

Peter Polák (Bloomreach)

Peter after years of developing banking software, he swapped traditional companies for startup culture. Today, he takes care of cloud client data at Bloomreach (formerly Exponea) as Director of Engineering for Customer Data Platform. He likes the world of SaaS products - he is fascinated by its freshness, unpredictability and immeasurable potential. He's married and has two teenage daughters who help him stay innovative (and alert).

What are we going to talk about?

Every successful writer knows this: a good story cannot do without consistent data. But the opposite is also true. Data in which we cannot find an interesting story are idle and boring. And if there's one thing today's tiktok era doesn't forgive, it's just boredom. Let's look at data as a product. Let's take inspiration from other digital products and adapt our business data to reveal powerful stories.

Tomáš Revaj (Simloop)

Tomáš responsible for transformation projects in the financial and public sectors in the CEE and SEE region. He is primarily engaged in business / IT architecture design, data management and system integration. He likes challenges where he helps customers unravel their integrative spaghetti and increase their ability to change. He is married and has 3 children who develop his people management skills.

What are we going to talk about?

Nowadays, businesses are bombarded with offers for data solutions and platforms to solve all their problems so far. But is there one model that fits the real needs of running the business? Is it possible to categorize these needs and use a combination of specifically focused platforms that work in symbiosis with each other and at the same time address different needs of business processes, reporting, or analytics and data science? We will try to answer these questions within our block, but expect that "there is no free lunch" also applies to high-quality, fresh and reusable Data.

Adrián Slavkovský (Orange)

Adrián studied software engineering and started working for Orange during his studies as a java developer. He has gone through several positions in the field of OSS (operation support systems) to subsequently anchor in the data and AI domain, in which he sees huge potential and opportunities.

What are we going to talk about?

The data mesh concept is gaining more and more attention from the data community around the world. But what about its usability and implementation in the company? What can we gain from this and what pitfalls can we prepare for when implementing it? Can't democracy become anarchy? Let's take a look at how Orange is experimenting with this approach as part of a pilot project to democratize data in the cloud.

Lukáš Hlavička (IstroSec)

Lukáš, during his more than 15-year career in cybersecurity, he has saved clients dozens of "data treasures" of quantifiable and incalculable value. He led the analytical team within the building of the Slovak government unit CSIRT.SK (Computer Security Incident Response Team Slovakia) under MIRRI SR, where he subsequently worked as a director until 2019. After moving to the private sector, he founded IstroSec, where he now holds the position of CTO. He specializes in responding to targeted cyberattacks/security incidents, coordinating digital forensics, infrastructure penetration testing, red teaming and defensive capability building for customers who don't want to experience another incident unprepared.

What are we going to talk about?

Decentralization of data, sometimes associated with the transition to the cloud, is a frequently discussed topic today, and yet it often forgets to talk about security. What are today's trends in building active protection? How to address data security in its constant cycle of creation, update, transformation or migration across platforms and applications? How effective in terms of costs and capacities of personnel to solve security when migrating data to the cloud? Can we get close to near-perfect security? So that the security of our data does not lag behind innovations and constant changes in their processing, we will try to find answers and talk about examples of the best, funny but also bitter stories.

Honza Zubíček (ČSOB)

Honza has spent more than 18 years of professional career in various companies - from those that could be classified as "garage companies" - to large international corporations. He has worked in various positions from programming, analysis, consulting, project management, to architecture. At work, he has always focused on transformation through innovation, and in recent years he has focused on data science and AI. He currently works at ČSOB as a Lead Architect and ensures the organization's readiness for the vision brought by Kate.

What are we going to talk about?

The future of banking is about perfect knowledge of customer needs and personalization of tailor-made services. Not tomorrow, not in an hour, but immediately! And from where can we find out the current needs of the customer? Well, from data! Banks have been trying the use of chatbots for a couple of years, but the result is not always ideal. In the KBC Group, we approach it a little differently - we build data driven virtual assistant Kate. You can hear what the future of meeting customer needs will look like with Kate during my presentation.

Marián Šimko (KInIT), Martin Takáč (FMFI UK), Peter Polák (Bloomreach)

Marián is deputy director of the Kempelen Institute of Intelligent Technologies and leader of the natural language processing (NLP) research team. It is dedicated to automatic processing of text data, which is growing every day at a dizzying pace. His team collaborated on the creation of the first large public Slovak language model, SlovakBERT, helps companies develop solutions for better processing of Slovak, and currently participates in several European projects focused on word processing.

Martin works as an associate professor at the Department of Applied Informatics at the Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University in Bratislava. He teaches cognitive science and researches cognitive modeling, artificial neural networks and developmental artificial intelligence. He co-authored the BabyX cognitive architecture developed by Soul Machines Ltd. He is also interested in the wider impact of artificial intelligence on society and the ethical aspects of cognitive technologies. He is a member of the Permanent Commission for Ethics and Regulation of Artificial Intelligence at the Ministry of Investments, Regional Development and Informatization of the Slovak Republic and a member of the scientific board of AIslovakIA - National Platform for the Development of Artificial Intelligence in Slovakia. He is a founding member of the Slovak Society for Cognitive Science.

After years of developing banking software, Peter swapped traditional companies for startup culture. Today, he takes care of cloud client data at Bloomreach (formerly Exponea) as Director of Engineering for Customer Data Platform. He likes the world of SaaS products - he is fascinated by its freshness, unpredictability and immeasurable potential. He's married and has two teenage daughters who help him stay innovative (and alert).

What are we going to talk about?

ChatGPT appealed to wide masses of users and surprised in many ways. Are current technologies around large language models (LLMs) really as good as they seem? What real progress have we made and where are the limits? And should we look forward to the future? Or be afraid of her?

Presenters

Miro Vladár

Miro has always been fascinated by innovations in technologies and especially by the possibilities of their use in the enterprise world. Gradually, he moved from their application in the programming itself, through the possibility to use them in the design and implementation of software architecture to complex solutions for modern transformation of key systems. He is interested in the pragmatic use of new approaches to digitization and how to turn buzzwords such as microservice, DevOps Cloud or Data mesh into meaningful solutions. It helps build a vision of long-term sustainable FutureIT, which allows the business to grow and respond to the rapid pace of change. 
 

Andrej Žlnka

During his IT career so far, Andrej has gone through several positions - from developer, through product owner, to division manager. All the way he was accompanied by innovations, for which he constantly has drive and enthusiasm. He likes his fingers in everything that smacks of innovation at SOFTEC. He specializes mainly in solutions using facial biometrics. In his free time, he likes to ventilate his head by playing double bass with his band.